Goriel and beyond, part 4

[Drusia]

"Well, I don't claim to know all the details of Veracian faith-" which was something he really had to bring up with Rose at some point "-But Tim's just a simple country man who's having a hard time accepting the greater world. Very conservative, to say the least."

I sigh. "And yet he embraced my Eli," I reply sadly. If only I could convince him that was a point in his favor. I shake my head.

"What happened here, Argus?" I ask. "When you left Snamish, Rose had everyone well in hand. I thought Eli would have a guide and guardian. From what I've managed to gather, it sounds like Rose ignored the changes in him and the evidence of strange magic, even when others including this Tim and your dauther, brought it to her attention. That doesn't sound like the Rose I know. That doesn't even sound like you." That... sounded more accusatory than I meant it to. I hold up my hand, forestalling any protest.

"I'm not trying to blame anyone," I say. "I just... I want to understand what happened. Is there more to this that I'm not aware of?"

-- Drusia

[Sareth]

Lillith sat on the edge of the bed, near Tim. "Do you know what an Errant is, Tim?" At the earnest young priest's shake of the head, Lillith sighed and stared at the hands she held curled up in her lap. "Elves and humans can have children together. Obviously. Though I, at least, am actually the daughter of a half elf and Argus. There are some real advantages to being a half-elf. We age slower, for one. It's hard for me to remember most of the time, but I'm really only a few years younger than Rose."

Tim shot Lillith a surprised look, then glanced over at Sister Rose, and the half elf girl almost smiled. "That's a story for another time, I think. We also tend to be resilient and... enduring, I suppose. We can snap back from magical effects pretty quickly. That can be an advantage sometimes. It can be a disadvantage sometimes, too." The girl drifted off briefly, remembering a girl not much older than herself whose heart refused mending.

"It can be the best of both worlds. We live longer than humans, and have time and strength to see and do quite a bit. But we don't live forever, like the elves, and so we don't get stuck in a repetitive malaise where nothing is really new anymore. I'm glad to be a half-elf."

The girl looked up, seeing that Tim was listening, then looked back down at her hands. Her skin flushed, a reflection of her discomfort with what she had to say next. "There's something dangerous within us, though. Every so often a half-elf will just... snap. No one knows why. But they just go off. They kill in horrific ways, often with no or with made up excuses. They're... terrifying. The worst of the fear is that we all secretly worry that we could be the next one, even though most of us never do." She turned to look at Eli again. "That's what we call an Errant."

"The elves want us all dead." She cringed, not even needing to see Rose' reproachful look to remind herself that she was being unjust. "Well, not all of them. But many of them believe we are all Errants that just haven't gone off yet. They send out rangers to find us. And kill us. Man. Woman. And child. Even in the womb." She patted her stomach.

Tim looked appropriately horrified.

"Drusia is..." She white knuckled her fists. "I don't like her. I don't think I ever will. I don't like what she does, what she represents, even just what she was born as is something I can't make myself forget. She makes me doubt my own faith sometimes. But I have to admit it. She does what she can to help out. When she finds half elves who haven't gone off she tries to help keep other elves from finding them. But when she finds Errants..." Lillith shook her head.

"I thought Eli had gone errant. But what you said last night, if it's true, means maybe he hasn't gone errant. Maybe he can recover quickly if we just get him free of whatever you said has him. Before he hurts anyone truly innocent. And as much as I am loathe to admit it, Drusia may be our best chance at finding him."

[Alberich]

There was a great deal more Tim wanted to know and wanted to ask, but these revelations from Rose and Lillith -- particularly Lillith -- were telling him what was most important. This Drusia was definitely not to be trusted. She might well be planning to kill Eli for being "errant" -- what did elves know of the soul, or temptation by demons, or salvation? Naturally they would interpret things in terms of these "errants." (Who, he supposed, got more respect than humans at least - those were simply dirt beneath the elves' feet to be ordered around and bullied at will, just the way Drusia had treated him.) Further proof that the elves themselves were evil by nature, and their use of humans a perversion of the Good Lord's creation. What a blessing it was that humans had been led out of the Captivity by his grace.

He thought it would be stupid to press Rose for details on what the Patriarch had really said and when, and neither she nor Lillith seemed inclined to tell him too much about their history with this Drusia. The point was that Rose at last seemed to want to save Eli - and he belived that much now; she might have dithered when the best chance was there, but at least she wanted to make up for it. And he needed help from her and this group to accomplish this thing - if it was to have a hope of happening at all.

And the price of her help was "working with" this elf. That didn't mean he would reveal all he knew or start obeying her orders like a slave. "Speak less than you know" was an old Veracian proverb, and maybe it dated back to the Captivity - the wisdom in it was clear enough here. He knew the elf knew about the Valahiri inn. But he didn't think Rose and Lillith knew that he knew the elf knew about the inn; and he thought it likely that even the elf didn't know he knew she knew, though he suspected she'd gotten the information from his thoughts. Anyway, that much was safe to tell, and was no betrayal at this point.

"I don't know much that's of help now" for you wasted your chance "but last night when he saw the other elf waiting in ambush, he ran off to the Valahiri Inn, a few blocks west of here. I wasn't able to warn him after the elf ambushed me. By now he's probably left out of fear - that's what I'd do in his place if they were after me." All true statements, if slightly incomplete.

"Did the elf tell you whether she found him, or knows anything about where he is now? Her voice was in my mind last night, calling me obscene names, showing her contempt," but no matter; you stuck up for her, not me, when she was showing it in public "and I think she was trying to get his location out of me. Do you know if she can do that?"

[Jack Rothwell]

"HEAL! HEAL! HEAL!"

Tamina observed the mishappen horrors magic and the speed it's wound closed. Silently, Tamina weighed up the damage Jaime could do with her bullets verses the rate the beast could fix itself, and came to an unfortunate conclusion.

