Third Time’s The Charm

B

y the time they’d reached the hall of cells that loomed ahead, Nimue had at least resumed autonomy from her escort. She was brought before a cell that, to her surprise, appeared to be already occupied by a form in the darkness.

She squinted to try to her a better look but not before the guard took control again and shoved her forward and into her temporary living quarters. And thank the Divine for that! Her surroundings were completely devoid of any light, the area from floor to ceiling as bleak and hopeless as one might expect a jail cell to be.

Tossing one last glare back over her shoulder she settled herself in a corner either just opposite the other presence. Here in the shadows she could at least sense that her cellmate was a female. She lifted her nose to take in her scent, puzzled to find that the smell of prison and wolf were one in the same.

This poor creature had been here for only the Gods knew how long. “Good evening to you…” Nimue greeted warily, keeping an eye on the woman for any sudden movements and also keeping an ear out for any signs of Rhiannon nearby.

@Third

art and code by Yahtzee-Penguiduck

Dark and cold and cold and shadow, whispers in the twilight-night, the soundless tap of spider legs on rough granite stone. She's forgotten the sky, but she remembers the snow, remembers voices in the void -

The cell door opens, revealing a crack in the wall. Light rushes in, and so does a body. A live one, this time. Interesting.

They seal the wall again, leaving the body in the dark. With her. 'Good evening to you...' the wolf whispers. A woman. With manners? Here?

It takes Third a moment to remember how to speak. Such silly things, words. Should she cry, or should she scream? Whisper, or wail? Will it make a difference which she chooses? It hasn't before. She'd rather not. But oh, she wouldn't want to be rude.

When she moves, cobwebs cling to her pelt, dust displaced in the dark. She takes a step forward, and then another, talons clicking against the stone. When the words finally fall from her dry, cracking lips, they are carved of crass whispers, a soft song strangled by disuse.

"All around the soldiers creep
Interrupting blessed sleep -
Will she speak or will she scream?
Is she here or just a dream?
Either way it's all the same,
But ignorance would be a shame."

A pause.

"What's her name?"

A

fter her greeting, she'd moved forward to peer out and try to catch glimpses of the other cells as the soldiers departed. "Rhiannon!" She hissed down the hallway, perking her ears in hopes of a reply only to catch the sound of movement behind her.

Nimue whipped her head around to spy the miscreant, detaching herself from the dusty corner she resided in one leg at a time like an arachnid . The dry, crackled voice caused a shiver to roll down her spine one vertebra at a time while she stared, at the arachnid that prowled forth.

The contents of her speech were intriguing, however. She tilted her head in the middle of her cellmate's introduction when she realized it was rhyme. Curiosity swirled in her ocean blue gaze, with the poet's dramatic pause and then her name was requested. Nim allowed silence to stretch between them still, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth when she decided she might entertain the resident. Perhaps time would only pass faster so long as she was having fun.

"My, what a lovely tempo you share,
It seems I've found myself in your care.

I do find myself wondering, though...
Would you be friend or would you be foe?

Nimue is the name my mother has gifted,
And what shall I call you, now that fate has shifted?"

@Third

art and code by Yahtzee-Penguiduck

She called for "Rhiannon". A fellow captive, perhaps? Or some nonsense word? She was willing to bet it was the latter. Everything ended up as nonsense, in the end.

The girl smelled of the sun - of green and growing things, of fresh air and the memory of freedom. Disgusting. Lovely. It brought a certain sense of novelty to the cell, which had for too long languished in static permanence. A new set of drapes, to brighten up the room.

Despite Third's good manners, however, silence woke and writhed in the wake of her question. Perhaps she had asked it wrong? Perhaps she had forgotten how. But no - humor danced within acid-blue eyes. And when the once-freed spoke, it was in imitation of Third's own rhythm.

Third was not sure whether she was flattered (perhaps a little) or irate (generally, always). Was she being mocked? Or had her madness finally become a mirror? Third narrowed her gunmetal gaze upon the earthen other, squinting through the shadows. It had been so long since she'd had any company, though. She missed playing the Game - even if she'd forgotten some of the rules.

She slithered to a stop a few feet from her fellow prisoner, tilting her head in a dramatically owlish manner. To be polite, she tried to smile, but the expression froze on her face.

"Come ye close oh sinner dear
And I shall make all matters clear.
Friend or foe, it matters not,
For either way I'm here to rot -
Called 'Third' of Rook, and late of time,
I haunt this jail, and thee, and thine."

The song ended, words ground into dust and memory - only for another, fainter breath to start the tune again.

"Tell me, girl, what brings you hence -
What action caused the king's offence?"

