RP:A Hawkward Chat About Raevyn

Part of the What You Leave Behind Arc

Summary: Birds of a feather flock together to come up with a plan to protect Raevyn and hopefully keep Nasada from making an appearance in the Shadow Plane.

Frozen Road, Frostmaw

Lionel folds his arms across his chest and lowers his head against the blowing wind. Without a wall to lean against, his legs feel restless; the shamans here in Frostmaw practice their craft in huts, not oaken halls. Lionel’s heart feels restless, too. The shamans neither recognized the strange crystal skull he’d acquired in the conflict against the Ouroboros nor were able to tell him why he’d felt so attuned to it -- and the interloper, Mulgrew -- as soon as the woman and her artifact appeared before him. His only remaining lead is Uma, Cenril’s de facto mayor and his contact with the city’s witches. If she cannot tell him, then it shall have to stay a mystery; Lionel has no time for excursions unless they tie directly into the war. The wind blows again, and Lionel’s loose scarlet silk shirt and slacks smack noisily against his skin. He closes his eyes and tries to think of something, anything, but that skull. A moment later, he sighs, unfolds his arms and reaches into his pack to retrieve it. Green like an emerald and shimmering majestically, the skull seems alive in its death. Why did Hellfire react so profoundly to this thing, or at least to its previous owner, and not to the murderous giants who’d surrounded his team just moments prior? “Why the frak am I even holding you?” He shakes his head emphatically and puts it right back in his pack. His arms fold fresh and he longs for a wall to lean on again. It won’t be long now before Khitti comes down this road, and he’ll join her on the route back to the fort. With the mission behind them, but her and Brand’s child blatantly on its way, this may be the last time the steward and his aide-de-camp walk this road together for some time. And, with Kahran’s war worsening by the week, it could be their last Frostmawian stroll ever. He’s let go his thoughts on Mulgrew and the skull for a scant few seconds, and already his mind’s replacement is proving even gloomier.

“Why did you even keep that thing?” Khitti said as she walked up behind him. She’d seen him with that skull, of course. Despite the fact that she was quite a bit larger now than she used to be when she’d go sneaking about, she was still rather quiet and light on her feet. “After the way you reacted towards Tenbatsu Kaji, would’ve expected you to chuck that thing over the side of the mountain.” She stopped by Lionel’s side, crimson brows knitting together, accompanying a rather prominent frown--he’d know that frown; it was one of concern and worry. “Even if you don’t do that, I think at the very least that you should not carry it with you. A lot of our ‘allies’ are not so great as they might seem. Out of everyone that accompanied us the other day, the list of people I trust is much shorter than the one with those I don’t. And then there’s even more for the latter that wasn’t even present during the mission.” She took his arm gingerly, then sighed heavily, “Come on. Let’s go get you some tea,” leading him along towards the fort.

Celaeno had never particularly liked Frostmaw, to tell the truth, a prime example of which being the biting breeze and snow everywhere, all the thicker for the season. She, however, braved the chill with a winter robe and drained her mana with warming auras around various vital areas for the sake of crossing that final library off her list. After Frostmaw’s, she would have discovered every one in Lithrydel, and could use them accordingly. Unfortunately, with the wandering mage’s poor sense of direction, she did often get lost in said exploration, and this time’s mishap brought her just outside the fort where Lionel and Khitti were walking back towards. At first, she didn’t recognize the pair, until she matched Khitti’s prominent hair color with her even more prominent stomach. Celaeno quickened her pace, trotting up toward them, at the very least for a quick hello and an update toward the employer she was quickly coming to admire. “Miss Khitt!” she calls after them, and pauses to bow her head once she catches up. “Good day to you, and…” She glances aside toward Lionel as if only just noticing his presence. Being a foreigner, the legendary Catalan (forgive the writer’s slaughtering of that spelling) wouldn’t necessarily be recognized immediately, as the last time the half-elf had seen him she had been...a bit anxious and drunk soon after because of it. “...your friend.”

“I would have expected it, too,” Lionel admits. “I really would have.” His face darkens all the further. It’s all he can say for now, but Khitti still has a way of lifting him out from the gloom. She’s his sister, not by birth but by choice. Simple things, like tea -- even if Lionel is turning to wine increasingly of late, for any number of reasons -- are still enough to bring him small smiles. “Heh. Let’s.” The fort comes into higher view, snow-covered but for the hot patches where smoke from forge fires rises out in wispy snakes. Frost Giants nod deeply in respect to the steward and his aide-de-camp, but still peer down from dizzying heights in so doing. An avian merchant hawks his wares nearby, but the goods are pewters and fine pearls, and few of townsfolk in the City of War seem to have so much as noticed. “Miss Khitt!” Lionel hears, but he ignores it because who the heck is Khitt? “Some lemon ginger this time,” he declares. “Earl Grey has its limits. You’d think it wouldn’t, but it does.” Secretly, he isn’t thinking of tea. He’s thinking of the skull… and he’s thinking of an aged merlot. Then quite suddenly a half-elf appears, bowing her head, and she’s looking right at them. Or at Khitti, in any case. What is a complicated hero with closet social anxiety issues to do when a woman he’s quite sure he’s never seen comes flocking over for his sister? Very little, as it happens. “Hey.”

