RP:Geometry of Shadows
Part of the To Haunt A Hero Arc
Summary: Lionel reports the ghouls' attack to Hildegarde and chances upon a Caedan more interested in crossing bridges than making his life miserable. The following evening, Lionel and Khitti engage in further banter and battle a demonic spider the fallen hero suspects may be under Xersom's employ. He leaves Khitti quickly, heightening her doubt about this strange man she's recently met.
Great Hall of Vailkrin
Caedan squints at Hildegarde, screwing up her face in skepticism. “Of course I know who you’re referring to. Why wouldn’t I?” She gestures to the bridge. “Are you going to help me with this or not?”
Lionel may have done battle against would-be assassins alongside an enigmatic vampiress who might have wanted to eat him just twenty minutes prior but all-in-all he’s been having a good day until he sees Caedan Navarre grilling Queen Hildegarde for help with a bridge. He straightens his button-down black shirt, flinches to set Hellfire at a more comfortable spot upon his back, and prepares himself for another beatdown he won’t try to prevent. There’s nothing for it, then. “Hildegarde,” he calls, not feeling particularly sorry for the interruption in the wake of whatever fresh hell that Catalian might be plotting even now. “Two things, briefly: one, your soldiers learned a few new techniques today that your sergeants will detail if you like; two, I just ran into a fiery redhead down in some shadowy hall and we staved off a quartet of bloodthirsty poison-spewing ghouls, so… uh, that happened.” He nods briskly. “I’m on the investigation.”
Caedan sneers at Lionel from where she stands, caught at the edge of the bridge. “Go away, you rat bastard. This is a meeting between honorable people.” Then, to Hildegarde, “With the bridge.” Duh. “I can’t walk on it. I haven’t any shoes.” She gestures wildly at the icy pass, clearly making her desire known that Hildegarde should just … fix this — perhaps because she has an affinity with ice, but Caedan would nothing know about that. Probably.
Hildegarde hadn’t expected a very warm welcome for Lionel from Caedan. So far, she had seen a very tense relationship between the two. “I would be interested in learning those details when you have the time, Lionel,” she said to him, “it’s important that I stand as an equal with my men, so I would wish to know and learn the same.” The tidbit about the redhead earns a nod of the head, but Hilde is being requested to help with the icy pass. Without a word or hint of effort, the knight lifted one of the heavy armchairs and approached Caedan. Popping the chair down, she gestured to it, “Sit,” she bade the girl before lifting the chair and crossing the pass as she then addressed Lionel. “I’ll go in a moment,” meaning once she had successfully crossed the path with Caedan in the chair – so her bare feet need not touch the ice – she would depart and seek out Khitti, “and investigate the matter. The only redhead I can think of here is Khitti. She’s been meaning to talk to me, I think.”
Lionel snaps his fingers, although his face is a full moon of bewilderment at the sight of... whatever it is... that... the two women are currently engaged in. If in some distant dimension there existed a Lionel who could bid Caedan sit, he might find a way there and never return. “Khitti, that’s the one,” he agrees matter-of-factly. “Right, well this is a meeting between one honorable person and one shoes-less person and a chair, so I’ll get back to the… aforementioned… investigation.” What in tarnation.
Vailkrin: Graveyard Path
Khitti was lurking near the gates, peering in between the iron bars. The red-head sat on the ground, a hand reaching through the bars, playing with the dirt on the other side. She could feel the dead over there, their spirits lingering, their hatred for her emanating and mixing with the dark magic of the area. She eyed the area warily, a slight smirk forming. With the recent attack at the castle and after meeting that strange sabertooth feline, she brought her bow and quiver with her, though for now it lie discarded next to her. She was still a mess, much like last time she had been seen in public, her duster gone now. Despite all of this, she still lingered, contemplating things in solitude as one like her normally did.
