HOME SWEET HOME

            As the crew of Nays, one in several parts, crossed the threshold of the Red Room Inn, the door slowly closed behind them. They were met with a dimly lit walkway, through which, after a couple steps, opened into a small eating area which seemed mostly abandoned except for the bar area. Across from the bar, before another entryway, was a fireplace that seemed to be burning despite lacking the material needed for normal combustion.

There were, indeed, very different rules in play for this world. For example, no one ever refers to themselves in the right terms to remove the power associated with names. Like everywhere else, there are those that refuse to follow this rule, entrenched in their association with the name. They drew raw power from their followers, living or dead, they belong to them now. 

 The bloody mahogany wood seemed to crawl with its own pattern, shifting it from time to time only enough as to trick the eye. The crimson flames in the fireplace were throwing red shadows through the lantern-lit interior.

As they passed the bar, heading back to Gaunt’s room, the Bag Lady simply looked down while the Baroness walked through the room, followed by her entourage. She would never look anyone in the face, even when speaking to them. She was youthful in appearance, dressed very poorly despite her young beauty. A small thimble was kept in her brown dreads under a purple bandana.

Babs, also known as The Bag Lady, wore it only when she needed to dig in her metal shopping cart, the blue logo long since worn away. The Baroness had given her the thimble and cart to replace her wooden wagon. The Bag Lady could, at will, pull from her cart, anything someone wanted that was linked to their own lives and experiences. Sometimes, when things get rough, Diver would be known to sit at the bar and re-experience some of his best-known memories, feeling drunk, smelling the French vanilla cigar smoke. It was a powerful tool used to balance her crew because, she knew, they were motley to others, but they were her crew.

            Thus far, the trip was in complete silence other than Diver’s noisy helmet due to the metal plates rolling over the hard tile floors. The floors were beige stones that would, at times, arrange themselves into spelling words or making faces. It was almost just as aware as anything else within its walls.

            After moving down a small hallway they arrived at a large white-oaken door with a copper cobra as the door handle. Its form started moving the second Gaunt’s body approached. The handle was formed from the hooded top of the snake’s head and its tail coming through the door below the head forming the latch. Whence ready it began eating itself until his copper hood vanished behind the door and it opened, slowly coming to a halt. The handle now on the inside, frozen back into position, slowly releasing the door.

            Just inside, Teddy moved ahead of the group, now seeming to disappear into the shadows of the dim room. They worked the bags and parts together and laid them down into a shallow, soil-filled, wet bedding of brown-black moss. It immediately moved the body parts around forming Gaunt’s body until the last one was added. The mossy bedding pulled the body under. Gaunt’s body would now do what it was supposed to do, and they would soon have the power they needed to begin policing the chaos that was the Purg.

In the corner of the room, Teddy appeared, sitting in the brown maple rocking chair, with the girl, ever-present, poised behind him. She was squatting down now and eventually, settled into a cross-legged position.

            “Fuck yeah, you bet, Boss Lady,” Teddy said, but this time it was the girl that said, Boss Lady. The whisper sounded almost like a taunt, but the Baroness knew she had damaged goods, meaning, sometimes, it was more advantageous to admit defeat and move forward than to be right and be by yourself.

The Baroness knew a great deal about leadership and manipulation. She was tasked to do something for which there is no concrete support. As the Neutrality could never vote for action or inaction, but they understood that everyone did not play by their created rules. Deadlock was the Nay agent working in and around the bureaucracy, tracking what was recorded and said. It was a hub of information flow for everything into the area.

Within the city of Jaynes, the bureaucracy existed, and they allowed everything to wander their city with immunity given to certain energosomas. Mostly the Censure, The Bright, The Tunnels, The Isle of Innocence, the Vile, Drukkna, and Despondence. These ambassadors were, without shame or retribution, allowed to manipulate and target the Mendicants that are responsible for what they seek. Although Dzenizem can find these creatures and dispatch them from the city, it creates a stink of a ruling class, which all Neutrality wanted nothing to do with.

