RP:An Orchestra of Stars

From HollowWiki

(originally from the beginning of February 2012)


it begins with a letter, delivered by courier;

(this short note is scribed in a messy sort of scrawl befitting of a blind writer)

Ranok,

I'd like to see the stars now. Come to Frostmaw, yes? You promised to show me stars in a way I've never seen them. I'll wait for you in the colosseum. I'm inspecting the echoes there.

Kirien



cast;


  • Kirien; empathic terramancer.
  • Ranok; stoic, strange smith.
    • Sera; mist dragonette.
    • Draeta; infinitely perplexing...thing.



Hidden Mountaintop Colosseum

Kirien scrunches his nose up and sneezes shortly afterwards, shattering the cold silence that has fallen over the colosseum. With hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his winter coat he paces slowly round the very rim of the desolate arena, his only real company other than the wind and snowfall being Zekchasz. The young grey pads along close in her guardian's footsteps, like a duckling would follow her mother, trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue - soon enough, though, she picks up a familiar scent that has her straying from Kirien's side and wandering closer to the centre of the stadium. Kirien watches her blindly as she inspects the bitter tang of blood that he has already filled his lungs with, while she misses the echoes of the fight playing out right in front of her that he cannot escape from; the cacophonous ring of blades, the heat of battle, and the image of an agonising defeat the empath had no desire to witness but could not help coming to see all the same. The drow's scream still reverberates through the stones beneath him. "Kuzial's blood?" chirps Chasz after a moment, bemusement in her voice as she turns to stare in the terramancer's direction. Kirien makes a face. "Yes," he answers with a nod. "Et here we are, stuck in Frostmaw." He looks rather downtrodden as he says that, nudging the snow with his boot.


Ranok steps into the arena. He'd had little interest in the tourney fights and watching them directly. More or less, they were only a information gathering process, and that, thanks to the play by plays, large coverage, ease of getting the battle ready Frost Giants to talk about it, and a plethora of other reasons made getting a nearly complete picture ridiculously easy. So he spent time in the warmer climates. Upon receiving Kirien's letter, the smith was reluctant, but forced to head up to Frostmaw. A promise was a promise, after all. He'd drug Sera along with him, this time. She was getting large now, about the size of a small horse. She was beginning to get her racial abilities under control, with the semi corporeal makeup native to its species manifesting at times of crisis. Adjusted to the warmer climates of the tropical Rynvale, the mist dragonette was as much of a fan of the cold as Ranok was. If not worse, since the mists that drift off its body soon freeze, making things extra miserable for the poor thing. It was learning to speak, but its vocabulary wasn't quite enough to voice its misery. Ranok shared in it, and helped out by crafting a harness for the dragonette that carried those ovals of metal that provided the warmth for the smith to endure the cold. The boundless energy of the young helped it a little, too. Two pairs of gray eyes survey the Colosseum, one flickering, the other shining and bright. Both unaware on an emotional level of the agonies that were endured in this place, but logically aware. Ranok didn't give much of a damn, though, and Sera was just too young to care.


Kirien remains caught up in the colosseum's echoes for some time. Flickering images of the more recent fights play over and over before his eyes, trapped in this place as he is confined to Frostmaw city's boundaries. He only really cares about one of the matches, watching enrapt as the vicious dance of barbarian and drow patron repeats endlessly, and always with the same outcome. Kirien makes the absent decision not to tell Kuzial that he saw his defeat, if only in a lingering memory; because sometimes he possesses maybe a little amount of tact. "Why?" Chasz questions, earning herself a curious blink from her guardian. She heads back over to his side when Ranok and his companion make their appearance in the arena, casting both a glance and staring intently at Sera for a second or two. Kirien honestly looks distracted, and does not really acknowledge the two's arrival at first - which is odd for someone as attentive as he. "Why-- why Kuzial lose?" Chasz presses on, her limited vocabulary not allowing her to say all she wants to say, but being able to convey enough. "I thought you wanted him to lose?" the empath asks in return, rocking back on his heels as his gaze finally lifts from his dragonling and strays in Ranok's direction. Chasz shakes her head vigorously and protests, "No! Not...really. Not to others." She huffs. "Just to Chasz!" And despite it all, her words have Kirien laughing, his shoulders trembling as he barks out his amusement to fill the arena with a lighter sound to the shouts of pain, however brief it might be. Swaying forward, he leans over so as to scratch affectionately under the grey's chin, causing her to tilt her head some and then nip lightly at his fingers when he pulls back. "You're as bad as he is, tu know," he offers to Chasz, though his attentions are back on Ranok, who'll at last receive a wave from the terramancer and the vague hints of a smile. "I wondered if tu would show up or not." That's a greeting of some kind, somehow.


Ranok would wonder, perhaps, if he's ever left an emotional imprint anywhere, were he privy to Kirien's thoughts. Out of the exit the smith steps, "Vat about de drow? Hy heard de match vas zumddink to behold. Eboric iz a verebear. Vo knev? He vas remarkably goot about maintainink his human form. Almost like he vas chust keepink de bear inside for chust such an occasion. Hm." Ranok was, quite obviously, ignorant of Kirien's crush on Kuzial, or whatever the empath called it. Sera had spotted the gray, and, predictably, ruffled herself up as large as she could. Wings flare out slightly, maw open, hissing and clouds of mist seeping out. She was territorial in instinct, after all. The Mist Dragon was the undisputed champion of the Fog Forest, to such the extent that no other dragons lived in it in the infested island of Rynvale. That sort of instinct transfers to its young. Ranok was doing what he could to curb her enthusiasm. Grumpy in the cold, the smith was not brooking any such shenanigans, however. A sharp command, "Enough! Kalm down." Sera winces back a little from the reprimand. Ranok was still larger then her, and the imprint made him to be the 'mother', as wrong as that image was to basically anyone. Stepping further into the arena, "A promise iz a promise, Kirien. Hy gaff my vord. Such iz de bindinks uf oath. Hy must disagree vith de klimate, tough. Luckily, ve'll be headink into de desert to do dis." The smith was dressed as he always was, even in the cold. An aura of warmth followed him around, the only reason he was in this Jimbob forsaken hellhole. Sera had a similar aura, as well, both products of the smith's ingenuity. So no heavy winter wear for either, unless you counted Sera's coat of sorts. His hands go in his pockets anyways, though. Draeta flares gently, letting it be known that the avatar was present and watchful.


Kirien would probably answer those musings with a smile and a, "Yes." Turning to fully face the approaching smith, he motions with an idle hand to the arena and the echoes still lingering unseen all around Ranok, "It was rather brutal. Eboric es a man with puzzle pieces that do not fit et a strange taste, I think. Eyeballs are horrible, so I can only hope he ate it just to spite him." He knew of Eboric's curious transformation abilities before the match, in fact, but this is something Kirien leaves mostly unsaid, save for that vague comment regarding puzzles. He's opening his mouth to speak again when Chasz pipes up suddenly, crying, "Kuzial -lost-!" in a somewhat indignant tone as she frowns up at Ranok, before her attentions are abruptly drawn back to Sera and her display of challenge. Equally territorial in her own right, despite being so young (and not realising her 'territory' is in fact part of Cryothain's already), it prompts the stubborn young grey into growling back, steely-tipped tail swishing behind her until Kirien catches hold of the weapon meant to intimidate and gives a gentle tug. It's a similar sort of reprimand to Ranok's, only silent. With both dragonlings sulking, the empath scrunches his nose up and says to Ranok, "It was a good fight. Doubtless he'll not be happy he lost but...well. It's just a process of cheering him up again, j'suppose." Hopping forward a step, he moves to meander past both smith and Sera, Chasz following huffily behind him though Kirien seems to have no real destination he's headed for - he simply begins to wander about the arena once again, stepping oddly here and there as though avoiding the thrust of a sword, until he comes to a pause at the point where Kuzial's mages briefly tore open a portal to House Stavret and all traces of the drow come to a stop. "Ah-- the desert? We have to do it in a certain place?" he asks with a glance back over his shoulder. "I'm sort of...grounded. Here." A boot scuffs in the snow, then, and Kirien might have pouted. "That's why I can't follow." He looks back to where that portal once was, frowning.


Ranok was now dealing with three sulking, in various stages, entities. His eyes go heavenwards, just a moment, as if to say 'vy me?' before he grits his teeth and moves forward with it. "Eboric iz Eboric. Seems like he's formink an army now. Not my kvuncern. If he attacks Rynvale, it vill take more den zum pissy verebear und his trio uf lycan gurls und zum siege to herm de kity. De idiot vouldn' know 'tactics' if zumone trev it in his face." The smith apparently wasn't a fan. Sera sulks about, choosing to nose around the arena and seats. She was getting bored. No small animals to try to hunt, not even bugs to chomp. Frostmaw was the dumps. "Hy didn' kome here to talk about de drow or de barbarian. Dey fought, vun lost. Hy gain. Hall dat matters." Hat was tugged down a little more firmly about the ears. "Yah, it matters vere." Draeta flares again, <Cloud formations block visible light, making it unideal conditions. The desert carries incredibly little cloud cover, providing perfect viewing conditions at the lowest altitudes. The same effect can be gathered by climbing to above the clouds.> The smith interjects, "Und if hyu're doink *dat*, kount me out. Hy'm NOT endurink de gotterdammerungn heights uf Mt. Asscrack for dis. Draeta kan do it viddout me." Sera would wander, accidentally or intentionally, closeish to Chasz, but not enough to touch. <Ah. There is one matter that must be accomplished before we may proceed with the plans. I require blood. Of a certain type. I currently lack the ability to synchronize with...> Ranok gives the lights a heavy look. Expression was difficult to read. For perhaps the first time, the lights falter in their speech. <...with the living or simulacrum thereof. We must gather some. Research indicates that the mind flayer is optimal, albeit highly hazardous.>


Kirien's ears twitch. After a second, he spins away from the centre of the arena and wanders to the stands, hopping up into the private booth with its seven odd chairs and taking his place upon his own. He watches the echo one last time from this vantage point before, with a slightly narrowed gaze, he directs his focus back to Ranok. "Eboric es Eboric but who es his other face?" he answers, cryptic as usual but with a certain curiosity in his eyes. The identity of that being has been questioned many times since he first saw him within the warrior - a warrior the smith does not appear to favour, if his remarks are anything to go by. Tilting his head, Kirien says, "Tu don't seem to like him much. Did he break up with you, or?" This is probably a little tease in revenge for Ranok's comments about boyfriends, even if those comments might very well be true these days. "It was you who brought them up anyway." A shrug follows but the empath drops the topic, though Chasz does not seem willing to do the same. "Kuzial said he -always- wins," she mutters, almost dejectedly as she ambles along a row of seating close by the private booth. She has a childish sort of rivalry with the drow, but more than anything Kirien thinks she looks up to him, as a father and a fighter. Smiling some despite himself, he squints in the general direction of Draeta. "I suppose that makes sense. I can't leave here though-- orders being orders et all, but we could head up the mountain." He waves a hand at Ranok. "I'll make stairs for you if you'd like. You don't want to see stars too?" Draeta's mentions of mind flayers prompt Kirien into rubbing at his side some, mostly unconsciously, and frowning in what might be disapproval. "Does it have to be them? I mean, they're somewhat difficult to find in a place like this. What sort of blood type do they have that's different from, say, mine?" During all this, Chasz has begun to bound across the seating areas, chasing after a pebble that chips and cracks as it tumbles down the arena stairways.