Lionel might have been sensed as well; after all, he’s been deeper within the graveyard for over an hour’s passing. At his perch beside an old sparsely decorated tombstone, the sun has dipped and disappeared. In Vailkrin, it is never quite day, but it can be bright enough, warm enough, to be some second-rate example of dusk or dawn. Now that dim brightness is gone and all that remains is shadows. Lionel can sense it too, that necromancy and ever-lingering wraithen Immortal taint and the perpetual unease that comes with it. Any man or woman here would feel this much hate, even if just unconsciously, but for Lionel – for a hero of old wars, his own violent spirit within his huge blade, a trace of Khasad’s enmity forever within his heart – this is a place of many dangers. He pulls Hellfire from a vertical lean against the tombstone, hefts it to his back as if it weren’t the claymore it was, and whistles down the path toward the exit – toward Khitti. He’s dressed much as he was when first they’d met; an unassuming button-up black shirt is joined by black leather pants and boots made for walking. But for that massive sword and those piercing blue eyes, he might have passed for downright earthly.
Khitti had fed earlier, finally. The single bottle of blood and slice of carrot cake left at the abandoned manse by Pilar was a sweet gesture, but barely sated the thirst she had. It was enough for now, however, to keep it at bay. As Lionel edges closer towards the exit, she continues to play in the dirt like a child. "For someone zhat didn't know anything about zhose ghouls, it sure is interesting for you to be here. You know, in zhe very place vere zhe likely originated." As he would come into view, she still doesn't look in his direction, though she knew it was him by scent...and that beating of his heart. Once again it was like a symphony in her mind. The vampiress focuses her mind elsewhere, however, to keep the hunger away.
Lionel blinks rapidly at the sight of the woman Khitti, glancing about as if this is all some practical joke. Undoubtedly assured that it isn’t, he saunters over – but remains on the opposite side of the gate. “Ah,” he nods, “and for someone who had nothing to do with them, it sure is interesting to find you here…” He pauses, scratches his cheek. “…in the city of vampires,” he finishes clumsily, obviously dissatisfied with his failed accusation. “Well nevermind that. It just so happens I came here hoping to run into a few more of those lovely little buggers. I need a better corpse. We can’t have flimsy upstart monster assassins lurking about the queen’s halls, now can we? No, that would be very bad, I trust you’ll agree.” Lionel spreads his arms and collapses into the bars, almost flamboyantly, before chancing his first real look upon Khitti’s features. Something sad stirs in his mind, tugs at his lips. It’s gone in a flash and he bounces off and spins around. “What’s a redhaired vampiress like you doing in a black-skied graveyard like this?” The delivery is as uncanny as the words themselves.
Khitti tilts her head, tangled locks falling to the side as she watches him fail embarrassingly at condemning her to...whatever it was that he was trying to blame her for. His inquiry is met with a raised eyebrow, and a stern look as if to try to figure out the man, but she fails utterly. He's pretty weird. "Zhinking...about many zhings." She pulls herself up to stand, using the bars to aid her in her movement. "How do I know you veren't summoning more of zhose beasts? I vill be my job to take care of zhings like zhat in Frostmaw. If you're one of zhose necromancers, I shall have to stop you now before you even make it to zhat frozen vasteland." Her words were untrusting, as they often were with new people, but now that this task would end up falling to her and her alone, she would be even moreso wary around the 'allies' that kept surfacing.
Lionel perks up at all that inflammatory, but there isn’t so much as a subtle hint of offense on his features. He doesn’t tense, he doesn’t bristle. His shrug is halfhearted and his eyes seem perfectly on-cue. Instead, he reaches into his traveler’s pack, the small boiled leather thing that it is, and promptly removes a heavy tome that’s surely seen better days. He reaches through the bars, like a warden offering sustenance. He offers that book to Khitti and he smiles earnestly. “Well go on, then, off you go, thumb through all you like. I’ve already been down this road once before. I suppose no matter who you are, if you’re gone for this long, out pops the plaintiffs, sure as rain you’re up to no good. You’ll be wanting the name ‘Lionel’. It’s in there 899 times. Please kindly skip the part about the time I fought Shogo naked; that never happened and I need a word with the author.” The cover is plain to see – something about Hollow’s history in a so-called Second Age. “But then,” he says with a sigh, “you’re going to think I’m impersonating this man, because after all, this book is stuffy and paints the wrong picture. So I suppose at some point you’re going to have to start trusting someone again, and it might as well be me, I’d argue.” He drops that last sentence as nonchalantly as any other, arm still held out, tome offered.
