Episode LVII: Numbing
It was with great reluctance that, after being holed up for two days unable to stop crying, she finally left her apartment in search of a mage. She hardly knew what she was looking for, and it was nothing short of a stroke of luck that she happened upon Melanctha in the Thalia transit station.
It was mostly a stroke of luck because neither Melantcha or herself had recognized the other, and Mel tried to pick her pocket for coins before it dawned on them.
"Seph! Honestly, this isn't what it looks li--" Mel stopped, finally taking into account her sister's pitiful appearance. "Christ, Pers, what happened?"
She led her over to a bench nearby, a worried expression never leaving her face, and Persephony wondered just how bad she must have looked.
"It's that obvious, is it?" she muttered, staring down at her feet and holding back tears again. Melanctha started running her fingers through her hair, partly to calm her down and partly to try and regain some order to her unruly locks.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say Dutchy died again."
"You're not too far off..." She sighed, wiping the tears from her lashes before they fell. Melanctha grabbed her shoulders and turned Persephony until they were facing each other.
"Seph, come on, please tell me... you really do look like shit. You're far too pale again, you look almost blue... the only feature on your face with any colour are your eyes, and let me tell you, the green on red action, kinda striking, and not in the good way."
Persephony choked back a sob, looking around frantically. Mel recognized the look, and grabbed her shoulders more tightly, knowing that Persephony wanted to run. Pulling her into a hug, she smoothed her back, asking what was wrong.
"Mel... I-I remember it again... My parents dying, the ship, landing in Quebec... I remember being in the same bed as me mother the night she died. I remember when she started getting sick, and when they quarrantined half tha' ship... I remember waking up because I felt cold, and she... nobody would tell me why she would'na wake up. Da was so sad, but he was already sick, too..." She broke down into sobs, clinging desperately to her sister.
"Nobody could explain it ta' me why they did'na wake up...." Mel rubbed her back soothingly, rocking her slightly and whispering nonsense.
"I couldn't ever explain death to a child either... I had to do it once. T'was after a battle outside the village; a man who had two young daughters died, the wife was so grief struck that I was told to tell them. It's never easy, Seph..."
Persephony's sobs lessened, and Melanctha pulled away, noting instantly how her eyes avoided everything, staring at her hands in her lap.
"I never in my life regretted anything that had happened to me... and not once have I ever wished that I was never turned, until now....." she said in the softest voice, and Melanctha had to strain to hear it amongst the hustle and noise of the station.
"Why?" Mel asked, surprised to hear it, and she pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket, turning Persephony's face up to dry her tears.
"If I hadn't been turned, I would have died, and gotten to see me parents again..."
"You will see them again hun, when it is your turn to go."
"Yeah right, I'll probably go to hell..." she said dejectedly, looking away.
"No... you are a great person, Seph... not an evil, damned one."
"What's that matter? We're still vampires, we still kill people. You kill anyting with a soul, you commit a mortal sin, you go to hell." She sighed, feeling utterly hopeless. "I'm cursed, I'll go to hell, I'll never get to see them again, that's the end of it."
"Pers... you can't think like that..." Mel squeezed her hand, which seemed to shake her from her reverie, she sighed, blinking away a few more tears before she finally looked up at her sister.
"Yeah, you'll have to forgive me, the memory brought with it 16 years of ingrained Catholic guilt...." Mel waved it off, and pulled her to her feet, leaving the station and walking through backstreets.
"I really think I need to get this outta me..." Persephony said quietly, staring ahead mindlessly.
"Yes you do." Mel agreed as she removed her hand from a passing vamps coat, fingering the wallet and looking through it for cash. "Wait- what? How?"
Persephony only shrugged as a discount shop came into view further down the street. She walked over and pushed the door to an old abandonned storefront open, ignoring Mel's question of how they had arrived at Discount Magic. She entered and waited inside the door while Mel looked over the wares; Persephony waited, her eyes numbly following the necromancer as he pushed aside the curtain that held the back of the shop closed off.
"You here for lost blood?" He gruffly asked, and had she not been so drained, tired, and emotionally numb she would have winced backwards in fear of the man.
Her hands shook from nothing more than exhaustion as she reached for a small bag of coins, and she tossed it to him, not taking another step closer to him. "Information, actually. I'm in need of a mage able to do memory spells. Know any?"
He weighed the sack in his hands, divining how much was in it as he decided whether the coins were worth the info. "It something I can do. It's costly, though."
