[Coming to like this isn't unusual. Rather, what's alarming is the absence of familiar faces. The last time he stumbled into a scenario like this, he had three others with him.
Sitting up, Sieghart narrows his eyes as he takes in his surroundings. This sort of time period isn't beyond him, and he has a mild guess as to what the pike-like contraption is up ahead. However, his attention first drifts down, past the foreign attire, to the bundle on which he's been lying, for which he reaches.]
[The bundle is very light and made of a thin burlap-like material. If he opens the bag by untying the little strip of leather around it, he'll find a slip of paper inside, along with what appears to be a hand-drawn map.
Unfurling the paper will reveal the following note, written hastily in blotchy ink.]
Captain,
I have done as much as I can. The rest is up to you now. Here are the directions to Tama. I will leave the transporting of his head in your care.
Keep your eye west. Do not get caught. We will meet again soon.
[Head? Sieghart looks up at the moon, gauging his position. Westward, the paper says.
He lowers his head to peruse the hand-drawn map next, rising to his feet with the bundle in his other hand as he does. Don't tell him he has to steal a head and run? That'll be the death of him. Whom is he even supposed to meet?]
[The hand-drawn map appears to be of the area, and it highlights a path that goes presumably west along the river, up through a part of the city, and off toward a forest. As he's standing and shifting with the bundle, something else will fall out of it, too: a small, spherical object with what appears to be a fuse at the end...
Sure would be wild if he had to steal a head and run though, huh?]
[Judging from the size, he concludes that they're probably smoke bombs. Sieghart's shoulders slump in a silent sigh. He really is going to have to steal a head, isn't he?
His eyes flit in the lights' direction. They're wavering and drawing closer—lanterns? (It's definitely not the lantern guy, because he'd be hearing raucous laughter from a mile away.) Evidently, he's wasted enough time standing here. He slides the bombs back into the bundle and moves swiftly toward the strange structure.]
To the strange structure he goes, though! As he gets closer, he'll begin to smell it even before he can hear the buzzing of the cloud of flies that had been essentially invisible in the darkness. It's a pungent, rotten odor, sharp with the underlying metallic scent of blood.
It is, as he'd probably guessed, a strange display that holds numerous heads on pikes, all of them looking out toward the river as if in some strange mockery of sight-seeing. They're in varying states of decay, though they're all recognizable as human heads to some degree.
One head in particular may stand out among the nails and pikes, looking relatively fresh, save for the sag of its facial muscles and the discoloration of the flesh. Though it might not be as eye-catching as another nearby.]
The smell of rotting flesh is nothing new, though that doesn't make it any less unpleasant. Sieghart swats some flies aside as he steps closer to inspect the heads. It's not hard to notice Kondo after the familiarity of those sagging features was burned into his memory from the other week. Frowning, he reaches for the head when a vibrant red enters his periphery.
He'd almost forgotten.
They're similar; however, a certain softness absent from the hardened face of a warrior hits him like a wave as he stares at what can only be Julia's head. His heart twists despite the paradoxical turn of gears in his mind. Despite his longevity, he hadn't stuck around long enough to see death make its claim on the first love of his life. To see her in the dark like this after so many centuries, reminding him of details forgotten over the merciless passage of time . . .
He tears his gaze away after a beat, moving to dislodge Kondo's head from the pike.]
Well, he's here with a head now. It's about as gross as you'd expect from a head that's presumably been piked for at least a day, and it will likely leave some gnarly decomposition fluids on Sieghart's hands, presuming that's how he dislodged it. He'll probably have to leave little bits of skin behind, but they tear easily enough, given their rotten state.
As he's working on freeing Kondo's head from its pike, however, a voice drifts over from the head he had just been looking at.]
[He did not, in fact, dislodge the head with his feet, so his hands bear the brunt of the fluids. After gliding across the battlefield and swimming in gore for so many years, getting messy doesn't bother him in the slightest.
The voice, however, gives him momentary pause.