They were sometimes referred to as the "Jaynes". They were the hierarchy of the Mendicants and monks that worked everywhere and on everything in the Grey City. They were the ultimate self-sacrificing energosomas and were very hard on all others they worked with. They punished themselves, judging themselves and ultimately leading to their own demise. Jaynes was in possession of technology that was forged from the very innovation that created the nuclear bomb.

* * *

The Baroness would have to travel soon; within a few days. She removed a small clockwork item. It was very similar in size to a pocket watch. There were three blackened glass domes set into the system which now seemed to be whirring to life, its inside moving and filling in the three circular spaces.

The largest glass dome filled with a symbol, dimly giving off a green hue, it looked like a backward written letter "V", followed by a "G", except the "G" was more coiled. It was much like that of a snake. It meant Gaunt was being reborn, again. The Baroness had lost count of how many times she had collected him back together.

The left small window filled with a yellow lotus, its petals open and aware; the Baroness’ personal coat of arms.

The last was the right glass dome, around the outside worked a two-dimensional representation moving slowly. It was represented by a black circle with purple tendrils all along its outside circle. They were set to move around, creating a time system, a system that only worked within the confines of the afterlife. These were given to her Nays for her to keep track of them while they worked, sometimes well into dangerous surroundings. She referred to them affectionately as "leashes", but were known to her crew as a V-Device. They did serve a very valuable purpose, with tracking the passage of what was considered parallel time by the Jaynes. A time system based on what they are seeing within their scrying.

Energosomas are self-powered generally, most classifications changing when they can siphon energy from others, mostly within a narrow scope. Gaunt would be in what most referred to as "Slumber" within the Purg. As stated before, energy is usually not an issue for a self-aware energosoma, they can pass time without resting through many cycles before they see any ill effects. They must slumber to gather the energy they just spent and give it time to find its way back to their chosen form. After completing their form, they now move about freely to the wishes, of course, of the Baroness. They are just as devoted to her as they are to themselves. The Nays are a close-knit group, open only through an invitation from herself and one another.

The Baroness replaced the V-Device. The Nays waited and emptied Gaunt’s room; left in the corner chair to guard his recovering body, was Teddy. You could hear a faint echo of metallic clicking coming from the girl. She opened and closed the small movable windows that covered her leash. Waiting and watching now, for Gaunt to wake up and then the fun could begin.

* * *

As the time passed, the lighting never changed outside the inn. There would be times when forces could be felt across the roof and foundations, creaking under invisible forces of pressure, seeking to find what they are looking for.

Teddy and the girl continued to chat for hours, sharing stories of her youth before she was taken for brutalization, before she was cast aside by everyone after she killed. “No,” she thought, her volume rising, “I was defending myself, they had it comin’.”

"Don’t you bother yourself, girly Q," Teddy said softly, "Ain’t no one, EVER, going to lay a hand on you again," he exclaimed, louder this time, hearing her crying behind him. The black blade coming around into the air during the "EVER" part, throwing more conviction into his position on the matter.

Her hands moved the blade back down, laid it gently in his lap and reached around his belly, squeezing him tightly. Teddy leaned his head back just a little to meet hers. They both let out a sigh as they curled up. Blades now sticking out of the wall next to them, they gathered strength; they were going to need it. Teddy never slumbered, his little red button eyes, translucent, would show a fine glow moving about. The girl, however, slumbered peacefully.

* * *

The Baroness stuck her head in later that slumber cycle, checking the bed of moss, now growing at a huge rate, doubling in size each cycle. She moved over to the corner chair and put her pale hands around her waist, pulling free the bottom half of the red dress. Underneath her bustle was a finely crafted set of leather pants with her high black boots. A rather worn butcher’s belt hung around her waist. Thirteen finely crafted utensils hung around the belt. She snapped the red bustle into the air, like someone trying to remove dust, and it settled back down on Teddy as a red silk quilt, epic scenes stitched into each small square.

