Post by lucien on Mar 13, 2010 0:19:40 GMT -5
For a moment after Leralynn was done absorbing the sins of a man half-forged in hell, the mortal woman responsible for the act kept everyone -- onlookers, concerned parents, Kaine -- away from the girl, whose eyes had changed yet again from Jolie's own pale peridot to a smoky black. The darkness that had dripped from Leralynn’s pores earlier was now finding an unquiet kind of half-life of its own, snaking out of her mouth and ears, lending her an octopus of extra, inky limbs, or so it seemed.
"Don't touch her." The former necromancer's words were quiet. Orange stood still, aside from a slight sway in her stance, in the manner of a person entranced. "But we must act quickly now." Before those sins had too much time to play out in the child's mind; before she truly absorbed them, and became a sineater herself. Jolie knew, all too well, the problems that could invoke for one so young. "We only need you, Shishi, now. The necromancy." But she'd never eaten a talent before. Only sins. Did that fell magic count as a sin? She had to know. "Blue, tell me-- if you didn't have to raise the dead, would you? Is it something you feel is not.. entirely right?" Her gaze was still set on Orange, a hawk's watch on the girl's demeanor. So much could go wrong...
Shishi bit at his bottom lip, making sure to not do so with his fangs as he watched the new change in his daughter. Absolutely helpless to do anything for her after he's ordered not to touch the girl. At least, he thinks, the scarf he had wrapped around her neck is keeping her sane by keeping those shadowy voices out of her mind for this extended period of time, but if those sins are allowed to remain in Orange for too long he fears any damage prevented by the scarf will become something of a moot point. So it is with a kind of concerned, somewhat shocked look that he looks towards Jolie and informs her solemnly, "I... I can't raise the dead... I wouldn't want to."
Jolie said, "Oh." That changed things a bit. A lot. She frowned. "Hell." No time to dwell on it, however. She glanced at Shishi. "Best I get that lot out of her, quick-smart. Shi, could you stand behind her, in case she falls?" The mortal stepped in front of the apparently trancing child, speaking softly. "Leralynn? Orange? It's Auntie Jolie. Honey? Listen to me." Orange gave no response of her own, though the smoke-like wisps snaking off her skin reacted, whipping about the girl furiously. "You have to give it all to me. All of it. Right down to your toes." She hoped against hope she was heard. And that her next promise wasn't a lie. "It won't hurt a bit."
Shishi nodded quickly and moved just as swiftly the short distance to drop to one knee behind his daughter, holding his hands up, hovering near her back, still unwilling to touch Orange at Jolie's order. The girl’s breathing was becoming strained, fatigue finally setting in, she was sweating as well, but if this could be noticed through the darkness oozing out of her and floating about her form it is unsure. To Jolie Orange nodded slowly, saying merely, "I know." in response to the former sin-eater, showing the blonde girl is ready to rid herself of all these sins...
Jolie was equally solemn, her torso leaning forward toward the child, lips pursing for that first, dark inhalation. Which didn't come. Leralynn was exhaling, or rather, disgorging from her own soul the foul misdeeds of sinners, but they were simply cycling back to her, having nowhere more preferable to go than to a sineater capable of performing her duties. This wasn't Jolie. And it wasn't good. "Dammit." The single word was all she uttered, before flinching her eyes, steeling her nerve and grasping Leralynn by her upper arms. It had to be in her, somewhere, or Orange couldn't have mimicked it, right? So all she had to do was dig deep... into what had, until now, proved an empty well. Jolie tilted her neck suddenly, and then to the other side, two sharp cracks ensuing. "Let's do this." Then her face leaned in once more to Leralynn's while the former sineater attempted to feel around inside her own psyche "all the way down to her toes". At last, she closed her eyes, and opened her mouth to a fresh stream of horrors welling from that tiny mouth. And this time, it seemed they were happy flee to the alternate cage that was Joliette.
