RP:Double-Sided Pages

Part of the The God of Undeath Arc

This is a Mage's Guild RP.

Summary: Lanlan finds Valrae in her office to discuss the matter of Alithyk Caluss and what they’d both discovered in the books they stole from the Repository of Remembrance.

Mage Tower

There is tension in the Archmage's office. And then when Lanlan closes the doors behind him, there is tension in the halls. Why had no one come to check on him? He could be dead in the dark forest, after suffering for hours until he bled out in the wake of that calamity. No one would know. Tension hovers outside Valrae's office. He mumbles to himself, cursing himself for coming here, for not being able to wait longer than she could (he knew she was waiting him out). Didn't she know the world depended on them? The air became so saturated, that it begins to warp the surfaces of the fortress around where Lanlan stands, melting them and twisting them together, until the straight and cornered hallway was sphagettified into a twisting and impossible labyrinth. And then he knocks. "Valrae," he says, sounding paradoxically optimistic as the world straightens itself out again. "It occurred to me just now that you brought two books with you to that bakery. But didn't you only tell us about one?" Behind his tortured smile, he wonders why he's bothering to save a world in which he has to come up with an excuse just to see one person.

The quiet peace inside of Valrae’s office stood as a juxtaposition to the thinned energy that Lanlan carried with him. Pale, slanting early morning sunlight cast long shadows in the cluttered room from the open window. Summer in Xalious was never quite so hot as Cenril’s and, at this hour, the soft breeze that filled and lifted her white curtains like lungs still carried a chill. The hearth was cold, filled only with gray ash and a hollow cauldron, and there was a cup of neglected lavender tea placed precariously close to the edge of her tea table that looked ready to topple over with the next breath of mountain air. The witch herself was perched on the swan backed settee below the windowsill, knees pulled up to her chin, basking in the sunlight as if she might be a lazy house cat whose only worry was catching sight of the bottom of its food bowl. This was perhaps her wildest fantasy, which would cause her great shame if she’d had a spare moment to examine it. And while she had come to Xalious to speak to Lan, she’d managed to wait him out only by indulging herself in this small way.

She doesn't move when Lanlan knocks, keeping her dark eyes on the clouds that bobbed across the sky as she waved her hand and let her magic coax the heavy oak door into opening. “Good morning to you too,” She replies, her voice still soft with sleep. Valrae unwinds herself as he speaks again, stretching out in a long, lazy arch as she muffles a yawn with the brush of her knuckles across her lips. “That’s right,” She agrees, standing and smoothing her dandelion yellow skirts. The stone floor was cold against her bare feet. “Would you like some tea?” The witch asks, her tone sweet as she plucks her own cup off of the table just as it might have emptied onto a bright rug. Her nose wrinkles after she takes a testing sip, displeased with how cold it had become. She places it back down and crosses the room. The book the drow was asking her for now sat somewhere buried on her desk. It took her a moment to find it but eventually she was offering it out to him. “We didn’t have time to go over this one because…” Her words taper off as she narrows him a look between dark lashes.

Lanlan takes one hurried step into Valrae’s office and is halted as if by an invisible wall. With a subtle exasperated breath, he curls to fingers away from him and the shade slides gradually in front of the window. The sun’s violence stops just on the other side of the glass. He takes another step, and stops again when he sees her curled up at the window. Like a prisoner longing for freedom. “What’s wrong with you,” he asks as if the answer should be ‘nothing’, and assuming by this wistful look that there must be something.

“Oh,” he says with a blink as she reminds him of his manners. “Sure it is. Right?” Mornings weren’t as kind to him as they were to her, it seems. He would like tea. But he doesn’t say that. He’s grown more impatient to know what she knew and didn’t want anything else in front of learning it. Even though yes, he would enjoy tea. While she fetches the book, he notices how much less dressed she is than he. His deep black cotton shirt and pants are all straight lines and edges, but still, subtle enough for the morning hours. He looks neat. Maybe even dangerous, he indulges himself to think. Maybe a symptom of her unhealth. No…she’s demonstrated her disdain for clothes in general before, he just didn’t wonder about it before, or attempt to connect it to anything. Then he noticed he was staring.

