RP:Dead End
Part of the Through A Glass, Darkly Arc
Summary: Valrae sends a letter to Callum asking him to meet her at a location in Sage with the plan to meet and talk with an old crone. Callum arrives before her and stumbles onto the woman's body, a mysterious symbol burned into her forehead and her face twisted in fear, before Val arrives. They leave long enough to discuss what they've found but return to burn the house down by way of burial. As they watch the fire consume the house Callum confides in Val and she attempts to offer him some amount of comfort by just listening. They part ways with Valrae asking Cal to visit her in Cenril some time and promising to keep him updated on anything she learns of the symbol. Callum waits until she leaves to search through the rubble and finds a silver charm.
A letter addressed to Callum would serendipitously find its way to him. It’s addressed with pretty but absent handwriting, the cursive letters looping so whimsically they could almost fall right off the page. It could only be from Valrae.
Had to run again, will explain everything when I can. Soon? I have a lead on something, if you could check it out? Sorry for being the world's worst mentor! See you soon!
The message was unsigned, a location in Sage and a date but no other instruction scrawled at the bottom.
Outskirts of Sage Forest
Valrae || Here, tucked deep within the thriving, vibrant green of Sage was a place tucked so snugly into the ancient trees that it had been hidden for a very long while. Long enough in fact, that one of the tall, thick trees seemed to have grown into the little unassuming cabin. Nature had clearly reclaimed the old home, it’s old roof covered in moss and patches of thick grass. The wooden face of the building was green with climbing vines and ivy, only the door completely free of that clinging foliage. The porch was small, baskets of clearly tended herbs crowding the surface and hanging from old hooks in brown pots. It would be easy to miss, even for those that traveled this far toward the outskirts of Sage, as tangled the forest as it was. There was a chimney stack but no smoke rose from it. There were windows but no light or movement came from them. All around, the forest was quiet but for the song of the forest and the life it safeguarded. This was where Valrae’s letter would have directed Callum, with no other instruction beyond that and today's date.
Callum was rather out of sorts when he got the letter that was seemingly from Valrae. Soon? Why did it have to be now? Meri had left in the middle of the night, only days before, taking her things with her, and leaving him with house and his horse, Storm Cloud. Cal was much in the same state as he’d been in when Meri was briefly trapped in the Shadow Plane: facial hair had made itself known, sprouting up along his chin and upper lip, and his hair was rather unkempt--it was all rather the opposite of how the vain Callum Rochester typically presented himself. If something was amiss about this letter business, Callum had no mind to sense it. With the destination not too far from his now empty house, the raven-haired Catalian went alone, leaving his horse behind. He’d find the house eventually, brows furrowing somewhat at the state of the place. Valrae -was- still in hiding, to an extent, so… maybe she just decided to live out here now, away from Cenril’s busy atmosphere. “Valrae…?” Knuckles rapped against the door, the witch awaiting the home’s mistress, the same hand that had knocked now rubbing against Cal’s face, as if trying to awaken him from this nightmare
Valrae || The cabin was empty. There would be no answer at the door, no subtle shifting sounds of movement throughout the dark space. Only the sound of Sage and the creak of ancient but sturdy wooden floors. It wouldn’t be until Callum had turned away, to look into a window or in simple frustration, that the door would suddenly whine open. The chipped yellow face of the door swung inward, into the shadows of the cabin just enough to reveal another chipped hardwood floor and a threadbare rug. Inside, with only the slanted squares of light coming in through the now open door and the vine choked windows, the cabin was in disarray. It looked as if a storm had torn through, ripped tapestries off of the wall and books off their shelves, left couches toppled over and cabinets open, the dishes broken on the floor. In darkness, something thudded into the floor.
Valrae was late. She hadn’t set a time, sure, but she felt late and that was enough to assure her she was indeed late. Travel was slow for her now, after the birth of her son. She’d not yet felt healed or brave enough to attempt riding Fury, so she was walking or hailing a carriage. She’d managed to make it to Kelay with the carriage but needed to walk this far into Sage. It was rough, Valrae hadn’t been completely sedentary in her pregnancy or the weeks following her son’s birth, but she’d not been hiking through forests either. She’s clueless to what has happened between Meri and Callum and clueless of her horrible timing. The witch could just make out the shape of the cabin through the trees as the door would be opening for Cal and would be too late to warn the poor man that it was in fact, not her own home.
