The Fires of Old Flames

[RR Cullen]

Isuelt arrived on the second floor of the Old Temple Watch precinct on time, and by the actual doors, which was a switch. No more swinging in through the windows in a clandestine manner to pay her favorite Watch lieutenant a visit. Nor was she dressed from head to toe in dirty black leathers that looked as if she’d just come from the battlefield…or a brothel. Today she had arrived for her meeting with Richard Cullen via the stairs and dressed black wool trousers and a white silk wrap blouse beneath a black woolen blazer. She looked smart, having just come from Batten Tower; she’d opted to meet Cullen over the lunch period rather than after hours. She had been thinking about him lately and wanted to check in with him, wondering how he was doing, how his life was. She’d heard that he’d gotten engaged to Bernadette last year and she wondered if they had gotten married. It wasn’t as if she would receive an invitation to the wedding, after all. Ex-lovers rarely were present at such things. When she’d gotten the message that Cullen requested a meeting with her at his office, she pondered if that was the reason: he was married, or about to be.

The floor was familiar, she knew most of the faces here, having worked side-by-side with most of them during her tenure as a Scathachian general protecting the Old Temple district of the city. There were a few smiles and more nods of recognition as she headed toward the far end of the floor, weaving her way through a few desks. Cullen’s door was open, Isuelt smiled faintly at seeing his name plate on the wall just beside the threshold. He was sitting at his desk, looking over some papers. His salt and pepper hair was tousled, but in a stylish way. His matching beard was more thick stubble than an actual beard. His skin looked sun-kissed, even though they were in the dead of winter. There was a neat and tidiness to his office; gone were the overflowing in boxes and piles of near-toppling files. There was a steaming cup of coffee near him and the faint scent of hickory in the room. His over-burdened ashtray was gone, instead there was a small running water fountain at the edge of his desk that trickled happily and owed a sense of peace to this Watch lieutenant’s office. He looked fantastic, Isuelt felt a small pang of regret. She immediately deduced that Bernadette was far healthier for Cullen than she ever could be. When Isuelt and Cullen were together; he had always looked exhausted and slightly panicked, as if he were waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. Isuelt was a wild card, a firecracker, and he had done his best to contain her…even at the risk of peril to his own mental well-being.

“Afternoon, Lieutenant.” Isuelt smiled at him from her casual lean on the doorjamb.

Cullen looked up and spoke easily, his soft voice having lost its gruff edge and sardonic rasp. “Issy! Come on in, please. Sit down.” He stood up and motioned to the chairs just opposite his desk. “It’s…it’s really good to see you.” Cullen’s eyes were clear, his smile was soft and effortless.

Isuelt took a seat in one of the chairs and regarded him for a moment. The moments between them after their affair had bordered on awkward, but never really felt uneasy. The respect and friendship between these two saw to that. “You look good, Richard,” she nodded quietly. “Really good.”

Cullen was walking to the door to close it smoothly. “Thanks, you too.” Isuelt knew it was more of a formal nicety than the truth. She was more than holding her own, but she still knew that she didn’t look as relaxed and refreshed as Cullen appeared. He took a seat perched on the corner of his desk and Isuelt couldn’t help but smirk. That was something she always used to do when she would climb in through the window, usually startling the oft-grumpy, grizzled lieutenant. But this now seemed like a different individual; someone who didn’t mind his job, someone who was getting sleep and exercise and proper nutrition. Someone who was happy.

“What can I do for you?” Isuelt crossed her legs and leaned forward a bit, her forearms resting on her knee. “I got your message.”

Nodding, Cullen replied, “I guess so. Listen, I wanted to talk with you about something. Something that’s going on.”

“Your wedding?” Isuelt lifted her brows.

“Hm? Oh, no no. Not that. Something that is going on in the city. I wanted to get your opinion.” He took a moment, possibly reading the expression on Isuelt’s face. “Thank you by the way. It was really wonderful. Just got back from honeymoon last week.” Cullen smiled and Isuelt felt a sting deep beneath the pit of her stomach. So, that explained the tan and the calm demeanor. He was now a happily married man and it obviously agreed with him.

“Yes, congratulations.” She thought she sounded sheepish and hollow.

Apparently, Cullen didn’t think so, he grinned and continued. “Yeah, thanks so much!” After a beat of glowing in his own glee, he started again. “I’m really sorry to pull you in here, I’m sure you’re busy.” And that was that. No cracks about where he had sent the message, no comments about her working at Batten Tower, no barely-concealed insults to Batten, himself.

“No, it’s fine. How can I help?”

