In the dark he rose in quiet, dreams slipping away from his skin, both his throat and lips parched. His vision was hazy at the edges and the madness receded with a brevity of it’s own. The Poison Master pulled himself up from the stool he was awkwardly collapses over and his mind felt frayed like the ends of a rope. The dream made little sense, yet there was something buried in it for sure. A sort of careening brilliance that was quickly being swallowed by the mire of the waking world.

The woman in orange was caught there in the quiet spaces of his mind and he in his clock-work tower felt some sort of strange pull towards this person he knew nothing about. Nothing more than a feeling and a broken one at that, there was no other connection and he could not even be sure of his haze inspired description of her that was quickly slipping through his fingers. Each word was a lost art now, and he could be sure of very little but the how. Each poison left it’s mark upon the makers flesh as each poison must be tested to be certain of it’s properties. Many poisoners died in the pursuit of their art, yet the ones who survived and endured became masters.

Quickly he reached for a set of vials and downed all but one of them. He had not felt the need or the symptoms of stagnation setting in and so he avoided taking that particular serum. He did however feel a sense of his mind slipping away and the tingling in his appendages, particularly his hands and feet. There was a deep sadness building inside his chest too and a peculiar pressure rising quickly through his slugging frame. The sensations slowly began to cease with each vial consumed until at last he felt the semblance of himself.

Across the room the mirror did very little to assure him that he was all there still. However, he had grown increasingly accustomed to his self changing in unexpected ways due to exposure to any number of toxic compounds and venoms. He looked down at his left arm which was half mechanical, some form of nanotech and his body had numerous filters installed at different places. Each one had been installed when a part of himself gave up and collapsed in pursuit of his art. His head felt light and a vision of the lady in orange passed across his mind like the petals of a flower falling onto the surface of a still pond. A ripple at a time he remembered fleeting moments that left just as soon as they came.

There were feathers. Liquored words and sweet sharp strokes. There were images captured in the lens of the eyes and stored somewhere in the confines of the mind. Darkness bubbled up from iridescent liquid and the tip of a fountain pen scrawled in deep strokes words he could not read, in a language that was surely all but dead. His mind focused for a bit and he could make out almost the cover of the book that the words were in. Then his mind slipped again and dragged him down the corridors of a maze against his will and slammed him into a wall. There was a meadow and flowers, the fresh dew of morning dripping from long