Fantasy Taedium Vitae

[Ronan]

taedium vitae (noun)
tae·di·um vi·tae | \ ˌtē-dē-əm-ˈvī-ˌtē , ˌtī-dē-əm-ˈwē-ˌtī \
definition : weariness or loathing of life.

a dark fantasy role-play written by Ronan and N.A.Watson
started on 23 june 2019​

 

[Ronan]

Chapter I
The Lost Bastille
​

The curse of Want brands the Undead.

And in this land, the Undead are corralled and led to the north, to an island surrounded by breakwaters, storms, and wardens of the darkest imagination. Here, prisoners don't need wardens, walls, and water to keep them in, not when they're trapped inside their own heads and scourged to an eternal cycle of suffering. Most go hollow within weeks.

The island is called the Lost Bastille, abandoned and abhorred by those who fear man's lust for Want. The Undead are prisoners, locked away to await the end of the world.

But only in ancient legends is it stated, that one day an Undead shall be chosen to leave the Bastille in pilgrimage to the land of forgotten wants:

Etam.

_______________​

A knight, nameless and unremembered, has recently journeyed to the Bastille to chase the legend of an Undead who will restore fire. Their armour is burnt pitch-black and their helmet severely dented. They carry a yatagan, a sabre with a single edge and slight curve at the top.

The Bastille is a tomb for those who have forgotten how to die, ruined and in disrepair. There are four towers on each corner, all barely standing in their fallen state. The main entryway is closed by a twenty foot gate of rotting wood. The roof and cells of the Bastille have large cracks in them and some cells are empty with prisoners who have leapt from the cracks and into the sea.

The knight has scaled the walls of the Bastille, surrounded by vines and broken columns that are easy to climb, and on the roof it is littered with hollows who have succumbed to their own disease, quietly murmuring in their unseen pain. The knight is careful to walk past its' prisoners, none reaching for them, but some following with their eyes, a quiet plea to be free.

They check in each hole of the roof, looking down into the cells to see the prisoners it carries. The first cell is empty, the second holds four trapped hollows, all screaming and devouring each other in their madness, the third holds one. A young girl pressed to shadows of her cell. To the knight, she seems lucid, calm, simply awaiting her end on a frigid island in the far north. She has not slipped into the realm of hollowing like so many of the Bastille's captives, and this is enough for the knight.

They will free her and journey with her to Etam where the legends of old will play out.

The knight turns around and searches the roof for a moment. Nearby is noiselessly gagging hollow. Their body is emasculated with wounds and gashes and one particularly deep one across the throat that will never heal. They cannot scream, cannot whimper, cannot wail with the agony of their wounds reopening and closing again and again.

The knight approaches the hollow, their black armour nightmarish as they hover over them, pondering their helpless existence. The hollow opens one of their hands to reveal a key. A key to the Bastille. This is enough for the knight.

They pick up the weightless hollow and approach the hole with a jailed girl inside and toss the body down into the cell. The knight listens to the sickening thud of them body, all twisted limbs but with a key in its hand. A key to freedom. At this, the knight lingers at the edge of the hole waiting. Watching.

 

[N.A.Watson]

The two women stared up at the crumbling walls. The taller of the two squinted at the black lines that seeped from the Bastille's sores, trying to decide what the shapes were. She thought to ask her companion what the patterns on the walls were but decided against it. Her companion would instead choose silence. The other woman had kept to herself on the trip out to the island, ignoring most attempts at honest conversation. She had helped with the chores and ate with the crew. The one time she did choose to speak, it was to reiterate the terms of their agreement.

"I am not being paid to talk," the smaller woman had said, preoccupied with dipping long pieces of cloth in oil. Thick, hollowed out sticks were lined up in her cloak beside her. The companion had then called the one boy over to cut a length of rope into thin pieces for tying. The boy, a thin thing that quivered beneath his scraps of wind-worn clothes and whatever clothes the crew members could spare, had come to her willingly. He had a steady enough hand to do the job, but he bit at his scabbed lips, brows knit in furious concentration.

