RP:A Little Gauche for Old Times Sake

Part of the Lies Within Us Arc

This is a Mage's Guild RP.

Summary: The clock is ticking. Haladavar's plan creeps forward every passing night and as the distant heralds of war start gathering their breath, a quiet moment passes between the two who have been part of this from the very start and will be to the bitter end.

Dilapidated Coral Castle, Cenril

Lanlan lazily leans forward, tilting his head toward a long telescope of smooth polished wood. He drags his fluff-lined comforter over his shoulders as he does so, bracing himself against the zombifying chill entering through the decaying walls of his castle. While he mutters to himself, his tarantula legs/eyebrows gyrate and jerk, directing a quill to scribble on some paper. Then he leans back again, waiting for Haladavar’s ominous space laser to reset its position on a lower portion of the rune-scarred moon. He flicks his arm over his shoulder, directing a bottle to refill a glass. The glass, now filled with some kind of bubbling tonic, floats over to him. Finally he actually uses his hand, and tilts the glass toward his mouth.

Odhranos wanders into the improvised observatory, swaddled in robes so thick and woolly, one would be understood to confuse them for a dressing gown. Because they were in fact a rather large dressing gown, pilfered from Pa Oohjmaeyik’s wardrobe. With permission, thankfully. “Watching the lightshow?” Odh inquires, addressing the pair of footprints he spies on the far side of the room near the telescope. He wanders over, steaming mug in hand and settles his elbows on the shattered parapet, supping from his mug as he stares off into the sky. “Which one is he on now?”

Lanlan is about to comment on Odhranos’s dressing gown, but realizes it would be pointless. He has no idea what he’s wearing, clearly. “Looking good, O.” And also, it isn’t a pair of footprints Odhranos spots, its the end of Lanlan’s fluffy blanket-robe dragging on the floor while Lanlan hovers a few feet off the ground. “Watching, recording, waiting.” Lanlan’s listless, bored, and its seeped into his soul. “He’s on…” Lanlan magically lifts up the parchment with the scribbles on it, “...his 27th row.” The laser continues to burn magical letters into the magic moon, casting weird purple light over the world even at this late, late hour. These days, even the humans have darkvision. “Have you and the lady made any progress,” Lanlan says out of some sense of obligation.

Odhranos smirks as he plucks at the furry dressing gown. “Do I? That’s good to hear.” The tone of his voice and the grin betrays that he is absolutely certain he looks hilarious, but right now, when most of the Guild is asleep and he is off duty, he couldn’t care less. “At least his pace hasn’t increased. We’re still on schedule for the beginning of Fifthmonth.” Odh nearly spits his tea over the side of the castle when Lanlan casually inquires into his love life. “We… yeah.” Odh doesn’t bother gussying it up, Lanlan and him have been through enough together at this point. “I didn’t want to say anything, with the war coming. But one thing led to another.” He laughs dryly and he drains the rest of his mug, plopping it on the ground beside them. “It wasn’t that happy a moment though. I almost blabbed about...y’know...the whole sacrificing my soul to kill Hal part. I sort of implied it and that was enough to upset her.” Odh crosses his arms on the rough stone wall and settles his chin on top. “Did you hear Kas is dead too?”

Lanlan nodded as he ponderously reached into a pocket, and pulled out a small wooden case, and plucked up the last cigarette, and brought it to his lips, and lit it with magic. After a deep inhale, he blows out a long plume that rolls and spins into the night sky, momentarily obscuring the laser and the moon before his eyes. Then it dissipates, and the ominous beam is still there. “I haven’t met her but very briefly, and I gotta say,” he says to Odhranos with minimal enthusiasm, “I don’t get it.” He pondered for a moment, inspected his cigarette suspiciously, and then continued. “But people said the same thing about Gevie and I.” Yes, Lanlan was comparing his and Gevie’s tumultuous, horrible, abusive relationship to something Odhranos and Inks should hope for. Happily, Odhranos changes the subject. “haHA, no way! I had heard a rumor but I figured it was one he started himself. How’d the idiot do it?”

