abraxaslogs | WELCOME TO THE FREE CITIES!

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WELCOME TO THE FREE CITIES!

WELCOME TO THE FREE CITIES!

Welcome to The Free Cities! The portal exits outside the capital city of Cadens. The first impression of the city is its sheer size. It sprawls out across the landscape like a great hulking beast at rest. The wall that encircles it barely contains it, the buildings of Cadens practically bulging against its restraint.

The air here seems thicker somehow, tinged with a scent that’s acrid and smoky. Smog hangs high over the city, belched out by smokestacks that tower over the industrial district. The desert stretches out behind it, dotted with towers and dust clouds that disappear into the horizon. Multiple gates lead inside and each is staffed by soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms that wave a steady stream of people through without appearing to pay much attention. People are coming and going almost all of the time, to and from the outposts and areas of activity around the city proper. It’s difficult to tell just what’s out there beyond the impression of tall metal structures and a great deal of labor. Wagons carrying travelers to Libertas and Aquila roll out from the Travel Post outside the city wall.

Anyone who can sense magic will notice a much lower concentration here. No one will be stopped or questioned at the gate, even if the soldiers seem to take note of the fugitives from Thorne.

The activity and sheer number of citizens can be overwhelming. It’s crowded and loud and feels constantly in motion with everyone talking and yelling over each other. It’s easy to get swept up in the ever-moving throng or find oneself ducking into the mouth of a narrow alley just to breathe.

Anyone who’s willing to make their way to the northern part of the city and Portham Hall will find Prime Minister Marlo Reiner available to receive them.

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Yeah, I didn't see that one coming.

[Which may not be a big surprise considering how little she had allowed herself to see, and for so long. She'd started those talks with Harrow about a prison break for nothing, but no doubt the way things had gone down was better than anything she could have pulled off. She looks back toward the hideous mystery creature locked behind it's glass case, and slowly nods. The mirth that had coloured her voice a moment ago bleeds out into something else.]

But I did make a choice. Who knows if it was the right one, but...

[But. They're here now. Perhaps neutrality would have been the more sensible option, but she feels she's been neutral for long enough.]

No, I don't believe anyone did. On the other, that is doubtlessly why it worked.

[No one could have anticipated two randos showing up and making magic portals to cities far and away, that much is for sure. If Alucard was forced to consider his own plans, the ones Hector was trying to roll out and how much he was reliant on one, he'd admit that he would probably still be in that cell. He isn't though.

The way she trails off is acknowledged with a soft mm, not wanting to poke or prod too much further. He isn't entitled to those thoughts, and in truth, Alucard can imagine he's better off not knowing.

So instead he turns his attention back to the mystery creature whose face is just clearly Not Right.]

On purpose or genuine attempt, do you suppose?

[There's no arguing with that, and their 'rescuers' - for want of another word, it remains to be seen if they're better off now than they had been before - certainly had access to better equipment than any of them could have drummed up. The portals and the time-stopping magic had really been pretty badass, she has to admit. Flashy. One has to appreciate an escape attempt executed with style.

Whatever, though. She's swift enough to let the more serious topic slide, and she steps toward the glass case, leans in so close that her breath threatens to mist up the otherwise spotless surface.]

It's got to be intentional. Either that or they let a kid or someone without a necromantic bone in their body have a go at corpse preservation. Maybe they thought it'd give visitors a laugh?

[It had made her laugh, after all.]

[Alucard can't say he trusts it, but questioning the results is absolutely pointless right now. He'd have appreciated a true opportunity to let his anger out at the situation though. It has been lurking under the surface since he was first tossed into the dungeons, and without an appropriate outlet--

-- never mind that.]

Nothing else I've seen so far has looked quite like this. [Much of what he's seen is bone though, rather than skin.] The skeletons seem reasonably reconstructed, or if the bones are out of place, it isn't obvious.

[To this she nods knowledgeably; one cannot spend 18 years of one's life in the Ninth House without becoming something of an expert on bones. Even if, in her case, that knowledge has been acquired mostly through grudging osmosis.]

They all look correct to me. Although they're clearly held together with, I dunno, pins and stuff. Not the best constructs I've ever seen.

[A brief pause, and then she shakes her head.]

But then, they're not really constructs, are they?

I think you'd need to define constructs in that case.