Khitti 's dark green line of sight drops from the man to the book, staring at it carefully. It's eyed ever so suspiciously, but it's ultimately taken. "Trust isn't something I give freely, Lionel. You may have your name in here 899 times, but zhat means nothing. Stories mean nothing. Stories and fairy tales are for children. I don't care about your second age, zhe zhing you fought, zhe people you fought vith." All of this is said as she thumbs through it idly, as if only to please him. "You're in zhe here and now and zhese vritings do not matter." The tome is snapped shut and handed back to the male. "If you vant to prove yourself as an ally, zhen let your actions speak for zhemselves and not some book."
Lionel seems impressed. He can’t suppress a steady smirk. He’s about to say something dashing or hapless or suddenly-somber or utterly bizarre – who can say? – when instead he suddenly throws his hands to the tip of the gate and leaps over, beside Khitti now but without sparing so much as a glance to her. In a flash Hellfire is drawn and its flames pulse a deepening crimson; the whole area around the two of them lights up and reveals a seething spider, giant and red-eyed and... talking. “The old gods know you both,” it utters so thickly as to be all but incomprehensible. “They want the blood.” Lionel doesn’t wait for Khitti’s reaction. He moves in for the swing as the eight-legged demon braces and then leaps between them, ghastly serrated paws reaching out in every direction to slice both humanoids clean. The man kicks off of the ground and takes two of the spider’s legs, but it leaps onto the gate and springs toward Khitti.
Khitti is quite bewildered as Lionel jumps over the gate and then illuminates the area. A brief hiss passes her pale lips, the light a bit too bright for her. Her sight adjusts, her body pivoting to face the being that speaks behind her and...oh. It's a spider. That's...that's not good. The discarded bow and an arrow are quickly snatched up from the ground, the projectile nocked back quickly. She's quite content to let Lionel strike first, fear of that thing before them cementing her to the path that leads to the gate. Spiders...why did it have to be spiders? It's when it leaps at her that she lets out a screech. It was so disgusting. So so so gross. She herself makes her own leap, but it's to the side, and an arrow shot, aiming for it's horrid thorax.
Lionel notes Khitti’s trajectory, wincing as he estimates. She’s good, he realized – good enough to evade. But if this creature is as he suspects, he needs to cease his analyses and strike fast. Khitti’s arrow hits true. Right into the thorax it goes, and for a brief passing the hellish beast howls, which allows Lionel another cleave. He misses; the spider quite simply warps from its placement, wisps of smoke trailing behind its initial position, and then warps behind him mid-leap. Lionel drops his sword to grant him a lean roll wayward of the attack and then lifts it all over again as though it were as light as a pen, but for a second time his swing meets air. The spider reappears now directly behind Khitti, fangs clenching and unclenching quick as any mockingbird’s wings. “Trust me once,” Lionel shouts, hoping Khitti will hear him. He arcs Hellfire just to her left as the spider descends, whips it about in a two-handed display, and sends the wicked blade’s build-up of heat soaring around the vampiress and searing the monster. These flames exit Hellfire in a three-second display, shifting course to avoid his doubtful companion. It is like Khiti has erected a barrier. The fire melts the spider but still it twitches. “Do you have any sort of spell?” Lionel inquires. “End this miserable thing. Now!”
Khitti felt the heat rising from the flames, though it broke no sweat on the undead woman. She had heard him, and unfortunately for her, there was no time for her to argue. Too bad he didn't know her well enough to make her angry. Only then would she truly shine. For now, however, as scared as she was of that eight-legged monster, those wispy, dark purple tendrils of hers is summoned up. The smoke-like vines sweep through the air, finding it's way to the spider's head. She would attempt to let the vines sink in deep, her dark magic penetrating it's cranium, finding it's way in. Like a marionette, she tugs the strings, letting them latch on to anything in it's body.
