RP:Jagged Lace

Part of the Rest in Pieces: Vailkrin! Arc

Summary: Having received a summons from Gilwen, Larewen goes to Sage and decided to track down Emrith for a little heart to heart. The complications of their relationship, and their mutual feelings despite that, surface with anger and frustration. Barbed words are exchanged before the two agree to try again. Plotting ensues.

Quaint Treehouse

Emrith is, for a wonder, taking a little time off. The little treehouse, so often home to one sort of game or other, is no different today, and Emrith has taken it upon himself to set up a complicated card game with three other elves. His rune-carved staff stands nearby, within easy reach, but he feels as if he might be among friends this afternoon, and his mind is at ease...or, at least, as at ease as it ever gets these days. A baleful presence, now as much a part of him as the myriad voices in his own mind, worries him constantly, but he has grown used to it. Its origin seems to be the ring he wears, the one of which he cannot seem to divest himself no matter how he tries. Something stirs there, deep within the gem adorning that ring, but its movement is slow, unsteady, uncertain. There will be time, Emrith thinks. "The lady of shadows," he intones, placing a card face-up. "And so, Maeltar, I think your knights are both taken from play." The named elf glowers momentarily, then sighs theatrically and turns two cards face down. Emrith favours him with a toothy but amiable smile.

There is something in the room with Emrith, something otherworldly and wrong. A brush of cool air moves against him, the feel of intangible lips upon his ear and then... quiet words, spoken with a special sort of melancholy. "I tried to do right by you, even after all this. I tried to unite the living and the dead, to show them we could live peacefully among one another..." she whispers. Her voice is disembodied, soft, barely above a whisper as an unseen hand rests familiarly upon his shoulder. The chill that accompanies her is enough to raise the hackles on Emrith's companions. Her mouth finds his temple, lips pressing to the flesh there was well before she continues. "I tried to do something right, and again I was thwarted. Tell me, my dearest love, why it is I cannot be good?"

Emrith flinches back reflexively from the touch, knowing both who and what it is almost immediately. Reaching for his staff is futile, but he does it anyway. The carvings along its length suddenly spark to life, growing a scintillant webwork of mana in an instant as Emrith clutches the weapon in one loose fist. "Why? What?" he asks, and when the elves seated at the table look puzzled, Emrith masters himself with great effort and explains. "A spirit, friends. And one you may not wish to fight. Show it no threat, for now." Emrith turns toward the place from which that chilly presence can be felt, and speaks quietly. "You cannot be good because you do not want to be good, Larewen Dragana," he says, and there is deep sadness in his voice. "At the core of you, it is not what you want. The goodness you occasionally attempt is always done for your own benefit, and not truly for others. If you could change that, you would not have to lament your losses so." His eyes flick downward and away, as if he has decided not to look toward her anymore; he cannot see her, in any case, but the gesture is telling. "I was, as you might understand," he continues, "trying to gain a respite from other, more pressing concerns. If all you have done is to come here to bemoan your fate, I believe there are children in need of a fright someplace. Get you gone." Emrith's tone has grown frightfully cold all of a sudden, and his downcast countenance is as iron. "Or perhaps," he finishes in a low voice, "you would like to try and fight your way out of a death-trap. It was folly to even come here."

Larewen sees the burst of mana from the staff and though it's meant as a warning, the banshee feeds from it. The arcane energies are drawn into her body, allowing her form to become corporeal. This, no doubt, further starts the others present for the apparition bears her death wounds - wounds inflicted upon her by the spell blade himself. Her expression is unusual. Scarred features are twisted not into a scowl but into something more... sad. Genuinely so. A simple shake of her head, sharp, is given. "I take no pride in scaring children, Emrith," she whispers and there is a heavy ache in her voice at his accusation. A step is taken toward him, tentativeliy and without the confidence she so often commands. The necromancer reaches for him, her gaze moving past him and to the elves with which he'd been gaming. "I'd leave, if I were you. Your friend is likely to seek my death once more," she warns before her attention focuses on Emrith. "You still believe I want this, Emrith?" Her voice takes on a frustrated note. "Were it not that I know you better, I'd wonder if you'd conspired with the Houses to seal my fate."