Shishi 's hands trembled slightly as he held out hope, prayed perhaps, that everything was going well enough and he wouldn't have anything to apologize to Orange about aside from a bit of hard work. Jolie growled out 'Dammit' and Blue's hopes dipped as he watched the second attempt, watched as tangible, black sin flowed from his daughter to the clan leader. Hands still stood ready to catch the blonde girl, the vampire still unsure from his perspective whether any of this was working or not...
‘But it -was- working. Jolie's heart hammered in her chest, a sensation she still wasn't used to, when it was as audible in her ears as this. A slew of grimy secrets crept over her lips, first a trickle, then a river, then an onslaught. Terra's indiscretions and dishonesties must have been a mere appetiser compared to the infernal wrongnesses perpetrated by Spawne, in his time. Jolie was not only filled, but bloated, sick on them. And as this exchange transpired, so Leralynn was emptied like a wine-skin, shedding the worst sins from her innocent frame first, then the lesser, finally the little ones that amounted to white lies. And the small girl would, indeed, fall back into her father's waiting arms when they were done. Jolie too, spilled to the ground, though with a deal more clarity of mind than the exhausted child. "Shishi...." Her words came out as an ebon cloud. "All is well." It was all she had breath for; the true sineater's talent kicking in, leaving her buckled up on the stony earth for a time. All around them, stone slotted back together, and the horrendous sound kept Jolie from slipping to unconsciousness. A groggy glance toward the unnaturally sentient building, and she added, "I gotta go in. You guys..." she paused, her expression shifting, as if she'd changed her mind mid-sentence. "You stay out here."
Shishi let the girl fall into his chest, his arms wrapping tightly around her. She struggled weakly for a second before realizing it was her father holding onto her. She wouldn't let tired stolen eyes shut just yet, asking weakly, "Did I-...?" and being cut off by Joliette's assurance that 'all is well.' With a content smile her eyelids shut and beneath them irises return to their normal, calm blue shade. The father's eyes dart from the girl, to Joie, back towards Terra, "Huh... Where's your brother?" he asked the barely conscious Orange, not exactly expecting a response. Then towards Jolie, "What? Are you sure?" he asked, looking a bit overwhelmed...
Jolie managed to register all these events, but quite in reverse. First, she realised that Shishi needed assurance, and then that he was asking about Yellow, and she glanced around in a kind of vague slow motion, under-water way. Not seeing the boy anywhere near, but instead more section of fortress clashing together, she frowned. "Yes, I'm sure. And where -is- Yellow?" She had a nasty feeling she knew. Then Leralynn's half-finished question was answered. "You did good, honey. Real good." And though she'd double over as she tried to gain her feet, as one does with severe stomach pain, albeit this an agony of the soul, she added, "If he's in there, we are best to try and get him out." Because the Pool had a penchant for taking children and never giving them back. And who knew this better than she?
~Meanwhile~
"Don't.." Pale fingers, splayed, reached to her, a gesture of his will that Caedan be plucked from the safer arms of sleep. "Stay with me." There was a hoarse desperation in his tone, an abiding misery. So many years, alone. So many, in the nothingness of the Dark. "You are my beacon." Kurgan dropped to his knees, his form shifting to that larger, more mature exterior she'd glimpsed before. "Please, don't go."
Elsewhere, a boy with tousled hair and a harlequin dog were huddled under a thick, grey blanket on the deck of the ship they were meant to be watching. Sleep, however seemed inevitable. Lids closed, and Luc wondered vaguely what his father might do to him were he caught napping on duty. As much as the idea of a roguish chewing-out displeased the lad, he couldn't help the pull of sleep's tide, and was soon washed into its depths. Head resting on Luc's ribs, Rascal whined softly and dreamed of rats that smelled like foxes and ran from the light.
