Sigil: City of Doors

Screams. Her screams. Scream and fire. Sawing, endless sawing. Crunch, crack, an eyeball being put out. She couldn’t breath. Did he need too? Smoke. Fire. So much fire. I can’t see. Cant even see death.

My eyes snapped open, and I jerked up, bashing my face against a closed coffin lid. Somebody had closed me in. My nose broke bad, and blood now ran down my face. Not much of a face, honestly. Just stitches and scars. Fire burned away everything. My wings itched. I reached behind me to scratch them, and found only stumps.

I reset my nose, and slid the lid off. I sat up, and was greeted by a dustman. Teifling. He looked anxious, and jumped and recoiled when he saw me. I stared at him with my one good eye.

“By the hells… I thought the dustmen simply animated dead bodies, not made stitched horrors.”

“Piss off,” I said. He recoiled even further.

“What kind of undead are you?”

“The kind thats somehow still alive.”

“What?”

I sighed.

“Nothing.”

I pulled my hood up, and got out of my coffin. A pad of paper fell out of my lap. I reached down too pick it up, and jammed it inside one of my many pouches.

“Who are you?”

“Null.”

“Acgross.”

I nodded at him.

“New?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“What made you join?”

“I don’t know. I’ve seen you dusties around forever. Eventually you kinda started making sense.”

“Live in the hive?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure the extra security didn’t help?”

He paused.

“No, no it didn’t.”

I stared at him. I thought of nothing.

“Why sleeping in a coffin?”

“I like it.”

“Odd.”

“I also like sleeping on the streets, so yes.”

“Why?”

“I enjoy the nighttime ambushes.”

“What?”

“Good chance too kill something.”

He raised an eyebrow

“Your a dustwoman?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn't sound like your a very good one.”

Something clicked inside my head.

“Uh, I have to count these bodies, and tag them,” he motioned to the other coffins around me.

“Yeah, yeah.”

I grabbed the rest of my stuff from the coffin, and walked out into the hive. I paused at the exit, and looked down at my clothes. Red and black. I rummaged around in one of my bags, and pulled out the robes Sarin wore while she killed the seer. I threw them on. Grey and boring. I walked out into the hive.

I arrived at the bottle and jug. I walked past the trolls, and sat down at the bar.

“Don’t you do it you harlot.”

“Hey can I have some salt for-”

I stopped. I had done that every time I had entered the building. Why? Just to piss everybody. Petty and pointless. Sarin enjoyed it. I don’t know why.

“Unsalted nuts. And something cheap.”

I was given unsalted nuts, and the poorest piss tasting ale the cage had too offer. I sipped and munched for a while. I should probably have some breakfast. I drank three pints, and ate two handfuls of nuts over the next thirty minutes. I payed with a 100 gold tip, and left for Chirpers. There, I ordered a full breakfast, and a bottle of brandy. I wandered out too The Metal Cup, and got myself a bottle of whiskey. I left, and headed for the portal too Celestia. I wanted some sunshine. What where they going to do? Send me to the abyss. Probably wouldn't even know what I was. Just some fucked up mortal. I stepped through the portal, walked over too the edge, sat down, and began too eat.

I pulled out the pad of paper again. Names. A list of people I wanted too kill. I took out a quill, and tapped it on the paper, mulling over the names.

I grabbed my brandy, and took a swig directly from the bottle. I took another. Then I downed the entire thing in one. I tossed the bottle over the edge. I missed having magic. I reached down with a spoon to have another bite of my porridge, then stopped. I grabbed the bottle of whiskey, and finished it in thirty seconds. Then, I finished my breakfast. I looked down at the paper. I couldn't read the words. I dropped my quill, and spilled my ink. I fumbled around with my bag, and pulled out a bottle of terran brandy. I downed that as well. Then I downed another. Something. There was something. I ran a shaking hand over the paper. Water. It was wet. I frowned, and searched for the source. Must be raining. Sigil rains. I looked up. The sun was shining in The Seven Heavens. Oh.

More water hit the paper. I touched my face. I was crying. Fucking crying. Why? Of course the devils had made sure I could cry. Just had too let me bleed out the last of my pride. I sat there and cried. At first I cried at what at happened, then I cried at the fact I was weak enough too cry, then I just cried. Wanting it all too stop, I reached into the bag and pulled out more and more of my vast hoard of collected drugs and alcohol. At some point the light faded.

My eyes snapped open to a celestial touching my forehead.

“dead.”

My eyes snapped open. The angel pulled back.

“You are dead.”

“I’ll get better,” I mumbled through a drug soaked tongue.

“But your not undead.”

“Piss off, I’m trying to eat.”

He looked down at my empty bowls.

“You from Sigil.”

“Yeah.”

“Want help getting back through the portal?”

“I don’t need your pity.”

The angel smiled

“You just tried to kill yourself. You don’t do that for no reason. There is some great hurt within you. Its not pity, its empathy. Kindness. Let me help you.”

“And I don’t need it.”

He looked at the empty bottles, syringes, and bags next too me.

“Yes, you do. Even if you will never accept it, you do.”

“Go away.”

“As you wish.”