Emrith shakes his head, moving it decisively in a gesture of negation. "Would that I had, it might have succeeded," he responds wryly, then stands to his full height. He is not so tall, perhaps, but for an elf, it is a commanding enough presence. His left hand dips into a pocket of his cloak, still dyed white and spilling down over his shoulders, to fish in one of its many capacious pockets. "Last chance, Larewen. And I do not usually give more than one. What you pay for now, you bought willingly. You are the mistress of your own fate. To deny this is to further damn yourself. I have been told, by someone far wiser than myself, that the first step on the right road is to admit that you had been walking the wrong one in the first place. Bear it in mind, won't you? If you have time, of course. Your information has been...useful, however." Something very close to a grin now twists his lips. "Quite useful. I am sorry that you still cling to these places you have used so badly and which, in their turn, have used you so well. The world, I have come to understand, would be a better place without you in it. I do not say these things easily, but I will not flinch from the truth of them." He gestures toward the treehouse's downward exit, a trapdoor with an elegant little flight of steps weaving down the trunk of a particularly large tree. "That way, at least, lies a little leniency. Take it, if you must." Emrith looks around at the other elves present. "Fight, or call the garrison, or do whatever it is you wish to do. If her presence offends you, you will hear no protest from me if you should attempt to rid yourself of it." Turning one last time back to Larewen, he adds, "A piece of advice, Miss Dragana. When you burn bridges, do not try and walk back across them. There is nothing there but an abyss. This one happens to be full of elves who are not particularly keen on your deeds and reputation." A last whisper, three words and sybillant: "Can you fly?" And so saying, he whips his left hand out of his pocket, hurling the mana stone toward Larewen's corporeal form with all the strength he possesses. The backwash of raw magical force is enough to send Emrith himself staggering away, clutching desperately to his rune-carved staff, but even if Larewen feeds on magical energy, surely this much of it, shoved upon her with this much speed, will in a very metaphoric sense choke her awhile.

Larewen says naught. What is there to say? In this form, the curse that mars her flesh doesn't quite affect her so well. The stripping of her title by the man she has tried to stop loving inflicts an entirely new wound on her ego and she flinches. Instead, the necromancer's arms open up. There is no draw upon the raw magic, no attempt to use it to guide a retaliation to any. Arcane magic has a way of harming those like her, just like the divine, and she is thrown back against the wall by the brute force of the font's release. It's a familiar feeling, in a way. The very same magic was gifted to her in a stone carried within a pocket of her gown, on her true body. Considering she's corporeal, the necromancer collides with the wall hard enough that wood splinters, but she does not go through it. Instead, she looks up at Emrith - then the elves. "Well, go on," she breathes, and there's a nearly manic lilt to her lips. "Let them know the big, bad necromancer is here. I'm sure Gilwen will be delighted to know I've received her summons." Slowly, her gaze returns to Emrith. Her image flickers faintly. "End me. Maybe you can do it right this time, Emrith. If there's not a single bit of love still in your heart for me, then put me out of my misery - and do it right this time."

"The woman I loved, she blew away on an ill wind and died," Emrith replies. "Any love I have left is for what is gone, not what is here." Emrith drops into wind stance, seizing his long staff in both hands, then begins to dance through the various forms of his weapons training. The weapon collects kinetic energy with each swing and jab and twist until the entire thing is lit with a nimbus of energy. He utters a liquid litany of words in the elven tongue, and suddenly that energy hurtles across the treehouse toward Larewen, spreading until it resembles a spiderweb. If it should come into contact with her, Emrith will waste no time in triggering the final spellword, a word which will cause the snare to tighten so viciously that it may literally tear her form apart.

Larewen pushes away from the wall, onto her knees, then tucks and rolls toward Emrith, careful keeping beneath the arc of magic before rising to her feet. "That woman you seem to think I was never existed, Emrith," she says, searching his features. She is within arm's reach. Proof of that comes as her hand extends, ghostly fingers seeking to caress his cheek. The necromancer makes no attempt at defending herself. Deciding this is some lover's quarrel gone horribly wrong, the three elves smartly decide to take their leave. They've enough reasons not to trust foreigners - no matter what their original blood might be. Having discovered Larewen's identity, one sets out for Larket to seek Gilwen and inform her that the deathsinger has arrived. The other two are content to busy themselves elsewhere. "There are several kinds of evil, Emrith. You did not allow me the chance to defend my actions; you only listened to what Pilar told you." Provided she is successful in making contact with his flesh, her memories would be imparted once more as they were so many years ago when first they met. It begins with the night a distraught Pilar finds him - and the moments before. Trajek arrives with two slaves. Gifts for his mistress. An argument ensues. The death knight's fist perforates the gaping wound in her belly and thrusts upward, snaring her heart and crushing it. Agony follows, and death too. Then, reanimation by the Shade's will. The slow, steady beat of a blackened heart, the breaking of Larewen's will, and the subsequent death of the two slaves. Then, Pilar discovering Larewen amongst the two bodies. End of memory, begin the next: the ball. Larewen, heartfelt offering a means to unite the living and the dead. For the first time in decades, the two are invited to mingle within Vailkrin. Then, a man shows up, dressed in her House's colors, but she does not recognize him. He brings an army of ghouls. Slaughter. The living dying, a panicked Larewen seeking her granddaughter, tossing her to her mother, and then being confronted by the Houses of Vailkrin. "Not all is as it seems, Emrith. There are varying levels of evil, and not all of them are heartless."