Caedan kept her eyes closed for some time after the plea. The blanket pulled closer, tighter as if to possessively keep her from the Chaos Lord, and it prompted her to shrug out of it, and drag her eyes open. They were met by his as they opened. His eyes held a world within them, and a thousand lives; she couldn't look away for some time. Something outside their immediate walls shifted and groaned and she could feel the building flex as if testing its new-found freedom. "I'll stay." The words came more willingly than she would have appreciated, and she was surprised by her sudden hospitality. "Tell me a story."
Lucien-of-the-Pool, if he could properly be called by that moniker any more, sank his forehead to the chair's edge beside her knees. His 'thank you' was muffled through the upholstery, and the face he raised to her would seem more solid, less transient, for her agreement. "Story?" Shifting so he could lean an elbow to the cushion, perhaps so chill proto-flesh lightly touched against her folded leg, the once-man mused for a time, his opposite hand's fingers tugging on his lower lip. "Very well." Abandoning his lip, his fingers splayed fan-like before his eyes. "This face. I will tell you the story of the man who wore it. One of them. It's not all that exciting.." Enough, he hoped, to hold her attention. Stop her from leaving him. His hand lowered. "Have you ever visited the well, in the village south of the mage's towers, in Xalious?"
Caedan kept still until his skin started to burn against hers, then quietly tucked her other leg under her and nestled her head into the crook of her arm. Her own fingers mimicked his, tugging on her lower lip with child-like fascination until she, too, abandoned it to reach out, her fingers fitted over Kurgan's own, splayed over his face, but without flesh meeting flesh. "Yes. I've been there. I like the park."
Kurgan's dark-on-dark eyes watched the motion of her hand, his expression unreadable. His voice seemed muted, after that, softer to her ear. "When I was a boy, it was already old. Not many things were, then, but that well is so ancient, people said the first dragon fell down it when it was but a hatchling. Which is nonsense, of course, but by way of giving you the idea..." She'd feel a cold rush of air against her hand, as he moved his own; Kurgan exhaling deeply. "We were the brightest and best of the Tower's apprentices, of any in the history of the place-- and we were not one, or two, but seven, all of a like in age and ability." A shadow crossed his face, at those words, literally darkening his visage a moment before it passed. "Due to gain our full robes, any day. Full of pith and vinegar, as you can imagine. Anyway, it was summer, hot as hell itself, and we stopped by the well to cool off. Now, there was always rivalry among us; though we were friends, we were boys and fiercely competitive in every quarter. It was mostly good-natured. But this day, Lola. This day presaged the next millennium to come, and many after that. For that was the day we acknowledged one among us as mightiest, the leader, the one whom the rest would follow. His name was Einar, and he was a necromancer." Pausing, the once-man raised his head, frowning, glancing about as though something had disturbed him though there was no sound. Slowly, he set his gaze back on the auburn-tressed girl. "The day before, Gilias, the elementalist among us, had set Einar's pants on fire while he courted one of the local wenches. Einar was furious, of course, but showed nothing except mild chagrin until we came to that well, and it was Gilias' turn to lean down, take his scoop of water from the bucket which never did draw all the way up." His formerly splayed hand, larger again than the long fingers he'd worn of late, attempted to close around the much smaller psychic's. "Can you guess the nature of Einar's revenge?"
Caedan was raptly interested in the story -- more than any other she'd been told, perhaps. The ending of this one couldn't be seen. Every other ending had been revealed with a single flicker of a thought from its author long before the story was due to conclude, but this one ... this one with the mind of sentient blackness weaving its plot was unseen. His hand closed over her own, and it would be a few minutes before she felt the strange burning sensation that started as a harmless tingling. "He pushed--no." She shook her head, sending unkempt hair tumbling over her shoulders. "Too easy." Dark eyes flashed with intrigue and she stared into his own, couldn't help but think of Lucien, and shook her head again. "I can't see. He took away his girl?"