As they drew closer to the Bastille, the black patterns took on the recognizable shape of ivy. The wind whipped back the cloaks the women wore, the taller one seizing the ends to pull it tighter around her leather and furs. The other woman, a touch too short and nearly square in the layers of boiled leather and furs she wore, removed her cloak and proceeded to the captain. The sellsword held out the heavy cloak lined with dark fur to the man. The captain studied her with suspicion written across his weathered face.

"What will I need this for?" asked the captain as he shifted with the deck. The small ship was threatening to toss the unaware to their asses.

"For when I return," said the companion. The cloak dropped into his arms and the companion turned back toward the taller woman. "Give it to the boy. Rotting earth, it is cold."

"You think me not to return?" the captain asked, the offense in his voice as thick as his beard as well as the contempt. "We have an agreement and I mean to keep my word and coin."

"I didn't think the word was that good," mumbled the tall woman. She watched her breath freeze.

Her sellsword snorted and a gust of wind caught her fur-lined hood. "Word carries meaning."

The tall woman stared. "You mean your words." The companion had an extra blanket every night and may have even slept in the captain's room instead of the captain himself. The tall woman was not sure, but she had heard confused rumblings from the crew. "They must be good words."

Her companion said nothing. Instead, she studied the vines as the Bastille loomed overhead, and for a moment the tall woman felt a real fear the wall would crumble down on top of them. The tall woman was staring at a particularly large crack in the wall, searching for any signs of movement, when a dagger with a long blade that tapered at the tip appeared. She jumped back a step.

"What's this for?"

"You will need this," said the sellsword.

"I have a knife already," said the tall woman.

For cleaning beneath your nails? "Take the dagger." The sellsword motioned to the wall. "Keep it close and easy to pull for when you reach the top."

The tall woman pressed her lips together as she turned the dagger in her hands. She looked to the wall again. When she reached the top? "You mean me to climb up first?"

Her companion stared at her with those storm cloud eyes of hers that knocked something loose in the taller woman's guts. Then proceeded to secure the hood to her head and clothing. "If you fall, you have a chance I grab you. And maybe you only break a leg. You will not catch me."

"And if one of the Undead happen to pop up at the edge?"

This was not your first trip here, according to you. The companion mimed unsheathing her dagger. She feigned stabbing up then flicked the imaginary Undead over her shoulder. The taller woman felt a little sick but understood the point.

The vines were given sharp tugs to test for weakness. The sellsword removed her gloves to tuck them into a hidden pocket. She gestured for the taller woman to start the climb and followed, keeping enough distance between them in case the taller woman did lose her hold. The climb itself was uneventful, minus the taller woman's chatters. She crowed about how people took their belongings, sometimes their finest, as if these possessions would provide comfort before their minds were gone and flesh withered. The taller woman wore jewelry, buried beneath her clothes, the smaller one noticed. Fine looking pieces that earned her a few envious stares during their time together. Along with a few stares that might have ended badly if not for the sellsword. The sellsword thought the other woman an idiot. There were also books, the idiot continued, and even treasures the remaining books only hinted at. It sounded like a bunch of horse shit to the sellsword. Instead, she told the tall woman to shut her mouth. Else, she would need to perfect her aim sooner than later.

The climbing slowed when a particularly strong gust of wind tried to throw them into the violent sea below. As they reached the edge of the roof, the tall woman paused to search for a loose piece of wall to toss over. The two women listened for any sounds of movement. Satisfied it was safe enough, the tall woman climbed up on to the roof then helped her companion up.

The tall woman gave a whopping sigh of relief. She looked around, hooked nose wrinkling at the state of disrepair. "This place keeps Them here but if the neglect keeps up They'll be swimming."