[It is a gentle prompt to explain some of the vocabulary at play. If Alucard has noticed anything at all in their brief interactions, it is that there are so many words he doesn't understand. There's a novelty in that fact, but the novelty has already faded to a vague annoyance for simply not already knowing and understanding something he suspects he ought to at least have a vague concept of.]

Oh, you know.

[She says, before immediately feeling a short, sharp stab of embarrassment because of course he doesn't know, or he did he wouldn't have asked her. Subtly, she winces. Tries to cover for it by quickly moving on to her explanation.]

Bone servants, raised skeletons. The reanimated dead.

[She says this last part in a deep, sepulchral tone that is clearly intended to sound spooky, if the way she waggles her fingers at him is anything to go by.]

These guys are more like, decorative?

Mm, I've never heard them referred to in quite that way. [Sorry, spooky fingers don't work on the son of Dracula. There's a nod that follows, making it clear Alucard gets the picture. Of course, his experience has mostly been in having to stab the reanimated and reforged dead, but that's neither here nor there for right this second.]

I believe they were going for educational, excluding whatever the thing in front of it is. [Alucard's gaze goes back, quite and considering.] Instruction on how not to do something might have been the point with this.

[Geez, this guy's sense of humour could give Harrow's a run for her money. Which is to say, it's about as dry and desiccated as one hundred year old bone. Clearly her attempts at humour are wasted on him, but regardless she sighs, and makes one more half-hearted try.]

Oh, come on. Throw me a bone here.

[Her wit, it sparkles. She gives him an obnoxious grin before turning back toward the display, her eyes trailing from one of the aforementioned skeletons of something she can't identify, back toward the taxidermied monstrosity that had got them chatting in the first place.]

But yeah, if that thing is meant to be educational then surely the lesson is 'when taxidermy goes wrong'. Or like, ancient preservation techniques, showing off how much better they've become at stuffing corpses over the centuries. Cheery stuff like that.

[Her gaze slides further along the glassed-in display case as she talks, vaguely narrowing.]

Maybe there's more of them around here somewhere. You know, more of the fugly ones.

After that? Absolutely not.

[At least that dry response has something that at least acknowledges the humour, even if it isn't quite in the mood to engage. There's a quiet headache in response to that grin, and you know what? All hail this terrible taxidermy. It brings joy and puns.]

I believe that if it is an exhibit, it's in isolation. Or at least the information cards would mention it, but-- [His eyes move to the museum label. It is shockingly brief, giving only the creature's name and the approximate year it was created. Nothing more.]

They'd be scattered, or else I imagine the rest are in storage. I don't think an index would have a specific section for what you are calling "fugly."

You wound me.

[She says, in a voice that doesn't sound wounded in the least. If anything she seems to perk up a little, because dry as his response may have been it nonetheless hints at a sardonic kind of humour just waiting to come out. Promising.]

And maybe they should have a display like that, it would liven the place up a little. Make learning fun.

[This is said in such a way as to suggest that she does not, in fact, find learning fun. Which is largely true when it comes to the dry, flat, academic kind of learning. Anything with a little more kinetic energy involved, and she's all for it.]

They could at least rope in a necromancer, animate the bones a bit. Get them to do a little dance or something.

I imagine that given all the hints you've dropped about your skillset, it could be repaired.

[Drier still, like the dessert beyond the city. Alucard's still not in the best place for humour, but he can see the rare occasion for what he feels is an especially clever dig. (haha, because archaeology, rite?0

Unfortunately, Alucard is a big fat nerd. This place is exactly his thing.]

I believe the layout is meant to discuss the evolution of the ecosystem, given that quite a few of the labels have noted what is extinct and when versus animals that still reside in the area.

[The whole thing is subtle, but it is there all the same. One just needs to pay attention.]

You may want to limit that discussion in public.

[Despite the fact that Gideon is not a total moron - contrary to both popular belief and the way she frequently presents herself - she finds something in her glazing over as he starts using words like ecosystem. Even if some small, quiet part of her had found something of interest in all these dusty old bones and their paltry little labels. There's a certain novelty in finding oneself on a world that has actual flora and fauna to its name, and there is something useful about now being able to name some of it. Perhaps it's just the thought of Drearburh's nasty, crumbling library that has her shutting down at the thought of a conversation that might veer too close toward academic, but whatever the case she comically crosses her eyes and gives him a dead, blank look until the moment he stops talking.]

I maintain that the little dance would make all that shit easier to take in. And for the record I'm the muscle, the cavalier primary to the Ninth House adept. And the looks, obviously. I don't have an iota of necromancy in me.

