Lass's Tear

as the people run for the door i unsling my assault rifle and fire at them, better to not leave witnesses, i drop down from the barstool and behind the bar as the "marks" have produced guns of their own.

Stuck between a hard place and a rock, many go into fight or flight mode. Their guns, pointed at Sori, begin firing away in hopes of killing her and leaving the quickly burning building. The flame from the bar had risen as though the years of alcohol had soaked itself into the wood that made up the foundations of the building.

i direct the flames in a circle around the people gathered at the door the voice cackles maniacly, i drop the spent magazine and fumble in satchel bag for a new one as i put it in and cock the gun one of the biggest ones manage to sneak up on me and grab me by the throat.

Those in the circle slowly begin to burn to death. A few shoot themselves as an easy and quick way out. The one that held her switched his hold into a throat lock as he was determined to kill her.

i struggle and kick with my feet like a chicken, i get my knife out my boot holster and jam it into the guys neck.

i drop to the floor vision blurry and spit blood.

Her attacker falls like a sack of bricks and the gunfire finally stops. All that lives in the bar now is Sori and the flames. crackling and burning, they rise ever brighter and hotter. An explosion on the roof alerts people outside of what is going on in the bar as the flames lick the sky.

The path lead's deeper, winding around dripping supply and waste lines, the air tinged with the smell of damp and mildew as Lily's companion lead's her further down. Somewhere not far away, a muted explosion rains loose mortar from the bricks down on their heads.

"Belladonna won't be terribly happy to see you," Aconite warns in an undertone as he seems to select a tunnel at random. "Ya kinda kicked her when you left; you know, she never took to anyone else like she did you."

Lily shrugs, "Her problem..."

"And now yours." Aconite smirks. "She wanted me to go after you, but the time I made it up, you'd slipped away."

"Lucky me."

"The flower that springs from the sidewalk walk rarely lasts long"

Snorting derisively, Lily pulls him to a stop. "Spare me the gardening metaphors. I'm not a wilting flower or some rot like that. And Belladonna wasn't so good a den mother that I felt inclined to stay."

Aconite stepped back, then closed again. "We don't get to choose our nature. Belladonna does that when she names us."

"Then what a job she did of enforcing it." Lily puts her hands on her hips. "Yes, so, that's me; the sweet innocent. Just take this dainty flower to Belladonna. I'll make what amends I need to, short of groveling at her feet."

She sighed and took Aconite's arm again. The roots and creepers of Belladonna's network touched so many lives in the Nightside, leaching sustenance from the city's nightlife in form of bribes and threats. Her boys and girls where prized as escorts and bodyguards, always well placed, always listening. Subtle poison. She sought only to improve her claim in the Nightside, growing greener on the corpses of those no longer strong enough to hold off the corrosive illness she embodied. She'd survived Lilith and the Angel's, collecting the mean of her harvest in the wake of the incidents and replanting, taking advantage of the orphaned and runaway to replant. Lily thought back to Aconite's comment on the flower in the sidewalk and smiled; Belladonna was the flower, so deeply rooted that you could never stop her from growing back unless you burned and salted the earth in which she set herself, and even then, each of her children could spring up in her place.

Aconite said something, causing her to look up and around sharply, "... What?"

"I said watch your step," He motioned to the broken flag's leading down to the water's edge. The lights ended over the water, leaving the tunnel eerily black in either direction. The odd slosh of water on wood echoed on the vaulted brick walls in such a way that it was impossible to distinguish a direction until the narrow gondola glided from the left and slowed to a stop, the slender, hunched figure at the prow, hair as white from age as the mask he wore over the left half of his face dipping his pole deep into the silt and anchoring his craft. "Lady's first, then on to the Beautiful Lady's place," he bows, helping her in. The boat's man nods after Aconite climbs in with a practiced movement, gracefully turning the boat on the current and poling into the dark.

hearing an Explosion from the direction the compass is indicating Sori is, I look over at liv, "Looks like you get the Half Crown, since i bet the fight is over" I roll my shoulders and drop into a ground eating lope. opting to take the direct rout instead of shadowing one of our missing friends. The fact that we are moving against the current flow of people is something that will hardly go un-noticed by any of the numerous potential threats we could have shadowing us, or waiting to ambush us, only made worse by the fact that we would gladly walk into the ambush for any of our number. 'Somehow I think this is going to get one of us killed.' I mutter to myself checking back occasionally to make sure the other are keeping up.

"Not if I can help it." I mutter, dodging and weaving to keep pace. "Sori better be in one peice or..." I skid to a stop. The building in front of us is a nightmare of flames, and in front of it, a girl stands, laughing uproriosly." I growl. "The suthlui muc crazy fool!"

I rummage in my pocket for a half crown for her, "No worse then any of the rest of us, just more obvious" I start walking toward our wayward friend careful to keep my approach loud and obvious so i don't get shot or scorched

"Sori, cool off!" I call loudly, pouring peace into my words.