Kurgan dipped his head to the back of her hand, lips hovering over that pale skin so the cold of his breath was felt keenly as he spoke, obsidian eyes angled up to meet her own, unless she looked away again. "As I said, Einar was a necromancer. The best; he'd outstripped his tutors in Vailkrin's dark Library months before and, not knowing what to do with him, they'd sent him on to Xalious to finish his term." Kurgan's lower lip brushed across Caedan's hand, and then the once-man lifted his face to level with hers. "Now, consider the well. Unthinkably old, unfathomably deep. How many unfortunate creatures had fallen to its stony maw, over time? Fell, and drowned in its icy waters, or were broken against its rocky walls? Poor Gilias was about to find out." The ravelling building around them hushed, as if it, too, was listening. "Einar cast a spell, of far above and beyond the power of the one cast upon him in the elementalist's jape. And so, lurching up from that murky hole in their tens, first, then scores, finally hundreds, came the slimed, rotting remnants of the well's dead denizens, raised by necromancy’s art. And all the while, Einar had his hand clamped to the back of Gilias' neck, holding him face-down in the darkness."
Caedan 's eyes glittered. Very clever. Very horribly clever. What man can look at anything the same after seeing the decaying contents of a hellish graveyard? She was desperately entranced. Her eyes closed against the feel of his lips on her hand, the inevitable burning cooled only by his breath, and she opened them only when he paused in his story. "What did he do? Gilias? Did he fight back?" But the information she really sought was what Kurgan did in response; in her mind, it would explain many things. She lifted her head, propped her elbow on the pillow, and splayed her fingers across the side of her temple.
A bitter smile ensued. "He screamed." The once-man's eyes shifted, oil on oil, lending them a strange and hungry gleam while he watched her re-adjust herself. Once the psychic settled, he continued, ".. and screamed, until Jarrock - our enchanter - and I hauled Einar off, his fingers still pressed to Gilias' neck, the skeletal hands of long-dead horrors snapping away as their limbs tore free, clamped to his robe-front and sleeves. And out of the well, while we held Einar in an arm-lock and demanded he call them off, crawled bones and lumps of half-petrified flesh, animate and obedient, horrific beyond anything we knew, even with the risks we took." That inky gaze dipped, his thumb-tip tracing softly along the edge of her forefinger. "In desperation, I summoned the likeness of the cruel and savage man who was at that time the land’s Arch-Mage, possibly the only man Einar still feared in the world. And on sight of that illusion Einar let the corpses fall, a foul collapse of death that twitched and writhed long hours after they should have lain still. Nobody drank from that well for many years. Einar earned a new name, that day, one more suited to his nature. Gilias developed a fear of dark and enclosed spaces he would not overcome for centuries. I..." His rugged featured turned away from her, and Kurgan glanced about the space enclosing them. "I would eventually reap Einar's reward for thus disturbing his petty vengeance that time, and several others to come. But not for many years. And oh, the irony of..." Whatever he was to say next was never spoken, the once-man startling, releasing her hand. "What was that?"
Caedan liked, this story, mostly because it had never been told -- not like this. Not even in Tenebrae's memories, as foggy and horrific as they were, had she come across such an account. The psychic yawned into the back of a hand she pulled from Kurgan just as he released it. "Are you scared?" It was a simple question, but the way he started, she couldn't help but wonder -- to suspect -- that perhaps he held on to more than just bad memories of Einar. Maybe he still feared him as well. "Maybe someone's come to bring us dinner." The barest hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her lips, but she sobered with the realization that she was, in fact, quite hungry, and she was stuck in a building made of chaos incarnate, now without an apparent master.
It was less fear than a disturbance sensed across time and space, across the boundaries of dream. Einar.. Eldritch... was gone, sucked into the very Void he'd sought to serve with Creation's demise. It was something, someone else, a presence he could not ignore, which seeped into his awareness like cold flood-water under a door. The boy. The boy was sleeping. He could feel it-- and dreaming, too. A voice echoed in his mind, calling a name he'd only learned recently, but which applied to the very woman in the chair before him. "Caedan..." he echoed it to her, dragging himself to a stand, untangling his hand from hers with obvious reluctance. "Stay with me." He had to keep her awake, at all costs. "And I'll tell you another tale, if you wish. Many tales."
