Absit Omen RPG

"It's an aphrodisiac," Vesta replied and stuck out her tongue. She was handling a carved erupment horn, taken without permission from a shop stand. A hag without a tongue was rasping that she return it.

Avi's jumpiness was funny. They were wix and all these garbage little creatures were no match for them. She believed that there'd be nothing of any substance to stop them if they just took what they wanted, but the Wizarding Blood Alliance had an in-road or two that a diplomatic incident of any scale could not endure. So they had to pay and ask and hide their wands and faces.

The skeleton did what it was good for and acted the living signpost. Vesta brushed past Aviad and the spat at the goblins who crowded too close.

"Mother Hunt will get what she wants," she assured Aviad.

Vesta stopped in her tracks, and even recoiled. What the hell was this! The sizable Auror was - what was that mumbling, what was this? Was he actually praying? Praying! She'd not been serious, she'd been about to melt his organs!

"Cut that out! Be quiet so I can dissolve you from the inside out! I said be quiet!" Her eyes were wild and every syllable shook her wand. This was that third opportunity to hold onto her freedom another day. Kill him and go, kill him and go, kill him and go! But the unstable Vesta Baddrick's attention had been snatched into a tangle at unexpected behavior from Auror boneshambles.

Back on her feet, Vesta strode towards the Auror on the ground. Out in the open, her general inability to walk in a straight line was easier to notice. And though her wand arm couldn't seem to hold still, point blank was easy aim even for the clattering wreck that was Vesta Baddrick.

"Not your day, Auror! Not your day! Pray if you've got'm, Auror. First you, then your kid," she scowled as she approached. "Not your day!"

Another opportunity for Vesta Baddrick to choose self-preservation presented itself. Spellfire from the Auror sent her wand ricocheting off a cabinet and in the next breath both the Auror and his whelp disappeared out the back door. Burke was up from behind the counter shouting at her.

"Baddrick, blast it! Stop, you'll get us both killed!"

Vesta gave the merchant a withering sneer. Borgin and Burke played both sides, always had. Always just above board, never trying to kill Aurors. Pathetic! She stalked across the shop to collect the wand, snatched it up.

"Fine! We'll just take it outside," she said with coughing laugh. Can't have any loose ends. They'd seen her face. She went after them out the back door, the end of her wand glowing red.

Out in the dark alley she saw the two figured ahead. She stumbled on a patch of ice and fell hard onto a knee. From there, she cast a Fire-Whip Curse. A yards long jet of fire streamed from her wand and lashed in the air, flinging fire towards them. Any fool could use the Killing Curse. Vesta preferred a bit more craft in her witchcraft.

From a strategic standpoint, Vesta had a lot to gain by the Ministry of Magic and the Azkaban guards continuing to believe she was dead and buried in a potter's field. Now would have been a great time to Apparate away. But, on the other hand, one less Auror in the land of the living was good for everyone. And what, was that a little boy? A baby Auror! Cut him down before he got too big!

Instead of retreating, Vesta advanced with little regard for her flesh as a table exploded in her path. The stolen wand in her hand seemed happy enough to obey her violent intentions and so her next spell blasted at full power.

"Intabeviscus" A flurry of red and violet sparks erupted from her wand towards the two interlopers.

Vesta Baddrick had been fully alive for not more than a week and she still looked it. Her lank blank hair fell over her face and she bared yellow teeth in a hiss.

"Of course it's real. What rat-wife would go through the trouble of faking one of these when it's far easier to sever a fresh one...! It's worth more than that and you know it. Or maybe you fancy losing one of - "

Burke was looking past her; she jerked her gaze over her shoulder to see the cut of a tall wizard in a wrinkled coat. She recognized him immediately as one of the MLE's rankest.

"Auror!" she wailed and flung her wand arm in a wild wide arc, like swinging a dead cat.

"Reducto!"

Burke barely had time to choke out a protest before he felt obliged to lower himself behind the counter.

