RP:It Is Personal

Part of the What You Leave Behind Arc

Summary: High Priestess Leone volunteers her services to a traumatized Lionel. She'll be a part of this war no matter his fears for her safety or anyone else's.

Cenril, One Day After The Attack

Lionel couldn't say how he'd found himself being shuffled out of a small shop which had been converted into a makeshift medical ward, but he had faint memory of Pilar bringing him to that place, where a black-haired mother and her young son tended the wounded that came through their doors. Nor could he say for certain how and when he'd begun traipsing down the battle-damaged Cenrili shoreline, but he could vaguely recite the shape of a doomed frigate jutting out from beneath the waves at odd angles, and the debris stretched out across the sand, and the smells of burning flesh done up in numerous pyres up and down the beach. He remembered strong-armed sailors and dockworkers, too, some of whom seemed familiar, dragging corpses across the way. There was something about the imprints those corpses left in the sand as they were taken away to the pyres, something that scared him more than the corpses themselves. Lionel wasn't sure when he'd stopped walking, or where he'd wound up, but his voice feels parched now as though he'd had to speak up for the first time since the attack. He remembers faces, many faces, although indistinct one and all, but none of them had mouths. Or, if they had mouths, then none of them spoke a word. They were stunned, he realizes in this trance-like reminiscence. So complete was their shock over the loss of life, the loss of loved ones, the loss of security, that they were speechless one and all. The rest is a haze; whatever happened next in this, the day after everything changed, is a blank slate in Lionel's mind. He glances down to find his left hand clutching the rim of a wooden mug filled with honeyed tea. His arm is shaking. His back hurts and he's not sure why. Slowly, his ears are filled with noise. He's coming to. He's realizing that he's at a table in The Winking Nod, an inn with a tavern that on any other day would have been filled with drunken cheer and gamblers' exclamations. It's solemn now, half its chairs unoccupied, and conversation is a low din of despair. Lionel looks around but finds no one who can sort things out, no one with a face he can identify, just a pack of sad survivors doing their best to make sense of it all. He's clad in his trusty black silken shirt, but it's ripped and torn at the seams. His pants are a similar mess. He sighs and tries to fill in the blanks, bit by bit, but all-the-while conscious of a terrible truth gnawing at the back of his mind: the more he recalls, the worse things are going to get.

Leone is lacking her fanfare of public office today. Her cloak has been left elsewhere today, and the smith's simply clad in her working leather. The old, beaten to hell pants and jacket that typically adorns her petite yet wiry frame. The diminutive blacksmith makes her way through the silenced tables, weaving between the mourners. She stops whenever eyes linger too long upon her. They are pleading stares, from people looking for comfort - from just about any source - and the Aramothian Priestess is only too happy to oblige. She prays with survivors, blessing their lives and days, offers forgiveness and reassurance to those who have lost loved ones in battle: they will all be called to the War God's stead, of course. Hands reach out, and she touches them, anointing some with oil and murmuring sacred words as she passes. Her aim is the sandy-haired Steward that's face down upon a table. Without so much as a how-do-you-do, the petite plover slides into an available chair at Lionel's table, and presses a cigar between her teeth. Bitting down upon it, she says around the stoogie, "You're buying. We need to talk."

Lionel has never been well-acquainted with Leone; on any other day, he would not have even thought of her name first, but rather of her status. Bad experience has abounded with Lionel with regards to organized religion, and the High Priestess embodies it. Earlier in his tenure as a Frostmawian official, this was one of several things which had the man thoroughly convinced he wouldn't last long in the Queen's service; the Frost Giants are a fiercely spiritual people, and in waltzes a Catalian who once told the gods to go to hell. But there had always been something in Leone's swagger, something different about the woman versus the title along similar veins as has been experienced by all them that have met Lionel and expected stoic regality but found cynicism and rogue-like wit instead. It's almost too bad, then, that today is the day one among these two has told the other that drinks are in order. There could have been such chatter, if it had happened only yesterday. Now, Lionel briefly ponders, memory whipping through his beaten brain as he sits upright and regards Leone, everything's changed and it's unlikely it will ever be the same again. "Alright." He looks around suspiciously until he's satisfied they are not being watched. More the fool, him; they -are- being watched, because when the High Priestess sat down at his table various exhausted patrons have realized who he is. Caution marks their motions, caution and fear. "I'll have rum," he tells a passing barmaid, pushing aside his honeyed tea.

Leone lifts a finger toward the passing barmaid as well. "Whisky," the smooth-and-sandy timbre orders promply after the Catalian's order of rum, thereafter punctuated with a directive, "Neat." She chomps on the end of the cigar, tawny lips clasping and loosing in jaw-fueled rhythm. At the same meter, lemon-lime sights sweep over the disheveled hero. They finally come to rest upon Lionel's (presuambly) scruffy mein. The miniature metallurigst leans forward, her forearms lapping across the table, though only managing to make it half way. She presses her torso to the edge, burying the curved wooden surface into her own ribcage to the point of discomfort. A gutteral noise ekes out of the priestess's throat, and she whispsers to him, "The swarm." The syllables are stacatto, like rain falling upon a tin roof. The deluge continues, a veritable hailstorm of words imparting the notion of, "I think I know where they're coming from. And I might be able to stop them." A brow is quirked toward the man across the table from her after the sentence has been birthed by sound and silence. She pauses, all extraneous movement arresting so that she may watching him silently for any sign of interest or response. The smith is still, her breathing curtailed to slow, calm inhalation and equally sedate exhalations.

