Stone Man Pass

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose and Argus looked at each other, shrugged. Tsuirakuans... "I guess we'd better follow them," she said. "Brad, why don't you -- help -- Lillith, and follow behind as soon as she's able to get around? I'll leave you a light globe."

"A -- what?" Brad asked, a bit of suspicion in his voice. Rose had lived in Kiyoka long enough to get comfortable with Tsuirakuan consumer magic gadgetry, but Brad was still Veracian through and through.

"It's okay," Rose said. "Just thumb this little knob when you need light." She demonstrated, gave the flashlight-like thing to her cousin, who continued to look at it as one might regard an exotic poisonous plant. He did take the thing, anyway; one small step toward international trust, Rose thought...

With a bit less light for themselves, Rose found herself moving slowly and carefully as she and Argus picked their way back toward the tent. "What just happened there?" she asked her companion. "And where's Harker?"

[Drannin]

"I'm right here," Harker piped up out of nowhere, causing Argus and Rose to jump. The familiar waved a rather large wooden cudgel and shrugged. "Just in case you needed help." With this said, Harker stepped back and disappeared into the foliage. The effect was somewhat ruined by the sound of Harker tripping, falling, and cursing roundly.

Argus stared at where Harker had disappeared for a moment, then shrugged. "Harker is eccentric, but very helpful," he commented. Argus frowned. "What just happened was clearly some manner of psyche-alteration magic. In other words: mind control." He looked Rose right in the eye. "It would seem that Maduin is a touch more powerful than I thought."

[Graybeard]

Brad did his level best to envelop Lillith in a comforting hug. "There ... let me see your head ... Ooh, you poor thing..." The bump on the side of her head, where the strange man had hit her, looked angry and painful ... and of course, he couldn't stand that ... and so he made a decision.

Brad wasn't exactly the most -- adept leaf on the Nuria family tree, but he was still a Veracian priest, and he'd learned the basic magicks that even the most conservative parts of the Church of Luminosita permitted its clergy. Included in that was a very basic Healing spell. It had been a long time since he'd used it -- healers and lifemages were beginning to set up their practices in the small towns of the north -- and he was quite out of practice, but he was damned if he wasn't going to try. Summoning all the energy he could muster, he sub-vocalized a prayer, laid his hand (oh so gently) on the bump, and exerted his will ...

... And the bump receded a bit, and became ever so slightly less angry looking.

His chest heaving from the exertion, he turned to Lillith's face. "Does -- does that feel any better?" he gasped. And then his eyes rolled back in his head ...

He managed to say "Excuse me" before pitching straight backward, asleep and snoring before he hit the ground.

---------

"It would seem that Maduin is a touch more powerful than I thought."

"A touch," Sister Rose agreed. "I've seen his mind magic at work on other occasions too." She chuckled humorlessly. "Funny, though, how it doesn't seem to translate into the ability to do simple things like move easily in the wilderness, unless he goes and clears a path. I suppose that's a city-dweller thing. And then he goes and gets a porter and --"

She stopped cold, and all the color drained from her face.

Now I remember where I've seen that outfit before.

There'd been one time, back in her special-forces days, when she'd been summoned to the main temple in Emerylon to give a briefing on something, Luminosita alone knew what, probably some kind of unrest up north. She'd been waiting outside the conference room, a great deal closer to Patriarch Jeramel's seat of power than she'd ever expected to be, when a bald-headed man, wearing a robe cut like the one the three people here (now down to two dead and one zombified) were wearing, but a different color, emerged from Jeramel's holy of holies. With him was a younger man whose robe was exactly like these three's. And as they left, there was a muttered susurrus among the enlisted guards outside Jeramel's office. "Ensigerum ... time-ninjas ..."

And this one was carrying Maduin toward the tent where Kim was sleeping. Kim, whose home had been burned down by ...

"Oh, shit!" Rose swore, startling Argus, and she broke into the swiftest run that the footing and the light would allow.

[Porcelain Fish]

Maduin's eyes rested on the tall stranger's black uniform, something about it tickling at his mind. It took him a moment to make the connection, exhaustion slowing his thoughts.

"You came here with Thomas," he whispered.

"Yes." The stranger's tone turned cold for a moment.

Maduin felt rage spark anew, a pale, tired shadow of what it had been earlier, but still real. "Why didn't you help him? He might not have died if you had helped him."

The words, when they finally came, were unwilling, and Maduin raised his gaze to see that same disbelieving horror lingering in the stranger's brown eyes as he walked. "I . . . feared for my life. I ran when I heard Madeline scream, saw the way he - he cut her down."

"Then why take the girl?"

"Thomas thought . . . he believed that the hunter was stalking you, that he planned something terrible. I thought otherwise. I thought he was there to protect you from us. After all, if he wanted to kill you, why weren't you dead before you ever reached Salticiel? I thought the Errant could serve as a hostage when he caught up to me."

