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Karsh Kentu sighed as he slunk lower in the bath, letting the steam work the cake out of his skin. This was his third run through and the first without cake dripping from him.
He was lost in mild thought, mostly about Abilene's ghostly appearance into the middle of the party. The guests, for their credit, waited for a few seconds before screaming and running. Karsh Kentu had asked Abilene, "What.. I... Did?" before grasping his head in his hands and letting out an anguished howl. When he looked up, Abilene, Arselen, Lady Bouvredi, and a handful of servants were left. Other than that, the hall had been empty.
Now he was relaxing. Or thought he was....
"Are you still angry with me?" came a voice that was rapidly taking on the essence of a curse. Karsh Kentu jumped and started reaching for anything to cover with. His gyrations were more successful in removing water from the tub rather than getting his hands closer to his towels..
"Modesty, modesty. It's not anything I haven't seen before...." Abilene took on a motherly tone. Karsh Kentu froze still and looked at her with a look only seen by parents when they're embarrassing the children.
Somehow, he got out of the tub and into his towel only to be accosted by the door opening and another intruder came into his sanctuary.
"Karsh, what are you doing in that towel? You're needed in the conference room." Arselen said from next to Abilene. Instinctively, his hands went to his face as a low howl started to escape his throat. He wondered what his blood pressure was irrelevantly......
In the conference room, the four dignitaries heard a high keening sound followed quickly by a loud yell... and they were on the other side of the keep.
"Umm.. you dropped your towel." someone, one of the two seemingly innocent yet demonic women, giggled. The door shut and he was alone. He opened his eyes and sighed. Then growled.
At least he still had his sword. He pinned his towel around his waist and charged down the halls after them with his sword over his head and bellowing.
"Give me back my clothes!"

The dignitaries asked the Studor if they were correct in thinking they saw a half dressed man with a sword chasing two hysterically laughing women with clothes in their hands past the doors...


The shouting was deafening. The recipients of the shouting were shifting on their feet and looking guilty. The bellowing person had great reason to be shouting. It was his job to maintain order in the keep. And these three seemed bent on making that job as impossible as it could get... Karsh Kentu was disheveled. His hair was a mess, his clothes even worse. He looked like he'd had a whole horde of Norkell hopped over him. The tray wrapped around the upper portion of his back told part of the tale.. the smoke rising off of him told the rest.
Arselen had small holes burned into her dress, both top and bottom. Somehow she seemed to have gotten a plant tangled in her hair. And everything else.
Abilene, if it was possible, looked worse than the other two. If it was possible for a ghost to look worse than the previous two sorry looking people. She looked absolutely tortured. Her nails looked chipped and broken. Her hair was woolly and wild. Her clothes were torn and tattered. She was daubing at something on Arselen's cheek..

And so it was that Rathe Kar, Captain of the Guard got a chance to scream his heart out to three members of The Most Unappreciative Audience EVER. He paced, he swore, he threw things, he jumped up and down, he smashed things, he pointed and made stabbing motions, he turned purple with veins sticking out all over his forehead. And that was all in the first three seconds.
"....And then you three fall over the balcony directly into the laps of the visiting countess of H'ri Bick with you-" pointing at Karsh Kentu, "flashing her and her escorting ladies with your towel half hanging there. And that Da-" Arselen coughed, "sword of yours almost skewering Bentold before he could move! You did that on purpose!"
He turned his fury to the Queen. More angry with her than anyone else, if that were possible.
"And you! If you weren't Queen, and you weren't my half-sister!, I'd turn you over my knee and make you wish that plant was the worst of your worries!" All three perps were gesturing and hemming, hawing, and saying fragments of words. Rathe kept going.
"I'm disappointed in you! You of all people know how to comport yourself, and you resort to grappling with half dressed men like children! And you broke that table in front of the delegates from Zhithrik!"
"Karsh Kentu landed on me!" Arselen protested.
"Abilene pushed me!" Karsh said, looking at the ghost.
"He bit me." Abilene said with a straight face, "See?" She held out one finger for inspection. Rathe didn't buy it.
"Youre a ghost! What can he possibly do to you?"
"He can throw lightning." she added in her defense.
"You started it, you set me on fire!" Karsh offered. He was right, she had set him on fire first. Not that it did anything to him. Rathe swore the man was made of stone, or undead. The latter was probably the more likely....
He shook his head, my how they could confuse a body when one was trying to get a good yelling out.
"And how did those holes get burned into your clothes, dear sister?" he asked sweetly, trying not to sound like he was changing the subject.
Arselen looked down at some of the larger, more revealing holes and singe marks, "Oh my." She looked over at Karsh Kentu, who in turn pointed at Abilene.
"She cheated. She didn't stay solid after setting me alight." Rathe could see it now, lightning going through a ghost to make one nice expensive formal dress become something out of a barmaids' closet..... he tried to shake the humor of it out of his head and failed.
"I hate to ask.. but just how did that tray become lodged on your back? Hmm?" He was rocking on his heels now.
"What tray?" the one that's attached to my back you mean? Why no, I have no idea how that got there...
Rathe grabbed it, and with some effort, pulled it into view. Karsh Kentu looked surprised.
"That crinkling sound was a tray?"
Remind me to take a long vacation away from here, the Eternal preserve me if I make it through this day...Rathe was really trying to keep himself together. But since he had pages of complaints and reports, and outright gratitude from some, about the ongoing 'sibling rivalry and outright terror' activities of these three... He was lucky to keep his head from spinning. He needed a drink.
"Go. Just get out of my office, and don't make me drag you three back in here again, especially you, Abilene. For someone who was a Queen herself, you act rather..." He couldn't think of a word to mean what he wanted to say. Abilene should have been born a man.
40,853 posted on 11/11/2004 6:36:56 PM PST by Darksheare (Personality shattered and horribly twisted, the humor flows out through the cracks.)
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To: Darksheare

You certainly can plot more zippily than Tom and Bill, although even they get to the point more quickly than Anoreth does!


40,856 posted on 11/11/2004 6:46:46 PM PST by Tax-chick (First we had all the money, then we got all the votes, now we have all the fun!)
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