She stood still as she heard something move in the bed of moss. It was now fully above the rim of the white oaken frame, starting to move fast enough that the Baroness bent low, the thirteen knives clattering around her waist now free of the dress bottom. Her empty black eyes grew close to the bed now. She moved to stand, and heard a familiar voice, melancholy, raspy and full of beautiful sarcasm.

“You never could keep those things quiet,” Gaunt stated matter-of-factly, his black-green face showing through the moss bed. “You’re a welcome sight, we can speak more in a cycle or so, when I have gathered everything I need to move.”

“Your things are inside the blackwood standing closet in the corner, opposite your visitor,” the Baroness said, rolling a now visible set of grey eyes over at the slumbering girl. “She protects you, you know, as well someone should. I suppose I can’t be bothered to chase you down every time." With the last statement, she stood back up with a long nail to his forehead. Her normal set of nails purposefully withdrawn to a couple inches.

“It’s good to be home,” said Gaunt, “Even if it’s only for a momentary relief.” His eyes sealed shut as his voice faded away towards the end. His skin was an ebon green now, it was leathery, and it would continue to harden. He could shift his forms at times when he has his full potential power at his hands. There have been many incarnations of Gaunt over the last six hundred years, some she could have done without seeing. She knew Gaunt would be up and around soon. His ethereal shifting face was retreating now, back into the cycle to finish.

The Baroness shifted back into standing and simply floated backwards, away from the bed of moss, melting into the first wall she contacted. Teddy’s eyes followed the Baroness’ form and they locked eyes just before her right hand and face melted away into the grey brick walls.

She quickly pointed at her own empty sockets, letting the talons melt through her incorporeal form and pointed them back at the stuffed defender. To which, the Baroness received a rather sarcastic salute, to which Teddy received a soft slap from the girl’s hand below his salute. She also pulled it back down to the side, again hiding behind her protector.

* * *

            “Well then, get the fuck up off me, turn your happy yellow ass around and get the fuck up outta my−” the rant of Teddy was held at bay when the Baroness, across the room, turned and gave her a hard stare. Slicker, sitting on the other side of the bar, hat off laying on the bloody mahogany wood top, was perplexed per facial expression.

            “Um,” was all Slicker could get out before the bear was now nose to nose with him, sitting in the girl’s lap in the stool next to his. He held a quick old hand up to the Baroness, pausing her movement towards the stools. Slicker was an experienced energosoma and although they were similar in nature, they were not similar in energetic stature. He would deflate it in three, two, one.

"Well, golly, Teddy, I had no idea you felt that way and if, somehow, I’ve offended the girl or you, in any way, I want you to know I sincerely apologize and as a matter a fact…," Slicker paused, allowing the girl’s curious nature to get the better of her. The girl started peering over Teddy’s shoulder, then he continued,

"Babs, I want you to give these two whatever they’re having," Slicker finished, now grabbing his hat from the bar top, placing it gingerly on his head. His white bushy eyebrows staring out from under the hat, now just above his wild-eyed expression. His eyes were filled with milky white spirals, the mimic of the pupil is at the center, its black swirl draining down into the middle of his eyes.

The way Slicker looked at it, sure it’s the window to the spirit, doesn’t mean you always got to clean the glass. He walked away, slipping backwards off the stool with a demonstration of surprising athleticism. He pushed off the top of the bar and back with his hands together, using his legs to throw the stool back into the perfect placement. His graceful landing several feet away on a crimson colored cushioned couch.

The Bag Lady, common, unaffectionate, referred to as Babs, simply stopped her digging into her shopping cart. Her face hidden under a paper hat, littered with ink and old newspaper clippings. It was huge, clouding her face very much like that of a hood. Babs was clever, intelligent, shy, and giving. Nothing in that life to show for when she was found frozen to death outside the warmth of a shelter that turned her away. She was different, always mumbling to herself, counting things in her cart but when it came to knowing whatever people wanted from her, it was a true masterpiece of an ability.

