[NoR] - [25] – [IK06] – Flailing Madly

The sewer smells exactly like the worst possible thing you can think of. Grime and sludge are pressed into every crack and corner, lichens devouring the stone roof. An overwhelming sense of recycled vitality makes the place perfect for Golgari ideals. You contemplate the gardener as you plod towards what you hope is his home, a path finally feeling your feet after what felt like days of travel. You barely recall your ‘visit’ and your renewed sense of purpose, while the name they had called you bounces around your mind, vainly seeking something to corroborate. It finds nothing but dead ends and broken connections.

My name is Korr. Inquisitor Korr.

Countless images of evaluations, debriefings, and complete strangers verify this evident fact. A vague emptiness leaves you contemplating the night you were saved by that old man. The tenement was appreciated, but why wouldn’t he take you to your own home?

You wonder where your home is. You get the distinct impression that the statue from your dreams is tied to it somehow. The same statue that predicted the gardener’s turn of phrase.

Why would a statue speak to me?

You feel a sudden presence in the general direction of your goal. It is faint, but feels familiar. It serves only to spur you further, promising even more answers.

But what do I ask?

Your mind offers a cascade of options. Who is Razel? How do you know him? What does he have to do with me? Why did you mistake me for him? Why is my memory-?

Your train of thought derails. An epiphany illuminates you.

The old man!

Of course! The old man who ‘saved’ you. The old man that lied to you. The old man that disappeared from the hallway.

He must be involved.

Your focus shifts to the recollection of that night. You run the entire event through your head, sifting for something that could help. The day is nonexistent before you woke up on the floor with the old man craning over you. You remember a fierce pain in your head. You recall him calling to you, and brushing dew from the back of your head.

Dew…?

He left rather quickly. Somehow he passed the object in your hall without noticing it.

Unless he made it.

But how? For that matter, what was the thing? Did it consume him?

You begin to suspect that none of what he told you was true to any degree. You file away a mental note to inquire with the residential administrator as to the circumstances surrounding your new tenement. The old man may not have lied about your incurred debt, but the reasoning was certainly under question.

A splash in the tributary snaps you out of your trance. A gator stares back at you, the corpse of a large rat floating on either side of the jaw that has claimed it. With another splash it disappears beneath the water, taking its prize with it. Ripples spread through the stagnant stream.

You resume your hike, comparing the ripples to your own circumstance. It seems that once you awoke, things went downhill. Every attempt to solve your problem has only failed and raised more questions. Two different individuals, both quite skilled at their craft, failed to fix it. In fact, the second one flat out told you it wasn’t possible.

Liar.

You aren’t sure that you agree with your own opinion. He held no reason to lie to you, as anything he wished you to forget he could have simply removed after the fact. You’re not even sure he didn’t do exactly that. Your confidence in your own recollection is practically non-existent. You try to deny it, but with no faith in your own mind you can’t say for certain that you know anything.

Can’t go down that path.

You’re right, of course. The only hope you have for resolution relies on maintaining your composure. Like it or not, you must place faith in your own memories, or at least what is left of them. You flash to your nights with Myra, the image of her look of concern calming you somewhat.

It’s good to know that there are some people that seem to care.

The Pontiff seemed to care. You can’t bring yourself to refer to him by name, though. Too long had he simply been ‘Your grace’ or ‘Sir’. He had taken you in from the streets, sending you on your first assignments and indebting you to the Obzedat.

His commentary regarding your plight was vague. He should have been your first clue that the old man had lied to you. The Pontiff made a habit of keeping abreast of recent events, and if he hadn’t heard of the festival, it hadn’t happened. This should have been obvious to you, but your compromised state stopped you from seeing it.

You wonder what other things you might have missed these past few days. Somehow, even with the failure at the bar, you managed to catch on to Myra’s hinting. Was it because you had shut yourself down? Was it a longing for companionship? Or was it something else? Something you had denied for years, but inevitably couldn’t refuse?

How has the loneliness not affected me before now?

Aside from your associates within the guild, you can’t recall any sort of social interaction outside of your duties. To complicate the issue, you can’t remember anything outside of your duties…at all. It’s as if you only exist as the Inquisitor, with no life beyond it. You try to remember anything that can dispel the thought, but nothing comes to mind. The quest to restore your mental state was the only non-business you had ever conducted that you can recall. You know you aren’t on duty full-time, so the gaping holes in your own timeline are worrisome, adding to your already considerable plate of complications.

You see ahead a skeleton pinned to the wall by a sword driven through its chest and into the wall. You stop in front of it, looking the bones over. The skull fascinates you. Echoes of an empty memory throb within you, and you reach out to run your fingers across the teeth. You look the unfortunate soul eye-to-eye. You once again remember the old man, and how he stood precisely your height.