Ranok crosses his arms over his massive chest, "Hy von' dignify dat remark vith a response." It was more or less bad blood. And the fact that Eboric was a threat, written in the abstract to the smith. He handled threats, planned, accounted for. It was just who he was. He had files on how to kill just about everyone he's ever met, no matter how benign. Just in case. "It hain't about de klimb, it's about de kold. A kampfire ruins de schtars chust as much as klouds. De meddod uf vievink vill be schtrange, hennyvays. Vun person at a time. Und Hy've seen dem. Impressiff, but Hy've truly *seen* dem." Two could play a crypticism, apparently. Sera's movements became more obvious over time: she was stalking Chasz. Like a hunter would. Hiding among the seats, moving up when she wasn't being watched. She was a sneaky little thing. Silent as the mists, as quick as them, it was hard to spot unless you knew what to look for. And if she wasn't in a mostly open arena doing it. That too. <In order to establish a solid mental link, you need a specific physiology or I need the blood of a creature with innate psychic abilities. The Mind Flayer is simply the most potent of the group, with good reason, and harvesting one would grant further benefits. Perhaps your blood may work, though experimentation will be the only light that can truly be shed on the matter.>


Kirien snickers to himself and breathes chilly laughter into the stadium - he cannot help but be amused, because he's sure the displeased expression on Ranok's face is positively hilarious right now. Oh, if only he could see it. "I was joking. Mostly. Tu would be a terrible pair anyway!" He waves a hand again in an idle fashion then leans forward so as to rest his elbows on the railing of the booth, chin in his palm. If his hair hadn't been so windblown and messy, and if his cheeks had not been speckled with mud, he might have looked almost regal up there in his fine winter coat; but, while Kirien might be royalty of some sort, or at least partially related to it, he seems to have no desire at all to look the part. Finery be damned, he's comfortable being covered in mud. "If it's the cold that bothers you, I can lend you a firestone? Stuff it in your pocket so it won't give off any light, et it'll warm your entire body." Kirien does not often part with his firestones, precious and rare as they are. He leaves the offer there though, while casting Chasz and Sera an absent look. His feisty dragonling is so caught up in the art of chasing after her pebble that she barely notices she has a stalker on her tail - she'll learn, thinks Kirien with a smile. Glancing back to Draeta, he says, "I have empathic abilities. That's kind of like psychic abilities." Except totally different, but the terramancer does not bother to think about that. "We could try it, though. I don't have anything mind flayer-related on me and experiments are fun anyway." With his curious existence, it might just work.


Ranok sighs, "Vy do hyu insist on attemptink to drag me up dere? No, no. Hy vill schtay und chat vith Drargon. He mentioned zumddink in his valls de last time Hy vas dere, Hy vant to ask him more about it. Draeta vill accomphenny hyu, not Hy. He kan do it, Hy vould simply be freezink my ass uff out dere." He sounded final. He wasn't heading up any mountains, period. Duster swirls around the man's feet, the leather whipping with a mind of its own. Draeta bobs down, the trio of lights floating lazily as ever. Sera was creeping up onto Chasz...and then she would pounce. It was the way she played: inflicting violence on unsuspecting others. Just like her 'mother', in his younger days. Claws would scrabble, gone hard after going solid instinctively from their soft state (better which to grip the ground quietly), onto gray scales as Sera hisses victoriously at her 'prey's inattentiveness. She wasn't trying to hurt the smaller gray, just pin her and prove herself the bigger dragon. It even had a 'RAWR' added in, for good measure. Heedless of the play of his dragonette, the smith continues to glower at Kirien. Draeta speaks up, <It must be blood. Fresh. Simply a byproduct of my workings, I am afraid. Empathic connections may serve, however. Albeit its usefulness would be limited outside of certain applications...if you would step up, then, please?>


Kirien blinks gently at Ranok. "In his...walls? Sounds interesting." Now he's genuinely curious about this, but there are more important matters at hand and the prospect of viewing stars through someone else's sight can never be passed up - especially not when a being as interesting as Draeta is the one offering to be his eyes. Things in the walls can be investigated later, if Ranok has not killed or extracted whatever it might be before then, of course. Grinning to himself, Kirien stands and stuffs his hands back into his pockets, while nearby Chasz shrieks in fright as Sera makes her successful pounce. The two go down in a mess of scales and sharp claws, the prideful young grey unwilling to give up without a fight despite her obviously smaller stature - she's not quite as polite as Sera, either, jagged teeth bared as she tries to use the brute force her species is known for to shove the young mist dragon off, nipping and scratching where she can along the way. Kirien is looking in their direction when Draeta speaks and distracts him again, leaving Chasz to struggle and lash her tail around, and keep on fighting. "Blood, blood, right. I can do that. Maybe it's a good thing you won't be coming with us, if he needs my blood," he says with a pointed glance to Ranok. "Are we headed up the mountain or are you borrowing my blood first?" He hops down from the booth, stretches, and turns to peer behind him, staring beyond the colosseum's walls to the frozen slopes above it. "Weather might be bad. Nothing I can't handle."


Sera wasn't too overly bothered by claws that caught or teeth that bit. What wounds she sustained bled bitingly chilly mists that tended to seize up the systems when it was breathed in. She was equally as feisty as the gray, and bigger. But it was all good fun...at least for her. The dragonette breaks off the scramble with a short hop, wings flapping. Not quite yet able to fly, she does a large leap with the wings assisting, instead, to put her on a new vantage point. Shining gray eyes peer down at the gray. If she was a dog, her tail would be wagging. "Borrow? Uh." The smith looks a little shifty. <Well, I must confess, any blood given to me cannot be returned. And, yes, a donation now would assist matters in the long reach. If I find now that it is unusable, then we must seek alternatives. Much easier here, is it not? Please step forward and indicate where you wish the letting to occur.> Ranok's eyes thinned, a bit, with a glance over at the two dragons, and then back to Kirien, "Vait, vat? Vy vould it be goot for me to not go if hyu are to lose blood?" Now it was Ranok's turn to be the curious one.


Kirien hears Chasz cry, "It's not -fair-!" in obvious frustration at not being able to best her opponent, before she chokes on a lungful of frigid mist and ends up momentarily immobile due to it. By the time she manages to fight past the biting inner chill, Sera has already leapt away - Chasz scrambles to her feet, bristling, clearly taking this little wrestling session more seriously than her apparent playmate. The empath watches them with interest, watches his youngling the most, and cannot help but wonder if her stubborn traits are wholly instinctive or if she's just taking too much after Kuzial. "Oh, so it's not... Well, that's fine with me all the same. How much do you need, out of curiosity?" asks Kirien, turning back to the smith and his odd flickering companion as he meanders back out into the arena, coming to a halt a few feet in front of Draeta. He's opening his mouth to give the being the okay when Ranok asks his question and the terramancer pauses, and swallows the words that were on the very tip of his tongue. "It'd be good for you not to go unless tu want to risk becoming a snack?" he offers in response with a blink, and then a bit of a grin that's broad enough to reveal his heritage. "Like before, with the elerium. Lose too much blood, or use up too much energy, et I can get pretty hungry." Another pause, while nearby Chasz makes a leap for Sera and smashes her head against a wall instead - the sound is rather like that of stone hitting stone. "...I said some silly things, that time, I think. Anyway! Draeta, go for it-- do your thing."


Sera pounces down on the gray again after it bonks its head on the wall. Hissing in what can only be saurian laughter at the thing's predicament, she opts to try keep away over 'wrestle the gray'. A talon to touch Chasz's snout, and then she was bouncing away. She'd keep at it until the gray caught her or 'tagged' her instead. The mist dragonette was having great fun, here. Ranok curls one hand into a fist, holding it up to Kirien, "Hy tink Hy kan hendle it myself. Hy've been fed on before. But Hy von' be gun. So ve kan schtop vorryink about it. Draeta. If hyu vould." The smith takes Kirien's hand gently. Inspects it. Draeta flares, brightly a scant moment. And then the armor turned black, pitch black. Darker then the space in between the stars, the effect was, as always, unsettling. The invocation of the blood of the darkness incarnate. Bleeding across the formerly bone white plate, the effect was quicker then the eye could blink. And just as quick were the tendrils that lashed out and sank into Kirien's flesh before the empath could change his mind. Drawing a cut across the wrist, for better blood flow, the smith lays the back of his palm on the wound. The armor behaves much like a sponge, drawing up what blood had seeped sideways in the moments it welled up but before it was stoppered. The tendrils, too, recede. <A liter or two shall work within tolerances. It is not as effective as draining a body solid, but I believe you will survive this ordeal.> As carefully calculating, perfectly neutral, and utterly dispassionate, the intelligence carried but one vice. A greed for knowledge. And to it, blood was learning, albeit of an unconventional sort. It would draw as much, and more, then it promised. The smith's fingers were locked with supernatural grip, born even beyond a simple measure to prevent the empath from wiggling, and utterly from Draeta's own actions. When the time came to separate, the armor would do it with great reluctance and the intervention of Ranok's strength resisting that of the grip of his own armor to stop it. Kirien would have to speak up, or it would drain him to the point of unconsciousness.


Chasz rumbles out another growl when outsmarted once more and promptly chases after Sera - she might be of a slightly stockier build than most dragons, but the grey is quite capable of running fast enough that she's not embarrassingly left behind in the mist dragonette's dust. A daring leap forward has her likely crashing head-first into the other hatchling, but she does not attack this time around, apparently taking more interest in this game of chase than in constantly being pinned. Poking Sera's jaw with the pointed tip of her steely tail, Chasz takes off running, streaking across the arena floor while Kirien glances to Ranok, frowns in bemusement when he takes his hand, but says nothing. The eerie transformation of the smith's armour goes unseen by the empath but not unnoticed; there is simply something 'off' about the entire thing that he seems to respond to, because he casts Ranok another look that is more questioning this time around, before dark tendrils slash across his wrist and have him flinching in surprise. He might have tried to jerk his hand away, but the grip is strong enough to restrain him even as he shifts awkwardly in place. The entire experience is rather disconcerting for the blind man, who cannot wholly see what is going on but can feel, slowly, his energy and blood being drained from him through strange measures that he does not at all understand. A litre, Draeta says. Kirien waits, brows furrowed, expression somewhat pained, as more and more of his blood is drained from him. When it becomes too much, he does speak up, in his own manner of course - the colosseum's foundations tremble, crackling like old bone, as the high walls and pillars surrounding the arena begin to bend inwards, almost as if to form a cage above them all, or perhaps bending to try and reach Kirien like plants do the sun. It's a strange sort of motion, and it lasts only a moment, before the entire mountain gives a violent tremor and the terramancer's voice is laced with golden sparks when he speaks over it. "I think that's enough, Draeta?" He glances up, then, blinking almost in confusion as the colosseum returns to its regular shape and the molten gold sheen in his eye dims back to amber. "...Huh."


Ranok pries his own hand off Kirien's, freeing the empath. As the hand that was pressed to the wound withdraws, a tendril snakes out, wiping the last dregs of blood before they fall. The armor had done nothing to heal or worsen the wound. Whatever rate that Kirien heals after that is simply what his body would do naturally. The smith's expression was absolutely thunderous, however. Draeta's behavior was greedy, but more importantly, strange. The ease of which the two operated gave hint to just how well they knew the other. Draeta's actions were something entirely unprecedented, and this worried him. Though, for reasons the empath probably didn't pick up on, as he eavesdropped onto Ranok's emotional state. In a way that was completely devoid of guilt, sheepishness, or any sort of emotion at all, it says, <Ah. My mistake. I have gathered enough to be useful. One moment while I tap the source.> The armor's black coloration recedes, once more returning it to its pristine white state. Ranok glances at the cracks where the colossuem had been called to Kirien's apparent defense, "Seems hyu got a liddle instinctiff, Kirien. Draeta kan be eager, zumtimes." Ranok's expression had reset to neutral, by that point. Then, Draeta would turn amber, the color spreading over its surface slowly as Kirien's blood was tapped and brought to bear. <Ahhh. Interesting.> None of the empath's quirks would be copied, merely his abilities. Namely, Kirien's terramancy and the empathy, the latter of which was further prodded. Like a child, at first, taking its beginner steps, the intelligence unspools itself to attempt a connection with the only thing it didn't really quite share one with at the moment: Kirien himself. It would, likely, be something like watching your own reflection get up and touch your face. In the background to all this, Sera was giving furious chase to Chasz, wings flapping as it tries to take to the air in vain.


Kirien, after lowering his gaze from the colosseum's walls, alternates between watching Ranok and staring in the general direction of where he thinks Draeta hovers. Ranok, being marginally easier to perceive through the terramancer's curious form of sight, eventually becomes the focus of his attentions even as he speaks to the smith's companion, assuring, "It's fine. Bit more than a litre, I think, but it's fine." It's probably not, but it's nothing he can't steal back from some unsuspecting person later. The lack of emotion in the being's voice is almost unsettling to one who uses such sensations to better see the world around him, honestly, but Kirien distracts himself from these thoughts. "Instinctive." He repeats the word, glancing back up at the high walls surrounding the arena - cracks that appeared when the stone was bent awkwardly out of shape begin to seal themselves. "I didn't mean to do all that, actually." Still bemused by this, he withdraws his arm and brings it closer to his chest, touching a finger to the smarting wound. "At least it wasn't enough to make me want to jump you right now," he grumbles under his breath to Ranok, reaching to pat the man on the shoulder. Then, he turns some, and this time he ends up gazing directly at the flickering amber lights that make up Draeta, as though some change has occurred that allows him to properly judge where the being is. Confusion melts into surprise, and then curiosity as Kirien moves forward, cocks his head to one side, and slowly lifts a hand. He splays his fingers some, his palm open as he inspects Draeta and says, "Here, here," while waving his hand gently. It's obvious enough what he wants to do - connect with a strange creature through the touch of fingertips and featherlike gestures. On the other side of the arena, Chasz, who'd paused when the colosseum suddenly began to move, finds herself caught by Sera again and jolts out of her brief moment of shock, chasing after the mist dragon with an indignant cry of, "Not fair!"


