RP:Corruption's Touch
Summary: Emrith questions Larewen about an incident in which he was drawn to shadows and able to use them to move quickly. Studying the spell-blade's magic with her augmented right eye, Larewen discovers that her blood has tainted the elf's magic, allowing him to interact with darkness. Stunned, Emrith requests Larewen's tutorship in controlling this newfound ability, only for an argument to erupt between the former lovers.
Frostmaw Tavern
Larewen slipped quietly into the tavern, shaking a bit of snow from the brim of her fedora as she did so. Her booted feet carried her toward the bar, where before she selected a place to sit, she ordered: “Whiskey.” The word was spoken softly and followed by a click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth - she had not yet swept her gaze over those present. As she had said earlier, the elf was lingering in the town she hated so much.
Emrith stumbles into the tavern after most of a day spent training at the Academy of Aramoth. His muscles have that well-sprung feeling only obtained from long work, and the pain of his injuries is, surprisingly, unconcerning. The spell-blade suspects that he will be as sound of body as ever within a few more days. He straightens up, shakes his head, looks about, and stops cold. Larewen. "You again." he says before he can think. If he didn't know better, he would think the necromancer is shadowing him in some fashion; he knows this is ridiculous, but her ability to be where he is, lately, is almost uncanny. "Have you made your apologies yet?"
Larewen turned from the bar, glass in hand upon hearing Emrith’s voice. The elf’s mismatched eyes studied him for along moment before a dark brow arched upward. “I did tell you I would stay for a short while, no?” she asked, and for a moment her lips threatened to curl into a smirk. Whatever mirth might have nearly surfaced faded in lieu of his query. “No, not yet. I… It’s not easy, admitting to my wrongs. I owe more than just Shi.”
Emrith takes a few paces toward the bar, but stops well short of it. He is thinking that perhaps a quick trip to less frosty climes might be in order. Ilaerothil, after all, may benefit from his company. "Best begun is soonest done," he replies, running a hand through his hair. "It will only get harder with time, and once it is over, then you can have done with it." All things Larewen surely knows, but Emrith has few useful words on the subject. Suddenly something utterly unrelated to apologies and awkwardness occurs to him, and his face adopts a pensive expression. "Larewen, I may need your help. Whilst engaged in the mission of which I have spoken previously, I...did something. Something I did not expect to do. There was a large ball of shadow magic, which was on a collision course with a target. It was rolling and bouncing down a large tunnel, and it...pulled me, somehow. When I was inside it, I felt strange, as if nothing could touch me. Silly, I know, but that is how it felt. But there is more than that. I found myself able to...shift, so long as those shadows were touching me. Only a foot or two in any direction, but I could do it nearly instantaneously, and without moving. This is an ability I never had before, and I suspect it has something to do with either the vampiric curse itself, or with you, my sire." Now, nervousness has crept into his words. "It is...not a thing of evil, is it? If it is not, I believe it is something I should learn more of."
Larewen wrinkled her nose at Emrith. “I don’t like apologizing at all, honestly,” she admitted before he changed the subject. This has completely and utterly redirected her interest and, raising the whiskey to her lips for a sip, she stepped nearer to Emrith, selecting an empty table betwixt them. She gestured to a chair across from her. Once situated, she set down her glass and withdrew a cigarette. A whisper lit its tip. “Magic is not inherently evil; it is the mind behind it that can go either way. I would think you’d know that, given your experience with me,” she said softly. “This… is likely related to the corruption in my blood. It warped my own magic, after all.”
Emrith warily takes the indicated chair, seating himself and arranging his cloak to spill over the chair-back before choosing to speak. "Magic itself is neither inherently good nor evil. Yes, I know this. But the use of shadows is, as I understand, tied closer to dark magic. And your explanation that it might have to do with the corruption in your blood is, in a word, troublesome. I have seen what misery that corruption has brought to you, and the thought of having some of it loose within me is rather dismaying. Will I have to learn to control it? Will it become a problem?" There are so many things he does not know or understand about the magical arts, and here, especially, he distinctly dislikes asking Larewen for help, given their unique relationship at present.
Larewen answered only with silence, her gaze falling away from the male as she puffed her cigarette and took another mouthful of whiskey. The fact that her blood is the only explanation she can think of for Emrith’s sudden affinity for shadows perplexed her beyond what she truly wanted to think about. She swallowed hard and then downed the rest of her drink. “I don’t know,” the elf said simply, honestly. “It… It explains a lot, but I don’t know…” She waved down a barmaid for a refill and almost seemed to nurse her cigarette, for it burned up so quickly.