Emrith grimaces with annoyance as the web of magic whistles by over Larewen's crouching form. Haste, it would seem, has made him careless, and before he can completely remedy his mistake, Larewen has touched his face, imparted her memories. And suddenly, in that instant, everything changes. The strength goes out of his knees, and they hit the deck of the treehouse with a painful double thump. "Dear gods," he whispers, levering himself back up with the aid of his staff. "You speak truth. This is either compelling illusion or the heart's answer to a difficult question, and I think you speak the latter instead of carrying the former." He goes quiet for a moment, noticing only now that the elves have vacated the premises. Emrith is still on guard, but for now at least, the desire to kill Larewen, to simply dismiss her from this plane of existence if he can, has departed. "Tell me one thing, Larewen," he says, and now his voice trembles for an altogether different reason. "What would you do if someone gave you the chance to be free of all of the evil influences vying for you? Would you take that chance, or would you be too frightened, too beaten to try? That, I think, it what I need to know. There is, after all, a difference between being overpowered and being willfully co-opted. Which are you? And if you wish to say the former, make me believe it, if you think you can. A lie would do you very badly just now."

Larewen responds only with another memory - several actually. These are shot into his mind one after another, coupled with the pain she felt at each one. She does not hide her infidelities, because they are necessary in this. Trajek kissing her. His hating Emrith. His driving the blade into her gut because she gave Emrith her heart. His driving the blade into her chest, because, as she told Emrith, she truly did try and take it from him. There's a struggle of magic - the necromancer trying to take it from him, and this his releasing it so that she is impaled. There are several instances of Trajek reminding her how weak Emrith made her, of how he was holding her back, and this time the image of her heart being crushed is accompanied by Trajek's promises to rid her of those feelings for Emrith, to fix her. Dispersed amongst those same memories are flashes of Langley, swearing much the same thing regarding the necromancer's love. Then, she is drawing back, away from Emrith as her arms curl around her torso. "I do not know what my future entails, but whatever choices I make will be for the good of Vailkrin," she murmurs quietly. "There is no remedy for the darkness now. I told you what its purpose was, why Trajek did it to me. When you... tried to kill me... I used it... I wrought it upon my bones so that I could twist what little magic I had left to save the city. It will be forever a part of me, now. It is the one thing I do not look forward to, when it comes time to finally claim my body once more. I tried for you. I wanted nothing else, only you. I meant it, the day I told you I wanted you at my side, for you to be my King."

"Then you have betrayed not only yourself, but me as well. Broke a promise because someone else told you it was weakness instead of strength." He is shaking now, whole body shuddering from the import of the memories forced upon him. "Even if it was not all your fault, and even if there is no going back, there is self-deception in this. I cannot but see it this way. Perhaps..." He looks down then, taking a compensatory step away from her. "Perhaps what you wanted was something you never truly understood. You were as a child, wanting to carry around the lightnings without understanding that they would char your flesh and ravage your bones. It will...be easier for you this way, I think." There is as much said by the words Emrith is not saying as by those he does dare speak, perhaps, like the holes in a net which let the water dribble away even while the living things caught within its confines drown in the air by degrees.

Larewen flinches at Emrith's words. Could he not understand then? Instead, her features darken slightly and she reaches out again, cupping his chin carefully. "Do you truly think so?" she whispers. Two more memories join the others forced his way. The first of her promise to him to undo Trajek, and then her attempt to do so. The manor's foyer, and another shared kiss. Then, a tug of magic as the necromancer uses the opportunity to tear her magic away from the death knight. He begins to come undone and then suddenly, he remakes himself - devoid of her own magic. Her mismatched eyes settle on Emrith's, the left now an emerald that matches his own. "I suffered because I loved you," she responds and she is crying. Tears mar the specter's cheeks, glistening on the pale, scarred flesh. "And I always will, no matter what you do or say to me."

Emrith takes another step backward, but not before this last pair of memories overcomes him, surprising him into shocked silence. He just stands there, statuesque and mute, gazing back into Larewen's eyes. "I cannot believe that you, a necromancer of such repute, were undone so completely by an aberration of your own design. It defies reason." But his voice is small, almost strengthless. "As you are incapable of being anything but what you are, I am equally incapable of being anything but what I am. As I have said before, there are some things that simply cannot be made to fit together. Perhaps we were one of them." There seems nothing left to say, but he indicates the trapdoor with a wave of his hand, then a quick glance in its direction. After a moment, he adds, "Either you go, or I will. I think this is ended. Whatever fault may be found, whatever love you may claim to feel, we still stand on potentially opposite sides of a divide, and I will not break my promise. Call me stubborn. Throw yourself at me in rage. Do what you need to do. But you would have better luck arguing with the sun than with me." There is gentleness in his voice now, but utter finality, too.

She looks at him in betrayed silence, her expression belying her feelings. Larewen had laid herself bare, stripped herself of all secrets, of everything and still it's not enough. There's something utterly defeated in the way her features fall. "I am not more powerful than the Shade, and that is who commands Trajek now," is all she says and even then her words are only halfway audible. "I may have damned your body, but at least I did not damn your soul." It's meant to be barbed, to be a laying of blame - which is true - on him. After all, had Emrith not been part of her life, Trajek would have found no reason to so thoroughly curse her. Instead, she loses her composure halfway through those words and her image flickers.