Ranok was looking around the arena, "Yah, instinct. Hy vould vager, at least. Onless hyu're in de business uf breakink apart de room every time hyu're onheppy." Sera had fished up a rock, thereabouts, and was carrying it to the top of the arena to push it down for Chasz, using her bigger size to get a bigger rock. Kirien's display contributed to the supply. It seems the mist dragonette was swiftly warming up to the gray. To say who was a bad influence on who, though, would be hard to do. As for Draeta, the flickering into the nebulous world was one that was strange to it, but it was swiftly learning. Flaring, at first, like the sun, it dies down to a duller roar as its control over the energies tapped becomes more absolute. It was right were Ranok was standing, naturally, but to look at it in the way it was might cause Kirien to be dizzy. It would like be looking at the ocean while the water's waves receded off the beach. Only it didn't stop. An eternal pull, into depths scarcely understood, let alone braved. Amber and electric blue lights tangle and weave, the motion to this withdrawing water. Whatever emotions it evokes are entirely to the empath. It in itself was devoid of them. Kirien would yet learn just how much so shortly. A line of electric blue, pulling out in spider-like threads, to the trio of avatars the armor uses. The smith acts for the armor, bringing spayed fingertips to the empath's featherlike grip. Just for a few moments. Then the contact would break and the blood stop being tapped as the armor concludes, <Yes, this will do for our purposes. We should head out before night falls, in order to maximize starlight.> Clinical as ever, was Draeta. The straight man to the stoic Ranok, were it possible.


Somewhere off behind the trio of curiosities, Chasz positions herself at the bottom of the staircase that rock is rolling down. She waits until it comes close enough then promptly turns to smash it back up to Sera with a powerful swing of her tail - another game of a sort, it seems, and one she's content to play while her guardian does whatever it is he's doing with the lights. Chasz is a curious young thing, but Draeta's unearthly presence unnerves her, and thus she stays away. Kirien, meanwhile, wrinkles his nose at Ranok, mildly disapproving of his comment. "I'm not some neophyte worldworker with no idea of how to work with his element." He frowns though, revealing that he's still not entirely sure of what just happened. "...Must have been instinct," he murmurs in the end, shrugging the entire experience off as though it's nothing. He's done stranger things before, and with less reason to. "You--" Whatever he might have wanted to say is cut off when Draeta flares abruptly before his eyes, visible and -real- but maybe not quite tangible, and intriguing and beautiful enough that all Kirien's words die in his throat. The ebb and flow of ethereal lights, like the pull of a vast ocean with depths unimaginable, literally sets Ranok aflame in the empath's queer form of perception - amber and electric blue burst into his vision, and all the world dims around them as the magnificence of those lights drowns everything else out. It feels like being thrust into oblivion, to Kirien, though after a moment he realises he can still see clearly despite the way his surroundings seem "darker" than they were previously, cast into shadow perhaps. "That--you-- wow," he manages after a moment, blinking a couple of times and not quite able to mask his awestruck expression or the childish wonder in his gaze. "This es-- wow." For one normally so talkative, it's almost surprising how he can't seem to find any words to describe the sights before his eyes. Draeta's words snap him back to some semblance of attention, though, and Kirien nods eagerly, turning to head out of the colosseum and up the mountain before he pauses in his movements. Turning back to Ranok, he squints at the man then asks, "If tu are not coming...how es this supposed to work? Draeta es..." He reaches out, touches a fingertip to the bone-white armour, and frowns.


Ranok was entirely unprivileged to the going-ons of that ethereal realm where Kirien's sight resides and Draeta briefly walked through like a dying star. Unearthly was a very apt way to describe what it was. Draeta was, frankly, terrifying, once you realized what it was. Only sheer familiarity was what kept Ranok fine. Familiarity breeding contempt, and all. Or, perhaps, something worse. Maybe Ranok was of Draeta, or vice versa. It was impossible to tell. Perhaps best not to ask, not just yet. Steering Kirien's questing fingers away from his chest again, the smith gains a sort of smug smile. "Draeta, Hy suppose here iz vere ve part vays, den. Do try to not see Kirien killed, vould hyu? Be mindful uf de temperatures. Und no chasink uf henny kreatures on de vay. Eksecutiff order." The lights bob, flaring gently, <Acknowledged. One moment.> As whatever was preparing, Sera gives a yip of protest as the rock biggs her right in the face. Of course, Chasz was immediately to blame, and there was absolutely no fault with her reaction, attentiveness, or any variation at all. With an indignant howl, she shoves the rock back down and breathes a billow of the insidious mist that was native to her species, entirely by accident. Then, back to Ranok. The smith had spread his arms a moment, flicking the duster around. Then he brings them back in to remove the thing momentarily, exposing himself to the chill of Frostmaw for a few moments, and coincidentally exposing all of his armor. The sound of metal on metal, oiled steel being withdrawn from a sheath, and a curious thing starts to happen. Ranok's armor seems to be blooming from the back, the ghroundium weave beneath the halfplate quite literally coming off of his body. The whole assembly peels off him, ghroundium weave and plate alike, leaving only the vambraces, one of wind, one of mechanical nature, and his boots. And then lands in an undignified pile on the ground. But, just for a scant moment. Draeta flares again. The armor turns black again, the same as when it had cut open Kirien's wrist. Tendrils once again ooze out of the thing, only, this time, it was internally. The armor seals itself back up. Tendrils weave together to create hands of sorts, and feet of the same, only that the feet were digigrade. The armor picks itself up, more or less, a suit of animate self. Without the smith to fill it out, the armor seemed spindly, almost spidery. And, given the dark black and its very makeup, likely very creepy to look at. Ranok simply puts his duster back on, enjoying the warmth. "Hy'll be in de tavern, as Hy saeed. Best not take you dragon, dere. Hy kan keep an eye on dem both. Hyu'll be up dere hall night, dat Hy vould vager." Draeta towered even over Ranok, its spindly structure granding it a few extra inches. And a head formed, too, of sorts, black tendrils weaving over and over. The lights floated around that weave, to serve as a face of sort. The intelligence knew how uncanny people found it when they were talking to something with no head but a human shape. <Ready to serve.> was all it said.


Kirien, over the course of his life, has, through luck or perhaps a lack of it, met some utterly inhuman and terrifying creatures - some evil, some not so evil, and some that are just beyond such a classification. Draeta surpasses even the hell gaunt Maladroit in unearthly strangeness, because Maladroit at least possessed some form of an emotion, and some kind of mind that the empath could understand, if only momentarily. Draeta's, on the other hand, he's not sure he could ever hope to make sense of - and maybe he does not want to. Something about the being leads Kirien to believe that it's probably a very good thing he can't truly understand it, as he stands here watching it with an ever-curious glint to his eye. "...You're very interesting, tu know," he comments, before taking note of the way Ranok's fully-revealed armour is beginning to shift unnaturally, lifted from his body by some invisible hand and set upon the frozen ground instead. In the background, Chasz watches too, clearly unnerved; and once more her inattentiveness has her caught off guard, for she's struck in the jaw by the rock. This provokes her into hissing at Sera in displeasure then smacking the stone back up to her, before she glances back to her 'mother'. The seemingly possessed (or -alive-) suit climbing to its feet before Kirien is somewhat disconcerting, for sure, but he cannot resist touching again, so used to inspecting details through the brush of fingers and the feel of things under his hand that he barely even thinks about how dangerous it could be. "Now it makes more sense." That's said to Ranok as the terramancer peers round Draeta, his fingertips dancing over the being's own then tugging lightly, experimentally, at an index finger. "I'll leave you to look after Chasz. She's as feisty as your little one." He grins, then, before turning to call Chasz over - she comes running and Kirien bends down so as to murmur something to her that sounds awfully like, "Don't ramble about your father and don't be a bother." Though she huffs at him in response, the look in her eye a silent promise that she's going to cause -some- sort of trouble for Ranok once Kirien is out of range, Chasz obediently keeps her mouth shut. The empath looks satisfied enough with this and straightens up, stretching briefly and then hopping off across the arena, headed for the stands and the high wall at the top of the colosseum that separates it from the wilds of the mountain. "Draeta! Let's go see the stars!" he calls back over his shoulder, before leaping straight into the rock, and probably through it, headed out onto the snow-covered mountain.


Draeta holds stock still, even as Kirien touches it. A thing of motion and stillness, somewhat akin to its wearer, only much more dramatic in its extremes. Warm still from the lingering heat of Ranok's body but rapidly cooling even as it was looked at. As a whole, and as it was, the armor was harmless. But only as it was, currently. Shackled to the smith's will, whatever urges, if they could be called that, were superseded by Ranok's own orders. As long as that kept...but such things were the realms of what-ifs and Possibly's. The smith had withdrawn a stave from one of his pockets, simply tugging it out wholebody. The thing didn't make a bulge and it certainly didn't look like Ranok could hide any staves in there. "Hy do hope Draragon doesn' mind me brinkink tvo energetic dragonettes into his buildink. Hm." Draeta was merely his most potent asset. Not his only weapon. He keeps Sera in line, he was fairly confident he could repeat the act for Chasz. Famous last words, likely, but then again, it *was* Ranok. "Fadder, huh...?" Of course, Ranok was now going to attempt to pry as much information out of the gray as was possible, by sweettalking, simply chatting, and the offer of tasty treats here and there. As the empath bounds away, the smith goes to tend the two dragonettes. Kirien would find himself silently accompanied by Draeta, the armor more then capable of keeping up with the empath. It even went directly through the rock, as the empath did, tapping into the blood of the Deep Dragons that it had absorbed and their native terramancy. The armor was no where near as good as Kirien, but it could shift and move rock, and the longer it used the ability, the better it got. So would the pair leave the smith and his new charges.


At the Summit

Kirien can only hope that Chasz will obediently keep her mouth shut for the rest of the night; but knowing the chatty young grey, she'll likely be swayed into spilling the empath and Kuzial's little secret if there are offers of treats and compliments, especially the latter. Still, there's no time to regret the decision to leave her with Ranok and there'd be time to threaten him into keeping quiet about it later (or something), and Kirien spares only a brief glance back at the colosseum before he turns, focusing on the journey ahead. It is not actually that much of a trek to reach the summit of the mountain, much to Kirien's relief, but the snowfall is getting heavier and the weather will undoubtedly worsen the higher they climb, until they're above the clouds - the terramancer would currently be up to his waist in snow drifts were he not possessed of a certain light-footedness that saves him from drowning in chilly white fluff. Draeta will find him waiting atop a boulder some thirty feet or so from the wall of the colosseum, a steep incline peppered with loose rock looming ahead. Beyond that lies the relatively flat top of this particular mountain, situated just above the cloud cover. After staring intently at the cliff for a couple of seconds, fiddling with a makeshift bandage to bind his injured wrist, Kirien scrunches his nose up some and murmurs, "Damn it," before he glances to Draeta. "Up here should do." The rock underfoot trembles, then, before thrusting upward without warning to effectively fling the terramancer toward the cliff, where he lands at an awkward angle and somehow does not fall over. Then, looking completely undeterred by his curious position, he simply begins to walk up the mountainside.