“Because the meeting place was compromised,” he asserts, tactically omitting his near-violent retaliation against Khitti. His face is stern as he stares at her. But almost seamlessly, it turns almost into a pout as he makes his way over to the settee she just abandoned. “Don’t look at me like that! If we’re going to just let anybody who feels like it hear us, we might as well tell Caluss the plan ourselves!” He leans across it and drags his arm in front of his eyes poetically, “Stop looking at me like that.”

She had let him sigh and close the sun away behind her curtains without comment, accepting this fraction of melodrama as an intrical part of him that had become endearing to her. The only hint of this was the ghost of a smile on the corners of her lips, something that faded like mist in the morning sun to her surprise at his next question. She let this pass without a word as well, feeling unusually vulnerable that he might have read her hidden melancholy so easy.

The witch did think he looked a little dangerous, as she regarded him in her quiet way. It secretly pleased her that he appeared as an animated shadow in her otherwise bright office, a man woven of night and whispered secrets that stood as an antithesis to the light she’d surrounded herself in. It wasn’t just the flattering black suit, or the drow heritage that had long become synonymous with a culturally ingrained taste for violence and untrustworthy behavior. She wasn’t sure when she’d stopped seeing that part of him first, instead seeing him only as Lanlan. The archmage now, the illusionist, a surprisingly dear friend and someone she could trust when things were heavy. It might have started when they’d damned Kasyr as a revenant again, even though she knew he might have fled. It had been cemented the night they had healed Cenril, nevertheless.

She laughed as he draped himself across the settee theatrically. “I don’t think I was looking at you in any special way.” She had been, she hadn’t stopped. And if she’d noticed him staring she hid it well. Tea was simple enough for her to conjure. The paper thin china rattled in its busy way at the wave of her hand. She chose her own favorite this time, lavender with a touch of honey, and offered it to him with a quiet smile. “Mmm,” Valrae starts, “Do you think anyone else is listening now?” She asks, her tone careful even if her eyes were filled with humor. It was easier, like the rest, to let the tension between him and Khitti remain unspoken until Lanlan himself decided it was worth speaking about. It hadn’t taken her long to learn that particular dance. She had wanted to pick it apart before, to convince both of them to come together and unwind whatever tangled and frayed thing had been growing between them. It had been part of the reason she’d come to Xalious to speak to him, after all. Or that’s what she’d told herself. “We should be careful going over what we found together, if so, and I have a feeling that whatever you have found is the… Missing link for whatever it is the rest of us might have seen.”

“You’re still doing it,” he says without moving his arm way from his eyes. “You’re trying to get inside my mind and…shake it up.” He smiles a little as he makes a loose fist and jumbles it around, to mimic what she was allegedly doing to his mind. “But I’m too strong for you, your witchcraft can’t get to me.” He leans up to a sitting position to accept the tea with a gracious smile. But there’s puzzlement in it too. Maybe she did get to him. Or maybe that look just tempted his regret closer to the surface. “I can’t stop just because they don’t–But at least if you could- What he planned was noble, he knew it. His methods were what they needed to be. And if he sometimes took a little bit for himself while he helped save everyone (which importantly includes himself), then wasn’t that okay? It’s not like anyone else would. And though he would love for Valrae to believe in him and trust him…wanting that feels like weakness. It feels like a crutch to make things easier. He needed to not need a crutch. You can do it all by yourself Lanlan. He shakes his head and devotes himself to his tea for now. Or tries. The tea stops just before his lips. “And it’s not just Khitti, you know that,” he says, nearly whining, as he looks up at her.