There were some things in the rotting corners of the world Vesta didn't stomach and the past-times of Moira Randall and, apparently, Lorelei Hunt counted among them. Every leg of their little odyssey was a sick puppet show morality tale. Vesta brushed past Hunt and made her way down the steep, worn steps into the cellar. The stairs went down further than one would think. Every time Vesta thought her foot would hit stone, they found another smoothed wooden tread.

Leading the way into a dark hole without a wand felt stupid, but contradicting Lorelei Hunt had proven to be ... a certain inconvenience. She was only in the pitch black for a moment longer. As soon as her hit the bottom a lamp flickered on. The space looked like the cellar of any other pub, cobby and smelling of wet and forgotten things. But there under the lamp and on top of a dark rug was a table that was recently tended to.

Vesta approached. A carved wooden bird sat on its carved wooden pedestal at the center of the table. It looked abjectly mundane and a little sad, like the sculpture didn't know if it was meant to be a crow or a magpie. Vesta turned around with a sigh and shook her hand at the bird and the table and the lamp.

"And what's this, Hunt? Lovely murder-hole but I don't see what I came back for."

When Hunt didn't immediately let her down, Vesta sighed heavily and let herself slump against the awkward suspension, her arms dangling down too long for the pinstriped sleeves. At being abruptly stopped, Vesta craned her neck around and watched Hunt's elaborate ritual with a fascinated curl of her lip.

Thump. Hunt dropped Vesta directly onto her back, nearly cracking her head against some iron bars.

"Hag," she spat.  For someone who claimed to have done all that hard workd to snatch Vesta out of a long inky sleep, Hunt was being rather careless with the carcass.

She looked over her shoulder at the haggard form in the cage. He looked back. Vesta snapped her stained teeth at him. Once she steadied herself on her own two feet, she rolled her head around to Hunt again.

"I'm not hungry," she said eyes wide.

Vesta stared at Aviad with open eyes. There wasn't a challenge that would back her down and even when she failed she got that much stronger and savage for every time she fell it always had to do with some weakness of will. Never the same mistake twice. It was a topic she'd discuss with Aviad until she drank herself under a table, but their benefactor had come around.

She got to her fit in a jerk and held herself up on the bar. Last night[1] had been quite a trip but she was on her feet again, mostly. That hag Hunt hadn't been as much of a help in the endeavor than she claimed, Vesta was sure. But she was here now. Vesta smile up at Tawse in delirious admiration. He was so happy, so warm, so inevitable.

"To all the doorstops I've loved before," she said with oh so sadly pinched eyebrows. "Drink with me, Tawse."

She poured a drink into the shot glass and slid it over to him, then lifted the bottle a little to indicate that's how she'd partake. Cohen could get his own drink. She didn't  have any gifts yet to give, so this would have to make due. Now she was out, she'd have plenty of time make herself worth the effort.

"And then maybe we can talk about those wands, ah?"

1.	17 Dec 2011 - Mostly Dead All Day

Everything went red then black. And then, as if no time had passed, Vesta blinked back to consciousness to the sensation of falling. But falling she wasn't becuase she never hit the ground. A few twists of her neck confirmed it - she was being levitated above the dirty cold cobblestones of Knockturn Ally at the flank of Lorelei Hunt.

Vesta recognized the new location, they were in one of the deeper tributaries of the love-forgotten neighborhood. She groaned. She knew a stunner when she felt one. It was as restrained a hex as any (even her parents had used it from time to time) so Vesta guessed it was a matter of convenience for Hunt. If she'd wanted to knock her out longer, she would have. If she wanted her dead, she would have. Chained up, buried, handed over to Aurors, she would have. But she hadn't. So here she hung, once again, no better than a trussed goose for Christmas dinner.

This entire caper had become an utter disaster. Tawse had very poor people working for him if this was the welcome she'd earned.

"Put me down," she demanded. And then she saw the sign. The Black Widow, a infamous Dark Arts shop. "I know this place."

It was connected to Tawse and that was as much proof as she was going to get that Hunt or Shang or whoever this was intended to make the delivery as planned.

