Rotblossom Rose (1.25R)
Welcome to the space where I experiment, my weekly serial. It is written raw, not edited at all, and mostly unplanned.
The world is partly based on the background of an unpublished Steampunk game that I worked on with a few friends, which has grown in my mind over the last couple of years. The story is a take on those ultra-violent revenge epics of the eighties where a man’s family is abused and killed, but he survives and seeks vengeance. Needless to say it is a grim, bloody tale, that deals with bad people doing bad things, so be warned.
Here is the first post of this series.
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Rose waits patiently for The Spider, attending her own business while he weaves a web to catch the enemy they share. He is the only being still living who shares her hatred of Lawch, it is part of what binds them together.
Pushing the Spider from her mind, Rose considers her current predicament. She is in the Lowdown Ward, a residential district buried under the upper city. Glimpses of the city above can be seen through metal gratings and the occasional set of stairs leading to the streets above, but it is a whole different world down here.
The streets are cast in shadow, but well protected from the vicious winds, rain, and dust storms that seem to perpetually lash the surface streets of The Scab. It is quiet down here as well; Rose thinks that it is because the buried streets with their ancient houses only attract the sort of people who do not like making too much noise.
Rose visits Lowdown Ward, not for the quiet but for the artisans. There is a doctor here who can care for even her ravaged, battle-scarred frame. There are also other mendicants, like the one she has just visited who can make wondrous balms and ointments for those who have Wraithstone and wealth.
She carries a special salve infused with green and blue Wraithstone, the purest, most energized stuff she has found. The salve, made with proprietary ingredients, can actually heal skin infected with Skankrot. Rose does not want to return to high society as a freak; she will always be scarred and broken, but perhaps with this cream she can reverse the rot on her face enough to look respectable.
Besides the Salve dims the pain and the anguish of memory. Perhaps it is just another way to feed her addiction to Wraithstone, but it is a more constructive one.
Because the Lowdown wards are so quiet, Rose is startled when she hears the distinct sounds of a desperate struggle. She stops and looks around, then puts on her Silver skull mask before proceeding. She does not want to be identified, if she needs to intervene.
Following the sounds, Rose creeps down an alley between two ancient houses half set into rock. The Lowdown was one of the few places in the city where one could afford a house of such size, since most people did not want to live down here, in the shadow. One of the houses had a back-yard, fenced in, the sounds of the struggle came from within. Rose approaches carefully, her coilsword drawn.
There is a breach in the fence. Rose approached it swiftly and quietly, utterly without fear. First Lawch, and the Depths had blunted her capacity for terror. Coilsword at the ready she peers through the breach.
She sees two naked humanoids, pale and bald, pinning a woman down and biting chunks out her flesh while she struggles. Wrongblood Ghouls. They were once people, but the bleed had warped their minds, turning them into feral cannibals. As the bleedwarpt go,
Rose moves swiftly running into the yard and lunging. The tip of her coilsword slides into the Wrongblood Ghouls kidney, enough to take it out of the fight without unleashing the coils. The second ghoul catches sight of her and tries to bear her to the ground. Most feral creatures try to pin their prey and then kill it, and the ghoul is no exception. It is a big male, and much stronger than Rose.
Sharp teeth clamp down on her arm, and then break because her arm is metal. The ghoul backs away, drooling blood. Rose thrust her coils sword into its gut, flicks the trigger dial and turns everything between its hips and ribs to bloody ribbons. The ghoul dies looking quite shocked.
The woman on the ground is sobbing, and bleeding from her arms and shoulder. She looks up at Rose as stops, eyes going wide at the sight of the mask.
“You’re her,” she says, her voice quivering. “… thank you for saving us.”
“Us?” asks Rose.
“My son managed to get in the shed before they got him. I lost my head when I saw they’d gotten through the fence. If you had not been here…”
“I’m no friend of ghouls. Take some of this ointment and rub it on your wounds. The green wraithstone will kill any disease that the ghouls have infected you with while the blue will ease your fears.”
The woman stared. Rose left. She felt uncomfortable about helping strangers, but sometimes she just could not stop herself.
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