<strong>Will of the One</strong><br/><strong>Location</strong>: Guest Quarters, Civic Festhall, Sigil<br/><strong>Time</strong>: Mid-morning<br/><strong>Tagged</strong>: Closed for Ihaana & Bryseis<br/><br/>Rysse still felt slightly unsteady on her feet. That was unlike her. Normally, she'd be close enough to sober at this point to do some basic wiring. Then, with a couple of hits of volatile Radiance Salts and some oil of capsaicin, she'd feel bright and perky enough to handle the difficult stuff they preferred tieflings to handle - like sorting out a malfunctioning elemental fire core in a steam drill. She took a couple of deep breaths and willed herself to focus.<br/><br/>Beside her, she felt Ihaana lean close, the aasimar's hand in hers, with that wonderful, textured sensation circling her wrist. Ihaana's trademark caress. Rysse smiled.<em>Ihaana, the razorvine angel</em>. On reflection, that sounded like a bad festhall song. Or at least not a song sung in the festhalls she frequented. She hooked her arm around Ihaana's waist and started to move purposefully, following her companion's lead through the wide boulevards of the Sandstone District, its high turrets and ornate parapets of the ancient and rain-weathered facades piercingt the skyline. Whether Ihaana really remembered a shortcut or not wasn't really the point. Rysse needed to get back to somewhere where she could collapse and she wasn't picky on the route being taken. She knew enough to orient herself half by sight and half by smell, but the Festhall District was alien to her like the Ninth Hell. Not the place tieflings (that is, the real tieflings and not the sell-outs - who were just humans with horns and tails they wish they didn't have) usually frequented.<br/><br/>From there, she recognised the vast, circular tower of the Hall of Records, where enormous machines she had once helped fine tune and lubricate kept the hours in a bewildering array of notations, and then, deeper in towards the tortured bowels of Sigil, the familiar scents of the Hive. Molten metal and burning coal from the Slags, dank rainwater, wet earth, soot-streaked stone. The finer houses had now faded into a yawning patchwork of habitations, some hovels, some decayed mansions, superimposed upon each other without rhyme or reason, stretching both high into the sunless sky and deep into the bowels of the sewers below. Her keen eyes remained peeled for danger, but any ill-disposed cutters seemed to have the right idea. Giving Rysse a wide berth was always the right idea.<br/><br/>"I guess we're close," Rysse murmured. She paused for a moment and stretched, almost letting Ihaana slip from her grasp, before recovering her, "It's somewhere down here, right?" The tiefling knew that wasn't helpful. Orientation in the Hive always involved some guesswork. "My head's got to be pretty addled if I don't know my way round the Hive." Rysse blinked - the alley looked familiar - the houses huddled close together like cold vagrants, the wood and stone dark with smoke. It wasn't the deep Hive - the place where reality seemed to break down under the strain of a multitude of planar portals and otherworldly sorcery - and it was pleasant enough. It looked just right - not like her bedsit in a derelict spire.<br/><br/>"You feeling better?" Rysse queried, brushing her lips on Ihaana's cheek and temple, the vital flow of the aasimar's heartbeat pulsing under her touch, "We're almost there, angel - 'least I think we're there. Just a little further. Otherwise, if you can't find your way yet, there's<em>my</em>place." That wasn't a promising prospect, even for the tiefling. Between the dust, the smoke, the unmade bed, the spilled alcohol permeating the floorboards it wasn't the most welcoming place after a night out. "And we don't want that, do we?" Truth was she didn't want it. She needed cold water, a stiff drink, and to curl up next to Ihaana. If she'd been in one of her nihilistic moods, her lair would have been just fine. That and a self-righteous lady-knight, preferably from one of the uptight shining-armour sects, to strip her, spread her and fuck her in the hungry, angry way only the self-hating could muster.<br/><br/>It had begun to drizzle again. Cold, needling droplets of sooty water. She turned her glance down to the cracked paving stones and kicked a loose cobble down the alley. It skittered and bounced, splashing into a muddy puddle. "Shit. It's raining. Let's get inside."