Background noise

[Graybeard]

OOC: And resume taking care of Brad I shall, but may I suggest moving this back to the main thread now? The characters and places all seem to be converging on the meadow with the big mushroom, and Lillith needn't be far away -- Brad's Lillith-seeking radar isn't that inaccurate.

[Drusia]

OOC: And resume taking care of Brad I shall, but may I suggest moving this back to the main thread now? The characters and places all seem to be converging on the meadow with the big mushroom, and Lillith needn't be far away -- Brad's Lillith-seeking radar isn't that inaccurate.

OOC: Done and done. Posted as Desiree in the main thread.

[Drannin]

(OOC:Elsewhere...)

"Found him," Haniko Goto growled in satisfaction.

"Finally," sighed Arsoro Kurou. fingering his ear-prosthesis. "Actually, I'm impressed. How did you find him so quickly? And I'm not referring to his daughter's sudden departure. You were zeroing in on him even before that."

Goto kept her eyes on the displays. "She did speed things up. And never underestimate my resources."

Your obsession with Cleiviein is probably the only thing keeping you from ascending the ranks of society. I'm profoundly grateful for that. Their de-facto leader was clearly insane, but it was the controlled form of insanity that made one very, very dangerous. And frustratingly in control, in their case.

"No sign of Drusia," Bauti said unhappily. "Dammit."

"So we'll pound her location out of the others," Goto said calmly. "I have tools to assist in that. It'll be fun." Bauti smiled in satisfaction at this, and Kurou eyed them both uneasily. "Besides, if the stories are true, there might be a half-elf village out there. Think of how many lovely targets you'll have." This was said in a conversational tone, like talking about a new restaurant's food, and it made Kurou shudder. So did Bauti's eager smile. Still, hi goal was clear: find Drusia, use agony to force every last bit of interesting information out of her, and then make the elf bitch suffer for everything he'd been through. If that meant some half-elves dies along the way, he really couldn't care less.

"We'll keep an eye on their party. What about the others?"

Kurou frowned. "That group who we caught wind of down south? I'm tracking their activities as best I can, but their very stealthy. Our biggest advantage is that they don't know we exist."

Bauti snorted. "And yet we're supposed to be scared of these idiots?"

"They are powerful and resourceful," Goto said serenely, "Our advantage is that they don't know of our existence, and thus cannot plan for our involvement."

Kurou blinked. "Involvement? You mean...?"

Goto smiled icily, still staring at the display in her darkened lair. "You know what we're up against. Can you really turn away from what it represents? The opportunities?" She caressed her new prize meaningfully. "We'll follow them by following Argus and his group. That way, they won't know who is watching whom. And when the time is right..."

Kurou nodded. Goto had a point. As a scholar, he could not simply turn away from such hidden truths. And Bauti was simply caught up in her bloodlust. In the end, he had committed himself to this group. Might as well embrace it and its possibilities. With a shrug, he turned back to monitoring their unknowing enemies. Both sets of them.

[Graybeard]

Arsoro Kurou may have been terrified of this woman (and justly so), but that didn't stop him from having his own ... priorities. He let the scary women conspire as they saw fit, but his interest was elsewhere. If I can just get a lead on that bitch...

Crystal-net, he reflected, was a great information source for anywhere that it reached. The problem was, what lay beyond its reach -- in other words, the lands of the barbarians -- weren't nearly as well documented. He prowled restlessly through the thaumatic ether, hoping for the best, but not finding much ... until he happened to look at something close to home.

"What's this?" he asked the two women as he pulled up a headline from the "Arts and Leisure" section of The Daily Tsuirakuan.

ELF IMPERSONATOR TO PERFORM AT NAGAROBOSHI LOUNGE

[Graybeard]

"Sleazy bar," Haniko Goto half-sniffed, half-growled. "Hardly worth our attention." (Of course, Kurou's interest in such a place was worth her attention, and she made a note of it in her capacious mental filing cabinet before turning back to her own pursuits.)

Bauti, however, had a rather more ... positive reaction. "Well, well, well," she said. "The old 'elf impersonator' trick. That's one way we have of moving in human space: pretend to be what you really are, and do it with enough little props and cheap tricks to leave people believing you're just doing it for show. Your little bed mate is a master of that act."

Arsoro Kurou felt his anger rising, carefully tamped it back down into place. "Do not call her that, please." He read the rest of the article. "It says she will be there again tonight. You know, suddenly I'm developing an interest in old elven folk songs."

Bauti's leer widened. "And I, in human entertainment and how it views our culture ... if some nice, handsome Tsuirakuan would be interested in taking me to see it."

[Porcelain Fish]

[OOC: Long one I know. Update in the main thread after I'm off work. /OOC]

The darkness that had held Maduin down began to give way at last, breaking up, giving way to light, and he pushed his way to the surface of consciousness.