"If he is the bane you claim, I will promise you this much, Larewen Dragana. It is he that I will attempt to kill first." He looks at her flickering figure a moment, silent, as if daring her to challenge this bold intention. He says no more, merely staring with those stormy grey eyes of his. His face cannot maintain its stony demeanour, however, and the confessions she has provided him, in the form of her memories, cause doubt, uncertainty and even pain to flicker across his features. His lips tremble a little, but his eyes remain dry. He means every word he has said.

Larewen responds with a faint shrug of a single shoulder to Emrith. "Were it that I knew where he was, I would tell you so," she responds quietly. Like the others in her life, he too has vanished. Even after their engagement, he didn't linger too long. Likewise with Shishi. Mismatched eyes raise to Emrith. "You were right - when you said there would come a time when I was completely and utterly alone. The only ones that care for me now are my children and grandchildren."

"You are wrong about that, Larewen. I care, even if that care is like a spark next to the bonfire of the promise I have made. I am sorry that I was right about your aloneness, however. If I find him - Trajek, I mean - I will do everything within my power to end him. Whether or not he is your betrothed, he is clearly more than your equal now, and this is a yoke you need not bear on your own. But for now, there is nothing left aside from what must be done. Love is just the chain that drags your anchor down now. It is clear."

Larewen curls her lip, biting back a scoff at his words. Why had she come? Initially, she meant to be cold and bitter, to make him feel guilt, pain, anguish and yet all she's done is manifest such feelings in herself. The specter, still corporeal at this point, studies Emrith for a long moment. It is clear that, though he cares, it is not the same as what she feels in her own heart and soul. At least, not while the curse is upon her husk and not herself. "I am sorry I bothered you," is all she says and then she's drawin upon magic once more. This time, she's conjuring that familiar stone from the pocket of her gown, so very far away. She's also reaching beyond the barrier, pressing what little magic she wields to its limits. With a popping noise, audible and loud, something else breaks through thin air, a pair of somethings even. With a clatter, font, Heleg, and Nahr all fall to the floor between the banshee and spellblade. It is all the elf has left of Emrith, save the memories they've shared.

"Thank you." It is all he can muster at first, as he bends forward to take his twin shortswords from the floor of the treehouse. "I fight better with these than I have ever done with the staff." Emrith sets about strapping Heleg and Nahr across his back in his customary fashion, then takes up his staff again. "There is a heart in theer, Larewen Dragana," he says gently, "and that heart does not need killing. Whatever Trajek, or anyone else, attempts to do to you, remember that. You just possessed an advantage, and gave it up. If that is weakness, it is the sort you claim to wish you possessed. It is often said that weakness is in the mind of the sufferer. You are not, perhaps, as weak as I had thought. I will make you a promise to lay atop my old one, as payment for your good deed here this day." He pauses then, trying to find the right words. "I will suffer you to live, for now, and assuming you are not the sole or primary reason for any more wanton bloodshed and slaughter. I will focus all of the ire I once felt toward you upon Trajek. If I can free you instead of just ending you, I will attempt it first, to the very best of my abilities." He steps forward, reaching out a hand as if to touch the necromancer, and when he speaks now, there is something close to pleading in his voice. "There is something of you still in there, Larewen. Perhaps she is not the woman I thought I loved - you may be right, in that she never truly existed - but there is...something. Bring it back. You can. You know you can. Do not let anyone else tell you that you are wholly theirs. You are your own. Tainted or not, evil or not, you are your own. Rise up and reclaim what was yours. You are far too strong, too great, to be a subject. You are no one's subject. And above all else, I think that is what hurts me when I think about it. That Larewen Dragana has been made into something less than she is." A single tear tracks out of his left eye. "Whatever you are, I want it to be what you deserve. I will, if I must, take upon that shadow in order to free you of it. That may not be love, perhaps it is only the heartsick, bemused rambling of a fool. Whatever it is, I say it now, and you know it to be true."

Larewen shakes her head at him. “I did not see keeping Heleg and Nahr as advantage, in as much as part of you,” the necromancer says quietly. “You only need see me in the presence of my son’s wife and child to know that I still have a heart, that I still seek some sort of balance between myself and the darkness that eats at me.” Her gaze moves away from him then, to the font that still lays on the floor. His last gift to her. “I may not live much longer, Emrith. I will be declaring war before the week is out. I will not let the Houses go unpunished for their crimes against my guests.”

