Pains Of The Mind

Black hair and ebony eyes, a cleft chin and sun-bronzed skin, he is no denizen of mine. He shoves his way through the teeming lanes of the Lower Ward, both arms wrapped around that enormous amphora he carries and no hand free for his sword. He wears the bronze armor of Thrassos, with no cape to protect against the acid haze that always hangs in this part of the city. From his belt dangles a purse, fat and naked, just daring some fingersmith to ply his trade. The gray-swaddled crowd swirls around him with scarcely a stare; with Abyssal fiends and celestial seraphim walking the streets, they have better things to heed than wide-eyed pilgrims too naive to hide their coin.

A clever disguise, but I know that Thrasson for a Hunter. Those ebony eyes can see through my thickest granite walls, and that long aquiline nose can smell a drop of blood at a hundred paces. Those ears-small and shaped like shells, in the human fashion – those ugly little ears can hear a hiss of pain in the next ward. He has one of those long forked tongues that can taste the fear of those who have. looked upon my face. And if the Thrasson presses his hands to the cobblestones, he can feel the coldness of my passing. I know he can.

In Sigil, the Lady of Pain always knows. I hear all the lies whispered into all the tepid ears in the dark bedchambers of all the great manors. I see every hand that slips into an open pocket on every bustling street, and I feel the dagger that bums in the belly of every trusting fool who ever followed a glitter girl into a dark alley. No longer can I tell where Sigil begins and I end; no longer can I separate what I perceive from what the city is. I am Sigil.

(In a dreary room where sick men slake their secret fevers, a yellow-bruised girl climbs naked from the zombie pit. She opens her palm and walks the aisles and does not cringe when the hot hands caress her thighs. She lives the best way she can; in Sigil, the noblest act is to survive.)