It never took long for the Lamia Fang Hazard to make Tessa stop caring about the world around her as the alcoholic haze settled in and began clouding her mind.

It was the only thing she had found that stopped the nightmares that frequented her sleeping hours and let her sleep with ease.

It was the only thing that shut up the nagging voice in her head trying to guide her away from how she was and tried to tell her she could be something better if she just gave life a chance.

Wandering the streets for how long she could not tell, the world had become a mixture of colors and not much else.

Part of her knew she had passed by people but didn't know who they were, nor did she care.

Part of her knew she had gone down several streets and alleys but they had all just become a blur.

Most of all why she loved the drink? It helped her forget about everything that was bothering her for a time and let her just exist.

In the end all she could remember after leaving the Pseudo Faux Bar was waking up from a horrific nightmare. The exact same nightmare Dusa had woken her up from the night before drenched in sweat laying on a mound of pillows and blankets.

That was when the after effects of the drink finally struck her waking mind.

All of the things she had been worrying about prior to drinking the Lamia Fang Hazard were magnified several fold leaving her shaking in place.

As she sat there shaking, the feelings of distrust she normally felt grew.

She couldn’t fight back against the fact she was so terribly alone and didn’t know what to do with her life.

All the hateful things that others had said about her throughout the past months all came echoing back into her head as she rocked back and forth holding her knees.

"You’re worthless.”

Tears rolled down Tessa’s cheek as her own thoughts echoed back at the voices in her head. “I know.”

“You have worth…”

“How can someone be so pathetic?”

“I don’t know…”

“You aren’t.”

“Why are you even alive?”

“I shouldn’t be…”

“You should be.”

“You’d be better off dead.”

“I would be…”

‘They’re wrong.’

“You're going to die alone.”

"I know..."

"You have people that care about you like Dusa."

“You’re useless Tess, you should just go die already!”

Raising both hands to her throat, they wrapped around it tightly. The thoughts echoing in her head pushing her onward as the tears rolled down her cheeks as she kept shaking.

Before she could attempt to squeeze the life from herself that annoying voice spoke up overshadowing her own thoughts and the other voices echoing in her mind.

“Live, Lady Tessa’Drethil. you have more worth than those people will ever know.”

Stopping in place, she began lowering her hands. Slumping back down against the pillows panting, she caught her breath looking up at the brick ceiling of her home while wiping away the tears from her eyes. “You really won’t leave me alone and just let me die will you?”

The only thing that answered back at her question was her own voice followed by utter silence.

Gritting her teeth, Tessa let out an anguished sigh clutching her arms around herself rubbing along her upper arms unable to stop herself from shaking. "Fuck...why do I keep doing this to myself?” Lowering her arms she let out one last sigh before deciding to get up.

Tessa breathed a sigh of relief to find out that the new drink Dusa had given her had done away with the headache that normally followed having the Lamia Fang Hazard. The other side effects of the drink however were still echoing through her mind leaving her unable to think on anything else as all her feelings of self worth dwindled in its wake.

Rubbing at her cheeks trying to shake off the feeling, she looked around her little home hidden away within the sewers beneath the City to see if anything was out of place.

There really wasn't much to the little hole in the wall she called home, though it looked to have no obvious entrance. Aside from the mound of blankets and pillows she had just been sleeping on there were several mounds of clothes in varying states of disrepair covering the floor in multiple places.

The only other things within the room was a small supply of food and water hidden beneath a blanket and a table beside her makeshift bed holding only a brush, a small pocket mirror and her sewing kit.

Tilting her head, Tessa’s eyes went wide as they fell across the table, her body freezing in place. The breath caught in her throat upon seeing her sewing supplies that had been on the table the night before now strewn across the floor.

Thoughts filled her mind of all the things that could have happened. “Did I do this? Or did someone manage to find my home? Did they take anything? Did it happen while I was asleep and I didn’t wake up to it? Did it happen before you came home?! What were they after? Did they wait until you left to leave?! Or did they leave after you fell asleep? C’mon Tess, this is the last place you can call home, think…think!”