He opened his eyes. The radiance that greeted them came from a curving bank of beveled windows above the scrollworked headboard of golden oak at the top of the generously-sized bed. The pillow-slips and sheets were rich, wine-red satin, the coverlet of heavy golden silk adorned with thick braids. The spare, dramatic black lines in the Tsuirakuan style over the fabric suggested a crane in flight.

The rest of the room was similarly lavish. A long desk of polished, dark red cherry sat snug against a curving wall, a high-backed chair upholstered in russet velvet behind it. The walls were paneled oak, and polished frames held maps that looked to be prized more for their obvious antiquity than for practicality. Bookcases occupied one entire wall, shuttered with sculpted copper, and a pair of long, golden runners flanked the bed atop the polished hardwood floors.

The entire room resonated with a muted hum, but there was no rocking, no rushing whisper of water along the hull. Maduin had been on enough airships to know what that meant.

He sat up, and something slid down his wrist. Soft braided gold, with no clasp that he could see. He held it up to the light, bringing it closer to his eyes. It was hard to tell, but it almost looked as though tiny runes were etched into the individual wires. He frowned, the fact that he was dressed in nothing more than a sleeping gown of more garish golden silk taking second place to what might well prove to be a much more consequential concern.

The door opened, and he had just a moment to wish he could have done something about his hair, because the fine strands turned into a cloudy, curly mess while he was sleeping. He was less than surprised to see John Wolf enter, and not really gratified by the fact that he bore a sterling silver tray loaded down with what was likely food judging by the scent, but not certifiably such just yet.

One could never be quite sure when dealing with a psychopath. Even a tall, handsome, charming psychopath that he might have shamelessly flirted with under other circumstances. A psycopath that had kidnapped him.

He opened himself to his magic, and the whole world vibrated. There was simply no other way to describe it. Reality trembled around him, and power spun free of his grasp, unresponsive to his will, aimless and languid. Maduin closed it off again, and everything returned to normal. His weapon of choice was apparently unavailable at the moment, doubtless due to the unfortunate presence of the bracelet. That was good to know.

John refrained from a smile as he sat down on the bed, but he radiated satisfaction as he set the tray between them. His tone was polite, even affable, the smile that crossed his lips not smug, but warm. His sculpted, handsome face held no appeal for Maduin now.

"Good morning."

Maduin felt an uncharacteristic impulse to resort to physical violence. Unfortunately, the nightstand next to the bed was devoid of small objects that could be used as weapons, and the sturdy piece of furniture itself looked to weigh a monstrous amount, not to mention probably being bolted to the floor of the cabin. So he smiled warmly back.

"Good morning, John."

John's smile widened. "I must say I'm delighted by how reasonably you're taking this."

Maduin's eyebrows rose, expression becoming amused even as frost spidered through his veins. "Previous experience?"

"Just once. About forty years ago." John began removing silver platter lids. There were crepes and pancakes, fresh fruit, eggs over easy, golden buttered toast, and hot tea. (Kunichi Green if Maduin judged the scent correctly.) "It took me the last five years to get over her. Then I met you." Green eyes rose, settled on Maduin's.

No, that voice in the back of his mind continued to insist. They're blue. Brilliant, fiery blue.

"Show me the real you," he said before he thought better of it.

John's smile widened, satisfaction visibly increasing. Brown hair melted into pale golden blond, already handsome face becoming even more so, dimensions proportioned in inhuman perfection, complexion turning smooth and completely unblemished, and though he didn't move a muscle, it was as though he'd stopped slouching, shoulders broadening, gaining several inches in height.

The elf's eyes were a brilliant, fiery cobalt, and they burned with all the fire they'd held in Maduin's dreams, threatening to consume all that they surveyed. They were the harsh, unrelenting blue eyes of that stormy night in Stone Man Pass as he'd knelt there in the rain, holding Thomas's cooling body in his arms, the lightning flashing in their depths, gleaming on the slick darkness of fresh blood on the length of a great blade.

The frost in Maduin's blood became a raging, howling blizzard, turning him completely, utterly cold. The smile that came next could have frozen quicksilver.

"Hello, John."

"It's Lantos, actually." Far from being discomfited by the deathly chill in Maduin's expression, Lantos simply looked mildly regretful as he poured tea. "And for what it's worth, I wasn't planning on what happened that night."

"I see."

"We'll be landing in Taileas Gai in an hour." Lantos's smile returned, humor entering his expression. "If I'm right and it's your friends on our tail, we might just meet them there."

He was too controlled. Too smooth. Too confident. It was time for a hard left turn. Maduin simply nodded, picked up the tea, and took a sip. "I'd prefer not to meet them."

Lantos paused in the act of getting up, one eyebrow rising. The amusement in his expression only increased. "Oh?"

"Of course. Being an elf, you're after the half-elves. You think that I'm a good hostage for you to get to them." It was ridiculous, but it was also evidently not what Lantos was expecting judging by the quizzical expression that danced briefly across his perfect features.

"Clever," he said simply.

He might have been referring to the subterfuge, or perhaps he even believed Maduin genuinely thought it. It was hard to tell. Maduin took another sip of tea.