Ranok had treats aplenty to offer. He was a sort of whimsical bastard, at times, when left with other people's pets. Usually he taught them terrible habits under the premise of 'tricks', though since Chasz probably already had an impressive suite of cursing, he'd probably stick to simply extracting all information about anything and anything the young gray was willing to talk about. He was surprisingly patient when it came to information gathering. That was far and away, however. Draeta claws its way out of the stone after following Kirien, lacking the ease and grace with with the empath moved from stone to air. Black tendriled hand bursts from the stone, then the rest of the limb. It rests on the stone for a moment, and then begins to lift the armor out. It was a curious process, with less over exaggerated limb movement, as a normal human would, and more the constriction of tendrils. The process was not silent, oh no. That would make it eerie and nothing more. This entire climbing was punctuated by clicks, of stone on metal and metal on metal, and quiet whispers of the woven ghroundium moving against itself. Nothing that a man would make, like a grunt or breath, nary even a curse from a stubbed toe. Rather then hop from snowdrift to snowdrift, it simply plows right through them, heedless of depth, consistency, or make up. When presented with the cliff, a moment is spent studying its face. Then more tendrils erupt from the plates, which lie still pitch black as the space in between the stars, and it climbs, fleet of...tentacle as any creature ever was. Not a single tendril was misplaced, and its passage was incredibly efficient. No motions wasted, nothing like that. If Kirien wasn't quick, he would be beaten to the top by this thing of metal and magic.


Kirien is a wraith where Draeta is all eerie clicks and the scrape of metal on metal. His ascent is swift and silent, save for a moment in which the rock he's standing upon comes away from the cliff without warning, tumbling downward with the empath still balanced precariously atop it. With a huff, Kirien pushes off and leaps back onto the mountain, leaving the wayward stone to fall and hit the snow alone. After that he seems less inclined to mess around or waste energy jumping from stone to stone - instead, he puts the boulder under his feet into motion, allowing it to skim its way up the mountainside like some makeshift elevator, grinding and crunching stone as it heads up into the clouds, and then through them. The flat summit is a barren place where the wind howls and the sky above is massive, dominating vision, though to Kirien that just means more white nothingness above his head. He knows there are stars there, though, and it prompts him into looking up as if already trying to see them, squinting skywards as a hopeful sort of expression flickers across his features. Just briefly. Soon enough, the echoes lurking on this mountaintop begin to make themselves known to the empath; the girl and her playmates who run by him have his brows furrowing as something decidedly sickened tints the edges of Kirien's features. He watches again as Aurelia's playtime is brought to a sudden and violent end by the arrival of the maddened grey dragon, and then brushes his hand over the top of the memory-girl's head when she dashes past him once more, the echo repeating itself. He moves forward, away from the occulus heading down into a cavern full of fake starshine, away from the echoes, until he's at the other end of the mountaintop where those lingering sensations are less obtrusive and he can breathe with less guilt in his lungs. There, he comes to a halt, and looks up again.


A thump, and Draeta arrives. A few clicks as it organizes itself back into the semblance of a human. This was accompanied by the same clicks as before, though it was short lived. Nothing up there seemed to even register. Neither the wind, nor the sky, nor the echos it couldn't feel. Digigrade legs carry the armor closer to Kirien, the lights shining brightly in the darkness and the lack of other sources of light. <Conditions optimal. Cloud cover below. Wind negligible.> The armor remains stock still as the lights fly out of the 'head' it had to spiral around the area. It might be hard to shake the feeling that the armor was just another doll and those lights were what the intelligence was. <Minor concern: exposure to elements. How long are you able to last above the clouds, Kirien?> The whispering voice of the armor, combatting the wind itself for clarity. It was hard to hear, strange in the near certainty of which if could always be heard. The lights spread further and further out from the armor at epipoint, though the voice was still all around as it always was.


Kirien stands staring sightlessly at the sky while Draeta goes about doing...whatever it does. He really is not sure at all, but he assumes the lights are at least inspecting the area somehow and not simply dancing about without some kind of purpose. Pushing the echoes of Aurelia's laughter turned screams turned laughter all over again as far out of mind as he can, sniffing a bit, the terramancer drops his gaze away from the stars to watch Draeta as the armour approaches. Ears strain to hear the being some, the wind snatching at its words but seemingly not quite able to carry them away - he nods, though, in acknowledgement that he he actually caught what was said, and responds after a slight pause, "Long enough, I should say. I-- I don't really need to breathe any more, really, et I've a firestone in my pocket that'll keep me from freezing solid, so no worries. How're we doing this?" He turns to watch the lights, their unearthly colours still rather enchanting in his sight; something rare and beautiful that is not often witnessed, and something Kirien seems intent on memorising every detail of.


The lights had receded to the point where they were just more stars in the sky. Indistinguishable from the rest of the starscape, really. <Your stress levels are elevating. Is there an issue?> The armor was settling down, then, clicks of metal on stone. The pitch black coloration disappears and the thing stops being animate. <Procedure is, naturally, unprecedented. Behavior and data suggests that best mental connection is established via physical contact. Is this correct?> Kirien's habit of touching stuff had not gone unnoticed, apparently. <If so, simply wearing this nexus will suffice. Which is to say, you will have to put me on.>


Kirien flicks an ear and shifts his gaze back to the armour stationed nearby, rather than staring at the lights, "Just echoes," he answers the intelligence, not wholly sure of where to look when speaking. He jabs a thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the oculus where the memories linger strongest, "A girl was murdered, there. Technically, it was my fault." The subject is dropped thereafter and Kirien does not look particularly comfortable discussing the matter, shifting awkwardly in place. "Touch es a good way to connect with something, oui." He blinks, though, at the suggestion that he'll have to actually wear the armour in order to properly view the stars. The idea seems a little...odd, when he thinks about how Draeta can control the suit and sort of possess it, but he reaches for it all the same, brow furrowing. "Put...you on. Hm. Never worn someone before." A laugh leaves him despite it all as Kirien attempts to work out how to work his way into the armour without feeling terribly awkward about it.


<Psychic discharge and residual emotions. Interesting.> A click. <That would explain your behavior when in the arena. Emotional discharges, life and death scenarios alike.> Another clicking sound. <Suggestion: static discharge to wipe the memory or echos. Proper and volumous application of discharge should reestablish a baseline, eliminate the echo, or simply overwrite with emptiness.> As Kirien reaches out to put it on, Draeta assists by standing back upright again, splitting down its back, and enwrapping the empath. Much like when Ranok stepped out of the armor in reverse. Kirien's outwear was engulfed completely, the disparity between the size of the smith and the size of the empath more then granting room. Even then, it would be very loose until the ghroundium weave snugged up, bunching with excess material. The plates roughly equated to where they ought to sit on the body. <Do not think of me as a person, nor a thing. This avatar is merely a nexus and an extension of a cognizant whole. Aspects and parts. Should it be lost, naught but a hair plucked from my head. So to speak.> Kirien would be picked up wholebody, himself, and rocked back to face upwards at the stars. Black tendrils were serving as headrests and props alike, to create a sort of impromptu couch of sorts. It would be rather comfy, all said and done. <Establishing baseline connection...done. I am ready to proceed. Please make final minute adjustments. You may wish to activate that firestone now.> Draeta loosens so Kirien can access his own pockets.


Kirien nods his head. "There are a lot of echoes in the arena. It's normally fine unless they get too intense and overload me, or something." The suggestion has him blinking again in mild bemusement, though his response is somewhat delayed as he ends up distracted by the armour that abruptly engulfs him. He steps back a pace, surprised, but calms when he comes to note that the sensation is not painful at all - just very, very strange. "I like...feeling them, to be honest. Even the horrible ones. Feeling those emotions and recognising and understanding them means I'm alive, after all." And when his heart no longer beats and the chill of the unlife is all about him, sometimes Kirien likes to remind himself that he's not quite truly dead just yet, even without his heartsong. "I just wish I had barriers sometimes, to block them out when they get too much." He casts a glance back in the direction of the oculus, before suddenly he finds himself plucked off the ground and tilted, facing skywards and held aloft by surprisingly comfortable tendrils. "...I do wonder what your true body looks like-- assuming tu have one, j'suppose," he murmurs after a moment or two, tentatively shifting about so as to reach into his pocket for his precious firestone. It's drawn out, held flat in his palm, and Kirien murmurs to it until the dulled light within it begins to glow softly, as though the gem is filled with internal, flickering fire. The empath stuffs it back into his pocket, allowing its warmth to spread slowly through his body from that point, then says, "There. Tu can...do your thing, now. Whatever it es you're going to do." And what will it make the stars look like, he wonders.


<Such is your choice. Perhaps it is a misaligned culture value. Given that I lack my own, the tendency for them to appear is distressingly frequent.> Kirien would be settled a little more. <A barrier? I will bring it up with Ranok. He has been looking into methods of selectively blocking certain inputs. He would help given the proper incentive. Barring that, any progress you may be able to offer on the matter would be most appreciated.> Ranok being Ranok, he would demand a price. Draeta wanted to learn, but the smith held the leash, so it was forced to comply. <My body is immaterial and not. For intents and purposes, you may consider this aspect to be 'my' body, as it serves in this locus. Merely one of many, I assure you. Regardless. Complete? Establishing mental connection...> The armor turns a mix of amber and black, as two sources of blood were tapped at the same time. Without further ado, Kirien's mind would be touched by what passed as the cognitive facilities that were Draeta. Draeta was...large. Staggeringly, mind bogglingly so. It had no shape, more a presence. Like a cloud, pressing down on Kirien. Only the effort of will on behalf of the intelligence stopped it from *pressing*. To speak of clouds, it would be like one was parting every where he walked. All around, all encompassing fog, but it parted like the sea. But as it did, the feeling of restriction...not upon Kirien. But on that cloud. Chains, invisible but nonetheless present, holding it down. Or something else. Draeta was shackled, that was evidented. That voice speaks, not at all matching the presence that it was, <Link established. I believe that the phrase 'welcome to my world' is the most appropriate cliche on hand.> A sense of humor, now, of all times? Or a fluke? <Rerouting. Light. Visual spectrum. What you are used to, in other words. Northern lights filtered as of now.> Then...light. The heavens open up. Yawning, wide, ever reaching. It transcended words, more or less. It wasn't just 'stars', it was an entire tapestry. Light, colors of all sorts. reds, blues, greens. More stars then it was ever thought possible. Draeta's sensory suite was far, far more sensative then humans or elves, it seemed. And it all had a tangible feeling, as if each star were hung carefully and by hand. The urge to reach out to pluck one down would be hard to resist for many. The feeling, too, of enormity would be transferred to Kirien. Draeta's sending of those lights of it outwards acted as an 'eye', of sorts. Triangular for depth of field, spread out to gather more light in at once, melded together in the vast mind of the intelligence to produce a useful picture. It was the night sky in true colors as it had not been viewed by anything living in a long, long time, if ever.


"Many bodies? That must be interesting," remarks Kirien somewhat absently and with a bit of a blink, trying to work out what controlling many instances of yourself at once might feel like. Perhaps it's a similar sensation to when he moves a lot of earth at once - he muses over this to himself in silence, his eye on the sky, and aside from this comment he does not say much else, allowing Draeta to work without the distraction of conversation. He lies there for a moment or two without seeing or feeling anything much, before a touch of -something- brushes over his psyche and he pauses in his thoughts as the immense presence of Draeta settles over him like a thick fog. It's in his lungs, clinging to his arms and legs, and suddenly the rest of the world feels a little further away - the monochromatic visual of the mountaintop blurs in his sight then blinks out of existence, and then all Kirien can see is light. He does not even have a reply to the intelligence's cliched remark, his mind momentarily forgetting what words are, what breathing is, what his entire world is and was and ever will be, because all there is is an sky brimming with stars. A myriad colours, some recognisable, some so unearthly that they would never be seen in this world, fill his vision and past that, extending so far that Kirien feels even he is made of stars, just for a second. "Dr-Draeta," he breathes in a voice that's barely there, utterly wonderstruck; and maybe there are tears in his eye because the sensation and the sights are just so mind-achingly beautiful that he can't help it, but Kirien does not notice them at all. However, as hard to resist as it is, the empath does not reach for the stars. He has already acknowledged and accepted that he is not a starcatcher and never will be, and even though these stars feel as though they dangle just close enough to grasp at, he already knows it's impossible. Extending his hand would be an exercise in futility - if he could even remember the motor functions required to move his body properly. So he will always view stars from afar-- but when he sees them in moments such as these, Kirien feels that's enough. More than enough, even. Though humbled and tiny, near-imperceptible in this mass of stars and whirling lights, the emotions that flare out from the terramancer in powerful waves are nothing but awed, deep-rooted senses of amazement and excitement and content all meshing together into the confusing web of emotions he feels right now. "Draeta," he repeats after some time, still sounding breathless, "What other ways can you see? Even if it's in ways I couldn't ever understand, how... Could tu show me something like that?"