No matter how much she resembles her, Elesis sounds nothing like her ancestral mother. As the result of her upbringing and personality, Elesis possesses a boyish edge that dispels any illusion of likeness whenever she speaks, while the one who bore her face first in his memory was timid. Sweet and shy—that was Julia, in spirit and voice both.
It hasn't even been a year since he heard her voice again for the first time in centuries. Back then, she parroted words he'd already heard. Here, she says something different, and that's what leads to the final yank that frees Kondo's head from the pike as Sieghart then moves to wrap it in the bundle, ignoring her.]
[Kondo's head yanks free with a visceral sort of tearing sound, like wet paper. The flies scatter at the absence of one of the heads they'd been clustered around, only to buzz and zip to the ones left, gathering there instead. An ugly and humiliating display for the people here. One last way to strip them of their humanity.
Of course, even though he's ignoring her, that same voice calls out again.]
"Sieg..." [The voice is soft in its sweetness and sorrowful in its weight, like someone standing on the shoreline and watching a loved one set sail for the very last time, knowing there's nothing to be done for it.] "...Please don't leave me here."
[In the time it's taken Sieghart to free Kondo's head, those bobbing and weaving lights seem to have gotten even closer - close enough that he'll be able to tell they are, in fact, lanterns being held by two people.]
[There's no more time. If he takes a moment even to shoot down the voice, he'll draw unwanted attention with his own. (Saying all that, who's to say that she won't cry out, herself?) The best course of action is to leave as quickly as possible.
He tightens his grip around the bundle and, using the placement of the river and landscape as reference, hugs the dry side of the river as he takes off in the direction highlighted by the hand-drawn map. If that should happen to be in the direction of the two people with lanterns, he'll maneuver himself to give the light source a wide berth, mostly for the sake of delaying detection when it's inevitable.]
[Fortunately for him, it seems the maps coordinates are taking him away from those two figures! Not delaying anything by talking to his dear, departed wife means that they don't get close enough to see him, either. And better still, she doesn't cry out for him, though as he turns to leave, she lets out a last shaky, mournful sigh.
For now, he's free to traverse along the river and away from the piked heads. Rainclouds are converging off in the distance, close enough that they'll probably end up over Sieghart's area sooner rather than later, but he remains dry for now, save for the nasty noggin fluid he got on him earlier.
As he continues to move forward, he'll eventually come to a point where he has several options which all seem to go in roughly the same direction the map pointed him toward.
One continues to hug the river. It appears to have very little by way of obstacles, though that also means there isn't much cover in case he bumps into anyone who happens to be moseying along the banks at this hour.
One veers up the bank and toward the buildings up above. Though most of the shops are clearly shut down for the night, one still seems to have its lights on. It's difficult to read the sign without taking a closer peek.
One takes a middling way, neither hugging the river nor going up the bank. It seems to offer some moderate coverage, though it's hard to discern where this path leads, since it eventually heads towards foliage rather than buildings.
Where does Sieghart, abandoner of his lovely wife, go?]
[It's a mournful sound, and not one he's likely to forgot anytime soon; however, real though it might have been after the grief he must've caused her with his disappearance, it isn't real here.
Stopping at the crossroads of sorts, he recalls the hand-drawn map. In the end, with little time to waste before somebody notices the missing head and acts—to say nothing of the oncoming rain—he takes the path that veers up the bank and toward the buildings up above.]
[It's fine, what's abandoning a fake version of a person you've already actually abandoned?
Sieghart goes up the bank and toward the buildings. Once he's crested the embankment, he can get a better look at the sign of the shop whose lights still seem lit: though the actual name is hard to make out, it's in the styling of an inn. It doesn't sound like a boppin' party over there, but voices can be heard from a reasonable distance.
Most of the other shops along the street seem vacant, currently. However, when he passes by an alley off to the side of the main road, he'll hear what sounds like a small piece of glass hitting the ground. Hm.]
[He cranes his neck toward the sound. A part of him believes that he should just press onward and not be led by distractions. There are voices ahead, however, and light is counterproductive to stealth—not to mention the risk of being pincered if he ignores whatever this is.