I closed my eyes, and attempted too sleep off my hangover. Eventually, enough of the drugs burned their way out of my system that my body returned from death enough for me too down one of my many, many potions. Instantly the effects of the booze and drugs where cleansed. I sat up. I tossed the bottle over the edge. I looked down at the paper.

What was the point? The point in killing these people. Nothing. Not even the devils. There was no point. I get off endless torture. I get off being a devil. And I fall back into the same routine. Kill them all. Its what I had always done, wasn't it? Singing, and killing. Over and over, throughout my life. Singing, and killing. Wrath. My sin.

But even looking at it like that was a problem. Not a planar anymore. Not a mortal, but not a planar. I was unique in my punishment, masterful in my squalor. It wasn’t my sin. I wasn’t an angel, I wasn’t a devil. I didn’t have some crippling shortcoming, some sin that dominated me. I was just a person. I could do what I want. I was killing. But that was routine. I didn’t need too. I could do what I want.

What had happened to me was a wrong, but it was a tragedy. Not because a devil got tortured, but because a fallen celestial failed. I had failed. There could have been another celestial. Another agent of good in the world. Now, there was just me. Cruel, bitchy, petty, bloodthirsty me.

I pushed the garbage from my drug based suicide off the ledge. Then, I ripped` the page from my ledger, tore it apart, then threw it over the edge. I stood up, and began to walk back towards the portal. As I turned I saw a grate. The Shrine of Domiel. I furrowed my brow, and reached into my bag. I pulled out two black pearls. The souls of tortured celestial souls twirled within.

I passed through the grate, and approached the guardian. He looked at me, and nodded. I held out the stones. He look them. I accepted my payment. I left the shrine, and walked back too the portal. Before I stepped through, I produced my two sharped, expensive, curved blades. I could have bought an apartment in the hive, but instead I bought two daggers made to kill anything.

I sheathed them, then opened one of my least used bags of holding, and jammed them as far down as I could. I stepped through the portal, and got ready too set up shop

Null snaps awake. It took her thirty minutes before she could move. Slowly, she reached her hand down into her lap, where a potion sat. she uncorked it, and downed the whole thing. The effects of the lethal dose of alcohol was instantly cleansed. She was kneeling in a corner of the mortuary, where they kept the bodies. She stood up, and got back to her work. Nobody else was up. Just her.

What was the point? What exactly was the point? The immortal dustman. She had thought about joining the mercykillers, but she didn’t want to fight. But without the fighting she felt empty. Was that a good or bad thing? I suppose it was very dust-womany, wasn’t it. But her true death wasn’t going to be like these mortals. Trying to emulate their passive nihilism and calmness was pointless. Not in a good way either. If Null retired from planeswalking, she would outlive every single dustman. She would be around when Skall passed on into dust, when the dustmen themselves died as a faction. And she would remain, trying really hard to die, but failing.

What does a ‘true,’ death mean for Sarin? For Null? Was it a literal death? A spiritual death? I suppose that is all personal, isn't it?

Null stopped and chuckled.

She had died, hadn't she? Sarin died, and she was reborn as Null, and she wanted to escape. A true Dustwoman. No, rebirth was just her cycle of reincarnation. A million years from now, there would be hundreds or thousands of Sarins and Nulls, on and on, changing through the years. Mercurial like a mortal, unending like a planar. Truly was a dustwoman indeed.

So, she had her cycle. She had what she wanted to escape. And Sarin was dead. The planar was dead, and now there was Null. Dustmen fit better than anything in that respect.

Well, she wasn't going to die. Not through introspection and being a slightly evil zen monk. No, she was going to die by the hands of another. One way or another, somebody needed to kill her. Moping around the mortuary killing herself every night wasn't going to do it.

But walking into the court of Helm and talking up all the innocents you have killed would kill her. Judge jury and executioner, right on the spot. But what if it didn't? What if they just gave her another false death. Passed on from Null into something else? That wasn't a true death.

So what was? She had to be sure of her death. Not some hopeful suicide attempt. No she needed to be killed, dead, on the spot. Battle it was. The enemy wasn't going to stay his hand when his life was on the line.

But they could. Of course they could. A devil would want to torture her, any given celestial might try to fucking ‘redeem,’ her. How do you get around that?

You can't. There is no evil you can steep to paladins won’t try to save, and the more threatening or not threaten you become to a devil, they will still want to torture you. You can't be sure. They could always save you. Even morso when they eventually learn you want to die. The devils to spite you, the angels out of pity, empathy, whatever they feel at the time.

What would nothing show mercy for? What would anything kill? There is no monster too great, no champion so good, no mage so mighty, no monk too peaceful. No nothing too nothing. If you exist, they might not kill you. They might change you. Give you another reincarnation.

Null sorted through a couple hundred bodies.

The simple answer was also the worst answer. The most insane, impossible answer. Divinity, isn't it? Everything has a reason to kill a god. When Bhaal wasn't a bitch, he could have left his throne, fought anything, and be guaranteed of either his death, or the people he was fighting. No paladin would try to save him, no god would show mercy, no fiend would let the power of stealing godhood slip from him. Nothing who would fight would show mercy.

An impossible goal for only the most insanely power hungry. Wonderful. Well, she had the time to try, didn't she? No realm would take her. Make her own. Sure. simple enough.

Null sighed, and looked down at the pile of bodies she was counting.

Yeah. Just get right on that.