The companion knelt, unrolling the fur to remove one of the torches. Turning her back to the wind, the small woman motioned impatiently for the taller woman to help block. She used her flint and steel to light the torch. Once the torch was lit, it was passed to the taller woman. She rolled up the torches again and stood, hand falling to her sword.

The sellsword nudged the arm of the taller woman, gesturing out beyond the light. She winced as the torch swung around to temporarily blind her, the heat licking at her face. The sellsword stepped back a couple of steps with a growl. The taller woman muttered an apology. A gesture was made, to point out the shifting shadows that may or may not have been the Undead. How they found their way to the roof was a question not likely to ever be answered. It did not matter. The sellsword made another gesture: Get on with it.

Get on with it they did. Not for as long as the exacerbated companion hoped. The taller woman muttered to herself as they crossed the roof, stepping over sections that crumbled and others that peered down into the gaping mouths of darkness where the stench that wafted up was a slurry of damp, mold, rot and dying that the damned wind was more a blessing than a hindrance. While inspecting the safety of the next part of their journey, the taller woman squinted at movement not too far from them. She sucked in a breath that the companion took for delight, and looked up.

"Look there, Silent Bird," said the tall woman. "Our first find! That would sell for a good bit of coin, I think."

Rotting earth, Woman... "That person is not one of them."

"How can you tell?"

The companion's jaw clenched. If she was to explain how she knew, it never happened, because the taller woman had chosen to engage with the stranger. "Hello there, good, um, sir! It seems we were not the only ones to take advantage of this weather for adventuring!"

Her companion was gauging how long it would take to reach the edge of the roof.

 

[Ronan]

The jailed girl did not move, did not attempt to reach the piece of hope the knight had tossed down into the cell. This bothered them. They tossed smaller rocks down the hole and made tapping noises at to grab her attention, but she still didn't move. She was frozen in place.

The knight stood up and turned to find another larger rock only to discover two women walking along the roof. One taller and one shorter, both un-hollowed. The taller woman quickly approached the knight, too quickly for their liking, and they withdrew their yatagana.

'Hello there, good, um, sir! It seems we were not the only ones to take advantage of this weather for adventuring!' she said. The knight held their yatagana closer and was alarmed. They are dangerous, was their thought.

The knight turned and jumped down in the cell and landed on the mass of hollow limbs. The women would not follow. Of this, the knight was sure. It was a twenty foot drop below.

The hollow moaned in pain from the knight's weight that crushed whatever ribs they had left. The knight swooped down and grabbed the key from their hand and glanced at the jailed girl only to discover that she was long dead. Her face was ash-coloured with black veins protruding from her cheeks, but her hair was freshly brushed.

The knight's gaze lowered to the bottom of the jailed girl's dress and saw that was stained with a large splotch of dried blood. Her hands were covered in the same red-bronze colour, too. She had died from childbirth.

That's one way to kill an Undead, the knight thought. Your humanity leaves with your child.

The knight looked over their shoulder and nearby was a baby, long hollowed and rotting from disease and starvation. The baby had holes in its arms and skull from the rats devouring it alive, but it still breathed. Its eyes moved but their body was hauntingly still. It did not wail or fuss like a normal baby did.

The warrior left the baby in the corner and walked to the jail cell door with the key in hand and unlocked it to a long hallway lined with lit torches. There was one hollow laying on the side holding their head and muttering unintelligible words.

The flame-scorched knight took a final glance to the hole in the roof, checking one last time if the two women would follow. How they came here and what their intentions were, they didn't know. People didn't come to the Bastille, and those who were in the Bastille had already been here for years, and it's oldest prisoners are over a century old.

They put their yatagan back into its sheath and proceeded down the hallway slowly, glancing into each cell as they passed. Most of the cells were empty with those who had flung themselves into the freezing ocean. There was one open cell on the inner side of the jail with a crack on the wall on the far side and as the knight peered into it, they saw something moving. It was a liquid black and reflected light.