Khitti tilted her head at Lionel’s request for a different sort of tea, then nodded, “Alright.” Her thoughts are shifted away from Lionel as her name is called--or partially called, rather. “Oh. Hi, Celaeno.” The half elf’s stare towards the Catalian is noted and Khitti’s quick to introduce him to her, “This is Lionel, my brother.” She gave no other titles, despite the fact that he had many. There was only one that mattered to her. “How are you?” There had been a pleasant smile for the moment, but it soon faded to mild concern, “Has anything else happened since we last spoke? With… Raevyn?” She seemed a little hesitant to bring it up, but her worry was not keen on being contained.

Celaeno’s voice had caught on some saliva that slipped the wrong way, taking the final “i” in Khitti’s name with it. Luckily the recovery was quick as her employer offered introductions. The young mage with a scholar’s habits did a double take as the Catalian’s name rung quite a few bells in the part of her mind that stored the Lythridel history she’d been obsessively pouring over. He earned a pensive once over as her mental gears turned. “Knowing how impressive Miss Khitti is, I can’t help but expect you’re -that- Lionel. M’lord, with the Hero of Hellfire, Steward of Frostmaw, and all of those other epithets attached.” Late recognition may have dawned when his presence at the Yule Ball registered. The impromptu examination did buy her time to sort through how exactly to phrase the Raevyn developments as succinctly as possible to the aide de camp. “It took some graverobbery--don’t worry, they deserved it--a nasty spellbook, and a a couple episodes of what I hope are only delusions, but we have made progress. No doubt she’s holed up in the Black Library now unraveling the damned thing.” The girl wasn’t known for cursing, so odds rested on the “damned” part being literal. She crosses her arms over her chest, addressing them both for the moment in a firm stance that seemed to brook no denial. “Speaking of which, she told me of the task she promised to perform. I want to help.”

Lionel enjoys the ten-second world where none of his titles exist and he’s free to be introduced as ‘Khitti’s brother’ wherever they may go. It’s a jolly world, with jolly people, none of whom wish to kill one-another with their cruelest strokes. In this world, Lionel is a treasure hunter, or a drunken sailor like his friend Brand. Maybe he’s both. Maybe he wakes up after dawn and sleeps before the wolves howl into deepest night. Maybe he gets his merlot whenever he damn well feels like it, and there are no mysterious women guiding his fate from on-high, and he isn’t mortally obsessed with saving everyone and tragically obsessive over his every failure along the way. And maybe, just maybe, that avian merchant hawking wares near the fort right now is not so inconceivably loud. All that fancy snaps like a twig against the pouring rain when Celaeno reveals herself familiar with his person. “Oh,” he says. “Epithets do breed epithets. Please, though, no m’lording over me. I get my cardio everyday just finding a safe spot to hide from all the pomp and circumstance.” He gets most of his cardio slicing orc heads off of Kahran’s armies, if truth be told, but this remark would make his sister fret. In fact, he’s just about to regard Celaeno as an overly proper fawning student type when suddenly she mentions graves in need of robbing. He blinks, and when he’s done blinking his blue eyes are searching her far more curiously than before. This one may be alright, after all. “Oh, you’re -that- Celaeno,” he declares, as if he has ever known another Celaeno. “Well met! Good bit on the grave-robbing, and I do trust the book is literally damned. Sorry to hear about the maybe-just-delusions, but they almost seem to come with the trade. And by ‘the trade’,” he makes a quotational finger motion, “I mean frak never everything remotely dangerous from one end of Lithrydel to the other. Anyway, of course you can help.” Lionel peers over to his sister, pleadingly. “She -can- help, right?”

The pregnant Khatalian cringed a little at the use of some of those titles, as well as at the mention that there were more. Sorry, Lionel. She tried. Celaeno goes on to speak about a book, and this caused a bit more concern to wash over her. “So, Raevyn found what she was looking for then.” Her brother got a side-eyed glance, and a frown--he knows the frown; it’s the frown that means she’s worrying a lot--before her attention settled on the half elf again, “There is definitely something you can do. I’m a little, erm… troubled by the fact that Raevyn’s so eager to run off to the Shadow Plane. She’s had very little training, mostly due to the fact that she’s been searching high and low for this ‘damned book’, and she’s even admitted to not being very skilled at all. I’ve given her a small portion of my own magic, in order to boost hers while she’s using that scythe, and even went a step further to put a failsafe on it, so it breaks once it’s been used. But, what concerns me is the fact that Nasada might take it upon himself to takeover Raevyn’s body and use it for himself, as well as the scythe. Dark magic flourishes in the Shadow Plane. She will already have a boost to her magic just from being there, but with this added bit of my own? It could prove to be a mistake on my part.” Khitti drew in a breath and let it all out in a heavy sigh, “It’s not a glamorous job, but I need you to watch over her. Sometimes people like us,” and by us, she meant those that have another entity stuck in their heads,” need people to ground us. Lionel and Brand were that with me with Amarrah. I need you to be that for Raevyn, just in case. Nasada’s not a good being. At all. He was evil in every sense of the word. Like Amarrah, and Facilier, and Kahran, and anyone else that decides to pop up out of history to wreak havoc on Lithrydel.” She gripped Lionel’s arm a bit more tightly, protectively. If anyone else from anyone’s past managed to claw their way out of the depths of hell, Khitti was going to unleash pregnant redhead fury on them.

