House of Senl: Seng in Hell - Part 1

She's blind, but the Wizard is aware of the blackness that surrounds her. It is reflected in the silence, the numbing cold of the thin air, and the empathic sense that no one else is there. She also knows the magnitude of her predicament: The Seng Atuesc has gone to Hell.

Hell is apparently to be living in the last remaining structure on what used to be called Earth. She has just given up wandering around it, calling on gods and humans both - even demons after a while. The massive fortress used to be her home. The echoes of her cautious movements tell her she is back in the Great Hall. She remembers it booming with music, and the noise of the families. That's one of the last memories she has before the great dark space in her head that she's just woken from. So this is her fate. The only member of the House of Janus left alive. The people she promised eternity to have all died away. She has no one to comfort her when the madness overwhelms, and she has no one to feed off as is her manner.

Her hands find the smoothness of the Ianus: the huge mural made from the magic of the absurd. It was the centrepiece of the hall, the gateway that gave the house its name. No matter what else was destroyed, this- the very skin of reality- flowed with power. But the Wizard's silver-encrusted palms sense nothing in it.

She laughs lightly at the piling irony around her. Here is the gate of infinity's last use. She is tempted to find a way to scale it so she can see if those famous words are written across the top.

"I've often wondered" she thinks, "What would happen if you just refused to abandon hope?"

The words "Damned if you do. Damned if you don't" float through her mind. So what if she is sentenced to pay the final price for her long list of tricks? She isn't beaten. The Seng Atuesc was legend throughout the realms of magic and across three galaxies as much for her agile escapes as her trickery.

There is no magic in this place. There is no one else around whose emotive energy can be syphoned to work with. She'll have to use herself. She begins an old spell- fairly simple in nature. It requires trancing, but it's not as if something's going to walk up and bite her while she's under. She casts a door, using the dream centre in her brain as the source. It's a form of cannibalism to use herself in this way, but when she's finished there is noise and vibration, and life.

"This looks to be about it." Sylver says. Her voice fills the other's mind. She has no form yet. Sylver is called a rider by some. She is of a race which pulses through the wiring of many machines, and the veins of some few humans. The people who discovered it, called its members Sealed Circuit Artificial Persona. They created millions of robots with "SCAP" riders, thinking they had invented artificial intelligence. Then the goddess Serene loosed a rider into Lona's mother. Lona Cecile O'Rourke was born with Sylver as part of her. Most people who knew her, blamed the child's mental instability on this. Both identities know different.

When the door formed Seng Sylver slipped through, and has become a separate entity from her host body. Seng Lona now has to bear the turmoil in her mind without the efficient "short-wiring" that the SCAP uses to lessen the psychic storms.

"What?"

"This. Picture postcard world you've made here, Wizard." An impression floods Lona's mind of a city seen from a great height. It is fluid and dreamlike, moving in and out of her perception. The evening haze of a city sunset creates a mirage of auras around the many tall buildings. In the distance water meets concrete in a clash of gold and blue. All are recognizable features of her own old home. It's understandable she'd choose it. Her hope is that it will contain the help she seeks.

"I need it Sylver, need you."

"Yeah, well, you are me."

"I wish"

"Okay, so maybe I'm a dream. This world's a dream... you've done a good job, though... lots of detail... I like that."

"Can you work with it?" Lona's trance takes her deeper, the lines harden. Her viewpoint descends to street level.

"Dunno... lotsa plebs."

"People." A disturbed thought flits through the Lona part of Seng's mind. Sylver has seen too much of humanity to respect it, and has always refused to see other planes as real. "Are there enough?"

"Millions, okay! Now let me have a few."

The constant syphon of Lona's mind gives Sylver enough energy to create the image of herself. Crossing the barrier was easy for what amounts to a projection, and she can move around, see and be seen here, without much more drain. But for Sylver to interact with anything, to touch and move things, requires either a host on this side of the dream, or the dreamy actions of her real host.

She doesn't look exactly like her host, but she does have the same African features, the same wide Asian eyes- less, of course, the cataracts. They are, like the rest of her body, suffused with silver. A very long time ago, young Lona O'rourke managed to get kidnapped off an interstellar cruise-liner, freeing herself only after many years and several attempts. She spent two of those years in a Fringe Space organic-silver mine as a slave. The parasitic deposits of the compound she harvested built up in her tissues. It gives Lona her colouring and makes an excellent conductor. Sylver shimmers from her contact with it.

The street is full of people who see no harm in staring at the wigged out girl with the metalic spiky dreads and the weird body paint. These plebs are no different from a billion others who have stared and spit and chased her all her life. In her blind host she couldn't see them, but she could sense them - always.