The Baroness had never seen it reproduced, in its exact form, and like many others before her, she was recruited by her. Found in the Squalor, the derelict, disgusting, lazy, advantageous land of Sloth.

She didn’t speak, not to anyone, Bab’s held her right hand out, the corpse-white hand heavily tattooed. The black markings from mid-bicep to markings on each hand were that of a skeletal system.

Teddy was still sitting silently on the stool when the girl let go of his right stuffed paw and closed it around the ghostly-looking skeleton hand. Bab’s released her hand almost at the exact second she closed her fingers and thumb around the girl’s. The Bag Lady had a job to do now and with furious determination, she flipped things about. The items that would have crossed the threshold of the shopping cart bounced against an unseen barrier. They seemed to be magnetized to her cart, moving slowly from where they were back to their home. She paused, the same hand she had grabbed the girl’s with, the only thing moving on her now, but far slower and more resolute. The girl jumped slightly when that hand appeared, blurring with speed, from the cart to the bar, landing with a satisfying thud. She was back into her cart mumbling quietly before she was able to move her eyes fast enough to see what she had left in the thud.

"You’re okay, pops. This time,” Teddy paused, knowing what would happen next, "Fucking right, old son of a bitch." The completion of his last word was accompanied with a middle finger from the little girl, with, of course, the other hand being busy with the fruit juice container from Bab’s. This was a good memory, a reproduction, not perfect, but it was good enough to calm the girl’s savage nature.

The Baroness simply landed from her previously floating form in case she needed to break up a tussle. As she became aware that there was nothing for her to do, she moved towards a door opposite the bar. She pulled off her bustle and hung it on the metal hook next to the door. On the opposite side of the door hung a set of keys which she fastened to her thirteen-knife belt, and moved towards a black smock, hanging just below the keys. She put it over her head and quickly tied the strings around the back side of the small of her back and neck.

"Got to do a bit of work in the basement, if anyone needs me my dears." The Baroness simply moved her hip with the keys towards the door handle and slid it in effortlessly. The brass handled black oak door gave in with a whale of screams, the sound so strong it momentarily blurred everyone’s vision. When the door was shut, locking auditorily, the screams stopped.

* * *

“Sometimes, a burden to bear is stronger than the person’s will to stop themselves,” said a figure in the corner of the room behind another table. The figure was smoking something, the dim orange light giving birth to more smoke. Su moved the item away from his mouth and leaned forward.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, always got something to add, don’t you, fucker,” Teddy spewed without thought.

Slicker motioned with his hand in a manner to wave him over to where he was sitting currently. Mr. Su, already moved to stand, was managing his considerable girth. Mr. Su’s favorite life was that of a sumo wrestling patriarch. He considered himself, and others did as well, a wise person to listen to, but not always to follow. Su was much more mature than the other energosomas, something he cared very little about. One was one unless they were two, then you could repeat the saying. He was very distinct with his application of wisdom.

Su made his way, swaying his girth back and forth until he came to a bigger, more seated structured bench, where he slowly bent his knees until it creaked under his weight. Unlike Diver, Su could make himself, essentially, unmovable. He was the Baroness’ muscle, the one she leaned on when she had to make certain things happen.

Each action taken by the Baroness, whether through her or by her, was something that only she had to answer for. The Nays could certainly take advantage of that, but why bite the hand that feeds and protects you; you might get bit. None of them wanted the existence they had before her intervention. So, it was with great boredom, Teddy, Babs, Slicker, Diver, and Mr. Su awaited Gaunt’s presence while the Baroness, well, was distracting herself with other matters that only she could attend to.

* * *

As the door sealed behind her, the Baroness moved down through a long set of dilapidated wooden stairs. The lantern down below her, off to the left of the landing, added a little lighting to the area. She could smell the dampness, something that was forced. She could feel the biting cold temperatures, her breath smoldering in the air before wafting into nothingness.

