05. 💍

[undread]

You and your friends Imogen, Fearne, Chetney and Orym in the study of a castle, a tall room made of white bricks with a window looking out over the valley below. The rest of your party are in conversation with the lord of the castle about mysteries and battle plans, but the three of you are approached by a tiny tiefling girl wearing a fancy dress.

"I am Lady Gwendolyn de Rolo," she says imperiously, addressing in particular the gnome Chetney and the halfling Orym. "I am the queen of this house, and everyone in it shorter than I am must do as I say."

You're immediately charmed by her, but the de Rolo family as a whole, and her father Lord Percival de Rolo in particular, make you very nervous. Even though you do normally love children, you don't want to risk scaring Lord de Rolo's daughter. You're afraid he'll be angry with you.

"I have heard of that law here in Whitestone," Imogen agrees, playfully. Chetney pretends to be put out, but tells her he'll go along with it if she guesses how old he is, and then teases her by pretending to be 4,000 years old.

"By the way, Laudna," Orym says, as he's pulled aside to join the strategy discussion. "Gwendolyn really likes skeletons and scary things."

"Really?" you ask, forgetting your nervousness. Children who are interested in creepy and scary things are your favorite.

"I've been watching you," she says back, also a little shy.

Excitedly, you show her Pâté, warning him to be polite in the presence of the child. When she giggles and plays with him happily, you promise to show her something really cool. You take your finger and draw it across your chest, and pull the skin back enough to show her part of your sternum. Imogen is immediately horrified, reminding you that this might not be appropriate for such a small girl, but Gwendolyn smiles widely and pronounces it "fascinating."

"Do you want to touch it?" you offer mischievously. To Imogen and Chetney's horror (Fearne thinks this is a good idea), the little girl reaches out a hand, her face soft with curiosity and interest to touch the cut on your chest. But then as soon as her hand makes contact, her expression changes. She suddenly looks alarmed and terrified, like she's about to burst into tears. She grabs her doll and runs out of the room. You feel something too, for just a moment - a sort of burning, ugly feeling. a ba-dum ba-dum throbbing in your head, but it's gone so quickly you thought you imagined it.

You're crestfallen - you'd thought that was going well. Lord de Rolo looks up from the discussion he's having, his brow furrowing in concern when he sees her run away, but turns back to his business.

Imogen and Fearne see how sad you are, and agree to come with her to find her and apologize. You follow her to a little hidden door, where you can hear a child's tears behind it.

"Whatever will we do without our queen?" Fearne asks.

"We're sorry, Lady Gwendolyn. We hope we didn't frighten you," Imogen says gently. "Sometimes things that look scary can be really beautiful if you give them a chance."

The little girl opens the door to her hiding place, face streaked with tears. You hide nearby, waiting for Imogen and Fearne to talk to her.

"Why does she hate me?" the child asks. She's sobbing so much she's shaking. "I could feel it when I touched her. I've never felt such hatred."

Imogen tries to console her, convince her that you don't hate her, but the little girl decides to go to bed. And you feel uncertainty and terror beginning to well up inside you. You can't pretend you don't feel some resentment for the de Rolos, but you could never hate Gwendolyn. Could you?

Imogen comes back, her expression grave. "It was Delilah," she says simply. "She said she felt hatred as soon as she touched you. Who else could hate her? Who would hate the de Rolos more? That wolf is connected to you, inside you." Guilt, fear, shame, all of it welling up inside you. She was supposed to be gone for good. They went to so much trouble to be certain Delilah had vanished from you, never to return. And you ruined it. "We can't tell them," Imogen says, worriedly. "Lord Percival would destroy you."

"What am I supposed to do with this seed of hatred I carry inside me?" you ask, miserable.

"What do you want to do?" Imogen asks carefully. "You talked about taking advantage of it, becoming stronger?" She seems uncertain.

You agree that you need to take this opportunity, being in Whitestone, the former seat of Delilah's power. That night, you, Imogen, and Fearne creep out of your beds in your guest rooms into the tunnels below the castle, tunnels you remember from a lifetime ago. They're blocked, secured so curious Gwendolyn can't find her way inside one of them, but all of you manage to locate a passageway to a series of underground rooms. A laboratory, a table with shackles on it, the smell of blood, strange vials, prison cells. You shiver; this place is familiar to you as well. You wish you could be sure why.

In this space, you find yourself moving automatically, absently, lost in nostalgic memories you can't place. You pull away sheets, revealing lecterns, alchemical contraptions, racks with tools, blades, and chains. A cracked and broken glass jar with a residue of residuum dusting inside it. All decayed and covered by dust or destroyed.

You hear Imogen and Fearne gasp and turn to see, behind you, the ghostly visage vaguely shaped like a person rising from one of the untouched sheets, its vacant, dark eye sockets staring emptily at you while its hanging mouth draws more and more open. It makes a baneful moan.

"Hello, friend," you say softly. "Who are you?"

The spectre attacks you, moaning, almost angry, trying to attack you. As it touches you, you feel an ice-like sensation all over your body. And with its vacant face and empty, open mouth, it says "It's you."

