<strong>Will of the One</strong><br/><strong>Location: </strong>Ihaana's kip, The Hive, Sigil<br/><strong>Time: </strong>Late morning/Early afternoon?<br/><strong>Tagged</strong>: Closed for Ihaana & Bryseis<br/><br/>Inside the ramshackle building where Ihaana had her kip, Rysse admired the subtle processes of decay all around her. The dusty hardwood, once glistening with beeswax, now cracked with age, splitting down its fine grain. The helix stairwell stretching out like the Infinite Staircase, ascending to a damp and musty heaven above. She half-followed, half-guided Ihaana. The place was familiar, but it looked different in the day. There were interspersed rays of light streaming through rickety shutters, which left the place in a kind of uncomfortable shadow halfway between lamplight and darkness.<br/><br/>Rysse's footfalls echoed through the halls and up the stairs. An aching creaking with each step. She briefly wondered if Ihaana heard it. The tiefling knew she had an ear for even the most muted of noises. In her trade, knowing when a cog wasn't ticking along like it should or finding the creaking joint that needed oiling was often half the battle. It was either that or the overhang of the Gehenna Thistle. It amplified senses so well she'd once tried to use it on a job repairing the clockwork mechanism of an orrery. In retrospect, that had been a bad idea. The ticking cogs and dancing wires had become colours, the sounds an overwhelming landslide of hues and shapes like the spontaneous art the Transcendent Order sometimes displayed, only for some tiefling kid to vandalise it or the rain to wash the senseless, chaotic brushwork into a grey slurry.<br/><br/>The knock pattern was familiar. That much she'd remembered and when Ihaana slipped into the darkness of her flat, Rysse followed. She suppressed a bitter snigger when Ihaana mentioned doors. "Me, I had a different relationship with doors. No one held them open for me, but there was a time when I was a kid when a big sodding berk used to say I ran into a lot of them. Explained the black eye and the bruised lip every time. Then, one day, his throat ran into a shiv."<br/><br/>There was no lamplight and Rysse's eyes swiftly adjusted to the dark. The familiar scent of incense, of old leather and the faintly cellared whiff of old paint. Rysse flicked her tail, hooked it round the doorknob, and closed the door behind them. That had always been a favourite party trick of hers.<br/><br/>She eased Ihaana onto the cracked leather upholstering of the closest couch and sat down by Ihaana's side to remove her boots. Slipping her jerkin off her companion's shoulders, she rummaged in a pocket and produced a slender metallic cylinder the length of her hand. Turning the top of the cylinder, she revealed a large, silvery insect trapped in a crystal prism, its bloated and distended abdomen emitted a haunting silvery glow, like a firefly but with far greater intensity. Rysse laid the open cylinder by the ashes of the incense stick. It cast an opalescent glow on the peeling walls, lambent like a moon flickering beneath dark clouds.<br/><br/>Rising to her feet, Rysse felt the pleasant, raspy sensation of old wood on her skin. The ivory light from the glowbug gave her deep red skin, a rich, almost coppery tone. She padded over to the liquor cabinet and chose and inspected an indigo glazed earthenware bottle with - at least to her - undecipherable markings. Unstoppering it, she smelled it and took a swig. She grimaced.<em>Sweet</em>. It was unctuous and muscat-like and tasted far too wholesome to be alcohol. "You drink this?" She asked incredulously. "Tastes like the stuff an aasimar knight of some Holy Flame order or other kept ordering - sodding expensive, too. She ended up drinking most of it. Which I suppose was her plan all along - building up the courage to get eaten out by a tiefling and then fuck her and hope it'd all be forgotten the next day. Nine Hells, once she got going though..." Rysse paused. She was positive Ihaana had heard the story before. That she'd feel sharp, electric little pinpricks against her skin when those consecrated to celestial orders came close or touched her. It was a tiefling's survival mechanism, no doubt, but there were ways to put it to sublime use.<br/><br/>"And so to bed, angel?" Rysse said. She definitely knew the way<em>there</em>. That and she hoped sleep would relieve the uncomfortable pulsing which had begun to spread in her head. "I won't kick<em>too</em>much, I promise. Tiefling's honour."