"How much?"
"75 000."
"WHAT???" Melanctha finally looked up from her own purchases of teleport scrolls to the pair. "You can't be serious! Persephony, I know you don't want to remember, but is that really worth it?"
"Mel, finish your shopping, I'll go negotiate a price, ok? I can get it for cheaper, I know it." Mel frowned, clearly displeased with the idea, but nodded and went back to browsing the shop, though her eyes followed them as the necromancer allowed her back past the curtain.
"10 thousand." Persephony offered.
"You're going to have to do alot better than that, you know."
"I know full well that a memory charm wouldn't be that much, and it wouldn't tax your magics enough to justify that much money."
"60."
"10." Persephony had never been able to master a poker face before, and had always lost whenever she played any games for money that involved cards. But in her state of mind she couldn't have smiled if her life depended on it, and she could have fooled even the best poker champions with the expressionless mask she wore.
"55."
"10."
The necromancer eyed her warily. At first he had been certain that she would have paid the amount he asked; she certainly looked innocent enough to be the gullible type. He was smart enough, though, to know that on closer inspection she wouldn't budge more, and that she definitely had the advantage.
"51."
"10. If you'd prefer, I can always try someone else, I'm sure there are others willing to accept a reasonable sum for such paltry work."
He eyed her from under his black hood, the emptiness in her eyes was starting to get to him. Finally he caved, unwilling to lose even the smaller sum of money she was offering. It really was a simple spell, or so he told himself.
"15." He offered reluctantly, and she quickly agreed. Leaving the back for a moment, she spotted Melanctha who was finalizing the sale with the shopkeeper.
"Please tell me this is really what you want, Seph, I've got more than a couple bad feelings about this."
"It is. He's agreed to do it, but I need to get the cash... will you run by the bank and get the money out of my account?"
"You're not seriously going to pay him seventy-five thousand, are you?"
"No, I bumped the price down to--" she paused, remembering that she had wanted to proxy-purchase those powers for Mel, and she could do that now, as well and spare the effort of doing it later on, "-- 55 thousand."
"Well, it's better than the first price, but still, so much money!"
"Please?" The look in Persephony's eyes had truly taken on a desperate edge to them, and Mel was afraid to say no to her.
"Alright, alright," she agreed reluctantly, and found it to almost be worth it to see the gratitude that shone in her eyes for a moment.
"Oh, thank you, Mel, so much! You have no idea how much this means to me, just you being here..." She hugged her sister, in an attempt to shut herself up; the tears were threatening to spill again as another flash of family went through her mind.
"He said he'd start now, and I can pay when you come back with the money."
"He trusts that I'll come back that much?"
"No. He's still a necromancer - if I short him, he can make me pay for it in other ways. It's that I trust you enough that you'll come back with the money."
"Alright, I'll be back soon." Her sister gave her one last quick hug before she left for the bank, and she turned around to re-enter the necromancer's room.
"Will I be getting the same quality of work from you that I would have recieved had I paid the amount you asked?" She asked warily, as he motioned for her to lie down on a stone altar.
"Okay, so I might be in the business for profit, but that doesn't mean I skimp on the quality of my work. So what do you want done, explain the memory thing."
She explained the memory as quickly as possible, trying to hold back the fresh well of tears that were starting to leak from the corners of her eyes as she got up and lay down on the cold stone.
"I still want to keep the memory," she added when she was done, scrubbing the tear tracks from her face with her sleeve. "I just want it pushed back for a while, or lessened or something..."
"I can guarrantee that the spell will work, but you should know that the mind is a fickle thing. I can say that the spell will work, but it's always variant on how long it lasts, especially with supression spells. Now to remove it entirely, that's something that won't come back to you..." he said offhand as he pulled out a thick oversized volume, looking through the pages.
"No, that's not an option." She said definitively. "I do want to eventually remember it again... I just... want to remember it less."
"Here's something that might work for you." he showed her the page, letting her read over the outline of it's effects.
"And you say it will work?" she asked, hope so evident in her voice and her tearing, shiny eyes that his heart softened.
"If it doesn't, I'll try something else, no charge."
She nodded, trying to hold her lip from quivering as she lay back down on the marble, trying to relax.
"This will hurt for a moment, you know." He said, circling the altar with a continuous line of sea salt.
"Only a moment?"