“Well,” he stood up and went back around his desk to pull a slim file from underneath a meager stack. “I’ve got some reports of graffiti being discovered. Beneath the city.” He sat back down upon his desk and handed Isuelt the file. “I thought you’d want to see it.”

Isuelt took the file and studied the expression on Cullen’s face as his brow wrinkled and she spotted an inkling of the Watch lieutenant she knew: perplexed, concerned and stressed. Uh oh… She thought as she looked down to the file and opened it. Photographs, artist renderings and scant reports written: At multiple spots in the city, and beneath it in the sewer and passage tunnels, the image of a skeletal ram’s head with an elongated mandible was beginning to turn up with more and more frequency. The most recent report that was included was not even one week ago when the symbol was found in a frequented alleyway in Old Temple that provided a shortcut between the Rhydin Public library and the Hangman distillery just south of Middlebridge. Isuelt’s blood ran cold; this was near the middle of the city, above ground, in a popular area. The symbol of the Temple of Bhaal. Her crimson eyes looked back up to Cullen; he was studying her face intently. He knew what this meant, and he knew she knew it.

“The Temple of Bhaal…” Isuelt began slowly.

“Is growing in number and gaining a foothold here.” Cullen finished the sentence. “They aren’t operating in secret anymore either. They are holding gatherings in Old Temple now. They don’t have a proper temple, but they are using public meeting houses and basements of well-known structures. They aren’t afraid, they aren’t hiding.” Cullen’s gray eyes were sharply regarding Isuelt.

“The Scathachians…this is a matter for them. They ha-“

“They left!” Cullen cut her off once more. “They’re gone, there’s no one to check the Temple of Bhaal anymore. And the Bhaalites know it. They’re swelling support in our city right now.”

Isuelt swallowed. “There’s one still here to tend the Temple.”



“Janie is one person and, pardon me for saying, but she’s not the warrior you were. Are.” Cullen’s brows lifted with significant meaning as he nodded in Isuelt’s direction. “Rhydin is prime ground right now. There’s no check point for these assholes. We’re sort of defenseless, I hate to say it. I mean, this god Bhaal...he's the god of murder for chrissakes. You taught me that!”

Isuelt was quiet for a long moment, her eyes looked back down to the papers in her lap as she shifted through them once more. “I’m not a Scathachian anymore, Richard.” Her voice was low, barely reaching above the volume of the rustling papers. “What do you want me to do about it?”

He didn’t reply right away. Perhaps he wanted her to answer her own question.

Isuelt sighed as she finished with the file and closed it, then handed it back to him. “I have no jurisdiction any longer; whether you grant it to me or not. I’m no one. I’m just another citizen now.”

“Bullshit.” He hadn’t yet taken the file. He was just staring at her.

Isuelt sighed. They argued back and forth with just their gazes for a moment. Like they used to do; communicate without a word. They were, briefly, back on the same wavelength, back in synch, back to the way they used to work together.

She caved. “I’ll…I’ll run some of the locations through the system at the Tower, try to get a sense of how many we’re dealing with and who might be leading the charge.

Cullen seemed satisfied. He leaned back and stood up. “I know you’ll figure some things out. That’s yours, by the way. It’s the unofficial investigation, already public domain.” He nodded to the file, then looked back to Isuelt. He knew she was finding this difficult. All of it. “I know you. I know you’ll figure it out.”

Swallowing, Isuelt nodded and tucked the file to her chest. “Yeah, well I can’t promise anything.”

“I know you.” He repeated poignantly.

Her crimson eyes looked down, nearly ashamed as she sighed lightly. “Okay.”

Cullen winked at her and gave her shoulder a light clap. “But whatever you find, just be smart about it, huh?” Isuelt nodded and turned for the door, sighing under her breath. She felt nearly impotent; so different than all the other times when she’d left his office with a job in front of her. “Iz?” Cullen’s voice caught her before she crossed the threshold. She turned to look at him. “I mean it. Be careful.”

Isuelt smiled softly, if not sadly. “Of course. After all, you said it, didn’t you? You know me.” She watched him nod once, slowly, to her. And after a beat, she turned to leave his office behind.

The lieutenant watched her go, perhaps more worried than he usually was about her in the past. To him, Isuelt seemed a shell of her former self. She had no Scathachian backup, no formal Watch backup. There was definitely something going on with her, but he was too polite these days to bring it up. Still, the very color of her eyes was way off and he was immediately regretting his decision to share this information with her.

