RP:Doubt The Sun Doth Move

Part of the What You Leave Behind Arc

Part of the What Dreams May Come Arc

Summary: Lionel, unable to sleep, watches Esche conduct another of his strange arcane rituals deep into night's solitude. Valrae appears, as she has appeared many times before, and the three convene to discuss the mysterious map she and Lionel came to possess through the magics of the emerald crystal skull and their own strange and inexplicable intuitions. Doubt is cast upon the true intentions of Mulgrew, the woman who made this possible, but Lionel is nonetheless undeterred, and reveals that he will lead a team to explore what lies hidden upon the map at some point in the near future. But Valrae dreads that her own near future will be the void, that she will soon lose her last, painful grip on the material plane and will fade away forever. Lionel's idealistic smile can't absolve her of what seems inevitable, and she vanishes with colder words than they have both dared to feel.

Earthen Sentinel

Lionel || “Araleth telathrin lethérin.” Esche cants his head to the next amber-glowing stone and prods it gently with his oaken staff, repeating the words. He’s traveled halfway around the earthen sentinel now, and the crescent moon has lowered by thirteen degrees toward the western sky. Lionel knows this precisely because Esche has told him this precisely. The elf is dressed in a midnight blue robe inlaid with gems which Lionel has seen glow strange colors when the starlight catches it just so. His ears flicker inquisitively each time he investigates a new stone and his shoulders are rigid with concentration. He has not spoken a word about anything else since Lionel stumbled upon him half an hour ago. “So uh,” Lionel starts awkwardly, wincing and glancing around in circles at Frostmaw Fort’s staid thick walls and the marching of frost giant guards on the roof and in the distance. “This uh, what you do for fun, man?” Esche doesn’t seem to nice the query in any way whatsoever. “Araleth telathrin lethérin,” he says, taking a step toward the next arcane stone. “Yeah, you tell ‘em,” Lionel sighs. “Look, it’s no secret you sleep, like, never. I’m just over here innocently wondering what could possibly intrigue you so damned much about something you’ve been looking at for years now that you’ve got to come out here and poke it with a stick until we’re both blue in the face.” The pitch of Esche’s breath is the only thing that betrays his mild frustration; his voice is peerlessly calm. “If you would rather be elsewhere, Lionel, you are welcome to be elsewhere. This experiment was planned without your presence and can indubitably proceed to completion without your presence.” Harsh, Lionel thinks, unconsciously moving to fold his arms defensively. It’s unfortunate that he’s momentarily forgotten his right arm, still stinging, is hung in a sling. The movement sends a fresh wave of pain coursing through his upper body and he’s unable to mask a groan. This -does- prompt Esche to turn, clearly concerned for the well-being of a friend. “You should be resting,” Esche chastises him. “Me measuring magical circumference is hardly a cause for you to be awake at 4:27 in the morning even when you are at your physical zenith. Presently,” he chins toward the Catalian’s pallid skin and wounded limb, “you are not.”

Valrae || The spaces in between the living and the dead were thin and motionless and without sound. The echo of the witch moved through them like shallow pools. There was light and color but it moved and took shape the way nothing she’d seen in life could ever replicate. It was like being suspended under very cold water. Her lungs screamed for the feeling of one ragged breath.The journey to the Shadow Plane had taken much of her and scattered it. Being torn from another body so abruptly was too much for even one lifetime and her soul had survived it now twice… But she was weak and wounded and so damn tired. Staying with Lionel had been another trial by fire. Watching him struggle and fighting the call of the black had taken more than Valrae truly had to give. Still she gave it and held onto him until he had returned to himself. The days that followed the ghost of the witch had found herself barred from him. Not even the power of the skull could pull her near. She floated without rest in the space of nothing and screamed without sound. A helplessness rooted through her heart wickedly. Couldn’t she just rest? The boiling, dark thing that called to her and whispered promises of sleep suddenly seemed like the sweetest dark relief… All it would take was to give in, surrender to the fall. Time marched on beyond the veil of death and took pieces of Valrae with it, eroding her spirit with every second that slipped away and for a shining moment the witch was ready to give in.