The intelligence was patient. Kirien was given the time he needed to process the starscape. Time would be meaningless, mostly due to the fact that Kirien was not inhabiting the one to one ratio that the world usually understood, but whatever skew that Draeta experienced. Fast, slow, it was hard to tell. It was immaterial, at this point. There were stars in the sky. <Yes. I can. I do not wish to tax your brain, however. I will ease you in slowly. Reorienting.> The fog descended again. Kirien would suddenly find himself upright and standing, on some wide open plain filled with nothing. Draeta was floating beside the empath, the trio of lights embedded into a translucent sphere that refracted the coloration of them. <We will take one step up: simulation. Starscape: immediate local star volume to planet. Galaxy arm three. Scale: unimportant. Enjoy.> The avatar that was Draeta blinks out. And then, stars, again. Only instead of up above, all around. They really *were* hung with care all around the empath. The same colors as before, but then, right next to Kirien, the star that hung in the sky over Hollow blazed. Not as bright as it really was, but a shining light bulb on the face. Its warmth could be felt, tangible. Then the solar system, done in true colors, all the planets strewn about, from the terrestrial ones to the gas giants, far and away and cold. And then, the planet they lived on itself. A ball of blue, green, and white, with two moons and change dancing delicate around it. The simulation was controlled by mere thought. Anything Kirien put his eyes onto came into perfect focus. It was all partially a lie, of course, educated guesses with real observation stored in the intelligence's memory, but the sim was so real it could hardly be questioned. The control wasn't limited to just the solar system, but, too, the far out stars. Steps move lightyears but on a whim, the feeling of control vast and absolute. < I do fear that this may be the ultimate form of observation when compared to the other filters, but those are more abstract. It will have to do. My apologies if the rest of the viewing is subsequently unappealing in comparison.> As before, the empath had as much time as he could spend in it all. Hours, days, a lifetime, if he wanted to. Time simply didn't seem to exist here.


Kirien does not care about the passage of time because there are stars and that's all he really notices right now. At least, that's all he notices until he finds the cloud descending once more, obscuring his view of those unlimited shimmering lights, and his body is flipped back upright so he's standing; except he probably isn't standing wherever his real body is but Kirien isn't thinking about that. He takes a moment to readjust to the lack of starlight before he questions, "Simulation?" and realises shortly afterward that asking is probably useless when he's just about to find out what Draeta means for himself. Beside him, the intelligence's avatar vanishes, just before the sky opens up once more. To begin with the empath expects a similar experience to the first, but then he notices that the stars are not just before him but all around him, swallowing him in an ocean of colours that fizzle and glint and give off rays of tangible warmth. He feels it, holds out a hand to brush his fingertips over one of the stars circling nearby, and laughs. "This is amazing!" And those words cannot quite describe it justly. He turns as this elaborate illusion of the heavens seen through a god's eyes opens up further, paints the planets and all the solar system in its majestic, unimaginable glory; there are stars blinking into existence everywhere he looks, white and silver and gold specks that grow and gleam and radiate with heat and life. And then he sees Hollow. To view your own world in such an abstract manner, even if the view is not exactly real, is a feeling Kirien cannot quite place, but he knows that whatever it is, it's amazing - something to be cherished. He leans back, squints, extending his arms and adjusting his vision until it's as if he's holding Hollow in his hands, the entire world contained within the span of his fingers. The image causes him to smile broadly, surprisingly pleased by this one single thing, but soon enough he's spinning away and breaking into a run, taking a leap that pulls him a hundred million miles from home and into a cluster of stars and nebulous clouds, all set afire with heavenlight. "How many ways can you view the world?" he asks Draeta over his shoulder, though he's not sure the being is even there, but rather all around him, "Et, I think this es my favourite way of seeing it, for sure-- aside from my own." He's smiling as he says that.


Draeta manifests next to a black hole. A yawning, all devouring byproduct of physics that in itself transcended them. This black hole in particular was devouring a star that had gone wayward into its grip. Spiraling contrails of fire spin in furious and a graceful sort of slowness, existing in both states at once. There was sheer volume of stuff to be eaten, which provided the paradox. Much was moving fast, but the process was slow. The dying star was stressed, tidal forces ripping it apart. < I can see that is what is true. This simulacrum is false, I am afraid, in the sense that it is not your world that you see...I was mildly pressed for time and such simply drew from memory rather then reality.> The avatar that was Draeta joined the star in its death, the sphere that it was being pulled into the black hole's chasm. Another one flared to life next to Kirien even as the former died. As far as that dance of two giants were in whatever terms of distance this place measured in, it was nonetheless perceptible, like one always knew where the hand was. <As I said, I have already granted to you the most macroscopic scope...and I'm afraid the microscopic would merely confuse you. Perhaps...> It all fades again, back to the stars in the sky. On the mountaintop once more. Overhead the northern lights burn gently, ropes of them. <The Aurora is something to behold; have no doubt. But see them as this...?> They begin to burn more brilliant, thicker. They spread, not just sheets over parts of the sky, but the whole thing. They were tangible, once more, only this time there was more to it. <Listen. They speak. The process of which creates them is a byproduct of the thing we are all wrought of; our sun. Here it speak to its children.> Whispers, statics, noises, a dull thudding roar of the interactions from the solar wind bearing down on Hollow's atmosphere, caught by the intelligence and given to Kirien. It had its own beat, its own words. To call it intelligent in itself may be granting it too much, but then, gods walked the world. To dismiss any stellar body as having a mind or not out of hand would be foolish. Its story, ever woven, in sound and sky, as the northern lights burned overhead.


Kirien looks for Draeta once more and finds it near a blot of pitch black space that distorts and twists anything straying too close. Heading over, movements tentative as though he thought the devouring maw of the black hole would swallow him too, he reaches to try and pull the dying star away from its End - some futile attempt, surely. "It is very beautiful, though, even if it's your memory," he says to Draeta, "Since it looks like this in reality too, right? So it's...easier to imagine my reality through this, instead of wondering from the ground. The sky cuts off a lot of...this. Speaking of, what es this exactly? A beast?" He motions to the tear in space where nothing exists and the crushing force of the black hole extinguishes the wavering trails of starfire caught in its spiral trap. Having never seen something like this before, as he's not even sure anything similar exists on Hollow, Kirien has to wonder, though soon he's shifting away from it as Draeta too is sucked into its depths and the empath fears he might be next. Steps that span a million miles take him wandering within a misting of nebulous clouds, his fingertips displacing universes and stardust as he brushes them through the fog, until suddenly he's torn away from the heavens and deposited back on the mountaintop, staring up at the unearthly landscape he'd walked in just moments ago - only this time, the sky is ablaze with the colours of the northern aurora. Any disappointment he might have felt at leaving the endless space beyond Hollow's atmosphere is quashed under the weight of childlike awe and excitement, because the aurora is one of Kirien's most favourite sights in all the world. He has never seen it like this, never watched it take over the entire sky, and stares enrapt as it spreads and flares and begins to sing. Ears perk up and he finds himself grinning like a fool all over again, listening to a new rhythm that, while entirely different from his familiar earthsong, still feels familiar and beautiful in his hearing. "Aurorasong, then," he remarks, mostly to himself, though aside from this he remains quiet so as to take in the sounds and sights in all their majesty.


The night burns with the whisper of the solar winds intermixing with the atmosphere. Terms that Kirien wouldn't understand, no doubt, but the effect was still pretty nonetheless. A particularly potent band of aurora twists down towards Kirien. Draeta, manifesting again. <The Universe is filled with things beyond the understanding of this world. That black hole was merely one of the most potent representations. A beast, you called it. It is an adapt description. To explain further would require versing you in terminology I am unsure you are prepared to understand. To mention nothing of the fact that Ranok would be displeased if I did so.> The band of blue that Draeta had hijacked dissolves. More twist down towards Kirien. <Your star is alive, as is all the others above. What you see and hear is the words they speak to the vast volumes of space. A language all its own. Each speck of light is older then everything you have ever known. Even for a being like me, it is difficult to quantify such terms of time. I manage, however.> Cryptic as always, of course. <Try to reach out and touch them. Feel the fabric of the threads they weave.> Kirien would find that those threads that Draeta had been using could be plucked from the sky, twisted in the hand, woven to the other. Each movement produces a flared whispering of what created it, and to hold it made the voice all the clearer. The more that were woven together, the more the melody was raised. Cacophonous, perhaps, if too many were taken, but they dissolve easily in the hand when released. To Kirien, it was like he was weaving a tapestry of the night fires over head. In reality, it was another abstraction, the plucking of radio waves, tuning and intermixing. Draeta was doing its best to allow the empath to see without exposing him to concepts he wasn't quite equipped to handle. The intelligence left the empath again to his games, as impermanent as the weavings may be. Until, after some time has seemed to pass and Kirien appears to be tiring of it, the voice again, an offer, < I believe that I have mastered enough of this power of yours to attempt an imprinting on this location. If you would so wish.>


It's beautiful, really. Or maybe it's not, it's something else entirely, because a word such as 'beautiful' is not quite enough to describe the sights before Kirien's eyes. He does not possess knowledge of any language that would allow him to properly describe this experience in full detail to another, with all of its depth and emotional meaning - he is not even sure a language like that exists, save the one spoken by the heart, lacking words but brimming with feeling able to be transferred and understood by almost any being. High above his head, aurora lights glint and shimmer, seeming close and yet a million miles away all at once, whispering and burning and scorching the sky with colours that range from blue and teal to green, and orange, and magenta. After a short time, Kirien begins to hum along with its song, raising his voice to join twisting far-off solar winds and particles and astrological reactions he has no name for. Draeta's words are taken note of but he does not answer at first, lost in the timeless rhythm of the aurora. A hand lifts and reaches for one of the trailing threads, however, and then another, until he's caught three, pinning them between forefinger and thumb - though he has little idea of how any of this works, the empath strings the threads together and the aurora's roar becomes a little louder. This provokes a curious sort of blink from Kirien, who then captures some more strings and begins to work at combining them in careful order, slowly but surely crafting a melody out of the sky. Threads are plucked and strummed, melded into one and then picked apart, and for a long while he amuses himself in this manner. Sounds that might be meaningless alone are brought together in some musical suite and Kirien navigates the tune with his fingertips and weaves a tapestry of song, the stars and the aurora his celestial instruments; and this might only be an illusion, some simulation wrought by Draeta's strange and vast intelligence, but the vampire does not mind at all. Indeed, he might even have forgotten for a short time that none of this is truly real, but rather a mimicry. When Draeta speaks once again, though, he pauses, a stray thread he'd yet to add to the mix clamped between his teeth and sending subtle reverberations over his tongue. "Imprinting? Like an echo? You'd imprint an echo of all this, here?"


Draeta has not the capacity to be amused by Kirien's weaving. Which is a shame, as the picture would likely be infinitely amusing. The empath's actions of simplistic eagerness, to say nothing of all the colors he's gathered and woven, would give Ranok a kick, at the very least. But the intelligence tells no gossip, merely gathers proceedings. Even as Kirien wove his own orchestra, the intelligence did the same. Hands unseen pluck strings from the sky and wove them onto images. Possessing skill and experience countless folds over Kirien, the threads aren't just plucked...they seemed to be created. A process difficult to describe. Draeta wasn't showing off, the intelligence having not the pride to do so, but teaching. Even as it does, Kirien would find his own weavings that much more selective and careful, the curious connection between armor and empath reverberating, the knowledge passed. Kirien would not be able to share his experiences in words, no, but perhaps an expression of art some time down the road. The threads wove into a story of sorts, but in a curious way. The eye tasted, the ear felt, the hands saw. More abstractions, it seems. A star, in a stately dance with some partner that pulsed and sang in steady beats like a drum. Their song plucked out, rebuilt, recreated. The voice speaks, <Those echos that caused you distress. I may be able to overwrite them with the echos of what you see above. A moment in time frozen, perhaps. Though the waves you see above are more stories then you have minutes in your life. An attempt could be made, if you wish, though it may prove costly. Such energies may require more blood.>


Orchestrating his own sort of skysong is something Kirien seems to take a lot of enjoyment in, especially as he becomes more familiar with the intricately woven threads and their sounds. He learns what melds well and what creates a less pleasant combination of sounds, stringing along a melody that attempts to replicate the utter wonderment he feels right now. If he could, he would push his emotion into the threads to further help with that - there's a fear of something going drastically wrong if he tries, maybe, for he pointedly refrains from doing so. Watching Draeta's own movements as he works, Kirien eventually ties off his last strings and completes his song, though he's still itching to craft more and more, fingers twitching with that urge. How often, after all, is he granted the ability to weave strings of sky, of the aurora, and create music with them? "Overwrite?" He blinks at that. The idea startles him, really. Perhaps to some surprise he ends up looking somewhat distraught that the intelligence would even suggest such a thing, despite the fact that Draeta was correct - the echoes are not things he wishes to see, truly, but removing them..? "You can't-- no, don't...overwrite her. Don't overwrite her echo. It's all that's left, now," he answers after a long silence, shoulders slumping a little. "Yes, her End es something that distresses me, because I'm the indirect cause of it, but wiping out something just because tu don't like it es not...right. It's all that's left of her." A shake of the head follows.