Neither option is ideal. Worse comes to worst, he can always toss a bomb or two. With that in mind, he steps into the alley.]
But the alley! Into it he steps! The air is quiet in that static sort of way that implies the presence of another sentient being, but for a little while, no further sounds follow.
Then, there's a little scampering sound that appears to be coming from Sieghart's left. The cloud cover is getting thicker, so the light isn't as plentiful; still, he'll be able to pick out a few areas up ahead where someone - or something - could presumably be tucked away.]
Obviously, someone is here. Is it a person or a rodent? Unless there's a path he can use to his advantage here, he needs to investigate and move on before he attracts unwanted attention. He can be quiet when he needs to be, but there's only so much he can do about the odor of a decaying head, bundled or not. So he moves to his left, minding his back and the ground as he first looks into one of those areas closest to him.]
As Sieghart moves through the alley with his stinky head bundle, he'll find that it doesn't really smell pleasant back here, either. Maybe a bit like decay, too, or sewage.
Nothing approaches from behind just yet as he makes his way through, and the first area that he's looking into has nothing more than a few rats clustered around a rotting lump of something. They dart away as Sieghart approaches.
From the corner of his eye, he may catch a little darting motion from one of the areas up ahead. Something small and pale withdraws from the thin moonlight, vanishing into the dark.]
There's enough rot here to stick to his new clothes. He's definitely not going to smell like flowers once he returns to the mansion. Withdrawing from the retreating rats and their meal, he makes for the area ahead while keeping an eye on everything in between.]
[He's going to be stinkier than Bucky's pits, even...
Moving ahead to that space, he'll have a little trouble with visibility at first. But nothing comes out at him from the shadows, and if he waits until a bit more moonlight peeks through the cloud cover, he'll see the small and huddled form of a child tucked into the back of the little cove. They're staying very still and appear to be looking out at Sieghart through their crouched position, though it's difficult to make out their features from where he is. Though they seem to be making an attempt at staying quiet, he might be able to pick up on a little huff of breath every now and then, too.]
[Perhaps the stink will be potent enough to drive Qi Rong back into the basement.
He figured it had to be a child. Now that he's here, though, he has to consider whether he should leave or engage. In the case of dreams, the best course of action is to ignore everything. But here . . .
Slowly, Sieghart crouches down before he can get too close, lowering himself to the child's approximate eye level.]
[Qi Rong probably rolls around in rotting bodies for an eu de parfum.
But yeah! Congrats! There's a child! The child seems to try to scoot back even further as Sieghart lowers down to their level, hesitant and anxious in all ways. But as he isn't trying to reach out for them, a voice eventually calls back - soft, wavering, and clearly scared.]
What does he want? He wants to leave! Chatting like this is counterproductive to that end. But he's engaged the child, so this is the hole he must continue digging until he knows enough to make his next big decision.
For now, he stays put. The last thing he needs is an even more frightened child.]
I thought I heard a noise when I was passing by. What are you doing here so late?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Sitting up, Sieghart narrows his eyes as he takes in his surroundings. This sort of time period isn't beyond him, and he has a mild guess as to what the pike-like contraption is up ahead. However, his attention first drifts down, past the foreign attire, to the bundle on which he's been lying, for which he reaches.]
no subject
Unfurling the paper will reveal the following note, written hastily in blotchy ink.]
Captain,
I have done as much as I can. The rest is up to you now. Here are the directions to Tama. I will leave the transporting of his head in your care.
Keep your eye west. Do not get caught.
We will meet again soon.
no subject
He lowers his head to peruse the hand-drawn map next, rising to his feet with the bundle in his other hand as he does. Don't tell him he has to steal a head and run? That'll be the death of him. Whom is he even supposed to meet?]
no subject
Sure would be wild if he had to steal a head and run though, huh?]
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Is that a bomb? He reaches down to pick it up for inspection, then rummages through the bundle to ensure that that's the last of the surprises.]
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Rummaging through the bundle reveals two more! They're all about the size of ping-pong balls with nice, fresh, shiny fuses.
Off in the distance, those two wavering lights from before appear to be getting a little closer.]
