Time for an update! Have a starter post!
"Told my mother not to worry, said I'd be home soon just fine..."
Nudging aside the remnants of a collapsed roof beam with his boot, Wren slid backwards out of range as the rest of it came crashing down. A haze of dust particles billowed up in its wake, and he lifted an arm to shield himself, coughing once before resuming his low, humming song.
"But still she worried, still she waited at the door, crying, 'No, son, don't go...'"
The mansion was already pretty much empty. Most of the families had scarcely been forcibly evicted from their abodes before the scavengers had swarmed in--some didn't even wait that long. The government had been stupid enough to underestimate just how greedy the average rat bastard was, even in the face of incumbent danger. Not even poison-tailed chimaera nor bloodthirsty unicorns nor fire-breathing dragons as big as a house could stop those with gold in their eyes. And who could blame them? To the Underdark, the collapse of the magic fields was a golden opportunity--forcing the privileged to flee inwards left a battleground rife with spoils for anyone brave enough to venture into it.
Some were brave, but lacked the wherewithal to defend themselves--those were quickly eaten, or possessed, or worse. Others were more canny. Wren was canny. He was all about canny--it was the main reason he'd survived all these years, despite one lack of fortune after another. Not content to live in the squalor sentenced to most part-human halfbreeds, he'd taught himself at a very early age how to take care of himself, whether that meant stealthing through the Untamed Lands to find food, or navigating the equally treacherous labrynth of social cues among the elite. Oh, not that they ever treated him like an equal--he could never pass for one, even if he dressed up in the same finery after stealing it from a hapless drunk. His ears gave him away every time--the decidedly mundane roundness of them, not to mention the fact that he could hardly ever pass as clean-shaven. And honestly, that was fine with him, really--he didn't want to be one of them, didn't want to look down his long nose at the 'lesser races,' didn't want to live in a cloud of entitlement and illusion. Gilded or not, a cage was still a cage.
Still, it would've been nice to try the high life just once. As he walked carefully past dismantled mahogany furniture and once-grand pallusades, he liked to pause and imagine it as it much have looked before beasts and monsters had moved in. How elegant the sweeping staircase must have been, how bright and glimmering the chandelier, with its thousands of tiny crystals enchanted to glow like captured flower pixies. The idea of people, too, intrigued him--more than actual people ever did. As he rifled through a dresser leaning sideways, he pulled out a long, red dress, made of something very soft and sheer. It was rent with holes and splinters now, but even still, it clung to his hand like textile liquid, and after giving it a few gentle shakes, he twisted it round his callused fingers and smiled. There wasn't much of it--didn't look like there had been much fabric to begin with--but it still might make for a half-decent glove...or something more intimate. Figuring it was about the most significant piece of booty he was likely to find in this run-down mansion, he pocketed it in his leather satchel and moved on.
Wren had finished searching through most of the grand foyer, downstairs studies and dens, and was just about to climb his way to the second story when he thought he heard a faint sniffle from somewhere in the next room. It was barely a whisper of sound, very possibly imaginary, but only a fool would ignore it with so many dangers nearby. Erring on the side of caution, he slid from his path in the center of the room to the shadow of a marble column, and quietly, so quietly, drew up his crossbow, notching a bolt. It was an older model, heavy and not very pretty to look at, but it had saved his life more times than he could count. Feeling safer once he had the crossbow loaded, he leaned his back into the column and breathed out slowly, then scanned the silhouettes across from him, seeking out anything that might have produced a sound like breathing. There, half-hidden behind a torn white curtain--was that a human form?
This was it, a moment of truth. Could be a survivor, somehow trapped in the manor, or perhaps returned after the evacuation to look for something too precious to go without. Or, it could be a monster wearing elfin form, luring him out to be eaten. No way to tell from here, not unless he revealed his presence. No way unless he made himself vulnerable.
But oh what a profit if it was some little lost noble. Besides, he might be a looter, but he wasn't a bad guy. He couldn't turn away from someone in need.
"Hey there," he called out in a low, gravelly voice, his vocal chords slightly rusty from disuse. How long had it been since he'd been around other people? A day? A week? Sometimes he was out in the wilds so long, he almost forgot his own name. Not his charm, though. A warm, disarming smile crossed his expression, elevating his handsomeness by several notable degrees. Handsome for a scruffy human, anyway. Affecting lack of concern, he peeled away from the wall and took a step towards the shadow, oh so casually keeping the crossbow drawn at his side. He still couldn't quite make out the shape of it--small and diminutive, it could have been a slight woman, or a child. "Funny finding a survivor here. Where are your parents? You been here the whole time alone?"
At twenty-odd paces, he halted his progress and took another survey of the shadowed figure. It was definitely the form of a woman, tilted away from him, wispy bits of colorless hair floating in the same wind that stirred the ripped-up curtain, blowing in through a shattered window that looked out over a ruined street. And because he was a man with a healthy imagination, he supposed her to be a beautiful woman, with porcelain skin and ruby red lips. His tongue flashed out, wetting his own lips, and he prepared his most suave voice before calling out, "Well, doesn't matter, I'm here now. I'll help you out of this mess, dollface. So, how about your turn nice and slowly so I can--"
The "woman" didn't turn, but something else did. A hideous, unearthly shriek was Wren's only warning before something came flying at him from the shadows of the observatory's roof. His knees already half-bent, Wren ducked, and the thing swept past him, knocking his wide-brimmed hat off with the force of its passing. "Hey!" he cried out, more affronted by that than anything, and sprang to his feet again, whirling sideways to keep the silhouette in his peripheral while he searched for whatever had attacked.