Maduin's eyes narrowed. "I've seen the way you move, like the wind. How could he-"

"Thomas and Madeline are both dead, aren't they?" The arms around Maduin tightened briefly for a moment before relaxing again. They came to a stop before the tent.

"Put me down," Maduin ordered quietly. He looked up at the tall, brown-eyed stranger, saw nothing but adulation once more in those eyes. It made him sick to his stomach. He turned away. "Go bury Thomas. Then I want you to go away. Forever. I don't ever want to see your face again."

"Please." There was horror in those brown eyes, not at what he was being forced to do, but horror at the thought of being driven away from the being the magic had placed at the very center of his world. Maduin could read it in his face, hear it in his voice. He could almost smell his own power, coiled deep within the other, and it made bile rise to the back of his throat, because he wasn't sure it would ever wear away.

He almost relented, except that it was the perfect punishment, too suitable, too just. A love that had been robbed of any chance to bloom, whatever the source. And even if he did, he'd always look into those brown eyes and know that it was the magic that loved him, twisted every thought, every emotion to hopeless adoration.

"Go," Maduin rasped.

The stranger hesitated a moment longer, frozen, his brown eyes darkening with unshed tears, a look of utter agony on his face. Then he was gone as if he'd never been.

Maduin glanced up as Sister Rose came sprinting into sight, her face tight with panic, brilliant green eyes wide.

"What is it?" he croaked wearily, leaning against the tent, barely able to stay upright.

[Graybeard]

"What is it?"

Sister Rose didn't take the time to answer. She rushed by Maduin, slipped through the door of the tent as quietly as her haste allowed, dreading what she might see ...

... But seeing only Kim asleep in her sleeping bag, her breathing even.

She stepped outside, much more delicately than she'd entered, aware that her own breathing was like that of a race horse that had just run in the Katuckiel Derby.

"Nothing," she answered softly. "Nothing at all. Now what happened here?"

[Porcelain Fish]

"Now what happened here?"

Maduin's expression turned cold. His voice, when it came out, was still hoarse and raspy. "I sent him away. He'll never bother us again. Please excuse me. I'm filthy and wet."

He managed to stagger past her into the tent, moving with none of his usual grace toward the partition that held the wash water.

[Drusia]

Well fuck. I hope this doesn't come back to bite me in the ass later.

I walk slowly, tiredly back to camp. Talk about a wasted effort. I kick a fallen branch in passing, venting my annoyance.

An elf. An expatriot elf, one just as sickened by the war as I am. I wish he'd stayed to talk... or more than talk. I haven't been with another elf in a really long damn time. Not even in my felicitious dreams.

In any case... actually, I'm not sure how this effects things. No interest in the war or Errants... so no threat to me. Although I'm not entirely sure why he was here, unless it was to kill the Einsigerum. Seems a little late for the Virador to be cleaning up their messes, but then again....

Ah, good, there's camp. Everyone looks, if not in the picture of health, at least uninjured to a functional degree. I trudge into Maudin's magic tent, looking to collapse on my bed roll. Those fast, short teleports really take it out of me.

-- Drusia

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose didn't need the Empathy to see that something was seriously amiss with Maduin's state of mind. However, there was a time to intervene, and a time to stay silent. This looked like one of those silent times.

"Argus," she said as he arrived at the tent, "would you be terribly upset if you started your watch shift a little early? I suspect Lillith and Maduin are both going to need some extra sleep, and I'd still like to take the last one. I'll be up early anyway for prayers, and there are some things I'd like to discuss with Drusia when she wakes up."

Brad and what he implies for Lillith, for very prominent example.

She yawned deeply. "Make that when I wake up."

[Drusia]

"Argus," she said as he arrived at the tent, "would you be terribly upset if you started your watch shift a little early? I suspect Lillith and Maduin are both going to need some extra sleep, and I'd still like to take the last one. I'll be up early anyway for prayers, and there are some things I'd like to discuss with Drusia when she wakes up."

OOC: Well, she isn't asleep yet - if you wanted to talk with her now, you could. Or later is fine too.

[Graybeard]

OOC:

"Argus," she said as he arrived at the tent, "would you be terribly upset if you started your watch shift a little early? I suspect Lillith and Maduin are both going to need some extra sleep, and I'd still like to take the last one. I'll be up early anyway for prayers, and there are some things I'd like to discuss with Drusia when she wakes up."

OOC: Well, she isn't asleep yet - if you wanted to talk with her now, you could. Or later is fine too.

The intended implication was that this conversation would be happening when they were both on watch. Rose is sufficiently exhausted from the spellcasting that she's just going to conk out as soon as Argus OKs going on shift. I should probably have made that clearer. Edited for clarity.