Ulysses Burke; world class buffoon. (vets) wrote in cultureic, @ 2016-06-18 17:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | araminta meliflua, garland mulciber, leland mulciber, leslie jugson, rabastan lestrange, ulysses burke |
WHO: Leland Mulciber, Leslie Jugson, Araminta Meliflua, Garland Mulciber, Rabastan Lestrange, & Ulysses Burke.
WHAT: An Azkaplan comes to fruition.
WHEN: Tonight, Saturday June 18th.
WHERE: Azkaban, and others.
WARNINGS: Death Eatering.
I. Leland, in his best Cruise-Ship regalia (polo shirt, jacket, shorts, an expensive looking pair of boat shoes) sauntered up and onto the giant ocean liner, flashing ticket and smile both, steel eyes hidden behind a fashionable pair of sunglasses. “Lots of mudbloods, ready for the taking.” He murmured to Leslie. A brief smirk, “Let’s find the captain first, and point this boat in the right direction. Then we can work on its speed.” His wand burned hot and ready in his pocket. Leslie, similarly clad in his Cruise Ship Finest (pastels, boat shoes, and a sunny smile plastered on his face), followed Leland into the ship as he fumbled with a stack of notecards in his pocket. "I'd like to speak with the Captain," he said imperiously to the ticket-taker. "My third cousin died in a horrific boating accident and I have a number of safety concerns that I'd like addressed." The ticket taker gave him a look that read I don't get paid enough for this, and gave him a well-practised speech about "safety precautions" and "rigorous testing" and "life jackets." Leslie argued with her a bit more, which involved loudly reading each of his concerns from a notecard as the ticket-taker tried in vain to interrupt him. This gave Leland the opportunity to slip in through the Staff Entry door, and head along to the Captain’s headquarters, his Imperius at the ready. After several minutes of arguing in vain, Leslie glanced towards the empty pier. He smiled patronizingly at the ticket taker. "Thank you for your time. I've decided I'll risk it - I'm feeling adventurous!" He then pulled out his wand, leveled a quick Imperio at the girl, and instructed her to follow him onto the ship to begin their journey. II. Araminta felt about as comfortable on a boat as she might have on the moon. For all her bluster and loud enthusiasm, she'd spent the last thirty minutes with one hand wrapped around the boat's handrail—and the other fisted into her mentee's shirt. He had admirable sea legs considering they were whipping through the North Sea at speeds no cruise ship had ever hoped to accomplish. So did the muggle with the vapid smile insisting on serving them champagne. "Leland." Her voice was a short, sharp puff of steam in the cold northern air. "Deal with it." Her hair licked at his face like fire caught in the wind, and Leland struggled momentarily to speak, having breathed in a mouthful of his mentor’s copper locks. His own dirty blonde hair was a frenzied halo about his head, and he was beginning to lament that he’d not worn a cruise-hat. To the muggle, he flicked his free hand out, shoo. “Champagne might settle your stomach a little, you know.” He spoke into her ear, lips pressed against the warmth of her skull. (She smelled of saltwater and sandalwood.) She leaned, finding the hot spark of his breath on her cold skin. Araminta longed for something to settle her stomach but adamantly refused to admit it. Instead, she closed her eyes and exhaled until every speck of warmth had been scraped from her lungs and the endless black of her eyelids burst with fireworks. Then she breathed in until her lungs were made of salt and ice. When she opened her eyes, the view before them was not as empty as it had been a moment ago. Breaking through clinging fog were the looming crags of Azkaban. They were tall and hideous and wrong. Aberrant. Araminta blinked, but the prison's outstretched claws resolved into nothing kinder. She made a curious noise. Leland followed her gaze, and his fingers curled about her small shoulders, astonished. Azkaban was not so much structure as it was a misshapen chunk carved out of the grey horizon. Like a fist through glass, the jagged peaks jutted out against the sky with very little respect for architecture. A black shadow built for suffering. It was uncomfortable to look at. Made his insides go cold. But every which-way Leland turned his head, there it was, a behemoth of a building that clung to the edge of his vision, refusing to be ignored. “Salazar.” "It's incredible." She could feel the warmth rise in her chest again, a heady elation that squeezed out all her dizzy nausea. Leland could only nod in mute, awestruck agreement. The handrail was falling out of her grip and then she was falling, into Leland's chest, face turned up to the monstrosity of Azkaban. It sang to her and her very worst parts sang back: ugliness to ugliness, dark magic to something even darker. She hated this place and she loved it. "We're so close." Araminta laughed, a horrible windchime ripped from her throat. Leland’s answering smile cut a sharp line in his expression, his dark expression turning darker still as he looked toward their destination. “I can hardly wait.” Was barely a misted breath against the air as a shiver scampered up his spine. Then, Leland also began to laugh. With Araminta, hot against his chest, and the black promise of mayhem and murder ahead, Leland could scarcely believe his luck. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get dressed.” III. Leslie paced back and forth, hands clasped behind his back. "Most Honoured Dementors," he began, "We stand here before you, in deference to your knowledge of this great island where rests Azkaban, hoping that you will come to Our Dark Lord's aid." He moved his arm in a sweeping gesture to indicate the totality of the mission, their place in history, and his fellow Death Eaters who faced the dementors with him. "His loyal servants have been too long bound in this prison. You, too, have been too long bound in this prison. These are not the souls you want! When the Dark Lord reigns supreme, you will finally be free...free to roam the earth. With one of our own in power in the Ministry, you will no longer be forced to spend your days on this remote rock. After this grand rescue, we shall --" Leslie paused to take a breath, then realized something - the dementors were not paying attention to him. Or, if they were, they remained silent and stony as ever. His teeth chattered slightly with the chill. He glanced to Araminta and Garland. "Are they listening to me?" he asked. He'd planned this whole speech, and he'd not even got to the part where he got to cite statistics and historical examples, and he was not about to continue if it was all going to be a waste. "Should I bother finishing this speech or should we move on to the next step?" Garland, ever polite, murmured: "It's a fine speech, Jugson. But perhaps better suited for when we stand together onboard the ship?" With that, he stepped neatly forward, doing away with Leslie's example of a deferential posture as he extracted a crystalline vial from beneath his robes and presented it, arm outstretched, a faint tremor running down its length, to the gathered dementors. The vial was sharply clear against the black of his gloves; the red within, bright and vermillion and pure. "This is from the unicorn we have in our possession. There will be more." The dementors were still for moments longer. Araminta watched them with a curious malaise, fingering a pendant that hung beneath her robes. It provided a radiant warmth—not physical, she was shivering—and she smiled despite the chill. She looked at the vial, then to the creatures. In her mind, the image of a unicorn took shape. "Legilimens." She thrust the image out into whatever openings she could find. The dementors minds were like open wounds, and Araminta skirted the images they offered back, filling cavernous minds with the picture of a unicorn. When she spoke her jaw was tight, breath uneasy. "Show them where it came from." They would soak up what was offered, like the parasites that they were. And so Garland offered a very discrete series of images, everything else -- himself -- remaining behind a firmly shut door. A prolonged stay in Azkaban under the guard of these creatures would doubtlessly erode every guard and barrier erected by one skilled in the magic of the mind, but this, now? Easy enough. One simply had to maintain distance. A young unicorn, barely into its second year and still sporting that preternaturally golden coat which caught the sunlight and radiated warmth even in the darkest night. Alive, well, frolicking in a forest that yawned high. The source of the blood. The promise of more. With cold, cold, cold fingers, like heavy fog on wet air, the dementors pawed at the offered image, their dark minds crawling and creeping through the spaces Garland had provided, seeking out every source of light and bleeding into it, oozing around it, leeching onto it. A slickly cold moment of contact, but the Death Eater did not recoil. The unicorn. Yes. The acknowledgement drip-drip-dripped. The gold-cloaked horse. The promise of more. Its incandescent horn cracking and crumbling beneath the powerful taint of their desire. A skull split in two and red red red ribbons twisting through the air. The Death Eater still did not recoil. Yes. What Araminta offered next was fragmented, visceral, emotional— —the boat (and a dizzy thrill of Azkaban's vicious peaks, of Leland's arms)—the water (and her discomfort, and the wavering horizon)—England (and its many, many people, frightened, crying, shrinking away from unseen evils into a worse dark)—Voldemort (and his power and her excitement and)— Hunger. An aching chill writhed at the pit of her stomach -- a response. An assent, perhaps, for she saw her muggles devoured, flesh and bone and blood ripping away like dust along the black wind. And Voldermort. The terror he promised to breed most delicious of all. Yes. Where Garland's self-control was ironclad, Mint's was lacking. A cold and unseen excitement crept across the tenuous bridge she'd opened, and suddenly thoughts selected in offering became an uncontrollable flood. Memories came in fits and starts— —spilled blood and screams, sparks of jealousy and rage, murder and deception, irrational fears and insecurities, the temptation of dark magic, the thrill, the consumptive hunger, the hurricane of emotion bridled by hatred— —the amulet shuddered. She laughed. The Dementor recoiled sharply, sliding back from Araminta’s barrage of mental imagery, bending to the fire of her will, having seen enough. They had an accord. IV. The prison buzzed with a frantic energy that drew Rabastan's curiosity more than once. The most exciting thing that had happened so far today was another inmate bursting into tears when a dementor had brushed too closely to their cell. Rabastan had laughed, then, but it was much less funny when the dementor made its rounds closer to his own gated cell. Now, however, one of the human guards — a paunchy fellow named Harvey with an unkempt beard — jogged past the row of inmates, gasping for breath with every other step. Rab got up from his cot and sauntered over to the door. With fingers clasped around the prison bars