.
"Don't touch her." The former necromancer's words were quiet. Orange stood still, aside from a slight sway in her stance, in the manner of a person entranced. "But we must act quickly now." Before those sins had too much time to play out in the child's mind; before she truly absorbed them, and became a sineater herself. Jolie knew, all too well, the problems that could invoke for one so young. "We only need you, Shishi, now. The necromancy." But she'd never eaten a talent before. Only sins. Did that fell magic count as a sin? She had to know. "Blue, tell me-- if you didn't have to raise the dead, would you? Is it something you feel is not.. entirely right?" Her gaze was still set on Orange, a hawk's watch on the girl's demeanor. So much could go wrong...
Shishi bit at his bottom lip, making sure to not do so with his fangs as he watched the new change in his daughter. Absolutely helpless to do anything for her after he's ordered not to touch the girl. At least, he thinks, the scarf he had wrapped around her neck is keeping her sane by keeping those shadowy voices out of her mind for this extended period of time, but if those sins are allowed to remain in Orange for too long he fears any damage prevented by the scarf will become something of a moot point. So it is with a kind of concerned, somewhat shocked look that he looks towards Jolie and informs her solemnly, "I... I can't raise the dead... I wouldn't want to."
Jolie said, "Oh." That changed things a bit. A lot. She frowned. "Hell." No time to dwell on it, however. She glanced at Shishi. "Best I get that lot out of her, quick-smart. Shi, could you stand behind her, in case she falls?" The mortal stepped in front of the apparently trancing child, speaking softly. "Leralynn? Orange? It's Auntie Jolie. Honey? Listen to me." Orange gave no response of her own, though the smoke-like wisps snaking off her skin reacted, whipping about the girl furiously. "You have to give it all to me. All of it. Right down to your toes." She hoped against hope she was heard. And that her next promise wasn't a lie. "It won't hurt a bit."
Shishi nodded quickly and moved just as swiftly the short distance to drop to one knee behind his daughter, holding his hands up, hovering near her back, still unwilling to touch Orange at Jolie's order. The girl’s breathing was becoming strained, fatigue finally setting in, she was sweating as well, but if this could be noticed through the darkness oozing out of her and floating about her form it is unsure. To Jolie Orange nodded slowly, saying merely, "I know." in response to the former sin-eater, showing the blonde girl is ready to rid herself of all these sins...
Jolie was equally solemn, her torso leaning forward toward the child, lips pursing for that first, dark inhalation. Which didn't come. Leralynn was exhaling, or rather, disgorging from her own soul the foul misdeeds of sinners, but they were simply cycling back to her, having nowhere more preferable to go than to a sineater capable of performing her duties. This wasn't Jolie. And it wasn't good. "Dammit." The single word was all she uttered, before flinching her eyes, steeling her nerve and grasping Leralynn by her upper arms. It had to be in her, somewhere, or Orange couldn't have mimicked it, right? So all she had to do was dig deep... into what had, until now, proved an empty well. Jolie tilted her neck suddenly, and then to the other side, two sharp cracks ensuing. "Let's do this." Then her face leaned in once more to Leralynn's while the former sineater attempted to feel around inside her own psyche "all the way down to her toes". At last, she closed her eyes, and opened her mouth to a fresh stream of horrors welling from that tiny mouth. And this time, it seemed they were happy flee to the alternate cage that was Joliette.
Shishi 's hands trembled slightly as he held out hope, prayed perhaps, that everything was going well enough and he wouldn't have anything to apologize to Orange about aside from a bit of hard work. Jolie growled out 'Dammit' and Blue's hopes dipped as he watched the second attempt, watched as tangible, black sin flowed from his daughter to the clan leader. Hands still stood ready to catch the blonde girl, the vampire still unsure from his perspective whether any of this was working or not...