No sooner had the knight seen something moving had it disappeared. There was something alive in the Bastille, and it wasn't human or Undead.

The knight proceeded onwards down the hallway and at the end there was a room with a dip in the centre that had filled with foul sewage water, but a ladder that led upwards. It was rickety and old with broken rungs, but the knight climbed it anyways, on to the next level of the Bastille.

 

[N.A.Watson]

The wind whisked the companion's snort away. Left standing there to open and close their mouth in a rather fish-like manner, the taller woman motioned to the empty space. Over her shoulder, fingers jerking, she looked to her associate and asked: “Who does that?”

The other woman had an inkling who jumps into an open part of a roof. Turning back now and lingering by the wall until the ship returned... It would be worth sacrificing the upfront payment for this bit of thievery. Almost worth sacrificing the coin and the promise of more. Instead, the companion chose to continue entertaining the nitwit.

“You should have offered them a bit of coin instead of striking up a conversation about the weather. Touchy about the weather, knights. Rusts their armor and gives them a wretched case of scenting their own odors.” Her hand flicked about her head; there was a smile in the way she talked that refused to show on her lips.

The taller woman lowered her arm. “You find my folly gratifying. He jumped down. It's not a long fall, but peculiar that he'd risk it.”

“Armor.” The companion eyed the missing section of the roof the knight decided was their entry point into this decrepit place. “It tends to weigh one down and when falling from heights, runs the risk of breaking bones. Causes the sea to devour you.” But she was over with this small talk over the knight. Let them do as they pleased — knights went about their own business with the occasional inclination to ravage the people's lands all for the sake of whetting particular appetites.

With a sigh, the taller woman clapped her mouth shut and pulled cloth up over her mouth and nose. The two proceed to walk past the hole the knight disappeared down into, the smaller of the two women resisting the tickling need to peer down to spot the knight's fate. It was not her business to care what a knight did, she reminded herself, and it was not her duty to yank them about for possible acts of flashy stupidity. If they were crying out in the hole or biting their tongue against the red-hot iron bands of pain, the wind was carrying those cries out to sea. Still, there was a niggling of unease squirming about in her head. Something was not quite right about the knight, and to please her obsessing mind she settled on the knight refusing to answer the taller woman. Knights responded — it presented the opportunity to test their wit and bastard tongues. It was not worth the fuss, not when there was the coin to dream over.

Still, the thoughts persisted. The thoughts were set aside to mull over them at another time. With a spot of luck, the thoughts would dissipate by the time she soaked in a hot bath at an inn with food threatening to burst her belly. She jammed her hands into her gloves, grimacing as her fingers screamed in relief.

Rotting earth, curiosity was as contagious as the curse.

The holes were more substantial in spots, forcing the women to backtrack and other times to risk a jump across. Pieces of the roof crumbled beneath their feet when they landed and moaned up their legs through their furs and leathers in other spots. If the tall woman was new to the place, it was not apparent now as the woman knelt beside an opening to inspect the edges and what lay below. Her umber fingers worked at freeing the rudely constructed rope ladder strapped to her belt. The top she staked to the roof with pieces of wide, sharp iron, with heavier pieces of the roof used to weigh it down. The rest of the ladder went over into the darkness. Passing the torch, the taller woman likely flashed a white, toothy grin at her companion behind the cloth covering. The companion could picture the woman's smile now. Between her two front teeth was a gap, more pronounced as the light saved her from the ever-pressing gloom. The tall woman swung her legs over the edge, feet finding the ladder, and after a curse-filled pause, descended. The sellsword watched her, eyeing an Undead that wandered about without a care to the flesh-blackening gusts. Sniffing, the sellsword waited until her employer called up for her to descend the ladder.