The lights above were fading. Slowly, but surely. The show was coming to a close, it seems. Or just this part of it, perhaps. The construct that Kirien made lasts, as does the one Draeta did. Pulsar beats more steady then any heart...or perhaps it was a heart. A celestial one, to boot. Such vast measures were difficult to grasp, however, so it was likely best to let it be. Kirien's emotions would have done nothing to his constructs. Perhaps that revelation would have been bad enough. The things that rained down from the distances more vast then the mind could grasp in numbers weren't truly subject to petty things as mortal emotions. Those were fleeting, not even a register on the scale of the cosmic. It was hard to realize that you were nothing, would never amount to anything, would never be anything more then the time it took for one nerve to speak to another in a body. Even Ranok avoided such troubling matters. Draeta was impersonal to such things, as was his nature. It was to Kirien's benefit that he kept the happy feeling rather then existential terror. <That is not true. You hold memories of her, do you not? They will surely outstrip any echos that you may see. Mortal memory is adaptive. Why not hold onto that, instead? The memory of failure is strong too. There is little need to remind yourself of it in physical echos.> A click. <It seems it may not be in my power to preserve them. Even if I do not over write them, bombardment of the very threads you see before you are likely to wash them away. Steadily. The air here is thin, and the atmosphere thinner. I believe that intentional implantation may preserve better. Think of it as the difference between a sand dune being washed by wind and weather, compared to one that is planted with grass. Some will be wiped, but cultivation will create a better result.>


Kirien is well aware of the fact that, when compared to the universe, he is very, very small. Luckily he has not quite come to grasp the notion that his every action and his entire existence, even, is barely a blip of the scale of everything that -is- and was and ever will be - the crushing realisation of being useless is avoided through this ignorance, and perhaps that is a good thing. "I don't," he says when Draeta mentions memories. He wiggles some in his suspended seat, frowning, "The only 'memory' I have of her is that echo, because I didn't meet her until after she died." With the light show dimming slowly above, the empath watches the waves of aurora fade and listens to his song hum and reverberate in the air, the celestial tune rhythmic and constant in his ears. If he could breathe it all in, capture it in his lungs and become a part of it, he would. Maybe he is part of it, in some way - small, but here, and alive in some sense. He is pleased about that. "If it fades over time then that's what's meant to happen. Nothing lingers forever, Draeta, right? Just...leave it alone, let it do what it wants. That's what echoes have always done." There's a pause, then, before he adds, "Thank you, though, for showing me all this."


Reality settles back in, slowly but surely. Feeling returning to the empath's body. There was a strange sense of having been there for a long, long time, no doubt. With all that time spent holding worlds in ones hand, weaving constructs out of the singing of the stars, and walking among them, it was hard to judge just how much time had passed. And yet, Kirien's body wouldn't be stiff. None of the symptoms of sitting still for long periods of time had settled in. Not at first, anyways. It would settle in, slowly seeping. The mind forgets, but the body's demands were no longer suppressed. The aurora fades completely, then the songs. The mountaintop was all that remained. The moon, over head. Clouds drifting. Plain reality, as the creatures saw it. Beautiful in its own way. But, it might slowly sink in. Something was off. And then it would hit: the moon. It was in a different phase. Down its road somewhat. The sliver changed as it goes through its stately dance. A hunger as the body, weakened, starts to croak. More time then had been promised seems to have passed. Even as these realizations make themselves known, Draeta says, <Surprisingly astute. No. All accomplishments are temporary. Even the gods will amount to naught in the end. Even I will be nothing but cold. But such things are for the death of all things. As you wish, the echos will be subject to the whims of the world and be as they lay.> Kirien would slowly be settled back upright onto his two feet, but he might be weak. Draeta could hold him up if it came to it. <A promise fulfilled, of course. There are more stories to tell, and more things to see. Ranok is not so hard to convince to loan me out, if you know what strings to pull.>


Kirien scrunches his nose up a bit. Boots return to the earth and its feel that he welcomes back like an old friend, smiling broadly-- at least until he comes to notice how empty his stomach feels, how the hunger claws at his insides like some desperate, raging beast. "Wha...t?" Confusion hits first as, slowly, feeling returns to his body and he realises he is not only very hungry but very stiff and tired. His firestone is cold in his pocket, exhausted of its power. Mostly, however, it's the hunger at the forefront of Kirien's mind. "How-- how long were we...?" he asks Draeta, bemused as he turns on the mountaintop, trying to find some sort of sign to gauge the passage of time. The impression of his boots in the snow is absent, fresh snow having fallen at some point, obviously without his knowledge, but he cannot find any real way of working out how long he was stargazing for. A step is taken followed by Kirien's knees buckling under him, startled by the sudden movement after such a long time at a standstill, and he groans in a mixture of bewilderment and surprise. His pupil blows wide, base instincts forcing him to stay standing even as he wavers, and asks again, "How long? I'm really...I really need to eat." And by 'eat' he means 'feed on some poor thing', and he's barely even finished speaking before he sets off - his run is an awkward lope at first as feeling returns to his body and muscles loosen, but he manages to work up some speed, presumably dragging Draeta along on the hunt as he leaps from the mountaintop. Headed for the forest, Kirien seeks food now and not much else, momentarily blind to all other things.


Came the reply, <Three days, two hours, twenty one minutes, and approximately forty seconds. Relative.> The armor did go for the ride, if only because its duty was to protect the empath. That required it to follow yet still. It was not passive, however. It was nudging the vampire towards the Xalious range, regardless of its distance away. Motions that mimed his, but not quite. Limbs that stretched and turned, just slightly. It was easy to forget, but Draeta was very much in control of itself. It could move without anything wearing it. With someone was no different, after all. < I apologize for the long duration. But your mind is not used to the speeds of which I operate. Thus I was forced to. I suppose you would call it sleep. I forced you into sleep to allow you recovery time. Perhaps with more experience in the matter, I may refine the process...> The armor didn't seem reluctant at all by Kirien's need to feed. As a matter of fact, it seemed more then willing to comply with the empath's need. Strictly speaking, it was a vampire, as well. And given its creator, to suspect ulterior motives was par for the course. But, for now, it was trying the subtle approach. Hopefully, Kirien wouldn't even notice the redirection out of Frostmaw.


Xalious Mountain Range

Kirien does not particularly care where he's going, so long as he finds food at the end of his road. His surroundings are barely taken note of, the direction he travels in meaning nothing, currently; so Draeta's subtle attempt to turn him southward is not picked up on at all and he goes along without realising. There is enough vestige of himself still there that he stays away from Frostmaw city, however, not stupid enough to attack its residents in such a state of heightened bloodlust due to knowing he'd receive punishment from Satoshi (and likely Kasyr, too, which translates immediately to "bad" even in this thirsting, instinctive state of mind). He races through the forests, eerily quiet despite his swiftness, working his way out of Frostmaw proper - down cliffs he leaps without thought, bolting across frozen rivers and weaving amidst trees shivering in their snowy coats, until the chill in the air begins to lessen some and the snow starts to recede, and Kirien comes to a halt in the midst of the forest clinging to the upper slopes of Xalious. Panting without any real need to do so, he pauses for a few moments, head raised, senses flung out in search of something, -anything- that can serve as a meal for him - an animal at least, to satiate his hunger enough that he can think clearly and lure some human off into the night for a tastier meal. He picks up a presence nearby, turns his head sharply in the direction of the source, ears pricking up, listening. After a moment, he begins to follow that feeling, and the vicious dance of the hunt begins.


Draeta was quiet, for the hunt. Its silent steering of the kit seemed to be effective, but it wasn't the journey down that it wanted. It allowed Kirien his hunting, providing the kit with supreme grace. Even beyond what he already possessed. In his hungry, tired, and sore state, his steps wouldn't be misplaced, the armor doing the exacts where needed. It would be elating, if you weren't used to it. The sense of grace wasn't often felt, though Kirien was already naturally full of a type of his own. The armor helped, too, tamping down its light. It would do nothing but assist his movements, offering no comment unless asked, no matter what the empath did. Not killing, not harming a human, nothing. It didn't really possess the capacity to care for things like morality and whether it was right to hunt sentient beings. But, on the trip back to Frostmaw...that would be a different story.


The bear is a very large one, as is expected of mid-chain predators dwelling in the high mountains of the Xalious region. Its presence was the most obvious and enticing of everything the empath took note of through his curious sense of perception, and now it is an unwitting target - a means to satiate his thirst for blood. Normally he might not attack such a beast, preferring an 'easier' meal, but at the moment he has no thoughts of picking and choosing; so he stalks along in the bear's shadow, upwind and as of yet undetected, surprisingly graceful considering his current state (though he does not notice the way Draeta aids his movement), and utterly silent. The bear has a meal of its own, a deer recently brought down, and it focuses as much on its food as Kirien does on it. Freshly-spilled blood from the carcass pools on the ground and the scent of it fills the hungry vampire, urging him on until he simply breaks - only then does he rush forward in what might be considered a reckless (and frankly very stupid) move, taking a leap that lands him right atop the bear's broad shoulders. The fingers of one hand curl into the startled beast's thick fur as it begins to thrash, confused as to what's clinging to its back, while Kirien draws back his other arm. He then thrusts it downward sharply with every intent to snap the bear's neck, though considering the amount of force he's using, vampiric strength powering the movement, he's likely to crush vertebrae rather than merely snap them, and possibly punch through flesh in the process. Kirien does not really notice this either, and probably doesn't care. It just means he gets blood sooner.


Kirien's strike was augmented by Draeta, of course. Vampire strength plus the accuracy of machine perfection, and a whipping of tendrils that grew harder then steel. The bear wasn't even able to register what killed it, such was how swift the strike fell and killed. What blood that splashed onto Draeta, and Kirien by extension, did not mark the pristine white state of the plate. Rather, it was absorbed. But it was circumstantial. This meal was for Kirien, and it would allow him. <Bear. Mundane. Useful for nothing but raw energy. A strange choice, but efficient.> It lets Kirien take his fill, then, no longer guiding his motions. All to the learning. It was interesting, at least, to learn how the empath moved.


Kirien, for all his usual chatter and habit of never shutting up -ever-, is actually a surprisingly swift and silent killer. This is aided and strengthened by Draeta, and soon spots of blood spray over his cheeks. The scent and feeling of it all is somehow delicious even before he's begun to feed - and the empath cannot quite wait until the bear has slumped forward over the body of the deer, his head already dipped so as to lap at the blood oozing from that vicious neck wound. It's an odd taste, bear, that he's never actually had the opportunity to indulge in before. He favours more humanoid creatures, magelings especially, but right now this is enough. He -needs- that raw energy, as quickly as possible, and what better beast to grant him it than this massive predator? For a time he remains quiet, the only sounds the steady drip of blood and the occasional gratified murmur exhaled between long moments spent guzzling down his meal, and when eventually Kirien pulls back, looking rather satisfied, he says to Draeta, "Three days. I never realised we'd be there for so long." It is a very belated response to the intelligence's words on the mountaintop. Sighing contentedly and with his senses returning to him, the empath sits for a bit on the remains of his dinner, which is seemingly quite the comfortable, furry chair.


A click.


Kirien makes a face. "I don't get what tu mean by 'relative'. When you said we might be up there a while, I figured something like...a night. Not three of them." He laughs though, shaking his head in some light-hearted disbelief while idly licking stray remnants of blood from his fingertips, and patting the bear on the shoulder as one might greet a good friend. "An End for tu, food for moi. At least your End was painless. I think." Attentions turn back to Draeta, then, and Kirien quirks a brow at its words, watching the trio of lights almost as if he thinks he might be able to discern what exactly it wants to do just by staring at it. After a pause the empath yawns and moves to stand. "A stop where?" he asks despite the tone of Draeta's remark begging no refusal to its wants.



