It was late afternoon, the clock atop her desk, piled with all the other messily placed documents and blotched pens that crowded her workspace in junk made the fact well known. It wasn't without reason either, the daily nurgle were a demanding bunch of slaving administrators that cared little for those stuck at the bottom of the barrels. Work like hell and earn like the goblins, that was the idea.
She tiredly rubbed at her neck, stiff from the long hours and pained like her back. The last few lines on a recent paper she'd been writing stood void and vacant, 'Why do we still fear the dark?' She thought it amusing and a little smart on the choice of words especially when the topic delved into the depths of dark sorcery. The door adjacent her small workspace lightly swung open with the concerned glance of a woman in her mid forties, short blonde hair and eyes like the pools of nightly lakes glanced up and over the room till where she sat half dazed, exhausted and perhaps a little worse for wear, it was obvious her appearance must've been horrible since the woman; Grethe, made a showing of that in the concerned look riddled along her face.
"The gutters huh?" Grethe amusedly asked, earning a soft chuckle and a dismissive wave.
"Work, never done it before?" She visibly winced, "You've hauled up in here for seven hours and an extra two left brooding in your sleep. That isn't work, that's self induced slave labor!"
Contrary to her old age, she was expressively outgoing. Velgra had never really seen a human like her, perhaps it'd been the fact that a majority of her childhood was spent less in close proximity with her own people and more with races like elves and beastkin that she treated herself as though she was still twenty, young trends and savvy words were barely lost to her with the youth; it was a little off putting once a person made a visible discernment from the few wrinkles lining her face and body that she was old though she made ample effort in having one forget that fact.
She let out a short breath and leaned into her chair, "You know the Nurgle, I'll be out for the slums before tomorrow if I can still afford rest"
Grethe gave a look at the watch slung along her wrist and groaned at her, "It's five in the afternoon, call it a day"
The god's knew she'd love to, though it was easy to do so when you weren't at the bottom of the mix. Her leisure was telling, she'd spent the majority of twenty years slaving up the ranks or perhaps had a few skips and beats somewhere along the line. Humans usually had preferential treatment anyway, they didn't last but an animal that thought itself dead tomorrow and one that saw itself still here a hundred years later worked with completely different fervor. For a moment one would envy them, for a moment at least..
She gave her a tired sigh at the ensuing reluctance and flicked her wrist, through it came the gentle breeze of a gust of wind as the papers strewn messily along her desk rearranged and neatly stacked themselves back together, leaving an open space between herself and the paper she was still working on.
"I forgot how great of a mage you are"
The old woman waved her hand dismissively, "Get some rest when you're done and don't let me find you here tomorrow morning will you?"
She smiled but didn't answer, earning the woman's mental exhaustion as she took to the blazer that'd been draped along her shoulders this entire conversation, "An occasion?" Velgra asked.
"No, just home. Top brass'll have my head by the morning though, there's an interesting string of cases they've been hounding over like starved dogs"
She raised a brow, "Cases?"
"Public superstitions, abominations striking for rights, odd happenings in the slums. That one house that burned down the other day, do you remember that one? People have took to it like bad omens"
Her brows furrowed, "Of what?"
Noticing her gaze, she gave a laugh, "Don't write a story on it, Velgra!" She'd buttoned up both parts of her blazer and took to any creases along its surface, an odd sense of awareness to her looks when supposedly going home, "It's nothing serious, Nurgle's just digging for the drama's. Propagated by the stillness I say"
She nodded in affirmation, they'd done it before. Story's in the city had become lackluster and snoreful, her own hadn't spoken of anything worthwhile for months on end. Detestable wasn't it? Sometimes one would wish that a murder would happen down the street or a terrorist attack or some secret cult from the dark ages might show their faces again, hell, politics had run itself down the drain with how well the king had been keeping things..at least on the surface but it wasn't good marketing to start delving into the woes of the mighty either; next thing she knew and she'd quite literally find herself turned into a rat or something. Point was that trying to find something interesting in a series of peculiar events was definitely up their alley.
"What are you writing about anyway?" Grethe's voice pulled her back from her thoughts, "Me?"
"Yeah, churning pages out that'd have you stuck in here the entire day? Something's caught your eye~" She seemed to suggest a story but her sagged shoulders should've said otherwise, the last thing she'd be able to acquire was a story but it wasn't like sitting around for weeks on end would wash in a payroll.
"Educational stuff, I'm stranded, Grethe" Grethe visibly recoiled, "Eugh, on what topic?"
"Dark magic"
She shrugged, "Well, at least that's interesting. Thought you'd say history"
Her eyes rolled, "I'm not nearly that boring"
"Thankfully so" Her gaze turned elsewhere, back towards the door. Seemingly aware of the fact that she had other places to be, Casey raised her arms in amused resignation, "I'll be out by six"
She gave a suspicious glare, "Promise?"
"I'll try"
Of course it was a half faced lie, the place allowed employees for as long as there'd be stars in the night sky and a sun to greet the new day. She half detested the idea of going home, not now, though the exhaustion was clearly taking its toll. Grethe left moments later, a few short conversations had ensued after but nothing else, an hour later and she'd left the building as well.
Fifty years ago Arken barely existed, a town just a fraction of the size it'd later become. Things were easier, lives were simpler. She wasn't so old to have lived through the dark ages but reminiscing about her own time from fifty years back and she really did start to envy those that had, though they were a rare few now.