Odhranos waves his hand around in front of his face when Lan blows his noxious cloud of smoke into the night sky. “I never got how you could stand those, they smell like mushroom spores to me.” He pulls a grimace, then shrugs in response to Lan’s comment. “There’s not much to get, really. I like spending time with her, she’s beautiful and intelligent. She hasn’t liquified an entire army of dinosaurs or anything, but hey, we can’t all be as lucky as you.” He turns to face Lan and sticks his tongue out in jest. “And in my defence, I have met Gevurah a few times and I still don’t get it, but at least we’re both in the same boat.” Odh’s eyebrows crinkle when Lanlan takes Kasyr’s news a bit more jovially than most, but given the past between the two, it's unsurprising. “Not all that sure really. He left a nasty scorch mark in one of Frostmaw’s inns, however he went out. Though you’ll be delighted to hear that’s not the end of him.” Odh leans over the parapet and looks out westward, where the faint ghosts of stone mountains glimmer on the edge of his perception. “He’s due to revive or something soon. In the Tower, if you can believe his letter.” Odh sighs and leans back into the room. “Another thing we’ll need to coordinate around. I just hope Kas is as good at timekeeping as he is at drinking.”

Lanlan chuckled haughtily to himself, “How do you think I’ve managed to stay healthy all this time? The smoke kills the virus before it can take hold. You should take more of an interest in your health.” What a dumb thing to say. “Well. I guess uh, maybe not, in fact.” That calls for an interjection! And Lanlan starts coughing and waving smoke away with both hands. “We’ll have to prepare some kind of welcome back party for him, in that case,” Lanlan says sarcastically. “But that’s a real talent he has, writing and sending letters from the beyond.” At about this point, ialantha comes waltzing through the door with a leash around her wrist, and a floating entourage of parcels behind her. A few feet behind comes Lump, the fat elemental salamander, his nose glued to the ground and his floppy tongue scraping against the ground to absorb the castles minerals. “Where do you get the gold to buy all this junk,” Lanlan asks of ialantha. She levitates them all into a neat four foot pyramid balancing on an empty table and responds with a confused smile, “I make it with magic, isn’t that what you do?” She magically produces a gold coin and flips it over to Odhranos to inspect it, assuming he’ll be able to sense it with his terramancy. “Alright boys,” she says after letting Lump off his leash. “Any progress? Any change?”

Odhranos snorts at Lanlan’s ill-timed comment. “Hah. Maybe I should start being more daring with my last month. Throw caution to the wind.” He chuckles, wiggling his fingers in the breeze that blows past the gaping hole in the castle’s side. “I think that might give the game away though. Might, uh, “adversely effect troop morale”, or so my books say.” Odh turns when Ialantha enters the room and he smiles pleasantly from his perch beside the wall. He watches dumbfounded as Ialantha plucks a gold coin from thin air, then tosses it over to him. He just manages to catch it before it bounces off the wall and pinches it between two fingers, inspecting it critically. “Yup, this’d pass by pretty much any inspection. You do know this is hilariously illegal, right?” The Philosopher’s Stone Law is a legendary stymie for up and coming alchemists, looking to make a quick buck. He holds the coin out for Ialantha to take, before answering her question. “Nothing new, thankfully. Hal’s keeping a fairly steady pace, which is good for us if we don’t screw up anything in the next month.” Odh casts a glance over his shoulder at the ancient elf. “How’s work coming along with the anti-soul cage plan?”

Lanlan rolls his eyes invisibly at Odhranos’s comment about suddenly becoming an adrenaline junky in the days before he was so critical to saving the world. “Yeah, maybe.” Then he just waits for ialantha’s great unboxing, the weekly event where she reveals all of the wildly frivolous and misinformed purchases she makes. Lanlan had to stop accompanying her because, having never encountered a salesperson in her old life, she was susceptible to every last one. “They call this little yellow towel ‘scam-wow!’, and it dries -anything- with only a little dab. They showed me! It seems like magic but it isn’t. And this,” she pulls out a small bottle filled with black goo, “is stretch-seal. You could seal up a hole in a boat...while on the water! Who knows when we’ll need this?” Lump, the heat-radiator, waddled over to the center of the room, just happy to be hanging out with people, and flopped down on his belly. Lanlan was never a patient man, but he waited until he threw off his blanket-cloak to remind ialantha of the question. “That’s really nice, Lantha. Yeah I don’t know, do you think we could use it to fix the weeping wound in the Xalious tree, maybe?” He knew, of course, that she had the most difficult job, that of plotting the demise of her own husband, but she was also critical to its success. She eventually sighs and replies. “Yeah. Well like you know, his body is magical. If we can exhaust him to the point that he can’t...manifest it. He might be forced to retreat inside.” They all knew that, in theory. “But he has the power of a demigod right now, and an army. How could we ever do such a thing? We’ll have to cast a spell that can do it,” she says as she unboxes some more novelty items that only the rubiest of rubes would buy. “But such a spell would take a long time to cast. And we would have to see him. It would be like trying to set a trap before his very eyes and then waiting for him to trip it. And we would need a power similar to his.”

