psychoshenanigans | GOODNIGHT // PSL

Entry tags:

syiera,
zhas

GOODNIGHT // PSL

"Hey... Hey, boss...? We got a girl over here...!"

"Can't it wait?"

"No man, a human girl!"

Syeira wakes to the sound of something large booming overhead, echoing down the long corridors. This is some kind of a dimly-lit grand hall or a banquet room, not entirely unlike the ones she's seen at home; the room is filled with the sounds of far-away combat, people shouting orders, others running by in a hurry.

She is on her back, on top of a table, and there's a messy, brown-haired woman peering down at her through a pair of sunglasses. The woman's teeth are sharp, like a shark's, when she grimaces in confusion and wrinkles her nose.

"Sure does smell weird, though..."

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A few things are noted when she starts to open her eyes. She's definitely not in any kind of familiar surroundings (not an unheard of circumstance, lets be honest). She hears the sounds of fighting (also not uncommon), and there's a strange woman without eyes (she's never seen sunglasses before okay) sniffing her.

It's like she's back home.

"I am well bathed, thank you very much." She's been referred to directly as 'unwashed one' by a former acquaintance, and she didn't appreciate it then -even if it was a little true- and she doesn't appreciate it now. Especially since she's as scrubbed as a new penny, if not as polished.

Also, she's going to sit up, not too quickly, but without hesitation. Those sharp teeth have her attention, but she's not one to instantly judge a book by it's cover. She'll give it a paragraph or two first.

"Whoa... Whoa, whoa!" Despite all the noise, the woman doesn't seem to be in much of a fighting mood. Rather, she takes a step back as Syiera sits up, raising her hands like she doesn't want to have to touch the thing to begin with.

Though the ends of her fingers end in sharp-looking claws, of course. She turns to someone busy near the door, "Dorothy's conscious, boss!"

There are perhaps two-dozen people around the room, most of them gathered closely in front of a set of large double-doors at the end of the hallway. The booming, as it turns out, comes from some sort of battering ram on the other side of it. The people are of all different shapes, sizes, colors--and quirks, many of them showing fangs and claws of some type or another. Many of them aren't moving quite right. One of them seems to be freezing the doors closed with some kind of magic, while another is shoving furniture in front of the door with a gargantuan strength they shouldn't possess.

One of them breaks away from the group, appearing quickly at Syeira's other side. Male (probably), tilting his beautiful face, dressed in a highlighter-bright jacket and really brings out the inhuman yellow of his eyes.

"A spy, do you think?" The man says, perhaps, to the woman across from him. Something about him is unusually compelling, almost as if he had cast a Charm spell. "How did she--"

"That's what I'm saying--!" The woman throws her hands up even higher, "She wasn't here a second ago!"

Other people are starting to turn their heads. Sye's presence here is confusing--even if it sounds like they've got bigger things to worry about right outside. The pretty one speaks again, in a commanding tone.

"If you've been sent here to cause trouble, do hurry it up."

There's another loud slam against the door, sending several people stumbling backwards into the hall.

"Who's Dorothy?" Her question is largely lost in...literally everything else that happens. She can practically feel the compelling pull of the ...male? person who comes up and talks around her. She feels it, but she's not sitting there gaping or anything. Mostly she feels exasperated. She crosses her legs, and just waits for them to get to the point. So it's almost surprising when she's finally spoken too directly.

"Well, as it happens, being troublesome is something of a talent." She pauses as that loud slam interrupts her. Gosh nothing like being thrown into the lion's den, while flood waters creep in. "The question is if I'm supposed to do it for you or for whom is knocking on your door there, whoever any of you are."

The man holds very still, save for his eyes, which read back and forth over her face for several tense seconds. His predatory assessment seems downright unsettling next to the much more natural movements of the woman, who seems a little more preoccupied with the angry banging sounds coming from the door.

"Interesting," the man says, eyes narrowing, "I apologize for not having more answers for you. Tabbie will take you to your quarters, where you will stay until further notice."

"Hey!" The girl suddenly whips her head back around, "What do you mean--"

But the man fixes her with that same sharp, calculating look, and the woman (Tabbie, as we have now learned) finds her complaint cut very short. The man moves away as someone else near the door calls to him, and he starts giving orders to them to move more men to the central corridor out of wings three and six.

"...Oy," Tabbie runs her hand through her hair, but... shows a big, toothy grin when she turns back to Syeira. "Well, guess you and me are friends now!"

"My quarters? Hey-!" Her shout obviously falls on deaf ears, as he just walks away from her. Like he expects her to just obey him. Where has she run up against that before? (Everywhere. The answer is: everywhere.)

She scoots off the table, giving Tabbie a wry, distracted, half smile. "I guess so." Better to be friends with the lady with the fangs and claws, at least for the moment.

"So this," she points to the crowd trying to hold the door. "Seems really important. I mean, you're clearly under siege. Shouldn't we stay here, in case they need a hand."

As if there isn't a whole slew of people there already. Hey, it's worth a shot.