This was created to chain the anchor, the Baron, ensuring that he existed in what his actions ignited. She could see him, seated in an ancient looking wheelchair, glued to the visage of her once living husband. He was frail, dying long after her incarceration. His frame barely fit inside the chair’s girth and his suit was, as always, impeccably tailored, even after he’d been dead for several hundred years.

"Good cycle to you, my dear," the Baroness said without giving his presence much mind. She peeled the butcher’s knife-set belt off from under her smock and laid it out onto a table in the center of the room. She worked the knives out of their individual scabbards, laying them out on the wooden table with a hole carved into its center, approximately big enough for a human neck.

The Baron seated, motionless, was locked into a perpetually slumped figure. He was an age-wracked body, frail and seemingly benign.  Each cycle, they were both treated to the Baroness’ actions that she accomplished over her last life. His eyes were, like many others, pitted sockets of nothingness. If his tether was severed by something or someone, it would cause shockwaves across the mid-domain, wreaking havoc and chaos, causing a gluttony of advantageous entities. There was no reason to exist to him, he was simply a tool of the Baroness now, and he knew he deserved it. Like an empty shell, he felt no pleasure or pain, he felt no desire or want, he was a shackled witness.

After cleaning and sharpening her gifts she placed the worn dark leather belt around her waist again. She moved to an old wooden door, the only one in this created basement, just behind her, in the shadows. That squeaking clatter of metal on metal movements in the handle as her hand churned it in her grasp. The screams were again deafening, the Baron’s figure was beginning to rock in his chair, slightly swaying. His hands and arms crossed, head down. His wispy white beard moving across his lap.  She left the door agape, letting it sway ever so slightly as her figure disappeared into the blackness. Within seconds, the screams died down, except for one.

This scream was now moving, the small voice, compared to hundreds, almost felt like a pin drop. The Baroness emerged, dragging a youthful, naked female, her long brown hair in a large braids. The Baroness made use of her braids, easy for movement. The Baroness would always braid the hair of those women she lured; again, something part primitive and part practical. This female was, told by her facial expressions, in great agony and was but one. Her singularity made the process minutely more tedious, but it was the quality that she threw into her work that made it ever more exquisite for her.

She slammed the females head into the wooden table, moving her hand ever closer to the back of her head. She kept applying the damage each time to her face. She did this until the screams went to whimpers and whimpers became complete shutdown. This spirit of the female trapped in a time of her death, for as long as the Baroness served her position as the Appointed.

“One down, after I carve this bitch apart,” the Baroness said quietly, letting go slowly of the braided tail, letting the thing slump to the floor, “four hundred and twelve left to cut.”

The Baron’s slow rocking changed slightly until the next door was opened, this one different from the first. His vision unmoving, staring off into the depths of the floors. He was chained, locked away, caught in his own hell, created by his own actions.

Fate had ripped his soul around and brought it to rest, anchored to the Purg. There was no reason to be anymore, other than to serve his purpose, his soul left wavering, shredded, eventually due to dissipate altogether. There wasn’t anything that the Baroness could do about that. Linking themselves like she did caused more to happen than she realized at the time.

"Not everyone makes good decisions. Many times, I made the same decision moving it from simple misjudgment to altogether indulgence." she whispered to herself.

The Baroness finished slicing the body apart, drenched in blood now, almost bathed in it, she would now remain silent. She would indulge now, this was his Fate. She had placed him so softly in her lap, it was genius. It was some of the most exquisite guilt she had managed to drain from him in a very long time. Four hundred and thirteen, the number she killed. The flesh bags had locked her away to die.

Her ruby lips pursed, kissing the handle of the last knife she removed from the now bloody table. The Baroness continued for as long as it would take. The time ran different here, she had time to really enjoy this. The screams lit up the room again, dying to one, then to none, four hundred and twelve more times.