She resists the urge to scream into their everyday's-a-busy-day faces and turns to walk up the street of the dreamworld. If it were a decent dream, it would have a bar.

Damn.

She wonders if it's the Wizard or the dream that's messing with her. She shrugs at the door to the bar that presents itself suddenly just up the sidewalk. The weakness is an old one. It was there before Lona was born. SCAPS love alcohol. Too much and the neuron firing slows to a crawl, but in the right amounts it livens up the host - a little buzz for the Wizard, and a little rush for the rider. How much harm could that bring?

Without more power she isn't very solid. Some things she can touch, some things even move. The effort of will, and the extra drain, can't be kept up for long. She sacrifices a little more opening the door.

"I need a drink."

Inside the bar the air is cool. Sylver notices for the first time how warm she is. The sensation always amazes her because it is so much an organic experience. She is smiling pleasantly as she approaches the long wooden bar. The bartender and another man are the only occupants this early in the evening. Both watch her carefully. Her sleeveless coat, silver tint and spiky silver hair mark her for a troublemaker.

"Whiskey".

The old fat white bartender doesn't like her. He's slow to respond. Underneath his lax shuffle, tension thuds up from his gut as he sizes her up. He pours anyway.

"Buck fifty" he says like a challenge.

A sudden sanity takes hold. Dreams have their own rules. 'Loni, give me money,' she says silently through her mind.

"I have nothing he would accept." Lona replies. Her trance makes the fortress seem fluid and larger in scale. Even if she could have found something by feeling around in the wreckage before, it is nearly impossible now. She casts about herself, a slow languid arcing of outstretched arms into the nothing of her world.

'Put something in my pocket' Sylver silently demands. 'Now!'

The face she shows the bartender is confident, nearly a sneer. She regrets this immediately as the dark glass ball rolls itself out of her unclenched fingers. The bartender is not gentle, and her exit is ungraceful. She gets up from the cold hard cement of the sidewalk and steams with frustration. She doesn't worry about Lona's likely bruises from the manhandling she must have shared. It's apt price for the embarrassment.

"Sylver." Lona calls.

The SCAP doesn't answer. She's decided there's way too much detail in this dream.

"Don't leave it." Lona says, in a little girl voice. Sylver notes it, and softens, but she still doesn't respond. "...the essence ball..."

"That's all you could find, Wizard?" Sylver demands, "A child's toy". Essence balls were created by the Priestesses of Dilthe. The glass was blown around a tiny light spell that could capture and hold a bit of the cast-off essence of any living thing. It was harmless, and popular among the younger children because it kept the feel of their parents close to them wherever they were.

Lona's voice is nearly inaudible. "Na'Atal's toy," she says slowly.

She hadn't forgotten her firstborn. SCAP memory is constant. But She has to hold the memories in complicated patterns of distraction. It is not technically a solitary hell back there.

She awoke in one of several hundred Sleeper units that line the walls of the House. The event that caused her to suspend herself-the unremembered event-also prompted the other members of her family to do the same. But each of the hundred and six other sealed sleepers contain only death. Hell is being absolutely alone. Rage is not knowing why.

She picks the tossed ball up off the ground. And storms off down the street. She's fortunate it hasn't broken. There may even be a glow in there, but her grip on Lona's thoughts are too tenuous for her to test it right now. The tiny shift in the fabric of reality is unnoticed by the people who pass by. The bauble merely isn't there the next instant. It renews it's existence in the gentle hold of the dreaming Wizard.

"Now I really need a drink."

"I'm sorry Sylver." Lona whispers.

"I know already. I'll get the scratch. The other way."

"Gentle." Lona warns as Sylver's stride takes her down the street to the far corner of the next block. "We don't have the energy to be fugitives here. Don't brutalize these people." Sylver's answering look is a hungry grimace. She curls the fingers of her right hand into a bar on her wrist and slips them into four small rings. With her left hand she digs into grooves set just below these and pulls it away with ten inch claws attached. The sight is terrifying in its possibilities. Several people passing freeze in shock at the sight.

"Give me credit." she says with a sneer, "I'm an artist." With her next move she strikes the picks along the strings connected to the rings of her right hand. Seng is a musician. The instrument folded around her right forearm is one of her few mementos from Fringe Slavery where she performed for some of the most extravagant and dangerous masters. The Fringe Beasts had no idea that she was Scapodgn and what that meant. One of them equipped her with what has proven to be the most efficient way of enticing emotional energy out of nearly every sentient being: her music machine. As people pass by many of them stop to see the bizarre instrument and the strange woman playing it.