Emrith indicates the stone still lying on the floor. "Then take that back, and use it as needs must," he replies. "Whether or not you perceived my blades as advantage to yourself is irrelevant. It was, at the least, disadvantageous to me, and I was planning on ending you, if I could, as you might recall. A philosophical difference of opinion, it would seem." Emrith shrugs his narrow shoulders. "Do not be subsumed by darkness. Your will is beaten down, but not altogether broken. Never forget this." Emrith looks away then, out a window, watching a flock of sparrows flit from tree to tree in some complex aerial dance which only birds seem capable of comprehending. "Sometimes," he murmurs, "I dream of being free to fly away."

Larewen’s lips twitch, as if she intends to smile but can’t find the heart to do so. “Ah, but there you are quite wrong,” the necromancer murmurs quietly. Her gaze moves to the trapdoor leading down. She does need to seek out Gilwen, but part of her wants to stay here, where she only deepens her pain. This time, when she reaches out to touch Emrith it is not to impart memories upon him, but simply to caress his cheek as she once had. “I wish I didn’t love you; that I never did,” she says quietly. “You haunt my dreams in this form; you make me long for the emptiness the curse gives me. I hate you for that.”

"So be it, Larewen, but if you remain here with me so that you may tease me with barbed words, it will do you no good. It may, in fact, rekindle old anger. I regret nothing at this point. The mistakes I made have taught me. The weaknesses I possess will later strengthen me...may, in fact, already be doing so. The greatest method of learning to be strong is to admit where one is weak, and the easiest way to get over a failed love is to make sure you do not wish it had never happened. Because it did, Larewen. It did." He turns his back on Larewen, moving quite suddenly, and glides toward the window, inclining his head to listen to the sparrows. Tears stand in his eyes, but his body is stone-still. He wants an end to this sorry, sordid affair, as indicated by the swords on his back and the fact that he will no longer meet Larewen's gaze. "You are done here," he mutters. "Done here."

Larewen responds with a shake of her head. “For you, it has failed; for me it still pains every moment; haunts every breath. The same reason I loath returning to my body, I also wish to,” she says as her arms fall to her side. A moment later, her image flickers again and she glances to the stone that lays on the floor. She leaves it as she turns away from him. She has no need to open the trapdoor though and, with a hard swallow, the banshee responds simply, “Is that what you truly wish? Peace from me? From our mistakes? Only ask that I begone from your presence for good, and I will Emrith. But know also that I would rather stand with him than be alone. For all he has done to me, and all he may do.”

"You would rather stand with him than be alone. But you would rather you had never loved me." He does not turn when he says this, and ice has once again returned to his words. "Thank you, Miss Dragana, for so clearly drawing lines in the sand, as it were. You might as well not have come, if that is how you feel." Still, he does not turn. Eyes on the sparrows. Hands in fists at his sides. Open them, let the fingers splay. The faintest tingle of magic as his senses take in the world around him. Bile in his throat, and a single, damning word. "Go."

Larewen closes her eyes. “Wouldn’t you like to know why?” the elf asks, but she doesn’t grant him time for an answer. Instead, she approaches his back, drawing as close as she dares. “Physical pain is something I am accustomed to. Loving you has brought me both the happiest and most painful moments of my life, and you’ve done naught but prove Shishi right. When I chose you over him, he told me that you were temporary. You only proved that right, and left an emptiness in your wake that no other can fill. That is how I feel, Emrith. I feel this gnawing hunger, this longing for you, that I cannot dismiss so easily without Trajek’s curse to aid me in that. It’s a horrible feeling, one I wouldn’t wish even upon my enemies, yet I am forced to endure it. And yet I’m condemned by the very person that has created that feeling within me, for wishing I did not have to suffer it.”

Emrith is surprised by Larewen's decision to draw close to him - surely she knows that his turned back does not mean he is blind to her approach - but even more stung by her words. They have the effect of shattering the frigid facade he has attempted to maintain. He whirls in an instant, drawing Heleg and Nahr as he moves, twisting so fast that the freed blades make a faint whisk-whisk sound through the air as he rounds on his former lover. "You speak of gnawing hunger, of loneliness?" he snarls, and his eyes hold tempests within them. "You dare speak to me of temporary, of solitude? You made your choices, Larewen, and so did I, but one of those, on both sides, caused me to likely outlive everyone I will ever love and care about. I owe my own loneliness and emptiness all to you. Your decision to give me what I wanted. I cannot blame you, but do not speak to me as if you are the only sufferer here. Do not dare!" He almost screams this last, and his whole body quivers with barely-throttled rage. The truth is not that -I was temporary. There was only one place I would not follow you, and you went there. I told you beforehand, and you went there anyway. So tell me, woman, who is it that bares the brunt of this? I gave up my mortality to follow you, knowing your history and your tendencies. I gave up Talyara for you. I ran from a woman who has done nothing but love me in order to try and seek a lasting union with you. And you repaid me by being weak! By succumbing to forces you were too arrogant to see clearly. By falling prey to someone else's affections and using it as an excuse to go to the one place that my conscience would not let me chase you to. And this is my fault? My fault?!" He jabs first Nahr and then Heleg in her general direction, but there is no real intent to harm her; each sword gives off a brief burst of light, first red and then blue, before subsiding. "No, Larewen. I am not temporary. You are temporary. Look at how many suitors you have had. When all of them leave you, for one reason or another, it begs the question why. Why do you always find yourself cut adrift? Have you ever stopped to think that each of us, in our own way, would have stayed with you except for some failing in yourself? You can call me weak, even craven. You can call me sanctimonious, even, or vindictive. But I gave up much for you. Trajek wants to use you, and loves you only in the way a master loves his chained hounds. And Shishi...do not even start me on that one. We all have our personal trials, never doubt it. But we have all loved you - or claimed to, in the case of Trajek - and each of us has, for one reason or other, left you. Look at yourself...a good long look, mind, and ask yourself why. It cannot just be our fault."