As I carefully approach our wayward friend, I find myself stopping and tensing at Liv's outcry, Maybe it is age I grew up in, maybe it is the years I have spent since, but the change in the air is Palpable. As if by some unspoken signal A large vaguely humanoid figure steps from the shadows. his upper-body that of a heavily muscled man, His lower that of a goat, with the curling horns to go with it, the major difference from the last that we met being his hide a mottled grey brown, with rust red skin, and the addition of an almost stereotypical bikers jacket complete with spikes and shoulder pads. As the firelight glints off the polished metal he wears I find my mouth running off before my mind catches up "what are you a failed BDSM power ranger?" The condescending sneer changes to an angry snarl as his glare moves from Liv to me.

"Hell." I hiss. "Hey, sheep shit!" I shout, waving my hands. The satyr looks in my direction, beady black eyes focusing slowly. Good, he's not too bright. Should make him easy to take...if we're careful. And if Sori doesn't do anything crazy.

I smile as I see Amiee, take wing from under my shoulder a small violet streak against the brightness of the flame her own trilling call adding to Liv and I's taunts, the spear so carefully coiled around my arm uncoiling and straightening in my grasp. " Come on then," I take careful steps Sori enthralled in her own conjuring, at least to my knowledge still laughing. "all that metal, are you compensating for something," The beady little eyes of his stay focused on liv when he barks out in a voice something between a mans speech and a bleat " River queen," his head turns and his body language becomes more confident as if another is riding along "I know you river queen. What a fortunate event that not one but three of my prizes should be here, such easy fruit for the plucking" a strange aura causing even the bristly hair on his legs to stand and spark with malevolent intent and power.

I draw my knife. "Watch out, sheep shit. The fruit's got thorns." I glance to Liam, a 'what now' expression.' From under my collar, Ailin comes curling, fur bristling. She sounds like a kettle about to boil.

the satyrs hands come up loose and claw like, as Liv and I continue to circle him, Kaija's Knife glinting in her hand angry and red as if it were already bloodied. The firelight lending all of us a ghoulish hue. He opens is mouth strange wording that sends a chill down my spine issuing from it. the words are different but the tempo and inflection is so similar. I don't wait, Kaija and I charge forward, her knife flashing my spear moving almost on it's own. Contemptuously he reaches down and grabs hold of the shaft yanking it from my grip and sending me tumbling end over end past liv, Kaija's blade ringing off the fur of his legs as if against bronze. the musical ringing somehow wrong on such a deep level it is sickening.

"Oh no you don't." I mutter. That chant's an old one, and I know the counter. But before I'm more than half through, he turns on me. My knife flashes in my hand, and comes away bloody. He roars. I grin.

i raise my eye to the scope, i see the girl laughing holding some soviet era rifle in her hands, i breathe deep and take my eye back i look around me in the room its an abandoned building with paint flaking from the walls, ive stuck my riflebarrel through a hole in a shattered window, i look to the chair beside me on it is a magazine for the svd sniper rifle loaded with exploding shells.

i put a lucky strike in my mouth and light it, i pick up the magazine and slam it into the rifle i pull the ejection port and chamber a round, i look into the scope and take a deep breath, i fire a series of six rounds at her spine and watch them blow up as she falls to the ground.

I shake my head to clear it staggering to my feet. The satyrs roar is more then a little distorted sounding like two being bellowing in one mouth. the spear clutched toy like in his meaty hand, I growl spitting blood from my mouth "Really that is the best you offer," I yell, my teeth stained a ghoulish red by my own blood "Come on then, better then you have tried to kill me and not succeeded yet" I raise my hands preparing to fight, hands in loose fists able to grab or strike with equal ease.

It was the opening I was waiting for. With a sprint, a leap, a slash, I cut the beast's throat. Blood fountains over the street as he tumbles. I nod sharply. "Bloody asshole. Took up far too much time too. Now, Sori-" But when I turn, she's gone. I hiss. "Gods of bright and of dark and of all that is between damn that girl! Where's she gone now?!"

taking out my compass as I move to recover my spear I begin swearing, first in the language of my birth, then a few i have learned over the years before finally in english "the tracking it being Blocked" the compass spins as if a magnet is being circled around and around it. "either that or Sori is moving at just sub-light-speed.

"Knowing her I wouldn't put it past her." I mutter. "What in the hell do we do now?"

"we start searching for Lily, these things aren't perfect but when they are working they lock on like nothing else, let her trail cool and solidify and we can find her again." I begin tinkering with the locket to reset the compass to Lily now instead.

I frown for a moment, then nod. "Fine. Might as well do some sort of good." I raise my blade, licking it clean. "She's got to be easier to get out of trouble."

I smile and begin re tracing our steps until we are able to find Lily's Path, and begin following it. As we travel the path gets Darker, even for the nightside. Along the way at some point we see a strange human-like creature, with a large bandoleer across it's chest running from a small girl with a clipper emitting a loud trilling cry of distress. the little girl is crying something about "it's just a trim chewy" incongruous with the atmosphere of the area of the nightside we currently traverse.