Vesta stared as an entire life passed through Hunt's eyes. She'd seen that look before but she couldn't remember when. In the eyes of a mark, or perhaps a fence. Some MLE stooge chasing her down, maybe. Hard to tell. But there was more to Hunt than she seemed, something dead like her, but stewing and chaotic. Not to be trifled with. Just ... carefully stalked.

Hunt was still lording over her, not unlike the Azkaban guards. The choices were all traps meant to imitate control over one's existence; not nearing true freedom because there were never more than two options. Vesta shrugged off the skeletal hands as they loosened and stepped quickly away from the hearth.

And so the next choice. Walk open and exposed for anyone to see her, or let this crack of a witch yank her through the nether to devil-knows-where. Vesta considered going for her throat again, stealing her wand, then striking out on her own to find Tawse herself. She looked at Hunt's offered hand with her mouth curled in disgust.

"Prove you're Tawse's. Then you can take me wherever you want," she dared.

Vesta hardly registered the pain from the jabbing vice grips of Hunt's minions. And fear, she couldn't remember its taste. Weakness and worry had been replaced long ago by wrath. She practically hung there, her anger doing little to bolster her still-recovering body. So she hung there seething and unafraid.

She narrowed her eyes considering all the ways she'd kill Hunt as soon as she got a wand. Or lacking that, the moment her back was turned. Hunt or Shang or whoever she - he - was. She'd figure it out and then she'd do it. She smiled again even as the skeletons compressed her rib cage. That would be a nice Christmas present to herself. Revenge.

But her eyes flashed and she looked up. She'd have to be alive to do that. Hunt's threats were credible; they required respect. Vesta knew she must cede ground to move forward. To perish when she'd come this far? A waste.

Vesta coughed as one of the hands found her throat - this offer was on a timer.

"Life," she said. "And I won't forget it."

Her face showed the effort of a jerking resistance against the bony shackles; she was impatient to get on with it. The fire in her gut that threw her at Hunt's throat moments ago was still there just waiting to be re-stoked.

To Vesta's horror, both of "Hunt's" attacks found home. At point blank range they couldn't miss and Vesta, unarmed, took the intended brunt of it. She was thrown backwards and her grip on Hunt failed. It took her a terrible moment to realize what had her pinned to the stony surface. Hands. Skeletal hands. The shock and pain in her windpipe left her coughing and gagging but it didn't stop her spitting and hissing like an angry cat. She clawed at the bony hands holding her back and she hacked her protest.

"You're dead! I'll bury you alive! You'll rot and feel every bit of it! Dead! Dead! Take whatever deal you have and shove it up your arse! I'll die first!" Came her choking, halting curses.

Even if she'd been at her best, Vesta might not have been a match for the skeletal restraint. Then she started making a noise close to laughter. "Tawse's going to kill you! Tawse's going to kill you!"

She seemed almost gleeful as she coughed the sing-song sneer out of a bruised trachea, as the skeletons gripped her hair and arms and clothes.

No wand! What was she supposed to do, just walk around like some shiteating squib? Trailing after this arrogant creature like a puppy after scraps? She'd strangle her with bare hands first. She would if she had any other chance at finding Tawse. Scowling, she flung the bottle away into a corner. She watched Hunt's movements carefully, her odd way of walking, the strange way she had of moving her head. Something was wrong with her. Vesta hoped so.

Her eyes grew wide at the question that came after preamble. The memory of her battle with Ventus Shang.[1] It had been an ambush! He'd lured her into a trap and set upon her a small army of skeleton slaves. They'd nearly killed her, that necromancer had nearly ...

Vesta's surprise suddenly flashed into rage and she lunged at Hunt. Arrogant! Dead-raiser! So like Shang to steal some woman's skin. He'd found out somehow and come looking for her. He'd had designs for her! He'd been following her, for years! This was why she'd never heard of any Lorelei Hunt. Wandless, ragged, and enraged, Vesta grabbed at Hunt aiming for her scrawny long neck.

"Shang! I'll kill you! I'll !*&$ing kill you!"

1.	25 Aug 2009 - The Skeleton Dance