Odhranos has been present to witness most of Ialantha's ill-advised spoils, but unlike Lanlan's increasing disinterest, he's tried to show interest in the odd and oftentimes hilariously bad products she comes back with. "You never know, that could be useful for sailors if their ship springs a leak mid voyage. I should tell Inks' father about it." Odh offers a weary smile as he meanders over to the table. He frowns at her prognosis of the situation, it certainly sounded like an impossible task. "His power isn't anything fancy, it's just more than any one person has the right to have. If we bring enough people, we can possibly match it?" Even Odhranos sounds uncertain. "But casting a spell like that in front of him sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Particularly if we only have one shot at this." Odh unties his blindfold, dropping it to the table so he can rub at his eyes. "Could we possibly divide the spell? Shorten the casting time by having multiple people cast components concurrently?"

Lanlan interjects here, “I could make him fall for any trap. Even one set right before his eyes.” ialantha reminds him, “But he’s been inside your head. He knows what you can do, so, how could you trick him? It would be like trying to trick yourself.” Little did she know, that is something Lanlan does all the time. “And maybe if it were just him alone, we could use everyone to cast on him. The problem is he has many followers now. Some of whom are quite strong aren’t they? But I -think-, if we can fix the Tree, then we may have access to the power we need. The power of a god. Maybe. That is something for the archmage to figure out.” She shrugs casually while she looks over her boxes. She found the one. She pulled a tie out of her hair and let it fall down around her shoulders in long auburn tresses, so she could test out another of her whimsical purchases. As she ran this fancy, wet looking brush through it, her hair changed from a sunny brown to pitch black. “My, this little instrument is fun!” that was before the acrid, toxic smell pervaded the air. She stifles a cough stoically and puts the thing back in its case, leaving her hair bicolored. “If we can defeat his followers quickly, we can fight him. I don’t think we could ever defeat him, but if we can force him to fight us for a while, I should have time to complete the spell on my own, or with one or two others. I think that is the best way. Do it while he’s distracted.”

Odhranos settles his chin in his hands and nods gravely, though he does have one good piece of news. "We mightn't be as outmatched as you think. Hildegarde has agreed to move Frostmaw's army to the Sage-Xalious border and set up a siege front. It should be enough to draw most of Hal's goons out of the Tower, which is when we'll hit the barrier hard and fast from the North. I've been prepping with the terramancer apprentices for that." Odh raises his eyebrows and turns to Lanlan. "Khavra's one of them actually. Real prodigy, that girl. You'll want to keep an eye on her when she goes back to Trist'oth, she's the sort of asset I could see the other houses setting their sights on." Little tangent aside, Odh returns to the plan. "We should be able to take the Tower while the rest of the OO are in the pass, gawking at Frostmaw knocking on their gates. I don't take Hal for an idiot, so I'm still expecting we'll have a fight on our way up the tower, but we might be able to catch them enough off-guard that Hal is left isolated as we climb the tower." Odh turns to Ialantha once more, wrinkling his nose at the acrid stench coming off of her hair. "Would that make your task a bit easier?"