Emrith folds his hands on the tabletop, tapping one finger against the smooth wood for a moment while he ponders the situation. "I wonder," he says at last, "if there is any way to test for...resonance. When I was young, each of my fellows and I were tested for the spark of magic. Believe it or not, each elf is unique in this way, and some elves do not possess any latent magical talents. Someone with the talent created something arcane - it differed from teacher to teacher - and then asked us each to focus upon it. We passed the test if the instructor eventually saw an echo of their own summoning in us, a sort of mirror image, but far, far weaker. They called it testing for resonance. I do not know if it would work for something like this, or if there are any other determinants to discern whether or not I am...corrupted. But I think this is something I would rather be sure of than find out by mistake."
Larewen listened quietly and lit another cigarette the moment hers was gone. She did not immediately raise her gaze to his eyes, and in fact seemed to avoid looking at him entirely until her drink was brought. Another sip later, and she finally raised her gaze toward him. Her lips moved silently and darkness clouded her left eye, blinding her once more so that only her brown eye could “see.” She remained unspeaking, studying the very threads of magic that were woven into Emrith’s being, the essence that allowed him to be a spell blade. It took her a few moments too long, it seemed, and then with a breath her left eye cleared once more. Her mouth formed an apology but there was no voice behind it.
Emrith regards the necromancer silently as she does...whatever it is she is doing. The spell-blade does not intend to interrupt it. When she finishes, then mouthes an apology, Emrith's body goes cold. "What does that mean?" he asks, and tension is wound tight through his words. "Larewen, what does that mean?" He reaches out an imploring hand, then withdraws it. Clearly, he thinks he already knows what is going to happen, and wants somehow to defer it, but one might just as well plead with an avalanche to stop its downward thunder.
Larewen drew her hand away the moment he began to reach out toward her, almost as if she were recoiling from the male - and she was. Not out of disgust, of course. Larewen was far beyond anything he might ever be when it came to darker natures. It was a mixture of guilt, of pain. “I don’t know what it means Emrith. New abilities are not uncommon when one is sired. I don’t think it is something too terrible; it is likely something you can use. Are you tainted by my blood? Yes, but it is not… You need not fear becoming as I am. I should not have damned you…”
Emrith feels some of his unease beginning to drain away as Larewen explains. But why did she recoil, then, when he reached out? Something does not add up here. "Larewen, is there something you are not telling me? You have the attitude of someone either trying to avoid an unpleasant truth, or someone who has just realized guilt. What you did to me, it is over and done, and there is no sense worrying yourself over it. I am what I am. I made the choice and so did you. I would not blame you for that." He knocks the heel of one hand against the table, then says, as if to himself, "Why must everything be so complicated?"
Larewen drew her lower lip into her mouth, crushing her cigarette and draining the last few drops of her drink. “Because I am an extremely complicated woman, Emrith,” she answered, and there was an odd sort of emptiness that has crept into her voice. She released her glass and lowered her arms first to her lap before curling them around her torso. “What I did to you was still wrong… I wish I could turn back time…”
Emrith is on his feet and glowering down at the necromancer before he is fully aware that he intends to move. "Listen to me, Larewen," he says, and his voice is as close to a growl as it ever gets. "Listen well. We are both too old to become wrapped in self-pity, too wise to be laid low by it. You made a choice, after much persuasion on my part. The choice is done. There is no sense lamenting it. The only thing to be done is to make a bad situation better. And the best way I can think of to do this is for you to teach me. If you know things, through the study of your arts, that would help me better harness this ability I have, it might better arm me against it if things should go astray. If I have no warning, I will be less likely to know how to react. So if you want to make good on a bad choice, then the best thing you can do is to teach me what you know. As much as you can. As much as I can learn. I will obviously never become a necromancer, not even of the more-or-less journeyman sort, but there are, I am certain, other things I can learn from you. If you must, consider it repayment for a debt, though I would prefer to see it as something perhaps a little less self-serving than that." In his agitation, the spell-blade's right hand has fallen on Heleg's hilt, tensed and ready to draw; realizing this, he hastily lets his arm fall limply to his side.