Larewen jerks backward at Emrith’s words, flinching. “You think I -chose- it?” she cries out, incredulously. “I just showed you the opposite, I showed you the truth, even the parts of it I ought not to, and all you can do is blame -me- for things outside my control? I fought it. I frakking-“ someone’s spent too much time around Khitti “-fought it for you, and I was punished for that. Now? I didn’t -have- to come here, Emrith. I didn’t have to make the choice to leave my body, to feel again. I could have stayed in that cursed husk. I could have waited there for eternity. You gave up your mortality for me, but your love for me barely extended beyond that. You’ve broken me in more ways than Shishi or Trajek has, yet still I seek out you.” Then, she is crying. The ghost of a strong woman has sunk to the floor, angry to the point of tears. “I seek out you, who blames me for my misfortunes. Who I could never and can never do anything right by, no matter how many of my good deeds outweigh my bad, all you see is the bad. That’s all you see, and you curse me for it.”

Emrith feels his fury draining away by degrees, and when Larewen collapses and begins to cry, he, too, kneels, placing his hands on the floor and letting go of his weapons. "You have said you would rather be with him than be alone. Is that not a tacit acceptance of your feeling toward him? That it is not against your will? In that way, have you not turned your back on me? You continue to characterize one particular shortfall of mine as something which mars my entire character, and that is not fair. But you are right about the rest of it. It is unfair of me to blame you for the pieces you cannot have helped. For that, you have my apology."

“Tacit? Perhaps so,” she whispers quietly. “What feelings I have developed for him are purely lust; I cannot love another the way I love you. It’s not… feasible.” She reaches for the familiar tin of cigarettes, and the ghostly version of her own becomes visible as the sniffling woman sticks one in her mouth. She lights it and though she is not really there, the familiar, acrid stench of burning tobacco permeates the air. “I don’t wish to turn my back on you,” she whispers between sobbing draws on her smoke.

Emrith falls quiet for a moment, kneeling there on the boards of the treehouse. His mind is awash with conflicting feelings and thoughts, and he is having trouble straightening fact from fantasy. The peculiar smell of tobacco, impossible though it seems, makes it all the worse, imparting to his sensory input both an aspect of the familiar and a hazy, surreal quality which he cannot reconcile alongside one another. "Then tell me," he says finally, speaking very cautiously, as a man may move when wading across a turbulent stream on stepping-stones. "Picture a scenario where I could look past the things you had a deliberate hand in, and would not blame you for the things that you could not help. A scenario where you and I were equals, and where I would not constantly be plaguing you about mistakes, or perceived mistakes. Tell me, if you would. If such a scenario could be manufactured, would it be to your liking, to your taste? Do you have enough presence of mind, or enough of your own will, that you could make this decision and stick with it? Or are we simply playing with matchsticks in order to see what burns at this point?"

Larewen puffs on her ethereal cigarette, mismatched eyes meeting Emrith’s. “Haven’t I already done just that? I chose to love you, and to not stop loving you - even though there are times I wish I did.” A final drag and the cigarette vanishes entirely, leaving that lingering smell. “There are some things that I can control, even if I cannot free myself of the darkness. Those slaves were the last to die at my hands.”

"That still does not answer my question, Larewen. Or perhaps I need to be more direct." He endeavours to meet her gaze. "Would you come back to me? Would you give everything a second chance, if your love truly is that strong and all-encompassing? Would you attempt to set right what we have both made wrong, each in our own way? Would you work with me, and have me work with you, instead of constantly being at odds? I have no doubt that we cannot agree on all things, but I know now that I have been hasty in some ways, narrow-minded in the extreme, as is the wont of my kind. I also know, however, that your love can play difficult pranks both on you and on those you set your sights upon. It is a thorny thing, love is, from any strong soul, and yours is stronger than most to still be here and at least partially in control of itself." He leans a little further forward, shifting his hands so that they are palm-up on the floor. "I suppose what I am really asking is whether or not you would like my help. First in being free of at least some of this curse, the thing which simultaneously binds you and empowers you in some way, but more importantly in rekindling what perhaps need never have been lost to begin with."