‘But it -was- working. Jolie's heart hammered in her chest, a sensation she still wasn't used to, when it was as audible in her ears as this. A slew of grimy secrets crept over her lips, first a trickle, then a river, then an onslaught. Terra's indiscretions and dishonesties must have been a mere appetiser compared to the infernal wrongnesses perpetrated by Spawne, in his time. Jolie was not only filled, but bloated, sick on them. And as this exchange transpired, so Leralynn was emptied like a wine-skin, shedding the worst sins from her innocent frame first, then the lesser, finally the little ones that amounted to white lies. And the small girl would, indeed, fall back into her father's waiting arms when they were done. Jolie too, spilled to the ground, though with a deal more clarity of mind than the exhausted child. "Shishi...." Her words came out as an ebon cloud. "All is well." It was all she had breath for; the true sineater's talent kicking in, leaving her buckled up on the stony earth for a time. All around them, stone slotted back together, and the horrendous sound kept Jolie from slipping to unconsciousness. A groggy glance toward the unnaturally sentient building, and she added, "I gotta go in. You guys..." she paused, her expression shifting, as if she'd changed her mind mid-sentence. "You stay out here."
Shishi let the girl fall into his chest, his arms wrapping tightly around her. She struggled weakly for a second before realizing it was her father holding onto her. She wouldn't let tired stolen eyes shut just yet, asking weakly, "Did I-...?" and being cut off by Joliette's assurance that 'all is well.' With a content smile her eyelids shut and beneath them irises return to their normal, calm blue shade. The father's eyes dart from the girl, to Joie, back towards Terra, "Huh... Where's your brother?" he asked the barely conscious Orange, not exactly expecting a response. Then towards Jolie, "What? Are you sure?" he asked, looking a bit overwhelmed...
Jolie managed to register all these events, but quite in reverse. First, she realised that Shishi needed assurance, and then that he was asking about Yellow, and she glanced around in a kind of vague slow motion, under-water way. Not seeing the boy anywhere near, but instead more section of fortress clashing together, she frowned. "Yes, I'm sure. And where -is- Yellow?" She had a nasty feeling she knew. Then Leralynn's half-finished question was answered. "You did good, honey. Real good." And though she'd double over as she tried to gain her feet, as one does with severe stomach pain, albeit this an agony of the soul, she added, "If he's in there, we are best to try and get him out." Because the Pool had a penchant for taking children and never giving them back. And who knew this better than she?
~Meanwhile~
"Don't.." Pale fingers, splayed, reached to her, a gesture of his will that Caedan be plucked from the safer arms of sleep. "Stay with me." There was a hoarse desperation in his tone, an abiding misery. So many years, alone. So many, in the nothingness of the Dark. "You are my beacon." Kurgan dropped to his knees, his form shifting to that larger, more mature exterior she'd glimpsed before. "Please, don't go."
Elsewhere, a boy with tousled hair and a harlequin dog were huddled under a thick, grey blanket on the deck of the ship they were meant to be watching. Sleep, however seemed inevitable. Lids closed, and Luc wondered vaguely what his father might do to him were he caught napping on duty. As much as the idea of a roguish chewing-out displeased the lad, he couldn't help the pull of sleep's tide, and was soon washed into its depths. Head resting on Luc's ribs, Rascal whined softly and dreamed of rats that smelled like foxes and ran from the light.
Caedan kept her eyes closed for some time after the plea. The blanket pulled closer, tighter as if to possessively keep her from the Chaos Lord, and it prompted her to shrug out of it, and drag her eyes open. They were met by his as they opened. His eyes held a world within them, and a thousand lives; she couldn't look away for some time. Something outside their immediate walls shifted and groaned and she could feel the building flex as if testing its new-found freedom. "I'll stay." The words came more willingly than she would have appreciated, and she was surprised by her sudden hospitality. "Tell me a story."