She looked down at her claws, her sharp, sharp claws. Then back at the blubbery side of the thing. A mewling noise arose from the back of her throat.

"Don't wanna!" She whined to herself. "It's disgusting! Gonna get wet!"

She looked over at Jaime and Udo, and sighed with resignation.

"Better get a present for this..." She muttered.

The kobold crouched, still cringing, and waited for the creature to roll back her way. She channeled, tensed, and flung herself at the monster in a pinwheeling blur of razor-sharp claws, sprays of discoloured blood and wailing cries of revulsion.

[Drannin]

Argus shrugged. "I don't think anything happened, really. It's just... fatigue, I suppose. Rose and I have been haring off across the known world for a long time on what feels like a series of wild-goose chases on behest of her superiors. I've been tagging along for reasons of my own, primary among them being Rose." Might as well be honest there. "Anyway, Eli hooked up with Desiree pretty early on and, well, I don't think he was very impressed with what he saw of humanity in general. After a life at home, seeing the broader world and the difficulties inherent to it was a shock for both of them. Eli just never opened up to any of us. Except Tim. And those two really didn't get along at first. I'm pretty sure Eli had a grudge against him for some reason."

Argus shook his head. "Maybe it's the common bond between two young men who were unfamiliar with the wide world and were suddenly thrust into it. I don't know.But Tim certainly knows Eli the best of anyone here."

[Alberich]

Tamina's flurry of an attack would've suprised the monster if it'd had any mind to speak of, to be surprised with. As it was, the voices were shrilling variously - "HURT! HURT! HURT! HURT!" and "HEAL! HEAL! HEAL! HEAL!" and "EAT! EAT! EAT! EAT!" But a lot of the mouths were occupied trying to carry out the last of these imperatives.

Tamina was a flurry of furry fury, and her claws cut its flesh and got its nasty glowy tan goo all over the place and all over her. But its little mouths were able to bite into her flesh and cause her injury and pain, tearing away like a thousand Chinese diners. And at last - alas! - she saw she wasn't going to make it all the way. In fact, she'd made it about halfway through the monster before she saw she must retreat, to heal her wounds. (Which would give it time to heal its wounds.) Something more would be needed.

It healed slowly enough that retreat would be easy. One more kobold and they could've cut a path through. But then, with two killikah gahs - how would it've been possible to concentrate on anything, except how adorable they were?

[Jack Rothwell]

The kobold, covered in unspeakable filth, blurred eyed with pain and exhausted beyond all reason, staggered back into the safety of the archway and collapsed in a panting heap. She jabbered distressed half-sentences to herself in her native tounge as went about the task of patching her wounds up.

"<That was the worst thing ever! I mean- by all the Gods that- heal->" A green glow interrupting her breathless monologue. "<...walked or crawled. I- ahh- I'm covered in gore! GORE! Heal!>"

The kobold eventually crawled to a safer spot and began wiping herself clean with an expression of tired disgust. A moment later she made a mewling noise and curled into a sleeping ball.

[Graybeard]

Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou, Sister Rose breathed in Lillith's direction. The explanation of the Errant problem, and how it related to Drusia's situation and Eli's, would be more compelling by far if it was coming from someone who might be an Errant in the eyes of a hard-liner elf.

Getting through to Tim was proving ... challenging. Well, it would be, she realized. The Orthodox Church had almost guaranteed that kind of problem, with the discrepancies between Orthodox dogma on the one hand, and some of the things she'd seen (not all of which she'd been supposed to see) in the Heretic Knowledge Vault, en route to her Special Ops commission, on the other. A day was coming, Rose believed, when that tension was going to land the Church in big trouble. But she really couldn't allow it to be today. Instead, it would be necessary to grit her teeth and go along with the Orthodox way ... just as it had so many times before.

She turned back to the young man and the question he'd asked. "I think she was trying to get his location out of me. Do you know if she can do that?"

"I don't think so," she said. "Not without a lot more effort, anyway. With practice, most magic users can learn to 'talk' in another person's mind. Drusia isn't the only one that can do that; so can I, so can Argus, so can Lillith, even Brad can do it a little bit and he's not highly gifted magically. Even Eli can do it, which is something not to forget about... I'm pretty sure that one of us could teach you to do that, and maybe we should, it's a useful skill in some settings and you have enough aptitude. It's just a matter of organizing your thoughts into verbal form and projecting them with magic. But magical mental listening ... that's different. That takes a lot of tools that you just don't carry around. Like I've said, I've worked quite a bit with Drusia, including in some situations where snooping on other people's thoughts would have been a handy thing to be able to do, and she never did it, so I think we can assume she can't."

She focused now on the young priest. "Now tell me more about this Valahiri Inn. Think of it this way if you want to: anything you can tell me is something Drusia won't have to try to worm out of you."

[Alberich]

Tim replied, "I've told you all I know about that inn already - just a name. I never went there. But when he saw Drusia's friend was hiding outside of here, lurking in ambush, that's where he went to wait for me while I checked." And got ambushed myself. "I doubt he'd still be there by now, it being daylight, and him not having heard from me. I don't think the inn itself is significant - just a convenient place for him to go when he saw the elves were waiting for him here."

[Graybeard]

"So it was just -- a place until it burned down?" Sister Rose summarized. Tim's nod confirmed this. "And you were there with him?" Another nod. Now the one that I can only hope for. "And would you have with you anything that he had, or handled, while he was there? Because there's a trick I learned in Special Ops that I'd like to try. Brother Miguel -- you never met him, but Lillith would remember him, and so would Argus and Drusia -- he's our Divination expert, but I think I can remember enough of how he'd do this to cast it myself. I need a physical object that Eli had, to make it work, though."