T

he inmate continued to creep steadily forward until she was a few tail-lengths. If that was not enough to make her uncomfortable, then the eerie way in which the wolfess twisted her neck to give her head an unnatural tilt certainly did.

She could’ve swore she even heard the crackle of her vertebra as she did so, as though it’d been centuries since they’d been put to good use. Nimue did her best to hold a smile rather than allow it be replaced by a cringe in response to the movement.

“Darling, please, I beg to differ,
I could assume your status simply based on my sniffer (no offense)…
Friend or foe? My inquiry most definitely still stands,
As I only await release by hourglass sands.
You may continue your haunting until the end of time,
But you’ll find my visit temporary, caged for a minor crime…”

“You see, lovely jailbird, t’was a peaceful protest gone sour,
Unfortunately for us all, it was clearly not Voxi’s hour…
Though, never mind what stories I’d give for you to believe,
It is your own intricate web spun of interest this eve.
If I’m placed behind bars for questioning truth in a time of uncertainty,
What gives one a life-sentence in the Dungeon for all eternity?”

As her words had dripped slowly from her lips she too had taken steps towards her counterpart. This now left them merely inches apart, Nimue’s eyes narrowing as she started at the crooked grin of the young woman. What tales this oddball could tell, feeling there was far more beneath the surface of her shattered smile.

@Third

art and code by Yahtzee-Penguiduck

Cracking paws shifted on crumbling stone. The cell held an echo of time and tawdry memory, pain forgiven and forgotten, and suffering suffused the space of existence. Third inhaled, sucking in air through flared nostrils, analyzing the scent of her temporary roommate. She was only half-listening as the earthen other produced another rhyme in answer.

Her muzzle crinkled in a grimace of distaste. Ridiculous things, rhymes. So unnecessary. So nonsensical. Why couldn't the sinner speak more plainly?

The girl's answer droned on, and Third found herself swaying to the vocal litany, a personal pulse of motion both rhythmic and repetitive. Shuffling from side to side, her movements coincided with the Nimue's speech - or, perhaps, with the underlying heartbeat that drummed in tandem. But then a truth, casually spoken, caused Third's attention to sharpen. Dazed moonlight eyes snapped to quicksilver focus, as lethal as a blade.

Voxi? Protest? These were words she knew, an echo of her life before. The girl admitted that she had been imprisoned for speaking too loudly - marking her mistakes in naivete and idealism. She then proceeded to question what ink had writ Third's own sentence. Third huffed, gaze drifting dreamily across the girl's features. Close enough to touch, now. Close enough to taste. Such a foolish little dreamer.

"In darkness I find naught but silence
And must ignore the call of violence..."

Another pause, as the moonlight mistress seemed to listen to another sound, another silent song, before she refocused on the woman in front of her. Again, she tried to smile. In reassurance, perhaps? Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly...

"Let's play a game - your guesses, three -
What crime would you pin on me?"

I

t was amusing to watch the creature of the night swaying with they carefully crafted beat and pace of the words she weaved together. Now she was beginning to think she should have stood by Aryth’s side in the realm of word craft to debut her talent for the King rather than playing water and wine.

Nimue noted the sharpening of eyes on the one who called herself Third. Ah, so the Voxi were familiar to her…she wondered in what standing she found herself with the ones who answered to The Voice. There we’re many mysteries to unravel here and though her sentence was short, she felt she might able to uncover a treasure trove of knowledge whether useful to her or not.

Rhyme and rhythm were returned back to her from the dry mouth and cracked lips of the convicted. There was a very odd pause in which Third seemed to be listening to something. Nimue followed her gaze and strained her own ears, only to find the muffled noises of the other captives of the Dungeon from afar. “I hardly call what our protest was violence…but, my word, is it difficult to sway a crowd without it…” Nim interjected amidst the pause with a bit of a scoff.

The poet became game master and this drew out a devilish grin on Nimue’s maw. Challenge accepted… Nimue’s features scrunched as she was thrown deep into thought on what the woman, who’s age was difficult to tell, was locked away for. Taking a long inhale of the stale, dusty air around them, she let out a hum while she contemplated what was most likely to have occurred in Third’s past.

“They did not outright execute you taking a few option is off my list,
Fraud could be a very easily be dismissed,
Murder I could see as a very real possibility,
Though which our wit, you’d be an organizer and not the killing party,
So I might land on treason of the highest offense,
An organized attempt to take King Adamh’s life makes sense…”

@Third

art and code by Yahtzee-Penguiduck

Rhyme was momentarily abandoned as the sinner lamented the necessity of violence in order to influence the populace. It was a simplistic viewpoint, and not necessarily an accurate one. Bribery, sympathy, and fear could all be used in equal measure to sway a crowd, sometimes to greater effect. Third was admittedly a bit rusty in such matters. It had been so long since she'd seen the sun - let alone leveraged popular rhetoric. These days she spoke to spiders, not peasants, and she prophesied only for her own shadow. She wheezed a quiet laugh at the other woman's expense. Or perhaps at her own. Were they not one and the same, now that they shared a cell?