Valrae || “You should be resting,” Esche’s voice suddenly shatters the silence of her existence and though he did not raise his voice to Valrae it was as loud as a thunderclap. The floating space between the light and the black fell away from her like shards of broken glass. The night surrounded her now. She finds Lionel within a heartbeat, Esche a moment after. The space around them much more slowly. She’s never been here before in life or death. That never seemed to matter when her soul was called to The Hero of Hellfire. Her image has changed again. Though she is the young and pretty Cenril girl much as before, she moves as if still lost under the dark water of the afterlife. Her pale hair floats around her with the dulled scarlet of her cloak. Her likeness was as thin and delicate as a beam of moonlight. “Yes, you should be resting.” Valrae echoes the sentiment as she moves closer to the pair.

Lionel has a really good comeback in mind involving ridiculing Esche for referencing the time straight down to its digit. If that doesn’t stick, he’ll make fun of his companion’s overall phrasing. Usually one or the other whittles Esche down and in turn gets him off Lionel’s back. He’s debating which path to take when Valrae appears before him for the first time since the dim, fleeting memory of the woman saving his life. He doesn’t even realize her appearance has changed. He knows that it’s her. That’s all it takes for the fortress walls and the patrolling giants and the arcane stones and the crescent moon and the pain in his arm and even Esche himself to fade into the void of his perception. He opens his mouth but only chilled steam comes out. Esche, sensing Lionel’s immediate stunned transformation, opts not to investigate the following stone on his circuitous route and tugs his robe against the wind. When he turns around, he sees her, too. He has always let the nature and extent of his abilities speak for themselves; a communion with ghosts, after all he has seen Esche do, would hardly faze Lionel even if he weren’t too entranced to process the occasion.

Lionel || “Valrae,” Esche greets with a most cordial bow. Lionel remains slack-jawed, but there’s no mistaking the warmth in his eyes -- or his face. The elven mage takes a single step forward, very lightly and very recognizably, so as not to disturb the spirit. “Your contributions to the recent battle cannot be understated. You…” Esche pauses, tilting and gesturing toward Lionel. “You saved my life,” Lionel finally speaks. He swallows hard. His throat became parched at the very sight of her, but not for lack of water. “And you watched over me when Khitti brought me to the Tranquility, and while Lennier healed me. And it strained you to the point of snapping.” Lionel knows it did. Even fleeting and fragmented memory cannot erase the pangs of guilt as he slipped in and out of consciousness, always to the look of agony in Valrae’s ethereal visage. She hurt for his hurting. She did not leave despite her hurting. He can’t put into mere words how much that means to him. His enamored expression will have to convey all of those words for him. “While you are here,” Esche somehow manages to seize this opportunity, “I have a question regarding the map that Lionel confided in me you helped him piece together. I have thoughts, theories, suppositions. If you would kindly indulge, perhaps the three of us could…” “Esche,” Lionel interrupts softly. “Let her talk. I… I missed her.”

Valrae moves ever closer, crossing the space between them with calculated and forced ease of pace. Nearing him sparks several changes in her. The pale wisps of hair suddenly become heavy and fall as coils of golden sunlight around her. The cloak settles onto her like newfallen snow and glimmers darkly as it sways in the wind that cannot truly move it. The lie of a flush blooms like vital life in her cheeks. The stir of a breath in her chest, the fragile beating of her heart... Only clever and ruthless tricks at her own expense. A taste of a life she no longer possessed. Looking at him was like pressing against a wound not yet healed. Relief to see him standing, healing and whole washed over her in waves and still they could not wash away the sharp claws of self doubt that burrowed into her. Why should she haunt him so? What gave her the right? The way he looked at her, as if the world would fall away from him as it did her, threatened to finish the job the Shadow Plane had started and send her straight to whatever hell awaits on the other side of the black.