Callum || Much to Valrae’s dismay, Callum would disappear into the house. “Val?” The state of things was noted, a frown forming almost immediately. Something was… off. Maybe he’d gotten the wrong house. It’s not like there wasn’t plenty of people that lived in this forest--perhaps the right one was nearby. He’d spun on his heels to go back out the door, but… there was that thud. Human curiosity could be just as much of a curse as it was a blessing, and right now, it was very much the former. “Hello?” A step or two was taken towards where the sound had been, electricity crackling along Cal’s left hand--everything else felt like it’d flown out the window lately, might as well have his pacifism go with it.
Valrae || There was little more than the same destruction and chaos to be found deeper into the strange home, but the further back Callum might go, the more he might notice a particularly ripe smell to thicken in the stagnant air. It was the foul, unmistakable smell of decay. If Callum ventured further he would find the rotting body of an old woman. Her mouth frozen in a twisted, frightened expression and a strange symbol burned into her forehead. She clutched a pentagram charm in her hand.
Valrae dressed practically, at least, in a tunic shirt the color of cream, the forgiving silhouette covering the bit of baby weight she still carried, and thick pants tucked into her laced walking boots. Her long hair had been braided back, the baby hairs at her temple curling as sweat beaded at her temples. Fury followed behind her, carrying her bags and enjoying the walk. The witch is just coming around to cabin amongst the trees when Cal disappears into the home. “Cal?” She calls, her voice happy and hopeful, if a little exhausted. Valrae’s booted feet lead her up the stairs, her happiness and long-time-no-sees dying on her lips. She leans a little, peeking into the razed home and the confused line of her mouth tips into a frown. “Damn,” The witch hisses, looking now out into the forest. Suddenly, the shadows seemed deeper, darker. Her gaze slides back to the open door, her head tilting in question. “Callum?” She calls again, her voice softer than before.
Callum did indeed venture farther back. An arm rose immediately to cover his nose and mouth as the fumes of death lingered around the body and seeped all around him. Valrae’s call found his ears and he soon turned away from the grim work of whomever got to that poor woman first, “Val! Over here. Be careful.” Ocean-blue eyes settled on the corpse again, then fell to the pentagram. She was a witch. Steps were finally taken away from the body, the Catalian intent on meeting Valrae halfway through the house, allowing him to put a distance between him and the stench. “Val, we need to get out of here,” he said, his bootfalls getting louder the closer he got to the Red Witch, “Immediately.”
Valrae kills her hesitation at the sound of Callum’s answer and steps into the darkness. She stepped over books, a couch cushion, broken pieces of what she assumed was a mirror. “What-” Her question dies in her throat as Cal meets her half way. It was dark. Fear thumped hard in her chest. The tone of his voice did little to settle it. “Yeah, okay, okay.” She doesn’t argue, doesn’t ask the questions bouncing around her head. There were more when they both made it back into the light. Callum was disheveled, unshaven. “Cal…” She doesn’t stop moving away from the house. Fury snorted impatiently beyond the stairs. “Are you alright?” That seemed more important. “What happened?” The forest was quiet, seemingly empty for now.
Callum avoided the questions that was asked of him; it brought the thoughts of Meri back to the forefront. Between that and the body of the witch, he was certainly looking worse than he had been before he set foot in that house. Static clung to the air around them, a product of his not-so-great mood. He did manage to keep a distance between the two of them, at least, in an effort to keep his sparkiness from zapping her. “Who lived in that house? When was the last time you spoke to her?” He assumed Valrae knew her, seeing as how the directions had definitely been to that house. “She was dead, Val. -Dead-. Sh-sh-she had this thing burned into her head,” a hand motioned to his forehead, the man clearly failing to get a grip on things as he broke into slightly unhinged stuttering.
Valrae would be following Callum now, all of her careful plans as dead as the woman they left rotting on the floor of her little home. Her name was Melba, and she was a witch who apparently knew the location of a seriously old witch relic that Valrae had gotten into her head that she needed to track down. She would tell Callum, eventually when they finally got around to talking about it, in a rush of words. Valrae blanched as he filled her in, stuttered slightly over the gruesome details. First, she covered her mouth and shook her head in denial. “No, she’d just spoken with my aunt…” Her aunt had been the one to arrange the meeting but it had been nearly a week ago. “Damn, damn,” The baby hairs on Valrae’s forehead were standing up wildly, charged by the air that was surely a reflection of Callum’s mood. “The hunters must have found her, somehow,” She thought of her family, tucked away behind the barrier and safe as they could be in Cenril. Still, the desire to see her child and see him safe filled her to the point of almost bursting. “A thing?” The witch repeats, confused and heartsick. “What kind of thing, Cal?” She didn’t want to ask him but she needed too.