Tessa breathed a sigh of relief to see everything else she owned still right where they belonged. “I guess I must have knocked them off when I came in last night…” Picking the sewing supplies back up off the floor she put them back into the kit properly.

Standing up, she lowered her hands to her hips, a soft sigh escaping her lips. She began bundling the length of her robe up one finger width at a time before raising it over her head and tossing it into one of the dirtier looking piles leaving her standing there completely nude.

Bending back down, she rummaged through the nearest pile of clothes. “What should I wear today?” Wrinkling her nose, she caught a whiff of vomit on a blouse she picked up tossing it over into the same pile her robe had gone into. “I guess a better question to ask myself is…just what is actually clean enough to wear?”

Moving to another of the mounds of clothing, she found a set of clean underwear donning them without any particular haste. As she continued to sort and look through the other piles she somehow managed to pull out several articles of clothing that looked almost new. She chose to wear a black hoodie, black thigh high stockings and similarly colored shorts that hid under the length of the hoodie before finally slipping her feet into a pair of slip on black shoes. "I guess this will do."

Lifting a hand up into her hair, Tessa blew her breath audibly out past her lips while raising the hair away from her eyes. "What was it I needed to do again today?” She paused for a moment trying to think.

As the fear subsided of having her home potentially stolen away just like all the others had been, the feelings of worthlessness began eating away at her mind once more making it impossible to think of just what she might have planned the day prior.

She let out a depressed sigh rubbing at her face trying to shake off the feeling once more. “I guess it doesn't really matter in the end what I do, every day ends pretty much the same anyway."

Picking up her brush, Tessa went about fixing her hair while waiting for the worst of the shakes to subside. Looking at her reflection in the small handheld mirror on the table she set the brush back down beside it as the worst of it began to subside. “Alright Tessa, you can do this. You just gotta take it one step at a time and you’ll be fine.” The look held within her eyes told a much different story than that which she was trying to convince herself with words.

Moving towards the entrance of her small little home she did her best to ignore the anxiety building within her heart once more before she succumbed to the urge to sit in her home and hide away from the world as she was so often prone to doing.

As her hand came to touch what looked like a solid wall it shimmered at the touch. The illusion fading as the wall began to look more like a piece of cloth rather than solid stone as she passed underneath it. Looking back upon it for a moment, the shimmering of the material soon stopped as it came to look like a solid wall once more.

Tessa had always been a little amazed by it, she didn’t know how it had come to conceal her home but it had been longer than she had called this place home. All she knew was that one night she had been drinking at Dusa's bar just like any other night; the next she had woken up down here in the sewers with this new place to call home, concealed by magic hiding it from everyone's gaze but her own.

Turning to leave, Tessa’s gaze was drawn upwards to the sun shining down upon her through the sewer grates. With a soft sigh, she shoved her hands down into her hoodie’s pockets and took a few steps forward, her eyes still gazing upwards, lost as she stared into the light.

Without warning, she went ass over tea kettle tripping over something unseen. “Oh shiiiit!”

Rolling over herself head over heels repeatedly, she managed to pull her hands out of her pockets and catch herself before falling into the murky sewer water below. “Oh Adishesha…that was close!”

Using the wall as support Tessa raised herself back to a standing position. Her eyes flicked wildly as she looked over her shoulder wondering just what it was she had tripped over.

There was an elven woman collapsed against the wall with a bloody spot on the top of her scalp and bruises covering her body. The wound on her head had bled its way down onto the left side of her face, matting her white hair against her cheek.

“Ah fuck…” Letting out a sigh of relief, she walked up beside the unconscious elven woman slumping to the cement floor. Tessa’s ears wilted as all the tension she had been feeling left her body. 

Tessa’s gaze fell back onto the elven woman as she sat spread legged, her arms resting on her knees. "You scared the hell out of me ya know? What in Adishesha's name are you doing here? Better yet, who the hell are you?"

Tessa’s ears wilted further as a stray thought came to mind. "Shit. I didn't do that to you…did I?”

She couldn’t be sure if it was her own thought, or that voice she sometimes heard echoing through her head as it echoed the sentiment she had just spoken aloud at the exact same time. “...Did you?”