Valrae || It was Esche again who broke the silence around her. She recoils, jerking as if she had been dealt a physical blow, but manages to regain herself and smile softly at the mysterious elf. His movement toward her elicits only the tilt of her golden head. “Esche…” Her mouth tests his name hesitantly, her eyes looking to Lionel for confirmation. The look the man carried had her lips tilting into a shallow smile. “I am dead,” She answers both of them as she shakes her head softly. “I did nothing but witness.” Frustration and sorrow carried in her voice. Her eyes study the lines of Lionel’s face, her own a delicate mask of melancholy. “The restless dead are bound to bear witness.” Valrae pulls herself away from Lionel to look at Esche and back again. Her hand moves to reach out to him but she stills it. “We -should- talk about the map…” She says softly, her face apologetic. “I don’t know how much time I have left. Whatever the skull or Mulgrew wanted you to know shouldn’t die with me.”

Lionel || Seeing her stifled silence causes Lionel to whimper. If Esche detects Valrae’s mannerisms anywhere near as thoroughly as Lionel does, he sure isn’t showing it. Esche’s gentle smile remains perfectly affixed as Valrae offers one of her own. Lionel wonders how close he must feel to her, to pick up on her struggle so much more keenly than someone who has never not impressed him with his pure heartful intellect. Esche is a master of understanding. Lionel is nothing so bold. But he is in love. He’s in love with a dead woman, as Valrae is pincer-quick to remind him, her blunt truthful analysis of the situation stabbing at him like the tone of her voice. He studies her as she studies him. And then she talks of time, and its finite composure, and the stabbing Lionel feels is almost laced with the venom on Kahran’s damnable blade. To love and to lose is grief enough. To wonder whether she feels similarly, and that she will love, lose, and fade into nothingness forever? There’s the poison of it, the writhing, purgatory poison.

Lionel || “Agreed.” Esche inclines respectfully and sets his staff upon the frozen ground. He cups his hands together and begins. “However, I believe that as a spirit there are things you may feel which we who yet walk the earth cannot exactly comprehend. As I grasp this scenario, Lionel had begun elaborate carvings at numerous forward camps, unable to restrain himself therein. Your arrival, alongside Mulgrew’s emerald crystal skull, seemed to spur a magical resonance, a frequency of sorts, and hence a map was unveiled. The carvings were pieces in a puzzle. Before I say more, I wish to confirm my understanding.” Lionel would snort if he weren’t so focused on Valrae; Esche really is a master of it. “Yeah,” Lionel says instead. “I think that’s about when I passed out, though, because the living really -do- need rest. At least sometimes.” Despite himself, he winks at her. His expression is unbridled optimism. His blue eyes still burn the right kind of fire. He’s not going to let Valrae fade.

Valrae feels the noise that leaves Lionel echo around her as if she were in a body and possessed a chest. Phantom pain slid through her sharply as she looked at him and felt her words cut at him. She felt the sting herself but could only hope it would do them both well to remember the reality of her situation. Her own longing wrestled with the guilt of haunting a man who had no business looking at her the way he looked at her now. Why was she returning it? Her love wrestled with the pure and simple frustration of the inability to reach out and touch him. How could she love him? Something so simple as touch, something she had taken for granted all for all of her living and breathing life, and it was denied to her as she stood before him.

Valrae || “Yes,” Valrae says with Lionel, sliding her attention to the elf as the man continues. “As he slept the skull…” A laugh bubbles out of her and she covers her mouth with her hand. Her eyes cut back to Lionel and she gives him a look of sterness that carries no real weight. “The skull flared around us again and I… I knew it was a map of the first dungeon she mentioned. Though…” A look of faraway confusion crosses the witch’s face. “I didn’t know she had mentioned them before. I wasn’t there. It was like something was reaching inside me and putting the knowledge there but I could tell it wasn’t my own. It felt… Borrowed.” The dead only ever felt cold and still something caused the spirit to shudder. Valrae pulls her arms around herself though the motion offers no comfort. “It’s inside the Nameless Desert,” She adds, thinking of the Shadow Plane and the portal that carried them home.