Lanlan took little to no interest in Khavra, up to and including now. He was raised on the surface after all, and only met her for the first time recently. “That’s nice, I’ll be sure to watch out for her.” Was he watching out for her well-being? Or the chance that she might come at he or Gevurah, down in the cutthroat world of Tristoth? He didn’t provide any clues. Ialantha moved on to a much longer package now, the one she seemed to be most excited for. “Yes, that will make things much easier, as will this!” She yanked out an enormous stick...with a sword on top! “I have never seen so much mithril in one place! It’s amazing isn’t it?” She gave it a couple practice swings, testing the weight, before whirling it around her back from one hand to the next, and slicing in half a ring of smoke Lanlan was admiring as it drifted away. Lump, who had been dozing, was instantly alerted to one of his favorite meals and started trying to climb up ialantha to get it, but she shrugged him off. He slumped back down with a groan, but his eyes followed the blade wherever it went. Lanlan was mildly peeved, but mostly intimidated by her displays. “We have little more than a month to be ready, Ialantha,” he reminded her as she pointed her weapon at him while he floated further away from her. “And that’s assuming he keeps his current pace.” She stamped the hilt into the ground, angrily. “I am ready. I’ve been ready since I woke up from the amber prison. I was ready when I thought I was sacrificing my life and the lives of my people and my family to stop him. So forgive me if I take a little time to enjoy myself before I have to do it again!” Lanlan kept quiet, but drifted backward and used his magic to levitate Lump into his arms for comfort. “You are the ones who need to be ready. For everything I am ready for.” Lanlan cast his eyes down, realizing he pushed too far, and underestimating her, or forgetting who she was. For her part, she was never out of control, and neither of them were in any danger, in contrast to the time when Lanlan threatened her life all those months ago.

Odhranos, ever the optimist, takes Lanlan's statement as a positive one. There's a reason why this man doesn't gel well with Trist'oth locals. When the blood starts to boil between Ialantha and Lanlan, Odh tries to step in as a peacekeeper. "Hey, hey, we will be ready, alright? That's what we've spent the last month doing and it's what we'll spend the next doing too." The terramancer turns toward Ialantha, now easier to spot for her long mithril halberd. "We'll be ready. Sacrifices and all. We just need to keep this little band of misfits together long enough to see this through. Then we can go our separate ways." Odh doesn't comment on how this party of three will only be going two ways once this is all said and done, but he doesn't feel it necessary. They all know the deal. In an attempt to lighten the tone, Odh addresses Ialantha with a more light-hearted question. "What's your plan after we reclaim Xalious and put Haladavar to bed? Will you stick around? Travel maybe?"

Lanlan arches his eyebrows and turns away even further when Odhranos suggests that we’re all ready to make sacrifices. He gently allows Lump to drift gently back on the ground, while he flails madly with the weird experience of accidentally levitating. This whole conversation was getting increasingly uncomfortable, yes they were going their separate ways, and they’d never see Odhranos again, except to torment themselves with guilt. Ialantha would drive this point home, not yet ready to change her tone. “I’m not planning for after, Odhranos. Not until I get there.” She returns to her pile of nonsense and turns over a couple more boxes. “Now what else did I buy.” She takes a little cup out, with a plunger on the top. “Lanlan I know how much you hate chopping vegetables, especially garlic!” She magics a clove into the clear glass container, and slams her hand down on the plunger a few times, and a crisscross of blades mince it in seconds. “So easy! What should we make?”

Odhranos casts about, looking for some way to save this conversation, but not finding anything. It doesn't help that any way he tries to gloss over the elephant in the room, they end up circling back to it somehow. He clenches his jaw and balls his fists up on the table as Ialantha produces her latest gizmo and though he tries to calm himself, the incessant smacking noise of her garlic chopping eventually causes him to crack. "Sven above, could you two please just humour me this once?!" It's odd, Odhranos hasn't had an outburst like this since the last serious confrontation between the trio back in Xalious. "I have a month left and you two are the only people I can turn to about it. And yet every time I try to talk with either of you, you clam up and turn away, like I'm already written off and being mourned for!" Odh's frustration boils off as soon as it erupted, but he still tenses himself like a coiled spring. "I know it's a lot to ask, but I just want to talk… you know, nevermind." Odh pulls his bathrobe tighter about himself and walks over to the wall again, scowling into the darkness.

Lanlan hmphed. “I’m not mourning you. I’m not even committed to this plan.” ialantha was softer, and relented her chopping, just leaning against the table and stealing a glance out of the corner of her eye at either one of them, each owing their gaze to a different direction. The rift was wide, and the silence hung heavy. So long, she grew too afraid even to move, and be forced to confront something mortifying. And yet, the longer she waited, the larger the burden became. And she thought each one of them must already know what it is. At last Lanlan spoke it out loud, unable to resist doing so, apparently. “You can obviously talk to us about anything, Odhranos. We’re…” he gestured emphatically into the wall before him, trying to roll the reluctant words out of his throat, “...here for you. Right Lantha? Of course we are.”