Callum stopped once they got far enough away from the house, to a place that felt like some semblance of “safe”. He’d take in the info she provided and sighed heavily, collapsing onto the ground beneath the nearest tree, his head leaning against it to allow him to stare up into its green branches. Cal told her of the symbol he saw, doing his best to recall the details he took in, in that short amount of time. “I’ve seen a lot of emotions on people’s faces. Fiery rage. A whole ocean full of sadness. Happiness beyond belief. I made it my duty to observe everyone I’ve ever come in contact with, for as long as I’m allowed--but I have never in my life seen anyone as terrified as that woman had been. Not even when Kahran’s hell bore down on Larket near my home there. Not even when you burned. She was so scared, she was clutching a pentagram, like a holy man with his god’s mark, thinking it was going to shield him from whatever was coming for him.” Cal took a breath, those blue eyes of his closing for the moment as he tried to quell the rapid beating of his heart before it leapt out of his chest.
Valrae could see the struggle play across Callum’s face and it make her heart ache for him. A chill tripped down her spine as he spoke, so she frowned while wrapping her arms around herself. Fury snorted again, stomping his feet in agitation. Maybe it was the charged air. “I’m sorry,” She says. She should have never sent him here, certainly wouldn’t have if she’d know the state of things or the state of the man himself. Regret and guilt weighed her shoulders down. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. They were supposed to meet with a nice old crone, maybe have some tea or cookies and chat about old witch tools. Maybe Cal would have brought Meri, maybe they’d all walk out and she’d be able to tell them why she’d left for so long. Maybe they would have wanted to meet her son. None of that was happening now though. There were only questions and death. Val doesn’t question him anymore but burns the description of the symbol to her memory. “I’ll speak to my aunt again, I’ll search my books, I-” Val breaks off on a sigh, plopping herself down a few paces away from Cal. “Things are a mess,” She looks away from him, following his eyes to the trees above. “I’m gonna ask if you’re okay now,” The witch pauses. “You don’t have to give me a long answer, really, but I’m sorry and I’m worried.”
Callum shook his head eventually, after her multiple apologies. “It’s fine. It’s not your fault.” His words felt, and even sounded hollow. He stewed on that last question of hers; it seemed like forever before he finally answered it, “No. I’m not alright. And… I don’t think I’m going to be alright for a long time.” After his much needed break, he finally pushed himself up off the ground, and didn’t even bother to wipe off the dirt. “What are we going to do about her?” He nodded his head in the direction of the house they’d just come from, his line of sight finding the house not long after his question was posed, “It doesn’t feel right to just leave her. Should we… burn it? I’m not exactly skilled in that magical department, unfortunately.”
Valrae doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing at all. She just sits, letting the forest surround them and the mood crouch like an unwanted guest between them. She follows him up more slowly, swiping at the clinging leaves and dirt she’d picked up from the forest floor. Her eyes move back to the cabin. He wasn’t wrong but… Valrae didn’t want to go in there. She’d heard enough, could imagine it vividly enough after Callum’s helpful description. Her brows wing and the mention of fire. “You’re right about not leaving her,” She agrees. Valrae tilts her head again, looking long and hard at the building clinging so closely to the trees. She had such a strange relationship with fire. It had always been the element to come easiest to her. She thought she might fear it once she’d returned from the dead and had begun practicing her craft again. Instead, the witch had only understood it more intimately than before. “I could do it,” She offers, preferring this method over entering the place again. “But I don’t want to burn the whole forest down.” Val walks back toward the cabin and stops in front of the first porch step. “Maybe you could call the rain? I’ll do my best to protect the tree.” Without hesitating, Valrae knet and whispered a spell into her cupped hands. The fire bloomed like a flower over her palms, emerald as the flames that had taken her to her death. Without leaving room to change her own mind, the witch tipped her hands over and watched the dancing flames tumble over her fingers like water. They spread quickly, hungrier than normal flames. Valrae stepped away quickly and the fire devoured it’s way to the walls of the home.