[She says, even if she does recover disconcertingly swiftly from things that ought to have floored her.]

Why would I need to limit discussion of it? I get that people do things differently here but I don't think they're against it...are they?

In a place with less magic, I'd speak of it less in order not to draw too much attention to oneself. [There's an undertone there though, a clear you do you that the dhampir knows he can't win against. There's something about necromancers and apparently the necromancer-adjacent that includes in inability to be subtle that would in fact be hilarious if it wasn't so stressful.

Moreover, she's back to using completely foreign vocabulary. The muscle part makes sense, but everything else--]

You've just been around it due to your position?

[For someone accustomed to skulking around silently in the dark, Gideon has always been disconcertingly bad at not drawing attention to herself. Regardless, she nods. It's not exactly a promise to do better or attempt to conceal something that has always been a straightforward fact of life for her, but it is an indication that she's heard what he's saying, might take it on board.]

Duly noted.

[She says, before continuing on.]

And everyone knows about necromancy where I'm from. Not everyone is born with those abilities obviously, and the Ninth House only has the one, but most other places have plenty of necromancers. Fuck, our God is a necromancer. I guess if you're not from a place like that it must be hard to grasp just how weird it is for me here. The only bone constructs - that's the reanimated skeletons I mentioned - that I've seen walking around the place are Harrow's. My necromancer's. She's here, too.

[She adds, perhaps redundantly.]

[Alucard will take it. He has a terrible habit of running into people who are bad at the concept of subtle (himself included, if he is forced to be absolutely and 100% honest with himself), this is pretty much the most he could ask for from anyone of that ilk.

Moreover, Gideon's home seems....also deeply unsubtle, if he was forced to really think critically about it. Necromancy as a fact of life? Hector should go live there, he'd probably be happier at the end of the day.]

There are associates of my father who have had more than just a passing interest in the matter. [Hector. He means Hector. But also Alucard dislikes Hector for what he thinks are completely legitimate and understandable reasons.] But you have one assigned to you?

Yeah?

[Something in her subtly brightens, which both surprises and quietly disgusts her. She's strained and fought and pulled against the grasping dead hands of the Ninth for so long that it still comes up on her like a short, hot shock, to know how much of the Ninth is in her. She can't help it, though; in a world so thoroughly alien to her, it's not unpleasant to find even slight and passing familiarities.

She turns away from the glass case and its dubious inhabitants now, leans her shoulder against it with a casual disregard for the fact that one is probably not meant to touch it.]

And it's...complicated. A long story, mostly featuring me, of course, which naturally makes it very interesting. But to save time let’s say yeah, kind of. Or I was assigned to her. The necromantic heir to each of the Nine Houses - that's...I guess that's what you'd call royalty of a sort - traditionally has a cavalier assigned to them, like from birth. Necros are powerful with the help of their necromancy, but they're usually scrawny little bastards with noodle arms. Cavaliers provide the brute strength.

[And they're ultimately designed to bond in an entirely weirder, more brutal way, but this is relatively new information even for her, and she doesn't want to bore him to sleep with it.]

He didn't use them well.

[Sorry to sound too cold about that fact, but Alucard was never a fan of used forged night creatures to destroy all of Wallachia plan. There were plenty of other ways to use forging - surely there were positive approaches out there - but it seemed the gift always came with an inclination towards destruction.

There's no correction of maybe don't lean against the glass? Only Alucard's eyes meeting hers, listening.]

So you have an entire class system built on a specific type of magic, and because their arts require certain approaches, they need physical back up because a class system like that always comes with political infighting? Is that roughly correct?

[But okay. You get a flicker of a grin at the descriptive term noodle arms. It's poetic.]

I think this is the first time I've had so little in another world that was familiar.

[Geralt just lives in a weird alternate Wallachia as far as he's concerned.]

[And just as something in her had lit up like a light going on mere moments before, now she seems to slump into herself, infinitesimally. Given what admittedly little she ever bothered to learn about the Nine Houses and the Resurrection, it's not such a shock. She had known there were worlds out there that functioned very differently from the collection of planets under the benevolent care of the King Undying. But it's still an odd feeling, to know how alone they really are, and how different.]

Probably just as well.

[She says, and her voice is a touch heavier.]