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His eyes flit in the lights' direction. They're wavering and drawing closer—lanterns? (It's definitely not the lantern guy, because he'd be hearing raucous laughter from a mile away.) Evidently, he's wasted enough time standing here. He slides the bombs back into the bundle and moves swiftly toward the strange structure.]
no subject
To the strange structure he goes, though! As he gets closer, he'll begin to smell it even before he can hear the buzzing of the cloud of flies that had been essentially invisible in the darkness. It's a pungent, rotten odor, sharp with the underlying metallic scent of blood.
It is, as he'd probably guessed, a strange display that holds numerous heads on pikes, all of them looking out toward the river as if in some strange mockery of sight-seeing. They're in varying states of decay, though they're all recognizable as human heads to some degree.
One head in particular may stand out among the nails and pikes, looking relatively fresh, save for the sag of its facial muscles and the discoloration of the flesh. Though it might not be as eye-catching as another nearby.]
no subject
The smell of rotting flesh is nothing new, though that doesn't make it any less unpleasant. Sieghart swats some flies aside as he steps closer to inspect the heads. It's not hard to notice Kondo after the familiarity of those sagging features was burned into his memory from the other week. Frowning, he reaches for the head when a vibrant red enters his periphery.
He'd almost forgotten.
They're similar; however, a certain softness absent from the hardened face of a warrior hits him like a wave as he stares at what can only be Julia's head. His heart twists despite the paradoxical turn of gears in his mind. Despite his longevity, he hadn't stuck around long enough to see death make its claim on the first love of his life. To see her in the dark like this after so many centuries, reminding him of details forgotten over the merciless passage of time . . .
He tears his gaze away after a beat, moving to dislodge Kondo's head from the pike.]
no subject
Well, he's here with a head now. It's about as gross as you'd expect from a head that's presumably been piked for at least a day, and it will likely leave some gnarly decomposition fluids on Sieghart's hands, presuming that's how he dislodged it. He'll probably have to leave little bits of skin behind, but they tear easily enough, given their rotten state.
As he's working on freeing Kondo's head from its pike, however, a voice drifts over from the head he had just been looking at.]
"Will you take me with you, this time...?"
no subject
The voice, however, gives him momentary pause.
No matter how much she resembles her, Elesis sounds nothing like her ancestral mother. As the result of her upbringing and personality, Elesis possesses a boyish edge that dispels any illusion of likeness whenever she speaks, while the one who bore her face first in his memory was timid. Sweet and shy—that was Julia, in spirit and voice both.
It hasn't even been a year since he heard her voice again for the first time in centuries. Back then, she parroted words he'd already heard. Here, she says something different, and that's what leads to the final yank that frees Kondo's head from the pike as Sieghart then moves to wrap it in the bundle, ignoring her.]
no subject
Of course, even though he's ignoring her, that same voice calls out again.]
"Sieg..." [The voice is soft in its sweetness and sorrowful in its weight, like someone standing on the shoreline and watching a loved one set sail for the very last time, knowing there's nothing to be done for it.] "...Please don't leave me here."
[In the time it's taken Sieghart to free Kondo's head, those bobbing and weaving lights seem to have gotten even closer - close enough that he'll be able to tell they are, in fact, lanterns being held by two people.]
no subject
He tightens his grip around the bundle and, using the placement of the river and landscape as reference, hugs the dry side of the river as he takes off in the direction highlighted by the hand-drawn map. If that should happen to be in the direction of the two people with lanterns, he'll maneuver himself to give the light source a wide berth, mostly for the sake of delaying detection when it's inevitable.]
no subject
For now, he's free to traverse along the river and away from the piked heads. Rainclouds are converging off in the distance, close enough that they'll probably end up over Sieghart's area sooner rather than later, but he remains dry for now, save for the nasty noggin fluid he got on him earlier.
As he continues to move forward, he'll eventually come to a point where he has several options which all seem to go in roughly the same direction the map pointed him toward.
One continues to hug the river. It appears to have very little by way of obstacles, though that also means there isn't much cover in case he bumps into anyone who happens to be moseying along the banks at this hour.