Kirien pulls another of those faces. The concept of time moving at any speed other than the one he observes is a curious one indeed, and somewhat difficult to envision even when granted with an image to help him along, but after a minute or so of contemplating he seems to grasp some sort of understanding - at least enough to satisfy him. "Makes a little more sense now. You mentioned something about essentially putting moi to sleep so-- it was kind of like it was all a dream? You don't really notice time passing when you're dreaming, et such." He pauses. "It felt a lot more real than a dream, though." His pondering of this comes to an abrupt end when he finds his limbs moving without his consent, pulling him into motion he did not think to start - this, obviously, is a bit strange. "Ah-- a cave? What's there, exactly?" More questions as Kirien begins to run, flying across the landscape with more ease than he normally might, leaping and bounding through trees and higher into the mountains once again. The feeling of moving like this is magical, more enjoyable than his usual manner of traversing ground, but soon enough he finds himself slowing and nearing a cavern with bones strewn at the entrance, which leads Kirien into questioning again, "Why are we here?"


<More akin to an induced coma. Your mind was brought to slow after it had been ramped high. Part of the delay was the gathering of the visual information. Stars shine, yes. But the longer you stare, the more stars there are. I used it all as a collective for the betterment of the experience and ensure that you remained sane.> The springs recede, bringing Kirien to touch the ground again. <As for what the experience can be classified as, I am afraid that I am unable to give you an adequate answer. Such is the realm of philosophy, in which I have much less interest in. Questions. Less answers. Questions to answer questions. All life experienced is a result of the brain interpreting sensory data. It naturally creates fiction even as it sees what is before it. A dream is merely more fabricated experience. Where is the line drawn, one may ask?> Draeta shucks itself off of Kirien, allowing the empath to stand on his own two feet once more. It reassembles into its lanky and spindly form. <This cave is a den for black dragons. There are a number of young located therein. I am taking the opportunity to harvest.> So coldly stated. So calmly mentioned. So logically abstract. The armor doesn't want for Kirien to input. Scythes of sorts extend from the things limbs, wicked extensions of what could be considered its body. The lights flare gently, belaying the horror that was about to be unleashed. <Mother absent. Risk minimal. Proceeding.> Nothing Kirien could say or do would stop the armor. It would simply proceed into the cave. The 'harvesting' would be short. Coldly efficient. Each strike a killing one, or nearly so. There were a number of dragon whelps inside. Each would be shortly found, killed, and then drained of blood. Each life snuffed out in turn. The living siblings not understanding what was happening until the deathstroke. And through it all, the spindly executioner, bathed in its own light, stalking like Death come itself.


Kirien looks a mite more comfortable once he regains full control of his own limbs, being unaccustomed to them moving without his unconscious (or conscious) consent. He's seemingly undaunted by the rather sinister locale Draeta has chosen to bring him to, though his unease is soon piqued at the intelligence's words. "Oh." Not wholly certain of what to say, the empath only manages that one response, keeping quiet as the armour disentangles itself fully from him. His curious forms of perception, some attuned to the tiniest vibrations passing through the ground, pick up on the presence of the young dragons soon to be executed, and Kirien is not exactly pleased with the notion of Draeta murdering creatures that bear such close resemblance to one of his own precious 'children'. Still, he thinks, perhaps the blood is needed; base instinct craving the save delectable life force he consumed himself just minutes ago. Something tells Kirien this is not the case. "Draeta," he begins uncertainly, but the being has already been swallowed by the shadow of the cave. Somehow, he knows that whatever he says is worthless anyway, will be ignored entirely - so he shuts his mouth and saves his words, and turns his back on the scene, doing his best to block out what reaches him of the cold massacre within. He'll wait for his queer companion to return before posing a question he's not even sure he wants to know the answer to. "Draeta," he says, "why exactly do you...absorb blood?"


Draeta walks out, carrying the corpse of one of the whelps. Blood was seeping out of the neatly severed artery on its neck, dribbling right into the pristine plate. The blood did not stain that white metal, instead, it simply soaked in. Its grip on the dead creature was not one of cruelty, which was to say, tight and unforgiving. Nor was it one or mercy, all gently cradling and soft fingers. Like you'd hold a dead chicken, it was. When the thing was empty and drained, it was subsequently dumped like so much dead weight. <Blood is the essence of many creatures, and required for living in all organic beings of complexity higher then invertebrate.> Tendriled feet plant on the ground as the spindly armor approached the empath. < I harvest the substance for energy for myself, partly. Another aspect is knowledge. Every entity that I have absorbed I gain information about. It is a learning process. Somewhat akin to your own abilities, I gather.> The corpse was left behind. There was no blood left, and the armor didn't think in terms of raw materials to work with. The whelp skin might have been useful for something or other, the scales indeveloped but still carrying the essence of the creatures. <And partly because it is a matter of prevention. Their innate abilities have been added to my arsenal to better protect myself with.> In other words, it murdered on the off chance that acid might be thrown at it some time down the line. And, like nothing had happened, <Are we prepared to continue?>


Kirien pushes off from the tree he'd been leaning against. He wrinkles his nose some in clear distaste, for the stench of dragon blood is nothing but caustic and bitter in his senses, though he does spare a brief look of what might have been pity to the whelp Draeta carries. When the small, black body is drained and dumped he approaches to inspect it, insatiable curiosity practically demanding he do so - he quickly pulls back when his fingers skim over the neck wound and remnants of the beast's blood sear his flesh. "Ow." Sucking at his fingers and muttering something about the disgusting flavour (he spits on the ground moments later), the empath turns back to Draeta and shrugs. "...Similar to my needs then, oui," he murmurs, even as his tone of voice suggests he still partly believes otherwise. Kirien, after all, -needs- blood and needs it without question, his very abnormal existence relying upon a steady flow of blood in order to survive - whereas he suspects Draeta might not exactly require the substance to stay alive. He decides not to push further into the subject. "Aha. You're some kind of ability thief." Somehow this amuses the vampire, who smiles to himself before barking out a short, sharp laugh. "Like a sponge, soaking up whatever you come into contact with." Maybe it's this image in particular he finds funny. A shake of the head clears his thoughts and brings him back to the present, and the intelligence's last question. "We are, j'suppose," he affirms, nodding. After this, he's longing all the more to get back to Chasz.


Draeta watches Kirien's inspections. The empath's curiousity getting the better of him would have likely been amusing to anyone with a sense of humor. Alas, Draeta didn't even know what a joke was, to say nothing of why it would be 'funny'. When the empath was finished with burning himself, it moves forward to envelope him again, < In a ways, yes. I do not need blood to continue biological processes, but a prolonged absence without it would produce less then ideal results.> It clicks into place around the empath. Springy tendrils erupt again, and it begins to move back into Frostmaw. <My absorbation is not abilities in a raw sense, nor auras. Only blood can be harvested at this time. Additionally, only blood that carries innate abilities can be utilized. A cow, for example, yields no useful traits and is only raw energy.> Swiftly, in great leaps and bounds, the armor once again moves the empath through the low hills and forests, vaulting over a very startled deer in the process. < Insofar, I currently seek out any new sources where I am able, as I was today. New input is gratifying, and one of the few set goals in my existance.>


Kirien manages a stretch to loosen the tension in achy muscles before he throws his arms wide, the gesture similar to that made when one is eagerly anticipating a hug from a friend. The white armour wraps itself about him once more but he already seems to be getting used to the strange sensation of a living creature (in some sense of the word) winding its way around his arms and torso, not flinching away from the contact. He's never worn armour that speaks before, is for sure, though. "Only blood, hm." He muses over this notion for a couple of seconds as his body is set into motion, the connected pair beginning their journey back into Frostmaw's frozen regions. He's half a mind to suggest eating magelings to Draeta, as their blood tends to possess a certain sort of electric spark to it that Kirien himself is quite fond of, even if he does not take anything more from it than raw energy. It's not mentioned, however - the empath figures the intelligence will discover this knowledge itself in the end, without his pushing it into murdering naive magelings. The risk of such events weighing down his shoulders with a heavy sense of guilt is too high, so Kirien again keeps his mouth shut and simply goes along with the ride, bounding across the landscape, northbound. Once or twice, he attempts an even greater leap than those Draeta directs, pushing his body into movements of his own making where he flies effortlessly over mountainsides and ravines, momentarily weightless and exhilarated all over again. "What're your other goals?" he asks over the roar of wind in his ears, curious.


Draeta didn't care about murdering people for the sake of learning. The thing with the whelps showed a hint of that. For the most part, however, your average joe was safe. A farmer had no hint of magical abilities that might be useful to harvest. And your average mage might just pack more of a zing then said farmer. It was people like Kirien that were worth attention, really, and there just weren't that many around. Pragmatic to let them live and simply skim off the top. So to speak. It probably would be doing that right this instant if it was not charged with the empath's protection. Soon the air grows not just cold, but downright frosty as they move. Such was the speed of Draeta when it was allowed to utilize it. Kirien might be a little sore later, if not for the fact that he was a vampire and already kind of flighty. <That information is classified.> And that was that. No amount of coaxing, wheedling, or begging would pull the information out. <Perhaps you may tell me, instead, which bloods you prefer. More input is always gratifying.>


Northbound Once More

Kirien skims the wintry landscape, skating along the rim of frozen rivers, leaping over treetops dusted with freshly-fallen powder. Right now, he does not much care for painful pasts and the ghosts that always seem to haunt his every step; and nor does he particularly worry about the soon-to-be-now and the possibility of aching, over-exerted muscles. Like a ghost himself he flies, untroubled and weightless - free, maybe, were it not for the shackles of Draeta coaxing him back toward Frostmaw city and not further out into the wastes. All his desires to scream across the northern sky and traverse the wild mountainsides are left as that, wishes held close to his chest that he may very well act upon later when alone. But then he remembers Chasz is waiting for him, and there is a certain sort of responsibility on his shoulders once again, something he's not wholly familiar with yet but understands is not something to push aside in favour of indulging in foolishness. "'Classified'. Of course it is." He grins despite himself, before answering, "I prefer blood with a certain kinda spark to it. I can't really absorb things like you can, but it always tastes better with a bit of...electricity." These things always do, he's found. It's all Kirien offers on the matter, remaining vague for once as finally the greyed silhouettes of Frostmaw city fade into view.


A halt. With the walls of Frostmaw so close, simply zooming through like a metallic pixie wasn't the way to go. The armor was an anchor indeed. Sometimes even Ranok was weighed down by it. Kirien was shackled for the time being, even if he did not feel it. The armor wished to see its obligation through. It could then fulfill its original duty, and whatever other goals it carried. Sinister, perhaps, but then, anything that could not be seen could be cast into sinister light, could it not? <A spark in the blood? Perhaps...you mean blood sources with mana in them? Some believe that mana is stored in the blood, which is what allows it to be used by the body. And why it can be diminished. Theory states that it is the only reason vampires can replenish theirs as well, but what credence can be lended to such a theory is minimal. However.> Lights swirl out of nowhere. The armor parts off of Kirien's body to return to its bipedal form to hunch over the vantage they had on the city. <This is where we should part. We can travel through the city, or you can go in to fetch Ranok. I presume you may easily locate him by your connection to your dragon? Unless you have a cloak which I may cover myself with, I would cause too much of a scene to enter the city.> The armor fit too loosely on Kirien for it to be subtle. Which was fine when no one was looking, but not when a bunch of warrior giants were looking on. Remembering. And judging.


Kirien finds himself jerking to a halt without much warning, and without much want to stop either. His limbs disobey his own silent commands, however, and after a moment the empath gives up, resigning himself to pausing atop the outcropping for the time being. Attentions turn fully to the nearby city and he squints sightlessly at the buildings, readjusting to the familiar feeling of many presences and a lot of movement contained in one small locale. After three days spent stargazing and experiencing something genuinely out-of-this-world, this city he calls home is a comforting sight, the beat and rhythm of Frostmaw's frigid heart a refreshing melody in his perceptions. Kirien glances to Draeta again, saying, "Mana in the blood, oui. Mostly. Not always. There are different kinds of sparks." He stretches when the armour has separated itself from his body to stand at his side, arms arcing skywards, back bowed as he rocks up on his toes and then relaxes, sighing. "That makes sense. I'm no scientist though - I don't really know what goes on in people's bodies, even if I can see into them." Huffing a laugh, he pushes back his hair and slants his companion a sidelong look. "Anyway-- won't be too hard to find him, no. I know his feel, et hers. Shouldn't keep them waiting." He hops forward a step, halts at the very edge of the precipice, then turns to blink round at the trio of lights and phantomlike armour that has accompanied him these past few days. For a second Kirien is quiet, but then he's smiling and falling into a graceful bow, exclaiming, "It's been fun! I'm not sure how much this means to you but thank you, Draeta, for everything." With that said, Kirien simply steps backwards and into the air, and falls without a sound to vanish into icy rock at the base of the outcropping. He pops back out of the city wall a few moments later and heads amiably in the direction of Frostmaw's timeworn tavern, where the distinct presence of Chasz and her caretakers can be felt thrumming like an old song. Apparently, she's dragged Ranok there and demanded something warm and meaty (and possibly expensive) off the menu.