Lionel stands ready as Khitti’s vines rip through the thing’s brain, holding firm with one leg bent forward at the knee and both hands upon Hellfire’s hilt. He dares not take his gaze off the spider, watching every agonizing beat as the combination of otherworldly flame and dark tendril takes it apart. It screams a feral scream and then decays into dust, which sweeps away with unnatural wind and scatters into the night. Lionel surveys his surroundings – the graves, the path beyond, the dead withering trees, the ground beneath his feet. A moment later, he sheaths and takes two steps toward the woman. “Did it touch you?” He asks, frantically. “Did it lay so much as a claw on you?” He looks her over. “No,” he answers to himself before she can speak. “Good. Well it appears I’ll not be having a restful night.” The words drip irony; Lionel never does. “This is officially as bad as I’d feared. Probably some throwaway worshipers of Khasad and Elazul. Well I’ve got a few things to say to these fanatics, namely that Khasad and Elazul are as dusty as that spider. You run along if you like; don’t let it all spook you. The odds of this leading to another realm-wide holocaust are…” He counts on his fingers. He literally counts on his fingers. “Less than two percent.”
Khitti allows the vines to linger, even after the spider is gone, hesitating as she shifts her attention towards Lionel. The panic in his voice is almost unnerving, as if she wasn't exactly used to people being concerned with her wellbeing. She had attempted to speak, but was quickly cut off by the fallen hero answering himself. The mention of Khasad and Elazul peaks her interest, if only a little, and she commits the names to memory. "I told you. I don't fear anything." Except for bears, Kreekitaka's rattling paddles and, the obvious one of the night: spiders. "It's been a restless veek for me as vell. Vhere are you going?" She raises a brow at him, moving to the quiver she left on the ground. She's soon fixing it and her bow to her back.
Lionel is already mid-trot down the path, singleminded as ever far to the point of unintentional rudeness. Truly, it has been so many years since he’s allowed himself the time to consider being considerate. There’s just never any... time. Khitti’s question, however, draws him back, and once again he examines her. These examinations of Lionel’s, it ought to be noted, are very quick. Perhaps this is why he keeps needing to do so. Or perhaps his mind, whichever part of it still remains capable of such emotions, is triggering long-dormant feelings with every study. Who is to say? Surely not Lionel, who is scarcely willing to recognizing such things anymore. Too much loss. Too much loss. Too much loss. No, he has to be strong. He composes himself with a crude attempt at a carefree shrug. “I’m, uh, well, I had thought to seek a man covered in tattoos of the letter ‘X’ just now, actually. He’s, uh… there’s a good chance he’s responsible for these attacks. I mean to end him, if so. None shall suffer under the wrath of these dark creatures. None.” For a moment Lionel is heroic again in his doctrine. It is brief but it is there.
Khitti 's pace behind Lionel was slow, keeping up with him but maintaining a distance between them. Despite battling ill things for a second time now with him, she was still wary of the man. This was a time of war, you know. This may be her first rodeo, but she surely wasn't going to fall into any traps. "Shouldn't you leave zhat to zhe people zhat know vhat zhey're doing vith zhis sort of zhing?" IE: Not Khitti. Not at all Khitti. Hanging around Daermon and Alex really didn't do her any good. She'd gotten cocky, and with the mood she'd been in lately, she was feelin' feisty. "You may be good vith zhat sword, but I don't know... I'm still skeptical." She keeps a watchful eye about the area as they head away from the cemetary, though it occasionally slips back to him. He was so strange...clearly disturbed in one way or another. And yet...perhaps one day, she would read about his adventures. Despite what she said, she ~was~ a fan of fairy tales.
Lionel laughs despite himself. Now he’s positive. He’s been gone so long that some folks simply have no idea. He loves it, this anonymity he has never before tasted. Wistfully, he contemplates the things he’s done for this realm. His lips twist into a small reminiscent smile as he pauses and peers directly into Khitti’s eyes. Intensity be thy name. “You’re preciously needed here. Your magic is as strong as Lyra’s. Hemlock’s. Xaden’s.” The names likely won’t ring any bells for Khitti, but they were titans on the battlefield. They were legends. They were all evil, too, but still. “I don’t see that often anymore. You’re remarkable. Fight alongside the queen and help save this land from all these myriad new threats. You’re right. You’re skeptical. You don’t know. You can’t…” His voice cracks. He collects himself. “You can’t know, Khitti.” He speaks her name. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this any longer tonight. This… talking. I’m being real with you here, madam, and that hurts. If you’ll excuse me, I really must find this demon myself. And kill it. Because that is what I do.” He does not wait for an answer. He cannot wait for an answer.