Lionel watches Leone for the course of a few seconds once she’s finished, seconds which seem to cling to him like damp air. Her arrival has affected him, forced him to remember things. Things of Frostmaw, things of funerals. He leans back in his seat, suddenly aware of how cold it must be at The Winking Nod this time of year. A funeral for the dead -- Frostmaw’s dead -- overseen and undertaken most chiefly by High Priestess Leone. A funeral for the victims of an attack from out of nowhere, an attack via portals of magic, an attack which ended almost as quickly as it began. An attack whose mysteries have almost certainly been solved at last; that, too, was Kahran’s doing. Anger wells up inside the man, fresh with recollection, tugging his arms until they’re wrapped around his chest. The barmaid returns and the requested beverages are provided. She curtsies haphazardly and scampers away with her best impression of a woman who just remembered she has half a dozen other tasks to sort. Her frantic steps reveal the truth. Another memory buzzes past Lionel -- a memory of the Northern Sage, where the Warrior’s Guild answered a call for help in the politically turbulent times directly before Frostmaw and Larket went to war. He had always sensed the presence of someone moving pieces from the shadows, orchestrating any number of unfortunate aspects in those challenging months. It was saurians they’d fought, and saurians had never migrated so far east in such numbers. It didn’t make sense. Until now. Leone’s face is mixed inside that memory, the face of a woman pained with the physical effort of teleporting Lionel and his companions across such a distance. Was Krice there, too? He can’t recall; it’s all a cacophony of blood and sweat and someone’s tears. Why is he thinking of Krice? Then it dawns on him, and his countenance shifts. His eyes narrow and he grits his teeth. “That would hurt you,” he says, hollowly.

Leone snorts a laugh at the excuse presented by the Catalian. "And engaging in battle carries potentially mortal consequences for you. This is my version of battle. You would not tell Hildegarde that she cannot fight when the lives of the innocent are at stake, and you will not tell me that I cannot. I choose my own fate, Sir," the farrier's mixture of gravel and velvet notes state stridently. The nearly phosphorescent, peridot sights flash upward, glimpsing the ceiling before settling once more on Lionel, "And I am offering you my help. I can smell this. Feel it. Close enough to a previously opened portal, I can even taste it. It's like being socked in the nose, and all of your senses filling up with the flavor of iron and spite. I am a priest. It is my job, my sworn obligation, to deal with the things that are not of this realm. And your shady invaders more than qualify." The smith brings her knuckles to rap hard against the table's surface before pushing herself back upright and into a full, though not entirely graceful, repose. The smith's eyes glitter, keen and jewel-bright, at the once knight across the table.

Lionel has suffered another bout of time displacement during Leone’s heated retort, but not from trauma. She’s just quite good at impressing her stance upon him, good enough that he appears to be out of rum now. He’s brow-beaten, and he sucks in a deep breath and exhales. “Leone,” he speaks her name, and possibly for the first time. “I have reason to believe that the bastard responsible for this attack is the self-same bastard who massacred my homeland after the conclusion of the Second Immortal War. In other words,” he over-explains, his words too hasty and betraying his fright with their urgency, “we’re dealing with someone who may possess a fraction of a very old and very dangerous power. What’s more, he did things on that ship that I’ve never seen before. His abilities are…” Lionel draws a breath again, raggedly. “I don’t know -what- they are. And that’s what scares me. I have no idea what I’m up against. But this is a man, or whatever Kahran is, who brought discord upon the realm long before I even saw his face.” He pauses. His drink has been replenished. The barmaid is as wise as she is fleeting. Lionel’s response thus far has only furthered Leone’s point, and it sickens him. Between her tenacity and his terror, there’s nothing he can say to prevent her from hurting herself in ways he doesn’t even understand. His next words are darkly-spoken, quieter and yet more determined. “Kahran’s responsible for the dead in Frostmaw, too. It has to be you,” he struggles to finish. “I can’t deny the pieces fit. I couldn’t stop you if I tried, and I can’t try half as hard as I wish because… I don’t know you, but I reckon this is personal for us both.” The rum is spiced, with earthy tones.

Leone downs her whisky in one gulp. The smith then pushes herself to her feet, palm curling about the edge of the table while fingers are laid in neat rows atop. The smith's elbows straighten as she rises, the strants of sterling silver embedded in her otherwise raven black scalp shimmering in the wan tavern light. "It is personal," she agrees in fiery notes of sun-baked sand on silk, "It's personal, and I don't cow easily." The smith again falls into silence. A beat pulsing through the tensed vein in her neck. Another, her carotid fluttering against taut, milky white skin like so many butterflies trapped beneath gossamer webbing. "I can get you there," she says sternly, "I can get you to where they dwell. We'll have to plan carefully." A third beat, another tick of her heart projected by the pulsating in her neck, speaks through silence. "I'll be in touch," the petite priestess pronounces. She spreads a few gold coins on the table and glances at the barmaid to insure that the girl has seen the payment laid out. Much more easily than she entered, the sacred smith exits.

Lionel wanders the streets of Cenril that evening, his path still filled with mourners. The beach pyres burn brightly through the night, priests with their rites and loved ones with their offerings. No sooner has he begun to acknowledge the magnitude of what has transpired than someone has come to him with the etchings of a plan. As darkness blankets Cenril, its atmosphere is rich with sparkling transparent magics. The work of witches, who have kept this one city safe from direct invasion at least for a little while. It’s an inkling of hope in a cloudy, starless black sky. He sighs, leaning up against the wall of some tanner’s shop and procuring a cigar of his own. He’s carried it with him longer than he can remember, a relic from a friend, a friend who numbered the dead felled the last time this evil made itself known. He stares at it, runs his fingers to trace its rough surface. With his left hand near its edge, he lights it with the Ishaarite magics that the spirit in his fabled blade has afforded him. “Ignorantly, Griff Morivan, I’d hoped I’d never need this.” He smokes it slowly, coughing at the unfamiliar sensations rolling down his throat and lungs.