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From: Serrin
Date: 27 Nov 1999
Time: 14:31:15
The street they walked along wasn’t very crowded, only the occasional living pedestrian passing them as the three wraiths were burrowing into the heart of the Necropolis on the other side of Dallas. The legionnaires that escorted Joe were silent, pointing the way with their swords when the road turned. Finally they came unto an open shopping street, which was filled with walking groups of people talking and staring at the sights. It was evening, and the stores cast out an empty illumination in the shadowlands. Joe and his guard had to weave their way through the unsuspecting crowds in order to avoid being pushed from their path by the living. They exited the street soon and now Joe could see something in the distance – just beyond the buildings in front of him in the living world, something dark was looming.
A few more streets, and they were there. The structure was like a medieval fortress compared to the city around it. Not only did it look like it was carved from a piece of black granite, it had a presence that made the rest of the city look like paper constructs compared to it. It was old, heavy, and powerful. It had numerous floors, and several of the windows on each floor shone with eerie blue light. The gate looked like glass doors that had been replaced with wrought iron, nailed into place and fortified. There was a vision slit in it, so that callers could be inspected from within.
Joe was not surprisingly taken up to the Citadel gate, where Lance knocked and waited for a reply. After a quick exchange of words with a voice on the other side, the heavy doors were opened. Joe was shown politely inside, into an empty lobby with black, crumbling walls. A guard with a fat face stood waiting inside. “He is a new arrival, from the Skeletal legion. Taking him to see Walker.”, Lance explained. The guard nodded. “Third floor, the Magistratum.” Two sets of stairs were at the end the lobby, and Joe’s two bodyguards motioned towards them. “You heard him. Go on.” The guards did not seem to follow Joe as he ascended the obsidian stairs, his own footsteps were all that rang in his ears. Once he reached the top of the stairs however, the labyrinthine crossroads seemed to reverberate with forgotten whispers. The walls seemed to be made of stone, but as he ascended two more floors they seemed to thin out and change into something like cobwebs or chitin. The hallways on the third floor were narrow and claustrophobic, like the veins of some mummified corpse, and each new opening led only to further branches of the mousemaze. But some sort of intuition guided him to the cavity that was his destination, the office of the Magistratum.
The room was wide but bare, a wrought iron desk and a couple of wooden chairs filling one corner, and a soulfire lantern casting its freezing light from another. The soul who occupied this particular desk rose to meet him as he entered. He was wearing a pin-striped suit in dark grey tones, and his face was covered by a brass mask that seemed to be riveted to his face, with openings for his mouth and bright blue eyes. His tone was surprisingly friendly and open. “Ah, good evening, my name is Walker, and let me welcome you to our city and our Citadel. It is good to see a fellow member of the administrative branch of our legion.” He stood face to face with Joe, their masked visages being as natural to them as a beard or elaborate haircut. Everything was a mask after all, no one wanted to be confronted with the true nature of their fellow restless in a social context. So Joe’s glass and plastic facade nodded agreeably to the metallic face before him. “Yes, but I was hoping I could finish some business here before I was set into a formal position. I hope you understand. “ He kept an air of official authority between himself and the bureaucrat before him deliberately. “Well, that shouldn’t be a problem.” Walker sat back down behind his desk and motioned to Joe to follow him. “What skills do you possess with which to help us in our duty of keeping the city in order?” Joe pulled out a chair and replied as honestly as he could. “I have basic talents for manipulating soul energy and lifestrands. My former duties were to support the military branch of the legions, keeping the cohorts under my care working smoothly, in conjunction with a skilled castigator. I hope to be able to fulfill a similar position here.” Walker’s teeth bared in a smile beneath the brass cover. “Sounds good. I’m sure we can work something out. But speaking of castigation, we do have to a little control before we let you go.” His voice took on a cold tone as he snapped his fingers two times. The sound echoed from the thin walls, and a tall legionnaire stepped out of the nothingness beyond the entrance. Walker motioned towards a door Joe had somehow not noticed upon entering, and he knew he had to go in there and get it over with. The door seemed distorted, like a surrealist painting, and he felt the source of his problem screaming in the back of his head. The shadowed voice within him claimed it was a rouse, that he would be taken to the forges as soon as he stepped through the door, but he managed to quench the venom and step through the dark opening, into the penitent role of the confessor to the Pardoner before him. The rage within him flowed like lava, spilling through his every cavity, but there was no way around it. Redemption, however painful, awaited.
Hours later, officially accepted by the Hierarchy of the Necropolis, Joe’s purpose could be resumed once more. He ran the address of his daughter through his head one last time, before he started moving cautiously through the mist-filled streets of shadowlands Dallas.