How easy it’s becoming for Lionel to play along with a dead woman. Her stern expression urges him to straighten his posture as if she were right there beside him, swatting him for insubordination. Ask anyone else in Lionel’s life and the man takes two distinct forms: passionate idealism is the first; dauntless cynical wit is the other. Characters in the novel of his life -- people in their own right, with their own ticks and charms and foibles -- will get one Lionel or the other. If they linger closely long enough, they will see both forms, but they will never see them merged. Valrae sees them merged. His proud belief that the witch will be reborn and Cenril will be saved on the minute hand; his real joy for her presence is the second hand. What is the constant? What mechanism holds them both together? It is her. A flash, a look from a specter, and he’s as serious as Esche but his eyes still hint at the joy. Her apparition has affected others along her way: Meri and Hudson and Alvina and Lanara and Talyara and Callum and Uma and Joanie and Khitti and even Kahran. Some have felt happiness, some have felt bitterness, some have no conscious awareness, yet all have been compelled. Valrae carries more weight than ghosts tend to presume.

“Fascinating.” As Esche analyzes the information, his taps his slender fingers to the gems on his robe. They sparkle at the touch. “Acting on incomplete parameters, my likeliest hypothesis is that the woman Mulgrew intended for this revelation all along. She seems possessed of a breadth of knowledge beyond anyone or anything else we’ve yet encountered. I do not trust her,” he adds, scrunching up his nose, “but I do trust that this is a vital lead. A person -- or, indeed, whatever it is Mulgrew truly is -- with the means by which to lay such carefully-strewn plans would be unlikely to stage an elaborate trap when she could no doubt deceive us in other ways. Whatever her endgame, this dungeon is well worth finding.” Lionel clears his throat, drawing Esche’s attention. “I also get the feeling she could have wiped the floor with the whole recon team back when we fought the Ouroboros,” the Catalian surmises. Those giants were better-trained than frak near anybody even here in Frostmaw… and they were gone with little more than a wave of her hand. And they were -gone,-” he tacks on for Valrae’s sake, seeing as she wasn’t there. “No sleight of hand can match the looks on their faces. She lived among them for a time, gained their trust, and killed them. ‘Because they were living out of time,’ I think she said. ‘Because they needed to rest.’” A darkness, a kind of guilt, casts over Lionel’s features after he paraphrases the enigmatic shaman. It’s too similar to Valrae’s plight. Were the Ouroboros ghosts of another sort? A more metaphorical sort? It is unlikely that question shall ever be answered.

“It seems the Nameless Desert has a way with us lately,” Lionel is quick to regain himself, shaking his head in open opposition to that kind of talk. “If this keeps up, somebody’s gonna have to heck up and give it a name already.” Esche’s tight-lipped grimace is enough to say that his friend’s need for rough-draft wordplay is noted and ignored.

Valrae struggles with the smile that’s just behind the line of her lips. Lionel’s sudden shifting of stance and seriousness begged for another laugh to tumble from her lips but she held firm against it. The spirit that Lionel has been presented with is only an echo of the woman that once was. Stripped of life, she was more vulnerable than she had been in living. She could want but understand the hopelessness of such wanting. She could reach out but never truly touch. She could see the brilliant merging of both sides of the man and never have the ability to fully know either… And what could she offer? Nothing. Regret and want. This made her continued haunting of him all the more cruel for the both of them. The stubborn optimism that Lionel carried like a burning torch did nothing to illuminate her dark path… But she was the moth to his flame. The witch was unable to turn away, even if it meant the end would be written in fire all over again.

Born of her selfishness, the image of star silk hair and a crimson morning blooms in her mind’s eye without warning. Her own words reverberate painfully in her heart. What was one more death?

Valrae’s focus returns and her eyes land on Esche. She studies him for a long while, her head tilting slightly in her contemplation of him. “Why lay such obscure and elaborate plans?” Her lips bow slightly, the corners turned down as she struggled to find sense in the tangled plot Mulgrew continued to weave. “If the skull was given to act as a conduit for this map, why leave so much to chance? Surely there are easier ways.” Her eyes shift between the pair. “And sure, even if it isn’t some sort of death trap, there is not a chance in seven hells she isn’t getting something from it.” The witch agrees with the elf’s sentiments and her shoulders rise and fall. Lionel takes the floor and speaks of Ouroboros. Her frown deepens. “Out of time…” She echos, a pained look crossing the deceivingly fragile features of her face. He moves on but Valrae doesn’t appear to hear it. Her eyes are locked on the glinting gems of Esche’s robe.