It turns you pretty weird, obsessing over the dead. And it's less that the Houses are pitted against each other, although you wouldn't have thought so, with how things went down...well, never mind that. It's another long story and I'm not trying to bore your ass off, here. But it's more like, the Houses are united under the King Undying - that's our God, who brought all the Houses back from the brink with the Resurrection - and then there are other worlds out there that aren't really into the way our God runs things, and we defend him from them. Or the Cohort does...from what I can tell, the heads of most of the Houses just sit around getting ever more weird and obsessed with the dead, and my House is the worst of the lot, just rotting away in the dark and guarding some chilly weirdo in a coffin...

[But she looks at him then, and shakes her head. Flashes a smile that looks almost self-conscious.]

But I bet this all just sounds like gibberish, doesn't it? I'm even starting to bore myself. What did you mean, he didn't use them well?

[There's not exactly a laugh from Alucard at how weird one becomes when focused on the dead, but there is a soft noise of acknowledgement at the statement. He's seen it. Saw how one death drove his father to madness and wanting to bring it upon countles thousands. Returned him to the Dracula of legend, but wrecked in emotions. An entire society focused on the dead?

The more she explains, the more the weird bears out. An entire society centered around it would have quirks, but defending a god of death with an actual army? His father couldn't imagine such a thing.

Although he can dig about coffins. That's his current goal right now, so no commentary.]

The particulars are....particular, but the overall concept makes enough sense to my ears. [There's an unfortunate noise in response, part sigh and part ugh no I don't want to.] Precisely that. Used them for more death and destruction with the end goal being annihilation.

Edited 2021-09-09 12:25 (UTC)

Huh. Pretty shitty end goal.

[She says it bluntly; she's always regarded the fighting her own people have been eternally caught up in as something vital and necessary, a bright act of self-preservation. Although perhaps that's because her ideas about the Cohort are so bound up in her own desperate desire for freedom, the yearning ache to feel as though she's part of something bigger than a decaying old House that has all-but decimated itself in a bid to create one last, powerful necromantic heir. There has been no time or desire for self-reflection, or what she thinks about any of those old dreams anymore. Not when things had become so fraught and urgent back at Canaan House, not when they'd been ripped away from their own worlds and transplanted into something very different. But when presented with the idea of using one's strengths only for annihilation, she seems decidedly nonplussed.]

I mean, are we talking about annihilation of everything? Or just the annihilation of the enemy, whoever that might be?

On that we agree.

[It was the worst end goal. His father had been too beset with grief to realize how terrible the plan was. That all it really was was a terrible cry for help that he could have had. Hell, if he had only killed the priest that had set everything in motion, things would have been different.

But no. Disproportionate response had been the only logical conclusion so far as he was concerned.]

In the end, everything, even if it started out with only one country.

What the fuck.

[Is how she eloquently responds to that. She's perplexed enough that she pushes away from the glass case again, her voice having temporarily risen to a level that jars oddly against the hushed silence of the museum. Just as well the hall of natural relics is currently empty save for the two of them; it's the kind of loud exclamation that would have doubtless received some irritable looks.]

I mean, what's the point in that? Where does that leave the annihilator, if everything is gone?

[Alucard's not surprised by the response, even if the way he flinches might imply otherwise. This is dangerous, tender ground that they've stumbled onto. He's realized too late that he doesn't have a plan to properly back away from it.

His reply is quiet, hardly offended at the reaction but making it clear that this is incredibly personal in a way he doesn't wish to elaborate on.]

Sometimes, destruction is the point.

[Gideon cannot be said to be well-versed in the picking up of social cues, nor how to respond accordingly. To say she's badly socialised is a monumental understatement. Left alone in a swift-decaying place with only ancient nuns and a few old military leaders too decrepit to fight any longer for company, people who's views on her varied from abject hatred to cool indifference, she hasn't exactly had much chance to practice. Still. There's something in the way his voice drops, in the tone with which he speaks, that has her pausing. She narrows her eyes at him, trying to discern what he's attempting to tell her with his quiet words, the odd stillness of them.

He'd said associates of my father. Which meant they were talking about his dear old dad. Parents who commit terrible acts are something she knows just a little about, even if the parents in question weren't her own. Finally something clicks in her, hot and sharp, and she affects a casual shrug.]

I guess people do all kinds of messed up things for reasons that make sense to them at them time. Like that.

[And she points back toward the taxidermied abomination, having gathered together enough of her sense to attempt a distraction.]

I mean, there are people in this world who go around defiling the bodies of deceased...whatever that thing is, for the fun of it. Now that's fucked up.

WELCOME TO THE FREE CITIES!

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