One veers up the bank and toward the buildings up above. Though most of the shops are clearly shut down for the night, one still seems to have its lights on. It's difficult to read the sign without taking a closer peek.
One takes a middling way, neither hugging the river nor going up the bank. It seems to offer some moderate coverage, though it's hard to discern where this path leads, since it eventually heads towards foliage rather than buildings.
Where does Sieghart, abandoner of his lovely wife, go?]
no subject
Stopping at the crossroads of sorts, he recalls the hand-drawn map. In the end, with little time to waste before somebody notices the missing head and acts—to say nothing of the oncoming rain—he takes the path that veers up the bank and toward the buildings up above.]
no subject
Sieghart goes up the bank and toward the buildings. Once he's crested the embankment, he can get a better look at the sign of the shop whose lights still seem lit: though the actual name is hard to make out, it's in the styling of an inn. It doesn't sound like a boppin' party over there, but voices can be heard from a reasonable distance.
Most of the other shops along the street seem vacant, currently. However, when he passes by an alley off to the side of the main road, he'll hear what sounds like a small piece of glass hitting the ground. Hm.]
no subject
Neither option is ideal. Worse comes to worst, he can always toss a bomb or two. With that in mind, he steps into the alley.]
no subject
But the alley! Into it he steps! The air is quiet in that static sort of way that implies the presence of another sentient being, but for a little while, no further sounds follow.
Then, there's a little scampering sound that appears to be coming from Sieghart's left. The cloud cover is getting thicker, so the light isn't as plentiful; still, he'll be able to pick out a few areas up ahead where someone - or something - could presumably be tucked away.]
no subject
Obviously, someone is here. Is it a person or a rodent? Unless there's a path he can use to his advantage here, he needs to investigate and move on before he attracts unwanted attention. He can be quiet when he needs to be, but there's only so much he can do about the odor of a decaying head, bundled or not. So he moves to his left, minding his back and the ground as he first looks into one of those areas closest to him.]
no subject
As Sieghart moves through the alley with his stinky head bundle, he'll find that it doesn't really smell pleasant back here, either. Maybe a bit like decay, too, or sewage.
Nothing approaches from behind just yet as he makes his way through, and the first area that he's looking into has nothing more than a few rats clustered around a rotting lump of something. They dart away as Sieghart approaches.
From the corner of his eye, he may catch a little darting motion from one of the areas up ahead. Something small and pale withdraws from the thin moonlight, vanishing into the dark.]
no subject
There's enough rot here to stick to his new clothes. He's definitely not going to smell like flowers once he returns to the mansion. Withdrawing from the retreating rats and their meal, he makes for the area ahead while keeping an eye on everything in between.]
no subject
Moving ahead to that space, he'll have a little trouble with visibility at first. But nothing comes out at him from the shadows, and if he waits until a bit more moonlight peeks through the cloud cover, he'll see the small and huddled form of a child tucked into the back of the little cove. They're staying very still and appear to be looking out at Sieghart through their crouched position, though it's difficult to make out their features from where he is. Though they seem to be making an attempt at staying quiet, he might be able to pick up on a little huff of breath every now and then, too.]
no subject
He figured it had to be a child. Now that he's here, though, he has to consider whether he should leave or engage. In the case of dreams, the best course of action is to ignore everything. But here . . .
Slowly, Sieghart crouches down before he can get too close, lowering himself to the child's approximate eye level.]
Hey.
no subject
But yeah! Congrats! There's a child! The child seems to try to scoot back even further as Sieghart lowers down to their level, hesitant and anxious in all ways. But as he isn't trying to reach out for them, a voice eventually calls back - soft, wavering, and clearly scared.]
Who're you...? What do you want?
no subject
What does he want? He wants to leave! Chatting like this is counterproductive to that end. But he's engaged the child, so this is the hole he must continue digging until he knows enough to make his next big decision.
For now, he stays put. The last thing he needs is an even more frightened child.]
I thought I heard a noise when I was passing by. What are you doing here so late?
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