"No, no, trust me, sweetheart." Tabbie continues grinning, reaching to try and take Syeira by the arm. She feels a little weird; devoid of body heat, to be precise. "If Hel wants us out of the way of the bloodthirsty fuckheads, we aren't gonna say no. Come on."

Out of her peripheral, something slithers across the high ceiling and down the side of the wall. It steps out of a shadow in the shape of a dark-skinned man, who then leans in to start talking quickly to Hel. They're too far away, but both of them glance at Syiera as they talk.

But Tabbie's tugging her away. It's time to go! Someone (or more likely, something) roars monstrously from the other side of the door.

She resists the tugging, because leaving a battle is so against her nature. But Tabbie is stronger than she appears, and Syeira has no real option but to start moving, even though her attention is over with the two ...."people" who are clearly talking about her.

"His name is Hell?" Because of course. She's long since been wondering if she woke up on the really wrong side of the doors. Nothing that has happened in the past five minutes has given her any confidence. The fact that the one bossing her around is named after a place of torment, isn't helping. "Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be?"

"Where are we going?"

Tabbie only grumbles noncommittally at all of that "Hell" talk. People mess up names around here all the time. Or maybe she's heard of him somewhere, she doesn't know. All she knows is that she's got orders, and that some fool of a human girl just appeared out of thin air on the high counsel's meeting-room table.

With them finally moseying along, Tabbie shouts back over the rising din around them.

"Going to one of the guest rooms! No worries, they ain't code for a dungeon or nothin'. Those are downstairs."

She hauls their new guest over to large tapestry on the wall furthest from the fighting. It depicts some kind of battle, or a ritual maybe, centering around three circular symbols--but it's clearly not all that important, since Tabbie shoves the heavy fabric aside to push in a hidden switch on the stone walls. A door slides open, and she cackles ferociously.

"We're going up!"

Behold, a set of stone stairs that indeed lead upwards. Without asking whether she wants to or not, Tabbie does her best to haul her new friend up into the stairwell.

"Thank you for the reassurance." This is just getting better and better. And despite the direction, Syeira doesn't feel like she's being taken anywhere better. Maybe it's the whole being half dragged thing. At least, she can keep up.

"This might seem like an odd question, but: where exactly am I? Just generally more specific than 'here' or 'going to the guest rooms'. If that's possible."

"What, you really don't know?"

Is it good or bad that no one else seems to know what's going on either? It's very dark in this stairwell, with it being largely unlit save for a small string of what might be plain white Christmas lights winding along the wall next to them. Still, Sye can see the girl glance back at her over the rims of her sunglasses (she has eyes after all--fairly normal-looking ones, too). She gets an eyebrow-raise, as well.

"You got into the secret vampire headquarters and you don't know?"

This stairwell seems to go up for quite some time. She was about to lead them to a door, but a loud scream from the other side seems to get her to veto that idea quickly. One more flight it is!

"Like, state of Washington? Pacific Northwest? United States of America?" --Dryly, "Tell me when to stop."

Syeira actually has fantastic low light vision, but Tabbie wouldn't know that, since she, and everyone else seems to assume Syeira is a human. But that's probably best kept to herself, at least for the moment.

And then, Tabbie says the one word that Syeira really really didn't ever want to hear. Vampire.

[Her brain does this.]

She actually stops dead in her tracks, and only Tabbie's continued hold on her arm makes her move forward. It's definitely a stumble, that might be lost in translation, since that timing happens right when someone screams behind a door.

But being a professional in the field of getting into trouble up to her eyeballs, Syeira recovers, and keeps her mouth shut. At least about her instant decision that she'd rather be on the team that was breaking in. Regardless of who they are. There's not much worse in the planes than Vampires.

"Uh...um" What were they talking about? Oh, right. "No keep going."

"Uh, North America?" Lucky for Syeira, Tabbie doesn't seem to have noticed. She's more preoccupied with not getting the both of them killed. "Planet Earth...? Jesus, lady..."

They finally reach another door, and things sound relatively safe on the other side. Tabbie doesn't let go of her more-or-less prisoner the entire time, which means that one of Syeira's arms may be getting a little bruised at this point.

"What backwater ren faire did they pick you up out of, anyway?"

She shoves the door open with her shoulder. It's an old, wooden thing that turns out to be the backside of a bookshelf. Another secret passage, no doubt. The coast looks clear, so out the go--emerging into another huge room, a library, filled top to bottom with books on shelves, on tables, in piles on the floor. It's an impressive sight to even passing book-lovers, but Tabbie doesn't spare the vast volumes of knowledge a second glance.

They're heading for another set of double-doors, ones that aren't being knocked in from the other side.

She doesn't know what "wren fair" means, but she's fairly certain, by tone alone, it's not a compliment. That and being dragged around like a doll, by a vampire of all things, is starting to put her into a less pleasant mood.

"Earth is extraordinarily far from Toril. Forgive me if I'm not well versed in your local geography." Literally, the world is just barely discovered by Elminster. And she knows only sparse details of it from the Fleet.

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GOODNIGHT // PSL

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