Whether he admitted it or not, she was his crutch. Sometimes, his feelings for what he perceived as crimes against him were used as a weapon to bludgeon others with. Here, even as vague allusions to what actually pained him, they had no motive. He could simply exist (with a touch of drama). He’s about to take a sip from the cup again when she implies that maybe this place was compromised also. He rolls his eyes toward her. “Like who Ky’loriel? I’d be surprised if he came within a hundred yards of this side of the tower.” The thought of the elf all draped in dignity and pomp on his hands and knees spying through the crack at the bottom of the door brought a smile to his lips. “Don’t make fun of me Valrae, please. I’ll perish.”

Then he sighs. She suggests that what he found in the library could help to make sense of what the others found, and he knew she was right. And he clearly isn’t happy that her insight was so powerful. At first. But his dismay quickly becomes something more like pride. Somehow, she always sees beneath all his illusions, even the ones he tricked himself with! And yet, she didn’t seem to despise him for it…even when he thought she would. That decides it. “You’re right it connects everything. I knew it right away.” He places the tea cup down on a side table and crosses his hands out over his lap, and then uncrosses them back to his sides. The bejewled book from the library appears. As if it was always there. “It’s basically impossible to translate, this language is chaos. It reads like riddles.” He grips the book tightly in his lap with both hands, if he gave it to her, she was going to know what he knew, and if she came to the same conclusion he did… He didn’t know what was going to happen. But he pushes it out to her. “I left notes about one possible interpretation,” he says. As she might turn to certain pages, messages would appear in the open air. Ethereal script written in magenta. Now he stares openly, waiting for her to divulge the answer to the actual question he came to ask.

Valrae laughs, the sound bouncing around the room like sunlight, as Lanlan accuses her of witchcraft and asserts that he is beyond her wiles. “Do you think so?” She asks, her tone one of genuine curiosity despite the humor that flashed beneath her dark eyes like silver fish in a shallow pool. It fades away when he seems to struggle to finish his own thought, a frown tugging at the corners of her lips. “I know.” She says, sitting next to him on the settee and crossing her legs at the knees. No, it wasn’t just Khitti. In truth, the inner turmoil that had been plaguing her most recently came from an inner indecisiveness that seemed to span oceans between her ribs. She loved Khitti as dearly as a sister, and her fondness for Lanlan stretched just as wide even if she didn’t quite know how to define that one yet, and she recognized that there was a great deal of pride and hurt between them. But her moral compass couldn’t quite seem to land on who carried the most blame for the brief flashing of anger between them. Khitti might have been more hospitable, Lanlan might have been more gracious. It was easy enough to see this from her lofty view, being apart from it and with the wisdom that came from looking back on something that had already transpired.

The witch laughs again, her own image of Ky’loriel with his ear pressed to her door not quite as comical as the image that Lanlan conjured up, and narrows him another look. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” She replies easily, even though they both knew she would. There was a time Valrae might have rolled her eyes at Lan’s suggestion that he “knew right away”, to wave it off as unnecessary boasting or a poor lie to stroke his own ego, but the witch only nods and accepts this as truth now. She believed he was as clever and quick as he’d suggested, another small shift in her perception of him that she hadn’t even noticed. She watches quietly as he conjures the book, hiding her frown behind her own fresh cup of tea and attempting to savor the calming notes of lavender before what she sensed would be a less than welcome revelation. There had to have been some reason he was being so… Closed off about it, so protective. “Perhaps they meant for it to?” She asks, as he speaks of riddles. It made sense to her that whatever knowledge the forces that be had deemed worthy of being cast into a library of forgotten secrets might also be worthy of wrapping in further protection. The witch sets aside her tea as he pushes the book into her lap, carefully thumbing through the pages as she tries to make sense of the words.