Lucien-of-the-Pool, if he could properly be called by that moniker any more, sank his forehead to the chair's edge beside her knees. His 'thank you' was muffled through the upholstery, and the face he raised to her would seem more solid, less transient, for her agreement. "Story?" Shifting so he could lean an elbow to the cushion, perhaps so chill proto-flesh lightly touched against her folded leg, the once-man mused for a time, his opposite hand's fingers tugging on his lower lip. "Very well." Abandoning his lip, his fingers splayed fan-like before his eyes. "This face. I will tell you the story of the man who wore it. One of them. It's not all that exciting.." Enough, he hoped, to hold her attention. Stop her from leaving him. His hand lowered. "Have you ever visited the well, in the village south of the mage's towers, in Xalious?"
Caedan kept still until his skin started to burn against hers, then quietly tucked her other leg under her and nestled her head into the crook of her arm. Her own fingers mimicked his, tugging on her lower lip with child-like fascination until she, too, abandoned it to reach out, her fingers fitted over Kurgan's own, splayed over his face, but without flesh meeting flesh. "Yes. I've been there. I like the park."
Kurgan's dark-on-dark eyes watched the motion of her hand, his expression unreadable. His voice seemed muted, after that, softer to her ear. "When I was a boy, it was already old. Not many things were, then, but that well is so ancient, people said the first dragon fell down it when it was but a hatchling. Which is nonsense, of course, but by way of giving you the idea..." She'd feel a cold rush of air against her hand, as he moved his own; Kurgan exhaling deeply. "We were the brightest and best of the Tower's apprentices, of any in the history of the place-- and we were not one, or two, but seven, all of a like in age and ability." A shadow crossed his face, at those words, literally darkening his visage a moment before it passed. "Due to gain our full robes, any day. Full of pith and vinegar, as you can imagine. Anyway, it was summer, hot as hell itself, and we stopped by the well to cool off. Now, there was always rivalry among us; though we were friends, we were boys and fiercely competitive in every quarter. It was mostly good-natured. But this day, Lola. This day presaged the next millennium to come, and many after that. For that was the day we acknowledged one among us as mightiest, the leader, the one whom the rest would follow. His name was Einar, and he was a necromancer." Pausing, the once-man raised his head, frowning, glancing about as though something had disturbed him though there was no sound. Slowly, he set his gaze back on the auburn-tressed girl. "The day before, Gilias, the elementalist among us, had set Einar's pants on fire while he courted one of the local wenches. Einar was furious, of course, but showed nothing except mild chagrin until we came to that well, and it was Gilias' turn to lean down, take his scoop of water from the bucket which never did draw all the way up." His formerly splayed hand, larger again than the long fingers he'd worn of late, attempted to close around the much smaller psychic's. "Can you guess the nature of Einar's revenge?"
Caedan was raptly interested in the story -- more than any other she'd been told, perhaps. The ending of this one couldn't be seen. Every other ending had been revealed with a single flicker of a thought from its author long before the story was due to conclude, but this one ... this one with the mind of sentient blackness weaving its plot was unseen. His hand closed over her own, and it would be a few minutes before she felt the strange burning sensation that started as a harmless tingling. "He pushed--no." She shook her head, sending unkempt hair tumbling over her shoulders. "Too easy." Dark eyes flashed with intrigue and she stared into his own, couldn't help but think of Lucien, and shook her head again. "I can't see. He took away his girl?"