There were signs of previous goers. Bits of wood, piles of disturbed ash, and abandoned weaponry and cloth. The weaponry, the companion noted, were plagued with rust blooms and the edges cracked and gouged. As the tall woman took in the cell they had dropped into, she promised they were to bound to find good treasures. “We all come in through this way, and a new shipment of the Undead promises new finds. The fancy ones do love their humanly pleasures. We once came upon a bed that filled the entire cell. Poor people who had to carry that thing up all those stairs! I am certain the Undead had a few more prisoners than anticipated. Some rich lord, I imagine. No smuggler ship would be desperate enough to risk their necks.” A chuckle sounded from the tall woman as she thumbed back her hood and yanked down the cloth so it pooled around her thin neck. “Lot of good it did for that lord — what glorious threads and treasures the bed had! I still dream of it, sometimes.”

The companion wished the other woman would get on with this treasure hunt. Her silence may have spurred the woman on, but it did not stop her from making commentary as she put her shoulder into the opening cell. Great flakes of rust rained down on them as the unlocked door screeched and groaned and became lodged where stones of the floor had separated and bulged. The companion followed, thumbing down her own hood but keeping the wrapping about her braided hair. The place smelled horrid, the cold already slipping through weakness in the furs and leathers to settle into her bones. Everything was wet or took on the appearance of wet and a sort of fungus was creeping along that did not appear friendly to the living. The companion decided to keep the cloth up over her own nose. Inhaling the spores may be what loosens this woman's pretty tongue and why she carries her damn jewels about with her. The woman was a little too pulled together and a little too free with tongue wagging that she was likely not as far into the life of thievery as she said. It was either that, or this type of thievery was far more lucrative than the sellsword assumed.

They passed occupied cells and cells that stood waiting. Cell doors hung open with their occupants wandering about. The walkways were wider than the sellsword anticipated, allowing for the two to edge around the hollowed that lurched from the dark. Their faces were pressed in by starvation's presence and lost to what ate their minds. It did not seem they were aware of the women, preoccupied with answers to questions no one truly wished to know, but the companion left a few of their writhing bodies on the cracked floors when they drew too close. The smaller ones with sticks for arms and legs the companion kept at a distance with nudges from the flat side of her long, thin blade. As they entered a cell with a sizable portion of its back wall in piles on the floor, the companion stopped to free another torch. It was lit with the first torch then passed to the horizontally-advantaged woman. The companion, who had the advantage when passing through the hole, kept the first torch. It would burn out soon enough — the wood was fine enough but not as good as the thicker reeds that could hold more oil when hollowed out. Into another cell they entered, then sideways through another (but smaller) hole.

As they pushed forward, the monotony of the journey broken by climbing and crawling through more holes to drop onto piles that puffed up a musky, foul odor, the taller woman talked on about the magic in the place. “Deceiving, this place is,” she said after a lengthy ramble that began with a previous journey through the Bastille. The ramble had concluded with them ducking through an entryway and the rambling woman finally seemed interested in checking the cells. “It's endless, some say, as a result of the magic fed by the ones here. It distorts everything, making it funny if you don't know your way around.”

Not the fungus? thought the companion.

“That's why the walls are marked, you see?”

The companion had noticed the odd-colored stones and cloth sticking out beneath deliberate rock piles.

She settled on waiting outside the cells while the jeweled-thief searched for her treasures. Fingers and tools worked at opening cells closed off, their occupants oftentimes tsked at while sometimes a startled yelp sounded, followed by laughter. The sellsword refused to enter the cells, reiterating their agreement did not mean interfering when her employer committed to acts of stupidity. There were times she closed her eyes from sights imagined in the dark, and other times to ignore the sight of the Undead. If this place's magic was working on her, she wanted none of its seduction. If the fungus (and the rotting bodies they sometimes passed. Oh, and the rats that crawled in the walls and slinked in the corners), she wanted out of this place before she hallucinated through her entire trip back to the mainland.

Soon enough, they pressed on, the taller woman scratching at the wall with the spent torch and leaving bits of cloth.