Several quiet moments pass between them. At first, she could feel his eyes on her, but as time spun by them the world around her slowly dropped away. Her focus began and ended on the next line, the next word. She’d leaned over the book in her lap until the free waves of her hair hung around her face like a golden curtain, her hand moving up so that she might nervously coil and uncoil a strand of it around her index finger. When she’d finished it she pretended she had not. She held onto the last line of Lanlan’s notes as if she might have suddenly forgotten how to read, until too much time had passed and it was obvious that she was pretending. When Valrae could take it no more, she gently closed the book. Her hands were trembling. She wished, perhaps harder than she’d wished for anything else, that they’d never stepped foot into that library. She wouldn’t look at him. Maybe she couldn’t. The words he’d spoken when he’d called a meeting in Xalious echoed like an unwelcome song in her mind. They suddenly felt to her like some sort of sick, twisted prophecy that Lanlan had stumbled upon. The room pitched around her and suddenly she felt sick. When she finally turned her face to him, her eyes were wide, dark pools of sorrow. “Lanlan,” She breathes his name like a desperate and mournful prayer, “We’ll find some other way.” There was no conviction behind her words as she searched his face. Did he want this? The fate she’d read sounded more like a curse than a blessing, but would Lan have seen the burden heavy fate between the words or only have heard a siren’s whisper of unknowable power? “This can’t be the only way.” She could hear the weakness of pleading in her own voice.

Lanlan actually had no idea what Valrae was capable of. In fact, of her depths, he knew fathoms less than he thought. Cenril proved that. Still, he went out on a limb to challenge her, casually. “Of course,” he says dangerous with mischief in his eyes. “I know your weakness.” His eyes narrow evilly and playfully on her, apparently very proud of himself. Whether because his dubious claim was true or because it was such a wild thing to say, who knew. But their thing was too complicated to only be playful. And maybe a small part of him regretted hinting at a future that might see them pitted against each other. It seemed remote. Not nearly remote enough. Just a shade of worry behind his eye, a dream of sadness under his grin. And speaking of infighting. He could see it was getting to her, could feel the weight of her heart when she sat next to him. There are a dozen things he could say to put her mind at ease; about how he might try to patch things up with Khitti, or how it didn’t really bother him, or how he knew he Valrae was right even without saying anything. Yet he says nothing to steady her stormy heart. He doesn’t lie.

The silence feels as expansive and endless as the desert to him. Until she plops her own little lie on his head like a silly hat. He wears it proudly, surprising himself. “Good. I think there’s laws about teasing your archmage. I can’t give you special treatment just cause you’re…you.” Whatever she was to him. He just knew it was good. Felt good, at least. Was she good for him? Somehow, the answer was in that book, and her reading it. “Maybe. Keeping it in that purgatory wasn’t enough?” He throws his hands up. “I can’t tell. It reads like five different stories. Five different testimonies or maybe interrogations but I don’t know who they’re talking to.” He had a thought, suddenly. “Sometimes it reads like an apology.” There was so much he didn’t understand about it; why were they so eager to lay all the blame on Xalious’s feet when, if Lanlan was right, he did nothing short of saving the entire world. Perhaps more.

And his excitement to have her read it, to know the true story of how Xalious ascended! He disappears to her but he becomes obsessed with what she might be thinking. He’s looking so close he can see the reflection of the pages in her eyes. But then…she can’t even look at him. At first, he thinks she’s as enthralled as he was. That the revelation stunned her. He taps his hands on his knees as he leans close. “...Valrae! Say something!” The book closes, and the look she gives him sends him back. Like taking a bite of a chocolate chip muffin only to find it was raisins instead. Felt wrong. “No Val- this is exciting!” Clearly she read it wrong somehow. “Not only can we finally kill that putrid freak for good…this is how he did it! This is how-!” Then it hits him. It hits him and stops him. “You think we need to find another way?” He turns away briskly and he pulls the cup of tea to his lips, buying time. How could he do this. How could he show her this and expect her to be happy for him. Foolish. She doesn’t think you deserve it! Slowly, he pulls the tea away from his lips. He didn’t even taste it, but it was almost gone.

