faderift | CLOSED | and in the faces you see

"There you are. I had wondered--"

From the floor, Evrion's gap-toothed smile shines up at Myr, and he meets his gaze, able to do so at last. Slowly bringing himself to a sitting and then standing position, Evry brushes himself off and looks toward the Black City himself, letting out a low whistle.

"I've never been here like this," he muses, tone still pleasant-- all mages dream in the Fade, but being really metaphysically transported there is a different story. Evrion was never Harrowed, and this is his first time.

Kostos’ arms are already crossed, his brow already furrowed. He snaps, immediately, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

A few small shifts in the events of his life—an earlier admission to the Circle, a bolt that arced in the other direction—and he might have devoured this with the same sharp-eyed intensity he turns on—you know.

But this isn’t that timeline. This is the timeline where he’s the equivalent of a lifelong teetotaler with a known propensity for addiction, dropped into a lake of liquor. Curiosity is the enemy. Comfort is a trap. And if Evrion wanders off and winds up possessed, Kostos will kill everyone and then himself for letting it happen.

But he also would have refused to let the boy come if he weren’t going to let him do anything, so he adds, brusque even when he’s trying to be a little apologetic, “The paths change. We need a guide.”

Evry's smile is infectious despite the gravity of their situation; Myr finds himself grinning in reply as he takes his staff down from off his back to check the mounted blade. "Now you know," he says warmly, not wondering much himself exactly what question he's answering. Any of them might be uncomfortable to think of too long.

He cuts eyes toward Kostos at the admonition they not be stupid--lingering a moment, speaking of devouring; as if he'd had any reason to doubt Vandelin's description--before lifting his chin in mute acknowledgment. Even if it's not for him, with an un-Harrowed mage along, he could use the reminder to stay sharp.

"You've got the barriers?" To Kostos; no reason not to make use of the best they've got, when he doesn't need his own in lieu of sight.

The wind swirling around them grows noise, then texture. Sand begins to accumulate in hollows of the black rock; with it comes a breath of heat and the furnace scent of the high summer desert.

Edited (missed my semicolon quota for the week) 2018-08-15 03:58 (UTC)

The boy's smile falters, effectively chastened by the harshness of Kostos' tone, but his overall bearing remains pleasant and it seems he's not too hurt by the admonition. "I won't," he says quietly, looking at his own hands, then at the sand that begins to swirl around their feet.
"Should I find someone to help us?"

Kostos' single jerky, put-upon nod is for both of them: yes, he has the barriers; yes, Evrion should find someone. Something. With Evrion looking at his hands, maybe the nod just translates to a prolonged silence, but Kostos doesn't fill it.

After a moment he uncrosses an arm to hold one hand to the wind, testing the movement of it like running water, but two moments after that he folds it in against his chest again.

Huh. That's a suspicion confirmed.

"Go on," Myr says to Evry, kindly; he can play sullen silence translator, if need be.

He can also establish a perimeter in case anything else comes round to Evrion's call. (It occurs the sand might be a precursor to--something. That it's something drawn to him is inarguable because this is too familiar; it smells like home.) He scuffs a boot through a slow-accumulating drift then drags his staff across it, gesture invoking ice glyphs to blossom in a tidy array to guard their flanks.

Though he looks a bit uncertain, Myr's prompting gives Evrion the go-ahead, and he nods with a faint smile.

He steps forward, walking casually, hands at his sides, looking around every which way, and starts to hum. His bare feet slap faintly on the ground as he keeps time with his stride, the tune some folk song or another, the kind every farmer's child knows even if the lyrics vary from region to region.
His humming transitions to quiet singing after a time, an untrained but sweet and playful sound, though he only gets about a verse in before the air seems to part and the strange glowing countenance of a curious spirit appears before him.

Whether or not he always sings to summon them is the unanswered question, but Evrion hardly seems to maintain that much methodology. It just seemed like the thing to do, in the moment.

Kostos refuses to be charmed, charm is also the enemy, and he eyes the spirit with brief suspicion—largely unwarranted, and not only because he'd be able to feel any ill will before it was acted on—before deciding it will most likely do and turning his attention to Myrobalan.

He eyes him briefly, too, and pronounces, "Your eyes are hazel," in case he wasn't aware. Then, ducking his head to avoid looking directly into the sandy wind blowing over them, "Balance."

That's still the plan. He doesn't actually need to confirm it, but look at him, verbalizing.

Were they still on the sunny road from Ansburg, Myr'd be inclined to harmonize off Evry's summoning, and only a little to annoy Kostos.

"They were, once." Now they're an echo of something missing, much as the tendril of hair Myr tucks behind the point of one ear, evidence of the wind unpicking his braid. (Much as the distant mirage-flickering image of a spreading oak, vast only from a child's short viewpoint, its trunk girdled in hazy painted pictograms: Here a wolf, a Chantry sun, a closed fist.)

For all the words are a reminder--to himself--that this is but temporary relief, that he can't stay, they are amiable, abstracted. His attention is largely fixed on their surroundings; he looks once toward Evry's spirit, jaw tightening with unease, before returning to his scan for demons.

Or other disturbances: It's been a long time since he's seen Hasmal's vhenadahl in the flesh, but its dream-shape is long familiar. He spares it about as much attention as the spirit for the same reasons.