In the meantime, her own question hung, suspended in the air from its thumbs. Twisting, turning, the truth screamed out in the silence, an openmouthed rictus of suffering that painted the walls with the echoes of her history. Challenge sparked in the stranger's gaze, mischief marked in the twist of muzzle and mutability. Third's own expression was one of patient bemusement. It was as if she'd offered candy to a starving child - so was it any wonder that Nimue reached out with both hands outstretched? Nevermind that the treats were probably poisoned. Arsenic was an acquired taste.

After a thoughtful pause on the other's part, words writhed into the space between them. Third's ear - her left one, always the more capricious - twitched in time with the other woman's guesses. Fraud. Murder. Treason. Third hummed, a discordant note that cracked and crackled in her parched throat.

"Quaint guesses all,
And of that series,
King Adamh's fall
Is the fairest of theories.
But truth to wit,
My crimes number more;
Imprisoned, I sit
for the oaths I forswore.
Murder, burglary, and smuggling too,
My sins are tallied, and so thus accrue.
But Prince Jacob's reign is well worth the trial,
And when he ascends, it will all be worthwhile."

Quicksilver gaze crawled away from the earthen other, brushing across the broken stonework. Her stomach grumbled, skin and bones protesting their skinflint upkeep. Drawn back to her only source of entertainment, Third's attention snagged thoughtfully on the other woman's oceanic eyes.

What did a Voxi taste like, she wondered?

A

dmission came tumbling from those cracked and brittle lips of hers. The rasp of her unused vocal cords provided just enough flavor for her poetry to haunt the space as Nimue took it all in. Her eyebrows rose slowly with each conviction listed until it was clear to her that this girl had pledged everything she might have been before a life of imprisonment to Prince Jacob. Pity…

There was hardly a pause after Third’s words ceased and Nim’s followed after. “Murder, burglary, and smuggling, hm? All in that order?” A rhetorical question and a failed attempt at comic relief. “I commend you for winning this game of rhyme. I forfeit…you can keep your crown, Queen of Shadow…” She offered a sweeping bow, her deep blue orbs never leaving the other and even offering a slow wink to the creature who who now stared at her hungrily.

“You did not immediately strike me as a Jacobite…you all must be far more radical than I presumed…” Nim mused while turning her head slightly to take a peek between the bars and out towards the other cells. Keeping her face directed outward she cut her eyes at the fae, watching her curiously. “So…who was it that you killed? Or I suppose an even better question would be…how?”

@Third

art and code by Yahtzee-Penguiduck

There were bats in the belfry, and they'd come to roost among her thoughts. She could hear them flapping, fluttering, chittering in the deep dark. Tempting, skimming the surface of her memories, drinking deep of what little sanity remained. But the recalcitrant rodents scattered into mist at the earthen woman's question, a limp thing that fell short of the humor it proffered. Still, she answered the prompt at face value.

"Once and thrice and eight times more,
Counting crimes is such a bore.
What matters which I did before?
These cells ensure no near encore."

But then the blue-eyed minx swept into a bow, and Third's lightless eyes tracked the movement with predatory focus. “I commend you for winning this game of rhyme. I forfeit…you can keep your crown, Queen of Shadow…” the dirtwitch noted. Third scoffed. Queen of Shadow, indeed. If it were true, then her crown had been carved of cobwebs and thorns. She could wear it to match her finery of rags and wretched filth.

Her temporary visitor - they were all temporary, such ephemeral, transient things, here one minute and gone the next, so soon that it made little difference whether they were real or hallucinatory - mused on the nature of Prince Jacob's supporters, even as she unwisely cast her attention out beyond the bars of their mutual prison. Third took advantage of the other's momentary inattention to take a step closer, her claws ghosting across the stone. This close, she could feel the heat that drifted out from the other's living body, the memory of warmth proving too great a draw to ignore. She reached out to touch, to feel - but paused when the woman slid her attention back to the wraith. Another question fell from dirt-dark lips, and Third huffed in annoyance. “So…who was it that you killed? Or I suppose an even better question would be…how?” Always so many questions. Did they even remember the answers, when they left her alone in the dark?

"Mortals live and mortals perish,
Far from friends they hope to cherish.
Sinners all, they lived and died
Standing in the way of pride.
A sip of poison, honey-sweet,
A flash of fire, keen of heat -
A dagger dark, a talon mean,
Thus fall the allies
Of the traitor Queen."