“What if we can’t?” What if he doesn’t want to. “You said it yourself, this book ties all the other ones together. Like we were meant to find them.” She knows better than anyone the significance of symbols and could see the hidden meanings. “Do you think it was a coincidence?”

The witch had only laughed softly at Lanlan suggesting he knew her weakness, thinking she had an array for him to choose from while wondering which one he might have singled out as her most dangerous. She might have asked, if not for how far it might have taken them off topic. So she settles for another long look and lets the rest hang between, a question unasked waiting for its partner in an answer that may never be spoken.

This temptation was only furthered when he seemed to stall at the end of his own joke. “Yes,” She laughs, “I am myself, whatever that means.” Valrae says, though her tone begged more of a question than a statement as her golden brows winged up. Still, they were talking about the book now, and the banter between them was sucked out of the air. Lost, like a child might lose a balloon, and it floated away from them and left her feeling a longing sense of regret. She only half listened to him as he explained how he might have read it. He spoke of the apologetic tone as if he didn’t quite understand it, and this should have been her first clue that he’d missed what a terrible weight their task had become. What the truth of Xalious’s fate was. To Valrae, it could only be a punishment. To Lanlan it might have been seen as a reward, the final and most unattainable goal realized.

Her face melts into the soft lines of confusion as he speaks again. Counters her desperation with argument. Her mouth hangs open, a small o of parted lips that no words would fall through. She’d lost them all as she watched him, unable to discern what emotions crossed him now. He turned away from her and she felt a sense of panic, as if she’d failed a test she hadn’t known she was taking. Several quiet, tense moments span between them and Valrae feels as if whatever distance they’d been able to reclaim recently grows with it. She stands suddenly, looking away from him as she begins pacing in front of the settee, arms crossed around herself as if she were cold. “Lan-” She started, stalled. Stopping in front of him, she drops her arms in a gesture of helplessness. “It’s as if we’ve read different books entirely!” She exclaims, her voice too high as her cheeks flame red. “Is this what you want?” She asks, careful to keep any accusation from her tone. There was only genuine concern in her eyes now. “You said it reads like an apology and that is because it is. They failed. Xalious was punished.” She put emphasis on this word, leaning in slightly, just enough that a curling strand of golden hair slipped over her shoulder. “This wasn’t a reward, some grand gift for a job well done. It’s a weight. It’s terrible what happened. What must be done-” She stops herself again, caught on her own words. It felt as if they were trapped in some macabre play, their footsteps doomed to follow those who came before them.

“If we do this thing-” She stands straight again, crosses her arms. “If you do this thing, do you have any idea what you would be losing? What you might sacrifice?” She searches his face again, praying to any god that might still be listening that he could see reason. “When is the last time you’ve seen the face of Xalious? When have you ever heard of the gods doing anything more than whispering in the ears of their followers?” There was a vulnerability in the words that came rushing from her, one she did not recognize in her own upset and temper. The truth behind them, the root of this new upset, was that if Lanlan chose this path he would be lost to them. To her. Lost to any future that he might have had, never mind the guild that now stood to lose him, but in the wider view of a thousand roads of opportunity that made a person's life. And was there ever even a choice? Valrae was a mortal, nothing more than a human, and the smallest thread in a wider fabric of the universe. She knew nothing of the grand machinations of gods or fates or any other design that had been laid before their feet. What she did know was in front of her and what they stood to lose. It was a uniquely deep cut to think that Lanlan might care so much for some nebulous promise of power and so little for anything else.

Lanlan finds himself unable to spell it out, what she is to him. As much as he wishes to. As if plausible deniability could save him from the rejection he might feel if he said it out loud and she thought he was ridiculous for it. Maybe this notion was cemented. He came so close to admitting why he thought this plan was so perfect. He would follow in Xalious’s footsteps, tracing his path to the heavens. She was beginning to understand, and in doing so, became all the more alienated.