Larewen stares blankly at Emrith for a long period of time, unsure whether or not she’s actually heard him properly. The ghost’s lip trembles for a moment in disbelief before her chin lifts slightly. “I will always come back to you, Emrith. Always. I have not known a love like this before, a need so thorough.” She pushes herself onto her knees and closes the space between them. One ghostly, translucent - but tangible - hand reaches upward to touch the side of his face. “Even like this, I come back to you. I need you in ways I have never needed another before.” It’s true, too. The pad of her thumb seeks to brush his flesh, and the gesture will feel like nothing but a cool brush of air. “There will be things I must finish, things I must end,” she murmurs quietly, a flick of her gaze to her left ring-finger serves as a reminder of her engagement to Shishi. There’s also her betrothal to Trajek to consider. “I will need your help in the worst way when I return to my body - and I think perhaps we, together, with that stone, might be able to fashion a temporary prison again for Corruption.”

Emrith recoils a little from Larewen's touch, face concerned. "I would be a liar if I told you that to plunge would be something I did not want," he says, and there is new caution in his voice. "But I would be equally dishonest if I were to tell you that I trust you on faith. Shortly ago, you had thought to keep my possessions out of spite, and were speaking of being with a man who controls you rather than being alone. Now, given this chance - or seeming to be given it, in any event - you jump so willingly that my senses, too keen though they may be, smell a trap. This seems too easy. Too good to be true. How can I know that this is what you want? How can I know that you will not, in fact, attempt to do me harm or subjugate me after what I have done to you? You have admitted to being at least somewhat under the dominion of an agent far darker and more malicious than you are on your own. Love is a wondrous thing, yours especially, but lying broken and dead at the feet of my maker seems a poor end to such folly. Tell me, Larewen, how I can trust you. And how, for that matter, you can trust me."

The words to describe the hurt that flickers into existence on Larewen’s features do not exist. She recoils on her own, seeming to draw into herself as her image threatens to fade from sight. “There is nothing I can say to assuage your concerns, Emrith,” she says finally and there’s a distance in the soft, disembodied notes of her voice. “I could respond vindictively, but to what avail?” Her heart aches, in all its ghostly glory. The manner with which the necromancer distances herself, pressing against the opposite wall of the treehouse, nears being a retreat in and of itself. “Why toy with me like this, Emrith? You asked me a question, I answered it. Yes, I’d be willing to take that chance - even after what has transpired between us. Why? Because my heart longs for you. Because I’d rather make that choice, than fall back on… on that… that fear. I’ve revealed everything to you, on my own. Is that not a show of good will?” She sinks down along the wall, drawing her legs to her bloodied chest. One hand moves to rub absently at her neck and instead presses into the garish wound she bears. “You asking me that was too good to be true, yet I dared hope. Now you seek to instill doubt when, even without you in my life; even after what you did for me, I still struggled to do things differently.” Larewen draws her hand away from the gaping hole in her throat and withdraws another cigarette. “What do you want from me, if my word is not good enough?”

Emrith sighs, a soft, entirely useless sound given that he is in no need of the breath that makes it possible. "Larewen, it is not that I require anything. It is merely that I seek to assure myself that this would be safe. Because despite your good faith, despite everything, my heart cannot be sure. I think I would be a fool to be certain of anything, and you as well, if you thought this bore no element of risk. There is a difference between voicing doubts and toying with you; it was my intention to do the former, not the latter. I apologize if I gave the wrong impression." Emrith now seats himself on the treehouse floor, dimly wondering if anyone is going to come back. A quick glance upward shows him the card game, which has been miraculously left almost wholly intact on its table; a solitary card, the lady of shadows, has fallen to the floor. The spell-blade picks it up, toys with it a moment, glances down at his hands, then gently sets the little rectangle of hard card-stock aside. "This is a thing I am willing to think about. I would not have raised it purely to rip open a wound that may have begun healing, in its peculiar way. But it is a thing we must both be wary of. We have done each other a great amount of hurt, if you had not noticed." His lips twist into something like a smile, but it stops far short of his eyes, which are still troubled and a little distant.

“It’s a bit hard not to, considering,” Larewen replies, taking a deep drag from her cigarette. “If I wished you harm, I would have done so already. It wouldn’t be worth the agony I’ve put myself through this evening. The ache right here.” She taps her chest with her free hand. “This is where one either takes a chance or does not. Do the rewards outweigh the risks? For me, yes.” The elf’s head finally lifts to peer at Emrith across the room. Emrith :: That sleepy presence, the one which accompanies Emrith everywhere he goes nowadays, stirs fitfully. He opens his mouth, a slight smile forming on his lips, and suddenly, something happens. His right hand raises to chest height, and the only warning either of them gets is a flash of purple-blue fire from the depths of the gem on the ring he wears. A burst of intense light, tattered at its edges like rotted lace, erupts across the distance between them, spearing directly toward the center of Larewen's chest. It happens so fast and so suddenly that Emrith is likely just as shocked as Larewen himself is, and he looks down at his hand with mounting horror. "I...I..." he gasps, starting to shake. "Did not mean to do that. Larewen. Please. I did not mean to do that." But Emrith's eyes tell a different story. Though he does not know it, there is laughter in those deep green pools, black amusement at the hell he has just wrought upon the one whose defenses he has worked so hard to lower. That presence stirs once more, then falls still. The amusement, unknown to the elf, fades as well, leaving only shock on his face and misery in his eyes now.