"Enchanter Kostos?" Evrion says, turning to him and gesturing to the spirit in the way of someone offering to broker an introduction; he hardly wants to take charge, not when he has a feeling his former mentor would have some Things To Say on the matter

The spirit drifts toward Kostos, angling its head like a curious dog.

"You do not have to call me that," Kostos says to Evrion, watching the spirit approach like a curious dog like someone who doesn't like dogs, which is not actually the case. Dogs are great. Dogs have never possessed anybody. To the spirit, he says, "We are looking for something—"

But he gets distracted. That's not his usual style. He's generally very good at not being distracted, outside of the Fade, when someone isn't making a ghost-tree covered in symbols and he isn't being stared at by a silent spirit summoned by a child with frankly unacceptably large eyes.

Distracted. Is the point. He points at the tree and looks back at Myrobalan.

"Is that you?"

"Is it?"

The spirit echoes, in a voice without tone or place (itself only the knowledge of words).

"Is it?" The flickering ghost of a hand toward Kostos, reaching for his face — it drifts away before ever touching, attention torn absent between the three. Its head tips aside and just keeps... tipping, past any human angle, until it's wholly on end. Fiery light rolls, licks up from the unnatural lilt of its neck and into a shifting form,

Solidifies: Becomes a sharp-eyed girl, who brushes hair past the points of her ears, in a manner that will be familiar to at least one of them (to all of them, for different faces). An apprentice, perhaps, passed by in the hall. Sat behind in some lecture. Found dead in a field. Remembered only in the peculiar, flashpoint way of these things.

She stoops to lift sand in her hands, lets it fall through her fingers and away on an invisible gust of heat,

"I haven’t met you before, why is that?"

Kostos' question isn't currently that interesting. Kostos isn't that interesting. Holding too much of himself back, with the greed of age. The old ones (hairier, more lines) are all selfish that way.

Edited (AND THEN I HAD TO EDIT FOR REAL) 2018-08-29 11:28 (UTC)

Caught out, Myr looks at the tree once more--a mistake; that solidifies it in soft-edged storybook layers--and breathes out a sigh that's all muddled up in annoyance and longing. "It's--"

He drops his answer as the spirit speaks and reaches for Kostos, fingers tightening on his staff; even if he's not staring at the thing he's damned aware of what it's doing. Anything weirder than the trick with the head... But no, it's finally settled on a shape with a face (Oraya, was it? Or Miri? The last he'd seen of any of the apprentices was before he'd started keeping names locked secure in his head), and that goes some long way to settle his instinctive prickling at the creature's presence.

"We've not been this way before," kindly enough, though not so inviting of engagement as he'd be with a real apprentice. Wary yet--she's still a spirit, even child-shaped.

To Kostos, then: "That's mine."

If only recognizing it banished it. Sand drifts around the roots, buries half-realized ideas of offerings piled among them: Candles, candies, flowers, bone.

Pleased by their visitor, Evrion stands with his hands clasped in front of him. He doesn't recognize the girl, but it's no matter; he's happy to accept spirits on their own terms, or in whatever forms they take.
"We haven't met you either," he points out, stepping forward, "what's your name?"

Kostos could guess. Could confirm. But she's an abyss—all spirits are, varied across a hundred different feelings and instincts but every one of them untempered and bottomless—and not one he can navigate. The draw of an idea.

Casimir would have probably liked her.

Kostos avoids looking at her, with her dead girl's face, which means looking at the tree, puzzling over the candles, the bones. (He'd never been to an alienage before the Inquisition, and he'd never asked what it is they honor, how it slots together with the Chantry, if it does.) But he's listening, too, if only so he can intervene if Evrion drifts off course.

"You have," To Myr, a bone picked delicately between thumb and index: The wing of something small. "You’ve looked for me. You don’t need to lie about it, I won't tell."

Wanting radiates from him even now. A glance up at that, furtive reassurance — a secret passed between brothers, or a Senior Enchanter's indulgence. Radius and humerus flex impossibly against the air; she casts the bone aside to flap into the breeze, and away. Watches its path, then licks a finger (makes a face), to ponder Evrion’s question:

"I don’t know if I have a name," It isn’t the answer of someone lost. She knows what she is. But a name’s a funny thing; a mortal thing. Those change. "Maybe I could. Will you help me find it?"

He seems the likeliest candidate, burning bright as melted candles in all this dark. A wisp drifts in passing; her eyes gleam with suppressed fire, draw it to her extended hand.

"We could both look. I could help you, too."

A deal.

The look he shoots her is sharp, startled in its recognition.

She isn't wrong: It is the path his heart treads when he dreams. But he'd made a rule of never looking off it at what the dream's denizens might offer--never treated consciously with anything larger than a wisp. That way lay seduction by the Maker's first children, promises of anything and everything (knowledge) to tempt even one of the Exalted.

He looks away and joins Kostos in silence. Many faithful mages treat safely with spirits, he reminds himself, tamping down the urge to hustle Evry away from this one. (Collusion follows speaking, then experimentation, then they find you out and make the fatal offer: Tranquility or death.)

Something reaches bony fleshless fingers around the tree from the far side, clutching, clasping, digits tapping closed one by one. Shapes bulk in the shadows. An empty eye socket peers out of the mass; a tooth flashes. "Stop," Myr breathes to the lot of it; he knows where this goes now, and why.

CLOSED | and in the faces you see

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