It wasn't his preferred flavor, but it would do.

[Graybeard]

"Can't this damned thing go any faster?" Father Blaise grumped.

Keyes rolled his eyes, once again wondering if he could arrange a convincing "accident" that wouldn't lead to Mr. Stagpoole killing him or worse. Probably not, he decided. He suppressed the temptation to snarl at the man and simply said, "Dit it de fatet boat around. In pact, we don't know ob anyting fater ekept an airthip or a warp gate. Jut be patent. We'll be in Kiyoka in about tree hour."

If I can't come up with a good justification for throwing you overboard before then, he thought but did not tay, er, say.

[Graybeard]

"Enjoy yourselves," Haniko Goto called after the improbably tall woman and short man as they left for the Nagaroboshi Lounge. Actually, she really did hope they enjoyed themselves. Needless to say, she'd planted a snooping device on the elf (how could anybody who was five thousand years old be so innocent, she wondered), and she'd get to experience every moment of their "enjoyment" vicariously ... particularly when it came time, some indeterminate number of days or years later, to blackmail Kurou with it.

For now, however, a different kind of enjoyment was in prospect.

Speaking of innocence, she thought, it was almost touching how that Cleiviein girl believed both in her contemptible windbag of a father, and in the thaumato-technology that had brought the two of them together. (Almost, but not quite.) She probably had never even considered the possibility that some more -- sophisticated wielder of magical technology might have been able to subvert a foreman in the shop where the airship was made, and cause to be introduced into its structure a little unplanned gadgetry. Gadgetry that she, Haniko Goto, controlled, rather than the near-barbarian Cleiviein family. Gadgetry that she was now prepared to use.

Her hand hovered over the controls to the transport platform for a moment as she savored the way that bastard Cleiviein would look when she beamed him into her web ... and then again, how he would look as the instruments of torture that she'd prepared there got their day in the sun.

------------

"I'm bored!" the spoiled ten-year-old whined to his father, plenty loud for the tour guide to hear. "I wanna go home! What's so exciting about an old castle anyway? They don't even have crystal-net there, I bet!"

[Graybeard]

The ten-year-old watched, with a big grin across his face, as the sky above Taileas Gai erupted in a kaleidoscope of colors. "Wow! Cool!" (Of course, ten minutes later he was bored again.)

------------

Haniko Goto wasn't exactly in that blast of magical color, in a physical sense, but she recoiled away from it anyway, every sense feeling as if it was on fire.

"NOOO!!!" the woman screamed. "THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE MINE!!!" But her invective against the universe was replaced quickly by a realization: I have to survive. The magical torrent threatened not merely her physical being, but her very soul -- a commodity which Goto had not, up to that moment, been convinced existed.

In an instant, she teleported away, using her own private travel platform ... and not a moment too soon, as the magical fires over Taileas Gai reached in and consumed her lair.

-----------

If he'd known what he'd just caused, Lucas Ravanel, now trying to get the obsessed ten-year-old back to the party, would have been proud.

[Graybeard]

[OOC: The following is happening "offstage" and about synchronously with events here in the Getsemiel/Veracia threads, and here in the Port Lorrel thread -- say a couple of hours later. It's also mildly spoilerific, so be warned...]

"He WHAT??" the scary man bellowed, causing almost all of the members of the Convergence Committee to break into a cold sweat ... except one.

Two, actually; Elke was made of sterner stuff than most. She was also aware that once the furor over her news died down, these people weren't of a nature to shoot the messenger (as long as the messenger had done nothing else to require shooting). So ... "He killed a man from the Veracian Church in Lorrel," she repeated calmly. "Two of my people happened to be watching when it happened. Pure luck, they have nothing to do with the project, they don't even know who Blaise is." Her dry chuckle could be heard in the crystal balls. "I certainly did nothing to enlighten them."

"I can confirm this," Mr. Stagpoole chimed in; his wife's calm answer had restored his own typical sangfroid. "My man Keyes who was bringing him to Kiyoka just reported in, saying much the same thing. He says Blaise took off afterward, on the run, he has no idea what became of him. Incidentally, he doesn't know who Blaise is either, so I won't have to kill him." That seemed worth saying.

There was a long pause, then the scary man spoke again. "Very well. Damn, I knew we shouldn't have brought that loose cannon back into this. He was trouble from the get-go, and he's still trouble, but not for much longer. You have two tasks, then. First, of course, that idiot has to die. I'll leave it to you people in Lorrel to arrange that. Elke, he's in your space for the moment, so you have point. Bring in the others as they're needed. Nothing fancy, keep it low-profile, we don't want it attracting attention." Quiet assent from Elke, Gryffyd, Peter and Mr. Stagpoole greeted this order. "Second, we need to come up with another way to make contact with our proposed candidates in Tsuiraku. I'll want to hear a plan in forty-eight hours." He broke the connection without any more words, leaving the other Committee members all asking the same question: what do we do now?