The recognition terrifies you more than the ghost ever could. And you drawn upon your power, the dark power inside you, and you start to steal away its essence. You transform yourself into a monstrous creature, long limbed and inhuman, but feminine, with a mourning veil drawn over your face. The creature moans and wails and begins weeping. "It's you, it's you!" The shape of the veil almost changes to a structured garment, a choker burnt on your neck.

More spectral figures begin emerging. They barely look human, but there's still something familiar about them. The shade of a young peasant man, the shade of a young maid in a serving uniform, the shade of an older man, heavyset with thick mutton chops, his jowls sunken and eye sockets deep in his skull. They all scream at you, furious, seemingly entirely made of rage.

You feel yourself growing angrier and angrier, too. They think you're her. They think you're Delilah, too. It's not fair. It's not fair. You were her victim. You were her victim, just like they were. You hate them. You want them to suffer for this, for looking at you and seeing her.

"You want to release your decades of rage?" you snarl. "Come at me, then." You pull open your chest and a monstrous spectral hound, wailing and shrieking, erupts out of your chest. The hound in the past has been malleable in shape, but this time, you picture Delilah's dogs and make it look like that. You cast a spell to make it appear that there are three of you, three twisted shapes that look like Delilah in her high collar and dress, standing in the room. You crackle with green necrotic energy, and you say, in a terrible, haughty voice, "I killed you once and I can do it again!"

You begin to fight them, your dog tearing into them, drawing on their energy. And then Fearne casts another spell and the entire room glows with bright sunlight, and they disappear. And now you can see yourself. Shadows like liquid oil cover you, giving the impression of pointed shoulder and a high collar, a strip burned across your throat like a choker, and behind you, you feel a presence, a shape, the sensation of hands on your shoulders, and you see Imogen and Fearne look at you horrified, and then look even more horrified at something standing directly behind you.

"Murderer," the ghosts all whisper as they dissolve. "Murderer. Why?"

And as they disappear, you hear a voice, though you can't tell if it's in your head or behind you. A voice you haven't heard for some time. "Anthony, Tethany, Vincent," she says. You shiver. It's Delilah. Delilah is supposed to be gone, but she's here speaking - in your head? Or is she in this room? "All kind servants of the castle, all very useful subjects." You look to Imogen and Fearne, but it appears they can hear this voice speaking as well. It's not just you. You can't see her, but you can tell by the way Imogen and Fearne are looking at you that they see something, her ghost arising out of you, behind you.

The voice continues. "It's interesting, you found part of my old additions to the castle grounds. A place to keep Sylas to rest, a place to experiment in the name of the Whispered One. So many memories here. It's nice to see it again."

Her tone is so pleasant, like she's strolling down memory lane. You feel drained, suddenly. Empty. Like there's nothing left in you for her to take, like there was never any point to anything you've done if it's just lead you back here, to her.

"What am I to you?" you ask her, your voice echoing numbly in the room. "Are there more like me?"

"There are none like you." She sounds almost loving, when she says that. She sounds almost kind. Like a mother, speaking with pride about her daughter. You barely remember the woman that the girl you once were had as a mother, so many decades ago. But you don't want to fall for it.

"So I'm your last material thread to this world," you say with gritted teeth, trying to hold onto that anger. Why was it so easy to hate the other ghosts, the other victims, but in the face of the woman who did this to all of you, your resolve feels so far away.

"As I am yours," she says, still calm and light. "Dear, you've been dead for quite some time. I'm all that keeps you here."

This returns the rage to you, sudden and abruptly. You don't need her. You don't want to need her. You can't need her. "You're lying!"

"Am I?" she asks. "We are bound, you and I. So let us put aside these strange and unnecessary quabbles, and instead, maybe do some great things together. All I want is to see history come to its natural close. I want to outlive this world. I want to uncover its mysteries, and keep them to myself, and my love. What's so wrong with that? But I do not push against your goals. Truth be told, our interests are quite aligned! I lend you my gifts because you need them, and I need you. Besides, both of us receive our gifts from the Whispered One. His shadows run deep, and while he may be biding his time, his tendrils lie in every shadow. I do not wish to see that taken away by your enemies." The sound of a smile in her voice. "And if he goes away, so do we."

"It seems you have a lot at stake," you spit, sullen. "So help me, then. Give me more! You've barely spoken to me in months!"

"I need you to give me more," she says. And you feel that hunger, the ba-dum ba-dum of a beating heart, that pulses inside you. You recall a shattered stone, the soul of an enemy, things you found irresistible, impossible to not pull the magic from and take it inside you.

"You've tortured so many," you say. "So many souls obviously still here. People hate me because of you." You hate that you sound petulant, like a child. "I'm a victim."

"People hate that which they cannot be," she says. "The weak-willed and fateless accept death. But we endure."

"I didn't choose this!" you scream.

"No, but fate's a fickle mistress, isn't she?"

"You're a lying bitch," Imogen suddenly snarls; you'd forgotten Fearne and Imogen were still there, hearing this too. Normally your conversations with Delilah happen entirely in your head.

"We killed you once and we'll do it again," Fearne says.

"It hasn't stopped me yet," Delilah says. "For she'd have to die for me to be truly destroyed. And you wouldn't do that, would you?"