'Frozen memories of the past', she thought to herself. The walk back to iron station, past the city square nearly towards the clock tower dwarfing everything else under its watchful gaze, was fast and fleeting though her footsteps were slow and lethargic. The last time she'd caught a good night's rest felt distant enough that it was laughably concerning, she took a paper from her briefcase and sifted over the front cover:
[Elderly couple gone missing: Terrifying happenings on the foot of Minsk street]
Read the front page, her brows furrowed though the titling of it was almost amusing. There were so many ways to slow the aging process for the mundane that she had a sneaking suspicion that Grethe had done so to herself decades ago, forty three sounded a lot better than a hundred and forty seven years old, for all she knew, the creeping wrinkles were but a small sign of her magic slipping and thus the word 'elderly' placed a funny picture in her mind, elderly in terms of looks or in age and yet who'd willingly let the latter slip?
The sliding of carriage doors brought her back to the bowels of reality, right, home, she usually took the train station home. The station lights flickered as she lazily took a step outside, a rising issue that no one in this area would ever find the time to complain over. Many things were, with industrialization came complicated lifestyles. More comfort for more complicated problems, the place was silent and the walk up the vacant stairs both rotting and pleading for service were lifeless as well. She exited from the ground, wafted by the still winds and quiet street roads leading into the city's section of crowded apartment areas.
A creaking door echoed in the empty streetway as flickering caged lights illuminated the dim reception hall, it was awfully empty and quiet during the evenings from a crippling well related exhaustion amongst the populous so the later the better. She gave a curt nod to a half dozed goblin leaned behind the reception and left for the elevator, the rattling contraption shuddered as its gears worked to pull her up, opening to greet her towards the velvet interiors of a dilapidated building.
The serene silence ended here, drowned under muffled voices and ironic orchestra music. Her room stood at the end of the long passageway on the third floor, a pale brown door with the tilted golden numbering of '48'. Her keys rattled as a door just across from hers creaked open, "Velgra, dear! Oh I'm so happy you're here!"
Her figure paused, turning towards the young figure of a woman in dark red night garbs with half an eye covered over by a thick miasma of ink mist, "Miss V'neer?"
The woman shuffled towards her as though her legs barely existed, "Oh, yes, that's right!"
She sidled up to her waist, three heads shorter than herself and half the height leading from her head to her stomach. Her short stature made for an awkward embrace around her body that was only heightened by the fact that the woman was decades her senior.
"What's the matter?" She asked gently, halfway into peeling herself from her weeping figure.
"Oh, there's a demon in my room, Velgra! I tell you, I tell you!!" She sobbed.
"A..demon?" Her brows furrowed into tight knots, "Like a cat?"
V'neer was a half ghoul, a bumbling madwoman with the unfortunate luck of being the product of two races that just didn't mix. To this day she still wondered how the events preceding her birth had occurred, the point was that the two sides of her melded into something rather confused. An undead with a hatred for the living whilst harboring a body well and alive, creating a contrast where instead of hating the living..she more or less..feared them? The poor woman's contrasting origins were a mess, she didn't know what the undead saw the living as but she imagined it wasn't something rather appealing and yet that perspective had to meet halfway with its living half.
Seeing the worst halves of both worlds, right? She thought to herself, thinking about it now and it was a little sweet that she had the gull to wrap all over her stomach knowing that in the better half of her vision, she didn't look all that welcoming..
Already human looking things that were alive terrified her, the inhuman were downright horrific thus if anyone looked remotely demonic in her eyes, an animal would fit the description rather perfectly.
"No, No, Demon!!" She shook her head, pointing into the open doors of her room as she wept, "Velgra, dear, please! I can't go inside!"
"Of your room?"
She nodded as she inwardly groaned, on other days she'd entertain the idea but the exhaustion hadn't so much been satisfied. Issues would arise demandingly quickly without an answer if she wasn't determined towards writing for Sunday quota's.
"I'll look into it tomorrow" she smiled, earning a terrified whimper as the woman clutched her tightly, "Velgra, dear, please.."
Her eyes shifted over inside but the sight of a clock in the middle of her kitchen area revealed it to be close to six in the evening, she gently peeled her hands off her as she nodded, "We've known each other for long enough, I promise I'll look into it first thing in the morning"
The woman's pleading gaze faltered as her hands slipped from her, "Thank you.."
She smiled, turning to open her door and stepped inside as V'neers body drifted to the bowels of her most likely, cat, mouse, rat, spider, or bird infested home and clicked the lock shut.
She sighed a breath of relief, though it wasn't rest, the view of her clustered apartment room drowned beneath an ocean of papers and books felt far more relaxing than the blandness of her office desk. Her jacket slung off her sleeves and fell onto a coat rack as she walked towards a nearby couch, crashing into it like a puppet cut from its strings. The rigid proding's of large books and crumpled paper took out a chunk of the comfort but it was relaxing enough.
'I should tidy it more often' she grumbled to herself as she leaned into the slightly rigid construction, the fact that her paper's contents still sat empty drew her thoughts elsewhere though not anywhere she'd like them to. Grethe's position of leisure drew in a scowling breath as the exhaustion nestled in like an unwantedly comforting guest, thoughts filtered to nothing and everything went dark.
Va…
Val…
VAL!!!
A loud knock on her door roused her from her sleep, banging against the wooden construct as she mindlessly flung herself off of the couch, unlocking the door to find Grethe's paled face and horrified expression.
"Grethe?"
"Val! I came to visit—The door—!!"
"You're not making sense, Grethe" There was a shuffling of people outside and shocked whispers as people slipped from their rooms to a part of the hallway, "What's going on?"
Grethe didn't answer, her body was paled and shaken. Noticing that a word wouldn't slip from her mouth, she slowly slipped past her and into the slightly crowded hallway towards a room flung ajar where eyes seemed glued in both horror and shock. Piercing through to the front of the crowd, a grim image painted itself along the walls of a room she knew eerily well with a woman pinned against its walls like a sickening display from a psychotic art Galla.
For pinned to the wall surrounded by an array of sigils and jagged descriptions drawn in the woman's blood..was V'neer