"Well, sure, cause that pain will knock you straight into unconsciousnes. You won't feel it then, will you?" he chuckled.
"You have a morbid sense of humour, you know that, right?" she said deadpan.
"In my line of work, it's a necessity." he chuckled, and she had to give him that. He stepped up beside her, placing his hands on the sides of her head. She took deep breaths to calm herself as he started mumbling something, but she stopped listening as she watched his hands fade away until nothing but a ghostly skeleton remained. With sudden speed the bony appparitions pushed through her skull; the pain wracked her then, and she couldn't even utter a cry of agony before she was unconscious.
The next thing she was aware of was voices in the room with her, and she turned her head to see Melanctha talking with the necromancer. Mel was soon at her side as soon as she moved, her hand smoothing her hair back from her sweaty brow.
"You okay? Please say yes, otherwise I'm going to have to kill him for hurting you, then kill you for having this idea in the first place."
"Idea?" she whispered hoarsely, trying to sit up. Mel helped her up, making sure she didn't tip over; her balance seemed to be a little off, but otherwise she felt okay. The haziness faded quickly, and she took a deep breath as she thought back to the day at the docks.
It was more like watching a movie than a memory. She could still remember everything, but it was as if watching herself go through the motions without actually being there. The images were there, but the emotions muted. She smiled.
"The feelings associated with that memory will eventually start coming back to you, but I doubt that you'll be bothered by them again. They'll come back at a slower pace, and you should have time to grieve the memory this time."
She nodded her head, one hand going to her temples where her skull felt particularly tender, but everything was there, and she got what she wanted, so she really couldn't complain.
"Mel, I've got a few more questions to ask him, why don't you want outside." She nodded, though the look of concern never left her eyes. Mel passed her the bag of money she had asked for, and Persephony went through and counted out the fee they had agreed on, plus a small tip.
"Pleasure doing business with you." She shook his hand, though blanched when he offered it to her, and he chuckled at the reaction.
She left the room, and left the shop with Mel in tow, feeling much better, though definitely hungry. "How much time do you have before you go back to the castle? We could grab a few humans before then? I haven't eaten in a week." Persephony smiled weakly as Mel agreed; She wanted the time with her sister, and she could suggest a place to hunt that was relatively close to the guilds she needed to visit to get her sister the powers.
She had wasted the past two days; she figured she should start making up for that lost time.
It was mostly a stroke of luck because neither Melantcha or herself had recognized the other, and Mel tried to pick her pocket for coins before it dawned on them.
"Seph! Honestly, this isn't what it looks li--" Mel stopped, finally taking into account her sister's pitiful appearance. "Christ, Pers, what happened?"
She led her over to a bench nearby, a worried expression never leaving her face, and Persephony wondered just how bad she must have looked.
"It's that obvious, is it?" she muttered, staring down at her feet and holding back tears again. Melanctha started running her fingers through her hair, partly to calm her down and partly to try and regain some order to her unruly locks.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say Dutchy died again."
"You're not too far off..." She sighed, wiping the tears from her lashes before they fell. Melanctha grabbed her shoulders and turned Persephony until they were facing each other.
"Seph, come on, please tell me... you really do look like shit. You're far too pale again, you look almost blue... the only feature on your face with any colour are your eyes, and let me tell you, the green on red action, kinda striking, and not in the good way."
Persephony choked back a sob, looking around frantically. Mel recognized the look, and grabbed her shoulders more tightly, knowing that Persephony wanted to run. Pulling her into a hug, she smoothed her back, asking what was wrong.
"Mel... I-I remember it again... My parents dying, the ship, landing in Quebec... I remember being in the same bed as me mother the night she died. I remember when she started getting sick, and when they quarrantined half tha' ship... I remember waking up because I felt cold, and she... nobody would tell me why she would'na wake up. Da was so sad, but he was already sick, too..." She broke down into sobs, clinging desperately to her sister.
"Nobody could explain it ta' me why they did'na wake up...." Mel rubbed her back soothingly, rocking her slightly and whispering nonsense.
"I couldn't ever explain death to a child either... I had to do it once. T'was after a battle outside the village; a man who had two young daughters died, the wife was so grief struck that I was told to tell them. It's never easy, Seph..."
Persephony's sobs lessened, and Melanctha pulled away, noting instantly how her eyes avoided everything, staring at her hands in her lap.