Larewen inhaled sharply and then exhaled slowly. Emrith’s lecturing was among the last things the elf wanted to hear presently. Her gaze lifted to meet his in silence and the way in which his hand fell to his blade did not go unnoticed, though she said nothing of it. Instead, the necromancer stood to her feet, her mismatched eyes moving toward the door. “I could, yes,” she said finally. “And perhaps to some degree I owe it to you, but I can’t like this Emrith. I can only handle you in doses, and teaching you anything will require a closeness that my heart is not yet ready to handle constantly. Please don’t ask this of me right now.”
Emrith remembers a conversation earlier in the day, a conversation which veered very close to dangerous territory; thinking of it still brings bubbles of rage to the surface within the spell-blade's mind. Larewen, claiming that she loathed Talyara, and that the only reason she would not hurt or kill her is because she knew that he, Emrith, would never forgive her if she tried. Larewen, further claiming that she would also not aid Talyara if she needed help. The elf has had time to mull this over, and has decided that, while it is understandable, it is not acceptable. As Larewen gains her feet and then looks toward the door, Emrith takes a calculated side-step to attempt to interpose himself between the necromancer and her only easy route of safety. "No, I don't think so," he replies, and his voice is surprisingly cold. "No, I really do not think so." His eyes are stormy November grey. This time, when a hand falls to the hilt of a shortsword, Emrith lets it rest there. "You had your chance for this to be easy," he continues, and now his eyes are darker, darker still. "But you said the wrong things, pleaded for mercy after all but suggesting that you would not grant the same to someone I love. I suppose I cannot force you to teach me anything; it would be beyond my means. But I can, at the least, stop you from simply taking the easy choice, as you are so often wont to do. The easy choice. Ever your way when emotion gets the better of you." Emrith looks aside, shifts his stance, tries to relax. He knows that something is wrong, but the wrongness is sensed from a long way away. ""Don't ask it of you? Well, I give you a choice you might not like. You will have one, or have the other. I accept nothing less. Either I will have your oath that you would help Talyara should you know she is in danger, or I shall have your willing aid in learning what I have to learn. One way or the other, you must prove the truth of your words. If you love me, then you will demonstrate it by doing one of these things, either one of which will not only make me happy, but might keep me safe. For if Talyara should die, I might not survive her long. We are empathically linked, she and I, and what she feels, I feel, at least to some extent. The trauma of her death would likely drive me into a rage so terrible, or a grief so deep, that there would be no coming back from it." The empathy is truth, but the supposition about what would happen in the event of Talyara's death is nothing more than a guess; the spell-blade has more than enough bravado to pull it off at the moment though.
Even the veil that obscured part of Larewen’s face could not hide the pain that suddenly contorted her features. She doesn’t know if he is telling her the truth or not, only that it is something that is quite definitely possible. The necromancer’s shoulders shake and then slump as moisture suddenly formed in her eyes. Though she tried to stave it off, the faint glow that begins to form in those blackened runes reveal precisely how helpless the elf felt. Her eyes closed for a long moment, lashes absorbing the tears to some degree. “If you must do this to me,” the elf said, her voice barely above a whisper. “If you must…” She was at a complete loss for words and her mouth open and closed uselessly. “If this is how you want me to prove my love to you, Emrith, then fine. But tell me, what use is it? Putting me through this turmoil? Is this how I must make amends? Is this even fair? I would never have asked you to defend Shishi, but then… I don’t make a habit of falling for people who cannot fight for themselves. Whatever you want, Emrith. Whatever you want.”
Emrith stalks forward toward Larewen, hand still on his sword. The spell-blade moves slowly, as if time is of no import. He moves close enough that, should he desire it, he could reach out and touch the necromancer, but he does not do so. Not yet, anyway. "You know that feeling," he says, in a coldly conversational tone, "where you are helpless? Where nothing you do will satisfy? Where all choices feel like bad ones?" He chuckles. "Well, now you know it, anyway. We spoke, the other day, about subjugating, about making people fear you, about making people hurt. It is a peculiar thing, being on the other end of that, isn't it? A peculiar thing." Another chuckle, but this one is not quite so cold. "You ask me why I do this to you, what the point is. You do not learn a thing until you feel it. It is something I believe I finally, at long last, understand about you, love." Now there is even a little sadness in Emrith's voice, and his eyes, though still grey, are somewhat lighter. "I withdraw my ultimatum. I see how much it hurts you to be around me. I see it more fully now than I ever have before. I see what it would cost you to do as I demanded, and more, that you would do it anyway. That is either the purest love I have ever known, or the deepest folly. Perhaps both. But know these two things." He leans forward, and now it seems that Emrith's face and mannerisms are wholly his again. His hand falls away from his sword. "I am sorry for hurting you. From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry. I might have had a reason, but that does not mean it did not hurt me as well, in some way. That is the first thing. The second? I will never again pose you that ultimatum. It was an object lesson, nothing more and nothing less. Now you know, perhaps better than you ever have, how it feels to be utterly and completely at someone else's mercy when that person seems to be showing you none. You understand cruelty from a quarter where you never expected to feel it. Larewen, I am not generally a cold-hearted creature, but I will do much in the service of greater things. This is one of them." He steps back, then shifts to the side. "Go, if my presence is so painful. Go, if you want to go. But I wish that we could see each other as friends, as people for whom there is mutual respect, instead of just as thorns to one another's hands."