“It’s as if I’m the sand on a beach or a river bank,” She says suddenly. “Time is washing over me, sometimes crashing into me, but I cannot move. Not fully or all at once. So it takes little pieces of me…. Outside of time.” She shakes her head. Blinking back to herself, Valrae drops her arms. “Maybe it was a kindness, putting them to rest.” A hollowness in her voice punctuated her words. “But that doesn’t mean she can be trusted. Or that her motives for sharing this, whatever it is, aren’t slanted in her own favor. It’s dangerous to go marching on the path she steers you toward without knowing why she wants you on it in the first place. Granted, I don’t see you having much of another choice.” She looks to Lionel yet again, forever pulled to the Hero of Hellfire. “You’re going to go, aren’t you?” Though phrased as a question the tone suggested it was more of a statement.

Lionel sees little and less of Valrae’s anguish. Not because he lacks the eyes or intuition to catch them but because he’s steadfastly against her self-doubt. He cannot comprehend the pain she endures. To try would be to let himself succumb to her grief. Lithrydel needs heroes and heroines like them both, and he needs her because he’s come to adore her, and likewise she needs him never to break the belief that she’ll be reborn. As such, he holds onto that expression with everything he has, even when the Red Witch repeats the darkest words of the evening: ‘out of time’. It isn’t easy. The spirit has taken a difficult visage after saying them and he knows her well enough already to recognize her sidelong stare upon Esche’s robes for what it really is: disassociation. Lionel parts his lips to speak, to break her silence and to pull her back from the abyss, but she continues talking, expressing her reality in a hauntingly poignant way. Try as he might, he can’t prevent his eyes from closing halfway just so, squinting at her description, dimming at her difficulties, mourning for her form. “Valrae,” he whispers at her once she’s said her piece, eyes widening expressively once more. “I am. I have to. The fate of the world may depend on it. It’s farcical how many times I’ve said that. Tragic how it’s always true.”

Esche chortles softly, pushing at an icy pebble with the rim of his staff. “I agree with you both. Valrae, I much appreciate your evaluation. And I concur that this Mulgrew is most surely working for her own gains in some fashion even if they run counter-current to Kahran’s. For that we will be on our utmost guard. The world may indeed depend on it. As it depends on Lionel.” The Catalian is quick to shake his head at that. “That’s foolishness, Esche. The chance for peace doesn’t rest on any one person. It rests on all of us to make it happen no matter who leads the charge. And it absolutely rests on you,” he adds, turning to face Valrae. He doesn’t stop there. He approaches her, reaching out his hand in an open vertical palm, imploring her to reach out with her own. “You’ll be back soon. I promise. And no matter how it happens, no matter where I am, no matter what we do, I want you to know something right here and right now: I care for you, Valrae.” The wind blows. Esche guards his robes against it but Lionel barely notices. He only has eyes for her.

The spirit has shaken herself from her disassociation. The look that crossed Lionel’s face had pulled her back. Her lips bow into a frown but she nods. “So I’m going too. If I haven’t run out of time,” His optimistic faith in her return stirred difficult feelings in her chest. It was unfair of her to haunt him so. Of all the dreams her restless mind would never admit to dreaming, there was no path to making them reality. The words had already left her and settled around the three of them. She’d proven last time that even dead she could make herself useful. She would find a way to do so again or finish the job Macon had started trying.

Valrae tilted her head toward Esche, studying him curiously for a second time. The smile she gives him is delicate. “And if they aren’t?” She asks softly. “Have either of you considered that she’s another part of his scheming? Surely the idea isn’t too far fetched. What do we know of her?” The witch was shrugging again. The two men before her had been fighting in this war before she had even been aware of its existence. What help could she offer? But they’ve both moved on Lionel is arguing his importance and simultaneously supporting hers. The spirit snorts at him. He steps forward and her chin tilts downward demurely. Her hand moves of its own accord, reaching to find his though instead of finding the warmth of skin and the sensation of touch she finds only disappointment. Through her lashes she looks to him. His words move through her painfully. All of her wanting, all of the silly little dreams and what might have been, spins around her. What her heart whispered was, “I care for you too.” All that fell from her lips was, “You don’t even know me,”

The image of the witch curled away without even leaving the scent of smoke.