"Dance for me, Lona" she thinks to her hidden partner. The Wizard is caught up in the music. She begins a complex and sensuous dance.

It isn't very long before a small crowd has gathered. They stand mesmerized by the music - and perhaps by the dance floating just outside their perception, enchanting their souls with its grace and boundless flight.

Soon Sylver's desperate hunger is teased by the taste of human emotion. She breathes it in; gulps it down.

The Wizard finally loosens the leash of will that kept the SCAP from killing when she arrived. Sylver is free to feed. Her growing audience, at first, senses nothing. The power of her performance moves them to the same emotional heights as their favourite operas and horror movies. Then they are beyond that ledge, and flying. The few who have tasted the highs of cocaine recognize the feeling, and how quickly it goes away. This time it is replaced by a sickening rise higher that threatens their stomachs.

Somehow, much sooner than Sylver wished, Lona comes out of her revelry. She becomes aware of the people in her dream - some of them fainting, all of them drained. She realizes that Sylver is not controlling herself. She will soon be surrounded by bodies, then police, then whatever else it would take to stop this monster. There is no doubt that she could survive whatever happened after that, but she would have to kill, and keep on killing to do it.

"Stop."

"Gods. I'm hungry."

"Stop! Now! They're dying!" The Wizard shoves her hands into the dream world. Two huge scarred hands encircle the still playing Sylver and draw her partway out of it. "I know you hunger. I can feel the pain of it, but I can't let you consume them..."

In the dream Sylver is let go. She drops to her knees. The music machine jams out one final note at the weaving audience. When they come out of their trances some applaud, some praise, though weakly, others walk away dazed. Plenty of money is dropped.

"Damn Wizard... Damn you."

"You're too late."

"You want me to die, too? Then you'll really be alone. More than you've been your whole life." Sylver struggles to get to her feet. Around her, the last of her victims also rises. He doesn't look back as he stumbles off mumbling.

"Sylver... I can't just let you go in there and drain them dry. They're people. They have lives... families."

"They're plebs! That's all! Short-lived-little-linear-minded-dream-people! This is a pleb world!" New people passing her on the street cluck disgustedly or ignore the crazy silver skinned girl yelling at the shop windows in front of her. They don't notice, as Sylver does, that the reflection in it is not hers, but Lona's.

"That's Earth your on, and it's as real for them as mine is for me. You should know, it's real for you, too."

"I'm really starving to death in it! Aww come on, what does it matter... a few of them? She looks around herself dejectedly. "Just the grubby ones?"

"Sylver... They live... That matters." In Hell, Lona walks past a glass case, barely outlined by a dim light, and runs her hands along it. Within, a grinning skeleton is slowly turning to dust.

"Sure." Sylver says, a moving picture on the opposing wall, "Guilt me."

"Seng Sylver you are surrounded by life. My Door got you that."

"Loni, I'm..."

"All I have around me... is my family."

The Wizard's hands rest lightly on the locks of the case momentarily before she springs them. There is no hiss. The seals have long ago rotted.

"Loni!... Loni! Stop that! Think of me. C'mon don't. C'mon away from that. Picture me here. City street!... ple-people! Look, money! I can go get us a drink! Come on." Sylver frantically begins to pick up the scattered change people have dropped. She is competing with others who have bent to help themselves, but ignores them, choosing not to show cruelty.

"Yes. Dream of you. I can see... people."

"That's right."

"I need..." Lona chokes back a growing wave of sorrow. "Find help, Sylver."

"I will"

"Soon"

Sylver stuffs her pockets and hurries, hunched over down the side walk. "I'm gonna find someone. One of our own. Then we'll find us a legit -" A skeleton falls in front of her out of a solid brick wall. She does not pause, but steps lightly over it. " - a legitimate way to get power, both for me, and for that fort of yours."

Someone screams behind her. A curious crowd gathers around the fallen corpse. Sylver doesn't look back and is soon far up the street.

"So many factors."

"I can handle it." She comes back up to the doorway of the bar she was thrown out of. "But first, I need that drink." She could find a new place. She should keep going. Instead she gives the door another push.

"I don't want no trouble, punk." The bartender says, low and tight lipped. His hand drops down below the edge of the bar to where she knows his shotgun rests. "But I already told you we don't want you in here." In a back corner, his only customer snorts.

Sylver smiles again, but it's no longer pleasant. "Well, why don't you just pretend that I'm not around and start serving up some whisky to my friends here instead." She tosses several bills on the counter.

He pauses to think it through. Paying is paying, and this will cover for last time.

"And bring me the Yellow pages," she says as she takes a seat on the furthest stool. "I have to catch up on my reading."