Larewen curled her lip bitterly at Emrith. “Congratulations. You know what it is like to be in my shoes now,” the elf hissed, coolly. It was not malice that laced her tone, but rather the desperation of a cornered and wounded animal. The curse inscribed in her flesh picked up on her feelings better than her own mind did, and those faintly glowing runes brightened until her jaw tensed. “Regardless of whether you rescind your ultimatum or not, I have given you my word. Your girl will have the protection of House Dragana.” Her fingers curled as deeply into her sides as was possible, nails threatening to tear the fabric of her gloves. She moved to step beyond him then, fully intent on taking her leave before something else strikes her. Half turning, the elf’s mismatched eyes seek his, her pain evident beyond that veil. “And before you assume what I have and have not felt, it would do you well to remember who cursed me.” Hildegarde exited to the west.
"No. Larewen! Wait!" Emrith finds himself hastening along in her wake, unperturbed by her hard stare and her words alike. "Not like this. I...I am sorry, all right? I...did not mean it." This last trails off a little, as if Emrith is becoming aware not only of what he said, but exactly how he said it. "I was trying to prove something, it is true. But before I began, I had thought to explain myself first, to challenge you with words about your claim not to aid Talyara instead of...gods, Larewen, I do not know what happened. Please, don't run." The pair of them are close to the door now, and Emrith is still standing aside, not barring her path. "You did not give your word on anything. All you did was agree to capitulate to me." Even the word makes him flinch isibly. "I release you. You don't have to do any of it. Please." Something near desperation informs Emrith's words now. "What have I done? Dear gods, what have I done? I will not be like him. I will not!"
Larewen slowed to a stop at the door, turning her face toward the male. If she could, she would have feigned disdain, but that was beyond her presently. Instead she shook her head at him. “I will do it, because regardless of what you may have meant, you have shown a vulnerability that needs tending to,” she said quietly, in that same distant tone. “Perhaps you should remember why it is that I could not tell you the truth about what I had done when I raised him, too. I will never be the one you need, the one you want, or the one you truly love for who she is. I am greatly flawed. Enjoy your life, your happiness. I will send some of my servants your way, to aid in protecting what you have.”
Emrith is stunned to momentary silence in the wake of Larewen's attack...and attack it seems, because the spell-blade has rarely felt so vulnerable, so pierced. Larewen has, with her simple damning assessment, cored him hollow. Tears begin to stream down his face. There is no defense to something like this. "This...this has nothing--" He gulps, struggling to form words. "This has nothing to do with you being flawed, and me not loving you for who you are. It had everything to do with...Larewen, I lost control! Don't you understand? Haven't you ever gone too far and then regretted it? For the love of the light, help me!" He steps forward then, blinded by tears, knees shaking. "Please, Larewen. Help me. I did not mean to do what I did. I was wrong. Doesn't that make any difference to you?" And then, in a moment of rising despair, "What can I do to make you believe me? I'll do anything. I'll do anything." Trembling, trying not to weep still more tears over this woman, the elf is simultaneously embarrassed, passionate and desperate. How could a simple conversation have gone so utterly wrong in so short a time?
Larewen reached her hands upward, cupped his face as he spoke. “If I had words, or knew what to say to make this easier for you, less painful than it clearly is, I would. Part of me wants to spare your feelings, while another part of me wants to drive that pain deeper until you truly understood what I felt, what I do feel. I would rather find myself under Trajek’s blade, the damned blade that I crafted, than protect Talyara, and yet for you, I will do that.” She paused to let that sink in, how far she would go for him, and then continued. “Every waking moment of every day, I regret that I was not enough. Not good enough, not caring enough, not trusting enough. I regret that I was so terrified of what you would think of me, that I mislead you into thinking it was so much worse than what it was. That I held you against your will. That I damned you, knowing what the outcome would be. Being near you is literally agony, you can see it in these markings on my flesh, and yet I still do it. I still have to FORCE myself away from you. So yes, I understand perfectly.”