lightly, he peered out into the corridor to watch him run to whatever trouble was brewing. "Get back, inmate!" Harvey shouted at Rabastan with a sharp jab of his thick finger. "Get back now or I'll—" A violent green light filled the corridor and Harvey fell to the floor, dead. Rab raised an eyebrow and glanced outward again, now undeterred by Harvey the Human Guard's lame threats. He let the weight of his body fall backward before he pulled himself up against the door again like some disobedient child on the ladder to the slide. "Was wondering when you'd get here," he said to the masked figure who had entered. "What's the old idiom? About absence and the heart?" Garland's voice rang hollow from beneath the mask, words underscored by a leaden shuffle of sound as he neatly toed the guard's head out of the path of his foot so that he could work on Rabastan's door. "You heard the man, old sport. Stand back." Garland didn't have to tell Rabastan twice. He stepped back, but continued watching as his comrade negotiated with his door. It was a difficult conversation that required intricate spellwork and the occasional application of brute force, but the door finally opened with the scream of a much-unused hinge. "Impressive," Rab said. He stepped over Harvey with wide steps. Just leaving the cell, he felt better than he had since he got here. A small relief that would only increase the further he got from this horrible place. But first they needed to release the others. But first, a fleeting moment of contact between comrades; Garland gave Rabastan's shoulder a squeeze. Then, a wand was presented. "You'll need this." V. "This one." Araminta gestured at a door as she strode through the halls, boots loud on the stone, voice ricocheting into distorted melody among so many clamoring voices. The escape route from Azkaban was filled with pleas, but Voldemort had no use for petty thieves and naughty enchanters. Only a few wizards would leave with them—and many dementors. The figure behind the cage was cut from the wet rock of Azkaban itself. With boulderous shoulders, and arms as thick as tree trunks, he stood draped in shadow at the back of his cell, unmoving and wholly impassive. Waiting. Leland glanced from Araminta to Ulysses, then to the cell door. Something told him if he angered the scarred beast within, he’d be without limbs, if he weren’t careful. “You there!” His voice from behind his mask was deep, ominously discordant. “Would you fight for the Dark Lord and his great cause?” From the shadows: a grunt. Ulysses strode past, casting a quick glance in the direction of Leland’s selection. He let out an impressed whistle. “Excellent choice,” he commented, before moving ahead, and leaving Leland to blast the cell door open behind him. He passed a number of cell doors, ignoring the prisoners’ pleas with an air of dispassionate disinterest until he came upon one that caught his attention. “I will serve the Dark Lord! I will devote my life to Him and His wishes!” the half-crazed witch shrieked. “Excellent,” Ulysses smiled. “I’ll take this one.” The dementors followed soon after, and the hall quieted and the torches seemed to dim and stutter. Araminta's eyes closed into a shudder, like they might in the face of a cool breeze. But with the amulet protecting them, that was all. They moved together out of Azkaban just ahead of their new allies, each picking out particular voices among the crowd like the prison was no more than some specialty boutique. And then, at long last, the stormy sky and salted waves. Freedom. VI. Ulysses stood at the bow of a cruise ship filled with hungry dementors, looking rather out of place in his dark robes and a pair of sunglasses. His expression, however, was triumphant. “I knew we could do it - excellent work, team,” he said, either too inebriated or too high on success (probably a bit of both) to be brought down by the presence of a few - well, okay, a lot of - dementors. “Who wants a celebratory cocktail?” Ulysses said breezily. “Please.” Leland was happy to take the offered drink, throwing it back as though liquid had not touched his lips in years. The chilling depression that clung to the black air, was hard to ignore; Leland needed all the courage he could swallow. Ulysses had decades’ worth of staving off the darkness by getting so obliterated that he couldn’t feel a thing, and tonight was no exception. He seemed unfazed by the whole ordeal, though he usually seemed unfazed by most things that might have given others pause. “How will you be marking this momentous occasion?” he asked conversationally. There was a reason Ulysses was a favourite of Leland’s; the very same twist of darkness coiled tight within his own belly, a festering, deep, painful self hatred held always at arm’s length - either by way of drink or violence. Leland turned his gaze out toward the ocean -- the islands broke just beyond the horizon and soon they would be rid of their dark passengers. At length, he pulled his mouth up into an approximation of a smile, and thought of Libitina. Thought of her dark eyes and darker smile, and, quite suddenly he did not feel so cold. “Getting shit-faced, sir.” A beat, and then a hastily added, “And toasting our Dark Lord, of course.” Ulysses grinned and gave him an overenthusiastic slap on the back. “Brilliant! Always did like the cut of your jib.” he said, then raised his own glass. “To dark futures ahead.” “To dark futures, indeed.” Leland replied. His glass was already empty, and so he hurled it at the boat’s deck, watching it shatter with muted fascination. “Alright,” he said, “I suppose we ought to get this rabble rounded.” |