[Issy]

For the past few days Isuelt had been going over the paperwork Cullen had given her; shuffling through reports and mapping out locations of sightings for Bhallite graffiti on Batten’s projections of the city, seeing if they created any sort of a pattern. She’d seen none, nor was there any correlation in a timing pattern as far as she could tell. Isuelt figured she’d just get out in the city, like she used to, and see what she could see. After all, that was what she was trained to do, what she had done in this city for almost a decade before becoming more ‘domesticated’ as Cullen liked to put it. The weather wasn’t the best for midnight strolls, so it was perfect for what she wanted to do. There’d be less traffic out, less casual passers by, less lovers walking in the park, less rabble causing unrelated trouble. Less to sift through. Isuelt was dressed not totally unlike her old patrolling days: black leather pants, knee-high boots and a black leather coat. She didn’t, however, have any blades at her sides to sway with her pace, nor a crimson sash to cinch her waist. She wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all herself. She knew she was no longer a Scathachian. Well, on the outside anyway. This was not an incarnation of the age-old rivalry between Bhaalite and Scathachian; it was not a battle for the balance of the plane. This was simply a curious, if not worried do-gooder trying to head off a dangerous situation before it gained too much steam.

Cullen’s reports clustered most of the Bhaalite activity in Old Temple, but there were other sightings in Dockside as well as Old Market. Tonight saw Isuelt’s black leather-clad form walking the streets in the old WestEnd, Dockside. She knew that most of the sightings were in the sewers and connection tunnels beneath the city. But she also knew what truly lurked down there and without backup, there was no way she was going down there alone. Even she wasn’t that stupid…or suicidal.

Though her fingers were encased in leather gloves, they still remained in her pockets as she made slow, long strides through back alleys and smaller streets that led away from the docks. Her eyes weren’t much luck in blackened backstreets, but she had a bit of Batten technology aiding her search. Heat signatures and paint anomalies along the edifices were being searched for. Isuelt knew where most of the sewer and tunnel exits were and that was where she was going to start. After all, if members of the Temple of Bhaal were marking up the walls below the city, they’d have to surface somewhere. One of the larger sewer grates that led to the labyrinthian tunnel system beneath Rhydin was not far from the Dockside Baronial manor, just south of Kabuki Street. Isuelt chose there to begin her search for the evening. She heard the far off Old Temple clock chime half past one and marked the time in order to check in with DIANA. Even if she didn’t have the backup she was used to, DIANA would be enough to keep her whereabouts and vitals logged if something went south. There was a freedom in that; feeling like whatever you did or wherever you went, there was a safety net beneath you. Folks used to call Ranger, Zulu and Spartan “foolhardy” or that they must have had a “death wish.” Isuelt was finally able to understand that they weren’t any of those things, they just had faith in a strong safety net with the potential to pull them out of whatever they could put themselves into.

Isuelt looked at her watch and then tapped her ear before speaking quietly, “One thirty-three am. Positioning coordinates 43.4314° N, 96.6973° W, Diana. Going silent for a bit. Continue to log vitals and position.”

“Data received. Request registered, Nails.” DIANA’s voice cooed into her earpiece as Isuelt nodded and tapped her ear one last time.

Isuelt then turned and walked down the narrow passage between a tavern and what she assumed was someone’s residence because she could hear arguing and kids crying from the windows above. Sighing, she kept going because she wasn’t here to settle any domestic disputes, as much as she might want to. Before long and before she could find the definite end to the building, the sound died away and she came upon a small courtyard of sorts where the passageway opened up. Isuelt’s eyes looked down at the sewer grate that was positioned in the middle of it. She knew that this was one of the ways down to the once well-used tunnels of the Rhydinian aqueduct. She also knew that the stone edifice of one of the buildings in this area had been tagged with the skeletal head of the Temple of Bhaal. While she looked around for the graffiti, she followed the passageway further away from the grate.

“Where are you, you bastard…” Isuelt whispered to herself as her eyes combed the brick walls in the darkness looking for the skeletal ram’s head. She spotted a bit of reflection from the wall further down that struck her as odd. Her long legs moved a bit faster as she strained to see in the dark. Sure enough, the reflection was from paint and she could see the familiar outline. However, as she got closer to the wall, she noticed that this graffiti was painted over. There was a second ram’s head beneath. It looked like one on top of the other, and the second one… Isuelt reached out a gloved finger to touch the bottom part of the picture; the mandible, it was still dripping. “Fresh…why?” Why would someone paint two symbols of the Temple nearly over one another. Not quite a perfect overlap, more of a echoed image. “Why…” her voice wasn’t even a whisper, it was almost a mouthed word. Her thoughts were running around, trying to piece together different hypotheses and ideas.