Kurgan dipped his head to the back of her hand, lips hovering over that pale skin so the cold of his breath was felt keenly as he spoke, obsidian eyes angled up to meet her own, unless she looked away again. "As I said, Einar was a necromancer. The best; he'd outstripped his tutors in Vailkrin's dark Library months before and, not knowing what to do with him, they'd sent him on to Xalious to finish his term." Kurgan's lower lip brushed across Caedan's hand, and then the once-man lifted his face to level with hers. "Now, consider the well. Unthinkably old, unfathomably deep. How many unfortunate creatures had fallen to its stony maw, over time? Fell, and drowned in its icy waters, or were broken against its rocky walls? Poor Gilias was about to find out." The ravelling building around them hushed, as if it, too, was listening. "Einar cast a spell, of far above and beyond the power of the one cast upon him in the elementalist's jape. And so, lurching up from that murky hole in their tens, first, then scores, finally hundreds, came the slimed, rotting remnants of the well's dead denizens, raised by necromancy’s art. And all the while, Einar had his hand clamped to the back of Gilias' neck, holding him face-down in the darkness."
Caedan 's eyes glittered. Very clever. Very horribly clever. What man can look at anything the same after seeing the decaying contents of a hellish graveyard? She was desperately entranced. Her eyes closed against the feel of his lips on her hand, the inevitable burning cooled only by his breath, and she opened them only when he paused in his story. "What did he do? Gilias? Did he fight back?" But the information she really sought was what Kurgan did in response; in her mind, it would explain many things. She lifted her head, propped her elbow on the pillow, and splayed her fingers across the side of her temple.
A bitter smile ensued. "He screamed." The once-man's eyes shifted, oil on oil, lending them a strange and hungry gleam while he watched her re-adjust herself. Once the psychic settled, he continued, ".. and screamed, until Jarrock - our enchanter - and I hauled Einar off, his fingers still pressed to Gilias' neck, the skeletal hands of long-dead horrors snapping away as their limbs tore free, clamped to his robe-front and sleeves. And out of the well, while we held Einar in an arm-lock and demanded he call them off, crawled bones and lumps of half-petrified flesh, animate and obedient, horrific beyond anything we knew, even with the risks we took." That inky gaze dipped, his thumb-tip tracing softly along the edge of her forefinger. "In desperation, I summoned the likeness of the cruel and savage man who was at that time the land’s Arch-Mage, possibly the only man Einar still feared in the world. And on sight of that illusion Einar let the corpses fall, a foul collapse of death that twitched and writhed long hours after they should have lain still. Nobody drank from that well for many years. Einar earned a new name, that day, one more suited to his nature. Gilias developed a fear of dark and enclosed spaces he would not overcome for centuries. I..." His rugged featured turned away from her, and Kurgan glanced about the space enclosing them. "I would eventually reap Einar's reward for thus disturbing his petty vengeance that time, and several others to come. But not for many years. And oh, the irony of..." Whatever he was to say next was never spoken, the once-man startling, releasing her hand. "What was that?"
Caedan liked, this story, mostly because it had never been told -- not like this. Not even in Tenebrae's memories, as foggy and horrific as they were, had she come across such an account. The psychic yawned into the back of a hand she pulled from Kurgan just as he released it. "Are you scared?" It was a simple question, but the way he started, she couldn't help but wonder -- to suspect -- that perhaps he held on to more than just bad memories of Einar. Maybe he still feared him as well. "Maybe someone's come to bring us dinner." The barest hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her lips, but she sobered with the realization that she was, in fact, quite hungry, and she was stuck in a building made of chaos incarnate, now without an apparent master.
It was less fear than a disturbance sensed across time and space, across the boundaries of dream. Einar.. Eldritch... was gone, sucked into the very Void he'd sought to serve with Creation's demise. It was something, someone else, a presence he could not ignore, which seeped into his awareness like cold flood-water under a door. The boy. The boy was sleeping. He could feel it-- and dreaming, too. A voice echoed in his mind, calling a name he'd only learned recently, but which applied to the very woman in the chair before him. "Caedan..." he echoed it to her, dragging himself to a stand, untangling his hand from hers with obvious reluctance. "Stay with me." He had to keep her awake, at all costs. "And I'll tell you another tale, if you wish. Many tales."
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