Odhranos doesn't react to Lanlan's first outburst, simply staring out into the blackness that he sees beyond the stone of the coral castle. However, when the drow does his best to force the words out, Odhranos sighs regretfully. "I'm sorry Lan, I didn't mean to snap." Odh turns and presses his back to the wall, sliding down into a seated position. "It's just all been a lot lately. I'm not saying I'm reconsidering the plan. I'm not. I've been living on borrowed time anyway and getting to choose the way that I go isn't a chance that many get. I suppose I just… need consolation that things will be fine afterwards. You know?" Odh grimaces, feeling that he's not finding the right words to explain himself. "It might seem silly, wanting to know what's going to happen after I'm gone, but it makes it feel less like an end. That the world goes on afterwards. It's not that bad that way." Odh manages a small smile at the notion. "I guess I'm curious to know what's next for you two. So at least I'll know you'll be fine."

Lanlan waves Odhranos’s apology away. “Don’t apologize to me I’m fine. Snap all you want, and I’ll still be fine. I’m not sensitive like that.” He plants his feet on the ground for the first time in a while and starts examining ialantha’s ridiculous hoard. “It’s just, talking about feelings. So gauche. Isn’t it?” He nudges the ancient lady. “Right?” Then he makes his way over to Odhranos and almost gently touches his shoulder reassuringly, but pulls back and lands it on his hip. “And after all this. I plan to start a labor union. Right here in Cenril. Make sure every worker, be he a blacksmith or a tailor or a bath house mopper, gets a voice and a fair wage.” As decided by Lanlan. “And you ialantha?” She puts on a merryish face as well. “Once Haladavar is gone for good,” she whispers, with melancholy. “Maybe I’ll take to your suggestion Odhranos. See the rest of the world.” Lanlan admires her weak attempt at positivity, though it was of course nothing compared to his own. At least he believed in his.

Odhranos snorts gently. "I do have a tendency to be rather gauche, don't I? I like to think it's why you keep me around. For the variety." Odh plucks up the energy to bare a cheeky grin to where Lanlan's face would be, now that he has deigned to walk upon the earth. "That's funny, I wouldn't have written you down for a unionizer, but now that you say it, I can see you being very good at it. Lanlan of Sage, man of the working people." Odh's cheeks plump with his warm smile. He brightens further when Ialantha suggests taking him up on his proposal. "I'm glad to hear that, Lantha. It's a good way to live. Oh, and if you ever end up in a country where the people look and sound like me, look up House Charraig on Ri. Give my parents an earful from me." Odh chuckles, imagining the scenario of his old man being chewed out by an elf near ten-thousand years his elder. He climbs up from his seated position and brushes the dust from his robes. "See, already it doesn't feel that bad. You'll both be fine. I've got nothing to worry about."

Lanlan could elaborate on how such a position would be advantageous for himself, moreso than the rest, but this impression seemed perfect. “Yes, that’s right. We’ll all be fine, won’t we?” He smiles forcefully and looks to ialantha, reminding her to keep it up for his sake. “I will!” She promises Odhranos. “I will find Mr. Charraig and I’ll...I’ll give him two earfuls.” But her joviality falters. “I-I’m afraid that in all this time...I’m realizing I know very little about where you come from. Isn’t that silly?” Lanlan rejoins. “I suppose, now that we have our plan. And we have our dates...we can talk about the little things we never had time for.”

Odhranos smiles, but this time it is a gentle and genuine smile. "It is a little bit silly. But Lan's right, we have a bit of time." He gets a little glint in his eye and turns to the pair with a mischievous grin. "There's a carafe of brandy in the cellar downstairs that I'll wager isn't being watched too closely. I'm sure if it went missing, no one would be the wiser." The terramancer shrugs nonchalantly, the image of innocence. "It might go down well when paired with some old stories."

Lanlan shrugs on his way toward the cellar. “We haven’t even had dinner.” Odhranos was just being tacky on purpose now.