All Celaeno can do at Lionel’s little denial of her “m’lording” and Khitti’s cringe is blink. She had never met a noble in her life who didn’t enjoy the ceremony, even a little--then again she hadn’t really met many of that infamous “higher class.” This land seemed one of people who hated titles, though. She nods and offers an uncertain, “Very well, Mister O’Co--Mister Lionel.” At least she had brought it down to something more generic. She wasn’t sure if his further speech complimenting her accomplishments with Raevyn was a quip, sarcasm, or quite possibly serious. Those history books certainly hadn’t expressed quite that much personality out of the famous figure. It shows as she stares at him with a funny furrow between her brows until the permission to help brings the eager smile out of her, exposing her evident youth. “Really?” She follows his direction and looks to Khitti, the same sentiment in her big, gray eyes as she listens. It did sober some as Khitti continued. “Well, she wants to be useful. Who wouldn’t with a threat to the entire realm?” At least that’s what she assumed based on rumors and second hand testimonies from ones such as Raevyn and Khitti alike. Despite the defense, she bites her lip, understanding clear in her reply. “Well, I did do that...thing we spoke about to help my situation, so I am more able to serve. I’d be more than happy for watching over my friend to be my duty. Not much different from what I strive for regularly, especially when it comes to that bastard.” That time the curse was surely intentional as the joints of Celaeno’s hollow gauntlets whine with her fingers clenching. “Until then, practice I suppose.”

Lionel’s shoulders straighten and the muscles in his forearms tighten at first mention of Nasada. He doesn’t need to wait for Khitti to refer to the creature as another dark thing in the history books; he distantly remembers fighting on opposite sides in conflict against Nasada and his brethren. That the man survived those ordeals is testament to the unrelenting thoroughness mandatory in Lionel’s life’s work -- as well as the impossibility of the procedure. Something will always slip through the cracks; Kahran was almost certainly an anonymous battle commander in Khasad and Elazul’s ranks, and Nasada followed the ambitions of sorcerers and warlords and otherworldly despots just the same. It sickens him to think that the girl Raevyn could be afflicted so, and it sickens him to think that Nasada would choose someone so earnestly decent to be his host. Pondering the gloom, as Lionel is wont to ponder, he remains silent for much of the next several moments. It isn’t until Khitti grabs hold of his arm that he snaps out of the trance, glancing meaningfully between them. “I don’t doubt the solemnity of --” Lionel is cut off by the loudness of the avian hawker, and he cringes and unfolds his arms slowly. “I don’t doubt her solemnity,” he finishes the thought. “Raevyn is doing all she can and more. We just want to make sure the ‘more’ doesn’t bring her harm, especially in light of her unique… circumstances. I know Nasada, at least a little bit, and sooner or later we’re going to need to do something about that little issue for Raevyn’s good and for the realm’s.” There’s something in Lionel’s delivery of the line that speaks to the texts Celaeno may have read on him more than any other thing he’s said thus far; something stalwart, decisive, heroic. “In the meantime, I’m happy to hear she has a friend who will watch over her.”

The redhead listened to both the half elf and her brother quietly, nodding along to both. “It’s entirely possible that I’m worrying for no reason, but… Lionel and I know full well what goes on in the Shadow Plane and it’s rather enticing for those that practice the dark arts, simply because they powers are doubled just because they’re there. I do trust Raevyn, but not Nasada. Not when my friends and family are going over there with that creature. I know you’ll do well, whether you have to fight or not--and I know this because you’re just like me in many ways.” More ways than she can count, really. “But for right now, definitely go and study. Make sure you’re ready for this. Lionel will be there with you, but he can’t protect everyone. You need to make sure you can protect yourself, and those you hold dear. And we--” She nodded at Lionel, “--need to go get him some tea. Or maybe something stronger.” Probably the latter. “You come find me if you need anything, Celaeno. You know where I’ll be.”

“She’s working to do that, to get her life back. We both are. I’ve seen enough to believe you both about the thing she needs to get rid of, but she’s so much stronger than even she knows. She will overcome this and more.” Celaeno spoke with the conviction of a family member more than a friend. But she had been wrong before, despite her firm belief. “All I can do is aspire to do the same.” She offers both Khitti and Lionel a formal, but determined bow with her farewell. “Some tea sounds lovely. Perhaps I’ll take a break at the tavern. They have a good brew. Drink well. It was a pleasure meeting some of Miss Khitti’s family, Mister Lionel. I look forward to next time.” A last word to Khitti. “Something tells me I’ll seek you out very soon, among others.”