Perfected Tears Upon Alabaster Sorrow
The Abyssal's dark masters forbid that they ever sleep beneath the same roof as the living. The warm embrace of mortal love is not their lot, nor the sweet morning smell of griddle cakes and eggs. So when the sun rose to find Perfected Tears Upon Alabaster Sorrow in a humble farmer's home outside the walls of the Marukan Redoubt, a muscular arm draped over her side, a handsome face near her own, the punishment of Resonance should have struck deep to the core of her Essence. That is did not came as no surprise to the Abyssal.
She had poisoned the household the night before.
Perfected Tears stretched out of bed, and the tortured ghost of farmer Zheng wailed over her absence. In days to come, that ghost would forge itself into the Nemissary called Zheng the Tear-Scorned Blade, but for now the Abyssal ignored him as she dressed. This was no easy task, even for one as dispassionate as she; Perfected Tears wore a junihitoe - an elaborate, twelve-layered robe. At over forty pounds and traced with elaborate knot-work, her dark splendor took nearly an hour to put on, from the first slip of the long-legged nagabakama-pants over her cold and shapely legs to the final knot that bound the mo-train to hang down her back. By the time she had finished tying her black hair into its elaborate knots and applying her red makeup to her pale face and fingers, the dark courtesan was happy to leave the ghost's laments far behind.
It was nothing to charm her way through the fourth ring gate out of the agricultural district; the barest assumption of the Irresistible Succubus Style, and the lusty Fang of Lookshayan soldiers were tripping over each other to let her pass. She left the Charm active while she walked through the trade district and smiled behind her Whispering Fan as lust-enflamed violence erupted at her passing. The Abyssal made sure to take the long way to her destination.
From the street, the sky was a hole in the city, a window of blue framed by buildings on either side. An inn had stood there, a week ago, but now there was only a ruin. The bent tin of a four-poster bed standing prominently atop the crumbled plaster and wooden spars piled high against the one still-standing wall. Perfected Tears Upon Alabaster Sorrow pouted and inclined her head and a dozen young men ran over to throw aside the rubble. The Abyssal paid no heed to the muscles they bunched for her benefit, nor did she mind the rotting flesh of the corpses the men uncovered. She stood detached until her workers uncovered the prize she sought: a perfect blade of soulsteel, six feet long and etched with a dark liturgy.
Perfected Tears Upon Alabaster Sorrow flicked open her Whispering Fan and murmured a name into the slats, followed by thirteen words: "Found Heretical Communion, no Widow. Taken by them? Or injured and hiding? Instructions?"
Her message delivered, the Abyssal abandoned her digging pawns and disappeared deeper into the Redoubt. She smiled at a shop-keeper; she would have some time before her fellows replied with a plan of action, and she might as well make the most of it.