Momentarily motionless as it reoriented itself, hovering within the middle of the room was a figure of ash-white skin and rotted clothing. A wraith. Perfect. Wraiths were damn hard to kill--unaffected by any mundane weapon, and capable of killing an unprepared opponent with one touch. Luckily, Wren wore a piece of enchanted armor that would make him harder to kill, but not by much. Besides, wraiths only killed someone if they had no alternative--the damned ethereals were much more fond of driving their victims insane.
"Not today,bitch!" Wren barked out his war cry, and with a squeeze of his finger, he let the bolt fly from its hook. It shot forward unerringly, arching across the wide room, gleaming quicksilver in the moonlight. With another shriek, the wraith swirled round to face him, just in time to catch the bolt in its chest. The bolt continued onward, seemingly unaffected, but in its wake, the wraith started thrashing and shrieking in earnest. Its arms splayed wide, and its floating hair flung out like tentacles, writhing and snapping and coiling in futile agony. Wren might have pitied the thing, might have, if he didn't know for certainty that wraiths were nothing but the rage of those who were wrongly murdered left in corporeal form. Well, sort of corporeal. It didn't really matter. Quicksilver bolts could kill anything--which was why they cost a goddamn thousand bits each. Thank providence he'd had one loaded, or he'd be stark-raving mad already, most like.
Still, pity the silhouette hadn't turned out to be a real woman. Taking a glance at the shadow, he saw it for what it really was--just a skeleton, still wearing its finery, forever facing out what had once been a window. Pressing his lips thin, he turned his back on the shrieking wraith and approached the skeleton, then gave the leg of its chair a light click. With a faint crackling, the skeleton's neck splintered, and the head rolled down its chest to the floor. "Whoops," he muttered, not feeling very remorseful. It was just a body, after all. The former occupant was long gone. Hopefully. "Sorry about that, dollface." Figuring he ought not waste the opportunity, he rested the crossbow against his shoulder with one hand and patted down the corpse with the other. Nope, not a damn thing of worth. Just a servant, probably. Scowling, Wren turned his back on the skeleton and marched out of the observatory, serenaded by the wraith's last undying screams as he passed. A thought went to retrieving his quicksilver bolt, but he quickly discarded it--expensive as hell, the bolts seemed to lose their charge once they'd been used on any supernatural.
All in all, this was turning out to be a damn waste of time. As he crossed by the crumbled staircase for the dozenth time, Wren lowered himself onto a lower step and turned out his satchel, taking inventory on the scarce collection of valuables he'd managed to find hidden in the refuse. The bit of red silk, a gilded hand mirror with cracks down the center, and some kind of amulet--hardly enough to spit at. He hadn't been upstairs yet, but odds were it was just as picked-over as the bottom floor had been, if not moreso. The bedrooms were where most nobles kept their valuables, so the bedrooms were where most looters went first. Unless there was a hidden safe room somewhere piled high with the family jewels, Wren very much doubted there was a single thing of value left to find. Maybe this was sign that it was time to give up on foraging this area, and return to the Underdark to look for other jobs, unsavory but decent-paying. Maybe he could find a seedy noble with something they wanted stolen, or maybe even get himself hired as a bodyguard for some spoiled royal child--it was boring work, but tended to pay for itself in spades. Maybe make a few bits off what he had found, and put that money towards liquor and the warm, milky thighs of a downtrodden whore. Wouldn't that be refreshing?
But no, he couldn't leave the manor without taking at least a cursory sweep of the upstairs. He had to know for certain that it was empty, or it would bother him--the chance that he'd looked past something worth the trouble out of laziness. So, repackaging his findings and hooking the crossbow back to his belt, he applied himself to climbing the staircase, grasping at railings and exposed support beams where the actual stair had busted through.
The manor was quite different on its second floor, or at least it seemed as much. Less destroyed, less marred by exposure and looters, though the upturned drawers and faded patches on the walls where paintings once hung proved the looters had been through there as well. Wren paced the halls slowly, slightly rattled from his encounter with the wraith though he didn't want to admit it, impatient to settle his nagging senses so he could leave the mansion and go back to the Underdark market. When he encountered a locked bedroom door, he kicked it in without caring about the noise, and grunted at the bare insides past the threshold. Room by room, he moved down the hall, shoving furniture sideways, tossing debris out of his way, kicking rubble hard enough to send it flying out balcony archways. He was angry, and he didn't really know why. Maybe the wraith had touched him in its passing, leaving him marked by just a little of its incarnate rage. Or maybe he was just horny, and tired of not finding anything to make all this trouble worth it.
Thus when he shoved his way into a room only to find the floor completely caved in, he grabbed a scrap of stone and hefted it up, prepared to toss it down inside. But he stopped, stilled for a moment, by the faintly delineated outline of a girl. Hackles rising, he slowly set the stone back to the floor, lifting his crossbow again. No more playing nice this time. He lodged a bolt--another quicksilver, the last he had on him. And he aimed it at the shape. "If you're sentient, state your name and history, now," he demanded. It wasn't a true test of sentience, but it was a start. At least he'd know if it was a wraith--wraiths couldn't talk, unless you counted shrieking. "Now!" he added sharply, just in case the figure misread his low tones as fear.*