As the silence grows, he feels his essence retreating further inside, and some simulacrum replacing the visible parts of him. He stands up with her as if it was time to go. Part of him wishes it was. His biggest fear now was that she would try to stop him, that she would tell someone, Kasyr maybe. He knew they would prevent him by any means necessary, out of spite, or mistrust. Or jealousy. Valrae was the one he hoped would understand and be happy for him. She was devastated and he donned his mask now. She wouldn’t get any arguments out of him about this. “No maybe…I was wrong, I think. You’re probably right, this would be no reward.” Though he’s truly unable to think about why it wouldn’t be. Even so, he manifests optimism and perhaps even pride. Joy. “Ah see? This is why I brought this to you! I knew your perspective would illuminate the truth of this. Yes.” Though unexpectedly, she seems to eventually find herself pickled. She lands on his side against her will. “But if it must be done,” he manifests regret and resignation. “Then it should be to me. As Odhranos before me, I must place the lives of many above my own. And it should be my honor to do so, right?”

But as she continued, he grew silent, and his eyes turn away from her as he grapples with this new and surprising revelation. There was an aspect he hadn’t considered at all, blinded to all by what he might gain, but she strikes a different notion. She mentioned loss. Had the circumstances changed so much from when he conceptualized this goal so many years ago? Back then, the idea that he might lose something that he wouldn't happily throw away if he could, wasn’t even worth considering. This frail body full of needs and pain? This troubled mind of isolation and loneliness and self pity? This fear? This fear that at almost any moment one of his enemies or friends could plunge a dagger deep into his chest and end his short existence? He could stand to lose all that. But maybe that wasn’t all he had anymore.

His mask falls off as quickly as he puts it on. “I didn’t think…um.” It was all so confusing all of a sudden, and then? An epiphany! “Oh but maybe you could…!” Come with him? No, no. “Then I. I don’t know.” Now he wasn’t sure if he even wanted it. He wished there wasn’t a choice. Is there a choice? “Then you think it should be someone else?” The idea that anyone else might do it instead, was repulsive. “No. It has to be me. If it’s going to be anyone, it’s going to be me.” Of course, he left the possibility that it didn’t have to be anyone. “Let’s not think on it anymore, there’s no point. Until we have another plan, this is our plan. Right?”

Valrae makes no attempt to mask the surprise that crosses her features when Lanlan agrees with her. She’s momentarily stunned, unable to reply as he continues in seemingly good nature. Even suggests she might be correct, though there was a part of her that sensed the hollowness in these words. He’d retreated into himself again, the mask of the man she’d seen only moments before. It was easier now for the witch to tell, to pick apart the tiniest of flaws in this new illusion he’d masterfully crafted. “Don’t,” She warns him, unwilling to accept this small compliment regarding her perspective. It was saccharine, and somehow insulting, no matter how miniscule because of the source. “Don’t do that!” The witch protests. “Don’t pretend to agree. Don’t say that because you think I want to hear it.” But he wasn’t listening. He spoke Odhranos’s name and her mouth closed into a frown. Her worst fear was realized as he compared himself to the former archmage. He’d do this thing, accept this weight, because it’s what he thought must be done.

There was a moment of shame that crossed her, because she’d first only thought that he might be thinking only of power. Now, she knew the truth. He wouldn’t see it though, he’d turned away from her. That distance she felt growing between them only widened at her feet. The witch opens her mouth to speak as he faces her again but she doesn’t know what else there was to say.

She listens as Lanlan concedes that he might not have thought of what he could be losing but she knew before he continued that it wouldn’t be enough. “Could what?” She asks softly, even as he stops himself. But he gave her no answers, only offered her more questions. ‘Anyone else.’ Her mind answered, though it did not pass her lips. She could only shake her head, suddenly mute and cowed by his resolve and what she assigned selflessness. “Okay.” She hated the sound of her own voice suddenly, but she continued. “Yes. This is our plan.” But as he leaves her office, there is a profound sense of loss that enters with his absence.