Callum || “Yeah. I can do that,” Cal said with an air of melancholy gripping at his words. It felt like the only thing he could do properly right now. The house burned that brilliant emerald green. It reminded him of so many things. Of Catal. The flowers that he’d given Meri, when they went to that coronation in Alithrya. The moss and vines that covered his house. The various shades of green that clashed with purples on that strange, bismuth skull of his. Green was in almost everything he held dear. But, sometimes to move on, things had to burn. “Meri left me.” He paused, chewing over his thoughts carefully, “She took her things and left in the middle of the night a few days ago.” The emerald flames began to lick at the trees near the house, and Cal took that as his cue to call a storm. Dark clouds gathered overhead, just as they had during Kahran’s attack in Larket, as well as when Valrae was murdered by Larket’s monarchy. Lightning cracked and the rain finally began to fall. The cold droplets felt like needles on his skin. Soon, tears began to well up in the Catalian’s eyes and he thanked Selene that it wouldn’t be seen in the storm. He didn’t care about getting wet, but he did do his best to try to keep much from falling on Valrae, a strange sort of fog forming just above her, the rain hardly able to penetrate it.
Valrae watched the home burn with a heaviness to her heart. She whispered a small prayer to the Goddess, asking for the crone’s spirit to find peace in returning to the earth without realizing that the symbol that Callum saw would guarantee for that to never happen. The witch moved away only once, to collect her cloak and fasten it around her neck, pull her hood over her head to protect her from the worst of the rain. It wasn’t needed though, as Cal kept the worst from her. There was a tightness in her chest when he finally spoke the words. “I’m sorry,” Fell from her lips before she could stop it. What good would it do? She’d done the same to someone she loved dearly not so long ago. Concern for Meri was there, a heavy knot in her chest to be focused on later. Callum was beside her now and so he was where attention needed to be. After the first initial look of surprise she gave him, Valrae kept her eyes on the fire, attempting to give her friend some amount of respectful privacy. She would wait with him in the downpour, watch solemnly and keep vigil over the flames she called until there was nothing left to the cabin but smoke and ash. It was the least she could do… For both of them. When it was over, the flames dying and everything left feeling bruised, Val turned to him again. “If there is anything I can do…”
Callum just shrugged. “There’s not much to do, about it. Or anything, really. Meri’s gonna do what Meri wants and there’s no stopping her. You know that.” The rain would eventually cease, swallowing up the last of Valrae’s flames. “You should go home. It’s clearly not safe here. We’ll talk magic stuff soon--I’m gonna need something besides work to keep my head straight. Something to cling too… or something like that.” Cal looked a bit wore out now. It was likely to be less because of him summoning that storm, as used to it as he was, and more because things with the witch hunters just seemed to ramp up again when things were already pretty low. “Make sure you tell Uma and the others. I’ve not kept in contact with any of the other witches, since you came back, and we left Larket--besides that meeting anyway. You’ve got way more resources than I do on this sort of thing, so you all need to figure out what that symbol meant.”
Valrae nodded but continued to struggle with finding the right words of comfort for her friend. As the rain tapered off she pushed down her hood. Meri was gonna Meri, that was a universal truth. The witch frowns again. “I know,” She agrees but continues to hesitate. It didn’t feel right to leave a friend alone, added that she’d managed to send him on an errand that lead to a literal dead end, and the witch was struggling with it. Probably, he wanted to be on his own for a little while longer. Val could respect that. She steps near, just give him a quick squeeze on the arm. “I’ll do that,” She promises. “And I’ll let you know what ever I know as soon as I know it… I ah,” There was a moment of awkwardness. “I have someone I’d like you to meet if you ever feel up to making a trip to Cenril. Something to distract you, when you’re ready.” She gives him a weak smile. “I’ll see you soon,” Val promises, heading off reluctantly with her hell stallion in tow and the scent of smoke clinging to her hair.
Callum would nod to Valrae, listening to her as she spouted promises and attempted to comfort him as much as possible. He managed just enough of a smile to hopefully send her off without worrying too much, though he knew deep down that she likely would anyway. “Alright. Bye.” He didn’t watch her as she left, instead choosing to eye the smoke that curled up from the remnants of the house. The cold rain had thankfully cooled off enough to allow Callum to wade through the debris and ash, the Catalian seeking something out in the rubble. Eventually, he’d find his way back to where the back of the house had been, and that body. Amongst the scorched wood and bone, a glint of silver caught his eye--it’d been exactly what he’d been searching for. The old woman’s pentagram was snatched up, the ash wiped off, and the charm slipped into his pocket before he headed off away from the burned remains and on towards home.