Emrith is reeling, and Larewen's touch only makes things worse. Part of him wants to pull away, while the rest yearns to lean forward, to take solace, to simply give himself up in all the ways that matter. This may not be torture in a traditional sense, but the spell-blade feels as if some vital part of himself is dangerously close to unravelling. In this way, he comes to know, on a level he had never thought possible, exactly what Larewen's feelings mean. Her deception, enacted out of fear, was based more on her worry than on his true opinion. Her choice to damn him with the curse of vampirism was not done because she wanted the whole business to be over, but because in some ways, the necromancer really cannot refuse him anything. Emrith has another fleeting thought about the deepest love being the greatest folly, but it applies to him, too. "Why do you think I dedicated so much--so much effort to this?" he asks. "Why do you think I stand here before you with tears in my eyes? Larewen, I understand. At last, I understand. I thought I did before, but I was wrong then, too. I could have walked away from you, called you a lost cause, but I knew, I just knew--" He puts his chin down, struggling with his emotions. When he raises his head, his eyes are squinted tightly shut, and his voice is choked. "I think I knew what you were, even then. And what I was to you. And I wanted it to be...to be right. I wanted to help you. I wanted you to come back, not just to yourself, but to me. To me. Does that ring true to your ear?" Emrith knows he is all but babbling at this point, but he is past caring. "You are good enough. You are good enough. Please believe it, Larewen. You are good enough."
Larewen lowered her hands, opting instead to occupy them with retrieving a cigarette. Anything to keep her fingers busy, her mind somewhat occupied with anything else. The cigarette falls from her grip though, landing between them on the wooden floor and she lets out a shaky, frustrated growl. Part of her wants to tear even further into him, to tell him that he did not want it badly enough, but even in her present state of mental unrest, of emotional instability, she doesn’t go that far. She has done enough damage. “I am already yours; I have already returned, and if I must wait lifetimes, then I will. Patience is a virtue I do have.”
Emrith gets himself under control by degrees, calming as the moments pass. When Larewen drops her cigarette, he looks down at it, then shakes his head. "Patience." At first, that is all he can muster himself to say. "Talyara is young yet. She will live hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, even as a half-elf. That is a lot of patience. It is a long time to be shackled." Emrith is entirely unaware that his last comment could easily be referring to himself as the bound one, instead of the necromancer. "I want to make this up to you somehow. I have done you harm, and I want things to be right again. Or better, anyway. Maybe you are on some level all right with simply taking abuse, but that is not my way. It never was, and I don't intend for it to become so. And thus I want to redress the balance, to make right what I did wrong. I just don't know how. Is there anything I can do for you to prove how sorry I am, and how much I want to fix this mistake?"
Larewen smiled bitterly at Emrith. “And I will live forever, if Vakmatharas wishes to damn me so,” the elf replied. She followed with a shake of her head. “You have not done me any harm that will not heal with time, and at least my vanity shall not suffer for it.” A snort punctuated the sentence: Trajek had done about as much damage to that as he possibly could, to remind her. She inhaled deeply. “I need some cold air, Emrith. I have withstood enough pain, and I am certain Talyara is waiting for you at home.”
Emrith flinches again, taking an involuntary step away from Larewen when she mentions Talyara. "I hope, then," he says in a cool, controlled voice, "that we can consider this a concluded matter. Regrettable, by all accounts. But know this, Larewen Dragana. I like dealing you pain as little as you like receiving it. One day, you will be able to stand with me, and it will no longer hurt you. I am often out, of an evening, and so is Talyara. I know not where she is, at present. But I will go and try to find her, because she will not be safe else." He folds his hands on his breastbone, waiting for Larewen to leave, assuming that there is simply nothing more the pair need say to one another tonight.
Larewen had no words and, without even stooping to pick up the dropped cigarette, the elf slipped out the door. Her feet carried her west, toward the cliff and the hill that would lead down into the ravine where she had found Trajek. She would go where misery had found her, and she would listen to the distant stirrings of Frostmaw’s departed. Tomorrow, perhaps, if she was lucky, she could apologize to Shishi. Or perhaps she would simply return to Vailkrin, to her home, to the last bastion of comfort in her life.