"I never in my life regretted anything that had happened to me... and not once have I ever wished that I was never turned, until now....." she said in the softest voice, and Melanctha had to strain to hear it amongst the hustle and noise of the station.
"Why?" Mel asked, surprised to hear it, and she pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket, turning Persephony's face up to dry her tears.
"If I hadn't been turned, I would have died, and gotten to see me parents again..."
"You will see them again hun, when it is your turn to go."
"Yeah right, I'll probably go to hell..." she said dejectedly, looking away.
"No... you are a great person, Seph... not an evil, damned one."
"What's that matter? We're still vampires, we still kill people. You kill anyting with a soul, you commit a mortal sin, you go to hell." She sighed, feeling utterly hopeless. "I'm cursed, I'll go to hell, I'll never get to see them again, that's the end of it."
"Pers... you can't think like that..." Mel squeezed her hand, which seemed to shake her from her reverie, she sighed, blinking away a few more tears before she finally looked up at her sister.
"Yeah, you'll have to forgive me, the memory brought with it 16 years of ingrained Catholic guilt...." Mel waved it off, and pulled her to her feet, leaving the station and walking through backstreets.
"I really think I need to get this outta me..." Persephony said quietly, staring ahead mindlessly.
"Yes you do." Mel agreed as she removed her hand from a passing vamps coat, fingering the wallet and looking through it for cash. "Wait- what? How?"
Persephony only shrugged as a discount shop came into view further down the street. She walked over and pushed the door to an old abandonned storefront open, ignoring Mel's question of how they had arrived at Discount Magic. She entered and waited inside the door while Mel looked over the wares; Persephony waited, her eyes numbly following the necromancer as he pushed aside the curtain that held the back of the shop closed off.
"You here for lost blood?" He gruffly asked, and had she not been so drained, tired, and emotionally numb she would have winced backwards in fear of the man.
Her hands shook from nothing more than exhaustion as she reached for a small bag of coins, and she tossed it to him, not taking another step closer to him. "Information, actually. I'm in need of a mage able to do memory spells. Know any?"
He weighed the sack in his hands, divining how much was in it as he decided whether the coins were worth the info. "It something I can do. It's costly, though."
"How much?"
"75 000."
"WHAT???" Melanctha finally looked up from her own purchases of teleport scrolls to the pair. "You can't be serious! Persephony, I know you don't want to remember, but is that really worth it?"
"Mel, finish your shopping, I'll go negotiate a price, ok? I can get it for cheaper, I know it." Mel frowned, clearly displeased with the idea, but nodded and went back to browsing the shop, though her eyes followed them as the necromancer allowed her back past the curtain.
"10 thousand." Persephony offered.
"You're going to have to do alot better than that, you know."
"I know full well that a memory charm wouldn't be that much, and it wouldn't tax your magics enough to justify that much money."
"60."
"10." Persephony had never been able to master a poker face before, and had always lost whenever she played any games for money that involved cards. But in her state of mind she couldn't have smiled if her life depended on it, and she could have fooled even the best poker champions with the expressionless mask she wore.
"55."
"10."
The necromancer eyed her warily. At first he had been certain that she would have paid the amount he asked; she certainly looked innocent enough to be the gullible type. He was smart enough, though, to know that on closer inspection she wouldn't budge more, and that she definitely had the advantage.
"51."
"10. If you'd prefer, I can always try someone else, I'm sure there are others willing to accept a reasonable sum for such paltry work."
He eyed her from under his black hood, the emptiness in her eyes was starting to get to him. Finally he caved, unwilling to lose even the smaller sum of money she was offering. It really was a simple spell, or so he told himself.
"15." He offered reluctantly, and she quickly agreed. Leaving the back for a moment, she spotted Melanctha who was finalizing the sale with the shopkeeper.
"Please tell me this is really what you want, Seph, I've got more than a couple bad feelings about this."
"It is. He's agreed to do it, but I need to get the cash... will you run by the bank and get the money out of my account?"
"You're not seriously going to pay him seventy-five thousand, are you?"
"No, I bumped the price down to--" she paused, remembering that she had wanted to proxy-purchase those powers for Mel, and she could do that now, as well and spare the effort of doing it later on, "-- 55 thousand."
"Well, it's better than the first price, but still, so much money!"
"Please?" The look in Persephony's eyes had truly taken on a desperate edge to them, and Mel was afraid to say no to her.