The only thing that cut through her pensive state was the sound of metal clunking. The sewer grate. Isuelt’s head snapped back to look down the passageway. Someone had moved the grate. Was is someone coming or someone going? Isuelt thought the latter as she raced back to inspect the grate. It was in place, but she knew that the sound had come from it. Someone was down there. Was it the same someone who was responsible for the Bhaalite graffiti just now? Or was it simply a homeless person seeking shelter from the cold? Isuelt exhaled a long sigh as she stared down at the metal bars on the grate, knowing what she had to do. After a minute, she begrudgingly made her decision. “Damnit…” Her hands reached out and pulled at the grate, nudging it aside to reveal the metal rungs that acted like a ladder to the barrel section of the tunnel below. Another sigh and she was heading down into the sewers, careful to pull the grate back into place as she descended.

Her boot heels hit the concrete of the tunnel without a splash. This tunnel was dry. She was thankful for small favors. However, without the sound of water or splashing, it would be harder to track whoever had come down this way. Isuelt took one last look up at the grate that was the gateway back to the streets of the city and sighed, hoping this was not the last time she’d be topside. Drawing a deep breath, as if she were going underwater, Isuelt’s gaze then leveled back down the long tunnel ahead of her. First to the left, then to the right. There was no telling which way she should go, so she just picked one. After all, if she was destined to die down here, it really didn’t matter which way she chose.

[Issy]

The sound of Isuelt's footfalls had been droning on as background noise for so long that she had lost her direction. Twice. She'd forgotten how easily turned around one could become in the labyrinthian maze that lay beneath the city. On the positive side, she'd yet to see any graffiti or activity that suggested that Temple Bhaal had landed full-force onto Rhydin. She knew that Cullen was no liar, in fact, he'd consistently been one of the most honest men she'd ever met. Maybe the Temple was realizing their mistake? Maybe they felt too exposed, too out in the open? After all, the Scathachians had held this city for over a decade; did they really want to come in and make such a splash where they were sure to be infamous? Crime had been on a slight rise in this sector of the city, but it wasn't really anything front page worthy. Rhydin, like all similar hub cities, had its share of troubles and those troubles waxed and waned naturally over time.

Isuelt was philosophising on criminal activity patterns when she heard something. Her feet stopped their droning steps as she listened. There was a distant dripping that rhythmically echoed through the tunnel, but nothing further. Isuelt let out a disappointed sigh. Though the emotion didn't reside for long. She heard it again: a muffled voice and some quick-paced footsteps, then quiet again. It sounded as if it were a ways off, but she was nearly positive it came from up ahead. Isuelt quickened her pace and tried to silence her boot falls as much as possible. She was again, thankful for the lack of water in this corridor. The voices started up again and she could only make out a word here and there.

"...drop off..."

"...sewer..."

"...paint..."

"...Watch..."

Isuelt's ears perked up, she slowed her steps to concentrate on the voices better.

"...and I don't want to fucking cops up in here figuring this shit out, either. It's none of their business anyway..."

Isuelt's brows lowered as she picked up the pace a bit. Whoever they were, it was clear they were up to no good. She knew she owed Cullen a few favors, so she wanted to cash in on one here.

"...they are so stupid, they don't even realize that what we do pays their fucking salaries. Without what we do, no one in this city would know what hit 'em..."

"The economy would come to a standstill. And they wouldn't even know why."

Then laughter; Isuelt used that moment to close the distance as she came upon a four-way intersection. She paused there, pushing her back up against the wall and trying to peer around the corner. She saw three shadows moving independently, they had a light source brighter than any civic lighting or anything that she had on her from Batten. At least she could hear more clearly from this position.

"Just set it up here and then we can take the next load another day. Arawn's gonna want to see the progress of today. He's got some sort of plan for the rest of it somewhere else."

"Oh yeah? What?"

"I don't ask questions, shithead. The guy looks like a fucking demon. You wanna argue with that? No thank you!"

Laughter from the other two, if not nervously.

"Anyway, let's finish up and get the hell outta here. I hate it down here. Gives me the creeps."

There was movement and then silence. Isuelt looked further around the corner as the shadows disappeared, as well as their light source. There was no one left in the corridor. Where had they gone so quickly? Was this even the right path? Isuelt looked back the other way, wondering if her ears and the accoustics had played tricks on her. She would have bet that they did save for the pair of wooden crates in the hallway. Isuelt moved to them, ever and overly cautious. The wood was warm, they had not been down here long. This was the corridor where the trio had been. What was in the crates? And who was this Arawn? The name stuck out the Isuelt; her brow wrinkled. She felt she had heard that name before...but where?