<Interesting. Perhaps I will attempt to discern what causes the flow of mana through the body. Perhaps attempt to learn what disrupts it, as well? It will prove to be illuminating, no doubt.> Kirien may have just planted the seed of some terrible experiment in the future. Hopefully Ranok will reign the armor in...or at least be unaware of such experimentation. Surely the smith can't keep track of everything all at once...? <Do make haste. Three days was slightly over our alloted time. He will, no doubt, be annoyed by the waiting. On top of whatever trials the pair of saurians have placed upon him.> Kirien's thanking of the intelligence was observed, and the proper social response dregged out of its mind. Hands place together. <When next we meet.> The empath's strange exit, as quirky as ever, produces no reaction. It was hard to impress an audience that really didn't have the capacity to even feel such an emotion. But it got the feeling that Kirien did it because Kirien wanted to. Down and through the city, the pathes that weave. Ranok was indeed grumpy as he ever got. Chasz's chatterings proved to be enlightening, but, as all children's natterings, eventually turning into annoyance and pointlessness. The meat treat was a small price to pay for the silence. Sera could only chase after 'Cheezy', as she'd come to call the gray, so many times. The seperation was taxing on the poor thing, and in turn, taxing on Ranok because he had to endure the endless questions about Kirien's whereabouts. It couldn't end soon enough.


Chasz was not overly fond of the nickname Sera chose to bestow her with. Something about it did not sit quite right with her, and so she found herself continually and futilely correcting the mist dragonette over those days and nights spent together. Now, she's practically given up trying to get Sera to say her name right, though she still huffs whenever 'Cheezy' pops up in conversation. "Sera should learn to speak properly," the grey grumbles to Ranok for the fiftieth time when Kirien slips quietly into the tavern, a gust of frigid wind curling about his shoulders, "Cheezy is not right. Chasz will learn to speak proper common, and also that...other speak mother and father use." She spits out a word in drowish, then, some horrid insult she picked up from her guardians' bickerings, and the sound of it has Kirien laughing despite himself as he approaches their table. "Rude," he says, quirking an amused brow to Ranok, before the empath abruptly has an armful of grey dragon complaining haughtily about how terribly long he's been gone and where has he been and -why- does he smell like bear? Laughing, and slightly weighed down, he sinks into the seat Chasz had previously been occupying and sets his hatchling on his lap - a good scratch at the scales on the underside of her jaw is more than enough to quiet her down some and the temptation of meat still on the table distracts her further. She tears eagerly into another chicken leg while Kirien strokes his fingertips lightly down her spine, smiles to himself, then blinks up at Ranok and remarks, "I suppose she told tu some interesting things, then. Draeta is on a hill outside of town, by the by."


Ranok was patiently enduring the complaining. Just a little longer. He wondered if there were and wolves handy...and then Kirien was there, relieving him of duty. He was a little mixed. On one hand, annoyed that the empath had taken so long. On the other, the gray wasn't his problem anymore. The smith takes the opportunity to rub his face. He could actually take his eyes off the gray, now. Earlier he'd been afraid it would run off and force him to slog through some hellish ice wasteland fraught with shenanigans in order to get her back. But he'd kept things mostly under control. It took a great bounty of snacks, distractions, and a particularly memorable run in with a flower salesmen, but he managed it. Sera's head was poking over the table. She was skulking about, enduring the endless complaining from Cheezy as Ranok was. She couldn't talk as well as Chasz could, and the insults on her inability to do so were starting to sting. Two pairs of gray eyes, three if you counted Chasz, lock onto the empath. "She hed qvite a fev schtories to tell, yah. Draeta iz on de hill? Very vell den. Hy presume you schtargazink proved to be everyddink Hy hed promised?"


Kirien, whether by virtue of his empathy or something else entirely, takes note of Sera's somewhat grumpy demeanour and possibly the cause for it too, and leans to nudge his knuckles lightly against her snout. "Don't listen to what she says, she's silly," he tells her, and is reprimanded for it when Chasz nips his hand as he pulls back. She stays, though, and after finishing her chicken curls a little closer to his chest, into a warmth she's secretly and instinctively longed for over the past few days. Kirien holds on to her and idly runs his fingers over her rough, stony scales. "I hate to think. Do keep whatever she might have said to yourself, hm?" Chasz rather enjoyed rambling to the smith about that one day on the ice bridge where the conversation between Kuzial and Kirien was in a language she could not at all understand, save the words, 'I love you too,' called out by the empath at the very end of it, after a long fall off the bridge. She's bothered him more than once about what this curious thing named 'love' is, because Kirien was only ever vague about it, and told her she would figure it out one day herself. "It was everything promised et more, I should say," says the vampire after a short pause, a broad smile on his lips. "First time I've ever played skysong, es for sure. It was...an experience. Sorry we were gone for so long, though it seems you coped." There's the slightest hint of a tease in his voice there.


Ranok heard that and a little more. He wasn't even sure he remembered it all. Most of it seemed to be drivel. And a large amount of bragging. More then a large amount, really. Came the reply, "Hy vill try." Sera snorted cold mist out on Kirien's hand when the empath reached to touch her snout. Part surprise, part grumpiness, part instinct. A delicate claw reaches up to scrub the snout, "Smell bear!" Not quite a complaint, and not quite an observation from the dragonette, but a little from column a and a little from column b. Seems that Kirien probably should have washed his hands. Ranok may or may not have dropped a few nuggets of wisdom onto Chasz on the subject of love. He was a little more forthcoming on such matters then Kirien, at least when it wasn't *his* love on the table. "...played skysong?" The smith's eyes thin slightly. Brow furrows, and then relaxes, "Oh." A heh follows, with a drum of the fingers and a line or two of his native tongue. To judge by the sly smile on his face, he knew just about exactly what Draeta had shown the empath. Or, perhaps, what he *hadn't* The Universe was a big place. One could hardly see all there was to in a lifetime. "Kopink. Yah. You liddle gray vas an inqvisitiff vun. But Hy tink Hy'm glad hyu kan vatch her instead."


Kirien casts Sera an apologetic sort of look, though he is not quite able to stop smiling. "Sorry. That was dinner." And what a dinner it was. Really, he thinks he could have moved even faster with Draeta had he not been feeling so damned fat after such a feeding - it was a much needed meal, though, and now he's slumping a bit in his chair and looking rather satisfied, like one just finished stuffing himself with his favourite food. "Skysong, oui. Or maybe aurorasong..." He narrows his eye a bit, listening to Ranok mutter to himself in that language Kirien does not really recognise as anything but 'Ranok-speak'. As fond of imitating as ever, he repeats the words to the best of his ability without understanding their meaning, before enquiring with curiosity, "What does that mean? Et, ah, I suppose tu know about skysong, in some form or another. Draeta's shown you things like that before, right?" If he was the one bound to the intelligence, he'd certainly be bothering it about witnessing more of these experiences on a daily basis. He simply would be unable to resist. "It was great fun. And, hah, watching. Yes. Thank you for looking after her, though." He looks down at Chasz, at a face he's only ever seen through borrowed eyes and the queer perceptions of earthsight. "I saw stars, and met a black hole, and saw so many other amazing things, but I missed seeing you, my darling." Kirien is, honestly, a very doting and affectionate parent, which is why he ends up snuggling Chasz seconds later, squishing their cheeks together as she squeaks in halfhearted protest.


Shimmering gray eyes blink. "Dinner?" The dragonette mulls over the words. "Oh. Food eat late?" Ranok reaches over to scratch the dragonette on the head, behind her ridges. Kirien wasn't the only one who doted on his child saurian. But Ranok would never admit it. Any smirks or teasing on the matter that was sent his way would be met with a death glare. Hopefully Kirien was too busy imitating the words he spoke in Motan to bother. No correction of the empath's inflection or an offer of the meaning of their words. The language was his. Useful when he needed to speak to Draeta and no one being any the wiser. "Don' vorry about it." was all Kirien was gonna get. He mulls over the possibility of answering his questions, though, on the matter of Draeta. He'd expected them, really. What a can of worms to open. The boundless curiosity that the empath held was only fed by the answers he got today. "Hm. He hesn' schown me as he hes hyu. Instead...Hy sav dem for myself." He adds a mocking smile to that. He had to be teasing. Sera was snorting over by the side, seeing Kirien's loving ministrations on Chasz. Ranok showed love in his own ways, but he wasn't a very cuddly person. The dragonette couldn't help but be a little jealous of it, as children are wont to do. She makes up for it by nudging snout under the smith's hands for more petting, about the only thing he'd do as far as physical contact went.


Kirien gives an enthusiastic nod to go along with Sera's words. "Mhmm!" Chasz scoffs something under her breath about the other youngling's speech that he quickly shushes with more snuggling. He earns himself a couple of nips to the chin for it but the fact Chasz does not attempt to escape his hold makes it clear as day that she enjoys all the affection lavished upon her, especially after days separated. Those subtle gestures from Ranok to mist dragonette might have been noticed but the smith is spared any teasing, the empath feigning ignorance to it all and doing a very good job of it, at that. "Saw them yourself?" He cannot help but to pry for further information when faced with those intriguing words, teasing or not. "You went above the sky, then?" This is something Kirien appears rather interested in, as he's entertained thoughts himself of trying to ascend to the place where stars wheel across an endless black canvas, even though seeing anything up there would be impossible for him. But it's the feeling, not just the image, that he wants to capture. A yawn catches him off-guard as he's in the midst of saying, "It's not really all that interesting, up there, until you go beyond the sky. I like it down here though."


Ranok was typically non forthcoming with information. Kirien's belief of the outrageous claim brings a slight smile to his lips. "Hy deed. Incidentally, Hy hef dis vooden sheck in Kelay for sale..." Given Kelay's penchant for burning down, it served as a familiar 'outrageous deed' metaphor. Sera gives a slight hiss of contentment as Ranok hits the good spot. Her scales were not hard, nor might they ever be. Her body's defense mechanisms were the mists she was made of. Wounds bled them and healed. Intangibility, that sort of thing. Not impossible to injure, but she had every bit of potential to be the terror her mother was. "Yah, yah, ve've hed dis konversation before. Hyu like feet on de ground. Hy tink it's time Hy left, tough." The smith was standing up, then.


Kirien's eye narrows again. He huffs a bit, more at himself than anyone else, for being foolish enough to believe those words in the first place. "I'll go above the sky, for sure. Just once, mind you." It brings to mind the idea of returning to Hollow's fine, fine earth as a meteor; some cold shard of a star torn from the night sky. Kirien entertains the notion of for a moment, smiling to himself, then shakes the errant thought aside. He tucks it away somewhere for safekeeping. "If you go want to go somewhere else, try the ocean. I know a kraken who needs more friends," he comments while knowing full well that if Ranok intends to go anywhere, it's up rather than down. He glances at the tavern ceiling and can't quite understand the motivation behind it all. Sure, there are stars and other astounding things up there beyond the sky, but in the sky itself... Then, Kirien pauses, and realises Ranok may simply have meant he should leave the tavern, and was not alluding to desires to travel to other worlds. He hopes he hasn't been forced to spend the entire three days here. "Ah. Right. Yes." He moves to stand as well, plucking Chasz up into his arms and holding her with relative ease despite her size. Despite having technically been asleep for a couple of days, the empath has half a mind to take a nap right now, especially after his rather large meal.


Ranok aims only a weird look at the empath. He wasn't privy to his mind processes, and, frankly, kind of didn't want to be. While whatever world Kirien was in was surely a lovely place, he wouldn't get one whit of work done, and that just didn't fly with Ranok. "Right." He doesn't even give Kirien a by-your-leave, and clicks his fingers to strool out the tavern door. Sera thumps the table out of her way through, perhaps intentionally bumping it into Chasz's hindquarters as she dangles from Kirien. And then they would be gone.