"Alright, alright," she agreed reluctantly, and found it to almost be worth it to see the gratitude that shone in her eyes for a moment.
"Oh, thank you, Mel, so much! You have no idea how much this means to me, just you being here..." She hugged her sister, in an attempt to shut herself up; the tears were threatening to spill again as another flash of family went through her mind.
"He said he'd start now, and I can pay when you come back with the money."
"He trusts that I'll come back that much?"
"No. He's still a necromancer - if I short him, he can make me pay for it in other ways. It's that I trust you enough that you'll come back with the money."
"Alright, I'll be back soon." Her sister gave her one last quick hug before she left for the bank, and she turned around to re-enter the necromancer's room.
"Will I be getting the same quality of work from you that I would have recieved had I paid the amount you asked?" She asked warily, as he motioned for her to lie down on a stone altar.
"Okay, so I might be in the business for profit, but that doesn't mean I skimp on the quality of my work. So what do you want done, explain the memory thing."
She explained the memory as quickly as possible, trying to hold back the fresh well of tears that were starting to leak from the corners of her eyes as she got up and lay down on the cold stone.
"I still want to keep the memory," she added when she was done, scrubbing the tear tracks from her face with her sleeve. "I just want it pushed back for a while, or lessened or something..."
"I can guarrantee that the spell will work, but you should know that the mind is a fickle thing. I can say that the spell will work, but it's always variant on how long it lasts, especially with supression spells. Now to remove it entirely, that's something that won't come back to you..." he said offhand as he pulled out a thick oversized volume, looking through the pages.
"No, that's not an option." She said definitively. "I do want to eventually remember it again... I just... want to remember it less."
"Here's something that might work for you." he showed her the page, letting her read over the outline of it's effects.
"And you say it will work?" she asked, hope so evident in her voice and her tearing, shiny eyes that his heart softened.
"If it doesn't, I'll try something else, no charge."
She nodded, trying to hold her lip from quivering as she lay back down on the marble, trying to relax.
"This will hurt for a moment, you know." He said, circling the altar with a continuous line of sea salt.
"Only a moment?"
"Well, sure, cause that pain will knock you straight into unconsciousnes. You won't feel it then, will you?" he chuckled.
"You have a morbid sense of humour, you know that, right?" she said deadpan.
"In my line of work, it's a necessity." he chuckled, and she had to give him that. He stepped up beside her, placing his hands on the sides of her head. She took deep breaths to calm herself as he started mumbling something, but she stopped listening as she watched his hands fade away until nothing but a ghostly skeleton remained. With sudden speed the bony appparitions pushed through her skull; the pain wracked her then, and she couldn't even utter a cry of agony before she was unconscious.
The next thing she was aware of was voices in the room with her, and she turned her head to see Melanctha talking with the necromancer. Mel was soon at her side as soon as she moved, her hand smoothing her hair back from her sweaty brow.
"You okay? Please say yes, otherwise I'm going to have to kill him for hurting you, then kill you for having this idea in the first place."
"Idea?" she whispered hoarsely, trying to sit up. Mel helped her up, making sure she didn't tip over; her balance seemed to be a little off, but otherwise she felt okay. The haziness faded quickly, and she took a deep breath as she thought back to the day at the docks.
It was more like watching a movie than a memory. She could still remember everything, but it was as if watching herself go through the motions without actually being there. The images were there, but the emotions muted. She smiled.
"The feelings associated with that memory will eventually start coming back to you, but I doubt that you'll be bothered by them again. They'll come back at a slower pace, and you should have time to grieve the memory this time."
She nodded her head, one hand going to her temples where her skull felt particularly tender, but everything was there, and she got what she wanted, so she really couldn't complain.
"Mel, I've got a few more questions to ask him, why don't you want outside." She nodded, though the look of concern never left her eyes. Mel passed her the bag of money she had asked for, and Persephony went through and counted out the fee they had agreed on, plus a small tip.
"Pleasure doing business with you." She shook his hand, though blanched when he offered it to her, and he chuckled at the reaction.
She left the room, and left the shop with Mel in tow, feeling much better, though definitely hungry. "How much time do you have before you go back to the castle? We could grab a few humans before then? I haven't eaten in a week." Persephony smiled weakly as Mel agreed; She wanted the time with her sister, and she could suggest a place to hunt that was relatively close to the guilds she needed to visit to get her sister the powers.
She had wasted the past two days; she figured she should start making up for that lost time.