Conspicuous.

You aren’t exactly a short individual, and you can’t recall too many members of your guild that can stand at your level. Yet another sign you missed. This old man seems to be at the core of everything happening to you. All of your thoughts return to him and his falsehood. An idea begins to form.

The old man…did this?

Your brain throbs forcibly against your skull when you recall the pain of waking on the floor. The dew you wiped from the back of your head. It would make sense. It explains perfectly why he needed to lie to you, as well as giving him a reason to flee.

But why? Why me? What did I get involved in?

You doubt you would be able to remember if you tried. If you had done something to offend the old man, he probably would have removed that as well as the rest of your missing memories. You feel as though everyone else is better informed on what is happening to you than you are. You feel confident it isn’t some grand conspiracy between the Pontiff, the Excisor, Myra, the old man, and the Gardener.

The old man and the Gardener…

Razel…

Your thoughts kick into overdrive as you wonder something that could threaten to illuminate the shadows of your mind.

The old man…is Razel?

A lightning chain of possibilities connect in a flash, stringing your logic along with it. If the old man is Razel, then that means that the Gardener knows him. The Gardener mistook you for him, which would make sense – from behind, he may only have seen an Orzhov agent of similar size.

Except…he saw my face. He looked right at me and kept going, unaware that I wasn’t Razel.

How would you explain your dream, then? How can you hear a name in the ether before you are addressed by it in the material? Stranger things happened to you on a regular basis, but prophecy was something you can’t recall having exhibited before now. Another possibility comes to you.

Is the dream…not a dream? Is the statue just an avatar?

An avatar of what, though? And if it referred to you as Razel, it also had obvious relation to him. Your idea that the statue was involved with your home only muddled you further. You now find parallels to Razel and your nebulous ‘home’. Each revelation reinforced the importance of that name. Somehow, it was tied to you in a way you couldn’t fathom.

…am I Razel?

Dipping back into a mistrust of your own mind, you humor the thought. What if you are Razel? This still leaves the question of why those who referred to you by it would then stop, suddenly. The statue did it, simply stopping and leaving your mind. The Gardener did it, albeit after implying…that…

For the first time in the past week, you know something with certainty.

I…am Razel.

It sounds right. It feels right. It neatly fills a void in your mind, like a piece of a puzzle dropped into place. Your name, in full, is Razel Korr. The initial burst of joy at your revelation fades as you follow to the next logical conclusion.

If I am Razel, who is the old man?

You again think on the Gardener’s words. He said something…something about…

“I didn’t expect you to actually go through with THAT part of the suggestion.”

Suggestion? What suggestion?

“I mistook you for someone else.”

He didn’t want you to know. Tried to hand wave it away. The conspiracy bubbles back up, now tied between the old man, the Gardener…and yourself. Did you request that your memories be tampered with? Did you find something so terrible that you had to force yourself to forget?

Why remove so much else, then?

Despite your gains in knowledge, the theme of answers spawning questions continues. You have answered one very important question and in doing so, raised a thousand more. Frustration threatens to tear you apart, instead escaping through a bellow into the sewers. You vent your displeasure loudly, kicking any debris at your feet as you throw your tantrum. After a moment you stop, breathing heavily and glaring down the tunnel. Grumbling to yourself, you continue on.

You begin to wonder what will happen when you locate the Gardener. Obviously you will do what you do best – Inquire. The questions that clutter your mind are disorganized, but you feel you will know what to ask and when to ask it. Your instincts, more often than not, serve you well.

Except for whatever initiated this whole affair.

The adrenaline begins to flow, making you tremble slightly as you contemplate the confrontation. Will it devolve to violence? You hope not. There is no reason for it, unless…there is a reason for it. Which you can’t be sure of, since you are still unaware of why this has happened. This line of thought serves only to make you more anxious, bringing more severe tremors. You shake like a cold, wet animal. You spy the grating at the end of the tunnel, along with the alcove beside it containing an ancient door. You lean against the wall, breathing deeply and trying to calm your nerves. Once you have brought yourself under a semblance of control, you approach the residence.

A pair of voices are loudly conversing within. Their muffled speech prevents you from making out individual words, but you recognize one of the voices as belonging to the Gardener. The other voice sounds as though you should know it well. They are lightheartedly bantering, even if it seems like his guest isn’t exactly happy with him. The tremors return, albeit subdued this time. You breathe deep, stopping just in front of the door and raising your hand and rapping three times. The speech stops, with only a quiet something from the guest followed by footsteps. You hold your breath as they slow to a stop, the handles creaking as the door is slowly pried open.