Larewen emits a muffle cry of shock, the bolt of violet light robbing her of the ability to speak. She shudders, image flickering and threatening to fade entirely as she grasps at her chest, choking on the rush of magic. “Em…rith?” she questions, even as he please his mistake. In this form, her brown eye’s augmented ability does not work, so she is unable to tell the true source of the attack. His amusement is more painful than the attack itself. Her lips are trembling again, confusion and pain marring her scarred features. The elf closes her eyes for a long moment, blinking back tears. "You can't make me fight you; I will not harm you again."

Emrith looks at Larewen, bewildered by her words. "Fight you? I do not want to fight you. I just..." He feels the fingers on his right hand twitch, and this time he is prepared. He slams his fist down on the floor of the treehouse so hard that wood cracks and blood flows, spattering the gem on his ring with a few ruby droplets. He snarls with pain, but the desire to raise his hand again, to loose yet more of that awful force, has faded. "Larewen, something is wrong with me. Do you remember the Everspider? The ring I found? It--" He falls silent, struggling with the words. "It is trying to wake. I have been wandering, have been trying to stay away from people. But everywhere there is life, and everywhere it has fed. The larger it gets, the stronger it grows, the more it wants. And it is becoming...harder to fight. Perhaps...can you help me? It is a terrible thing to ask you after...after what has just happened, but can you help me?" Quite unconsciously, Emrith raises his hand to his lips and quite casually licks the blood off his knuckles. Larewen watches him slam his hand into the wood, watches the blood splatter the ring and for a moment she yearns for her body, to be able to smell that blood, to taste it. As he speaks and absently laps up his own blood, the banshee shifts closer and reaches for his hand to look at the ring. If he doesn’t draw it back, she’ll study the ring then interlace her fingers with his. For a moment, her hand passes through him and she concentrates for the sake of succeeding at her gesture. “I will help you… I told you that before you left me, and I still have every intention."

Emrith does not recoil, does not pull back, but Larewen's touch sends a little shiver through him, and he does flinch the slightest bit. "That is a good thing, because I suspect we may have to aid one another a great deal in the next little while. In my mind's eye, I am picturing two people attempting to cross a rickety rope bridge in a windstorm. That is how this feels. One snapped rope, one misstep, and both of us are lost." He shakes his head. "And now I am likely just being dramatic. But it is apparent to me that whatever this entity is, it will fight. When I opened my mouth to tell you things, it made as if to stop me. And it succeeded. When I concentrate, I can master it, but it lulled me this time. That is happening more often." He glances down at his own hand. "I feel as if this is going to get worse before it gets better, Larewen. You must understand that before you commit to anything, or before I do. And, if you wish to be freed from your own traps and snares..." Emrith lowers his voice to a near-conspiratorial whisper. "For appearance's sake, for now at least, perhaps it would be better if, to all others, we still appeared on different sides, as we so often have. Ambush may be the key to victory. I know a great deal about ambush."

Larewen doesn’t like that idea, and it shows on her delicate, scarred features as she withdraws her hand. Quietly she searches his face. “If you think that best,” she says quietly. He had a point, that she cannot deny. The tips of her fingers run over the ring in particular before she draws back. “Should I… keep the engagements then, for the moment at least?”

Emrith nods his head decisively. Distaste crosses his own countenance, clear enough for her to see at this distance, but he does not hesitate. "It would be best, much as it pains me to say it. Appearances are the best way to ensure an enemy who is lulled into a sense of complacency. Even if we should encounter one another in public, we may have to act a little, to maintain the charade. When the time is slightly better, I, or you, or the pair of us, can make a more definitive move toward what we seek to pursue. In the meantime..." Emrith's voice, still low, takes on a darker edge. "If it is possible, you must attempt to find a way to undermine Trajek, in particular. I can probably undo him alone, but any help is appreciated. If we aid one another, I think it will work a good way toward sweetening any sour blood that may remain between us. I do not expect all grievances to be forgotten, after all, nor all hurts to fade to nothing. You have much reason to doubt me, and I have plenty of my own."

Larewen furrows her brow in contemplation. Faking her betrothal to Shishi is easy enough but Trajek… The necromancer’s eyes search Emrith’s. “You realize… should Trajek return… If I do not continue to respond to him, to give in to his desires, he will suspect that I am up to something?” She almost stumbles over those words as she withdraws her fingers from the ring. “What then? What do I tell him? In some regards, he still sees me as his mistress, but in many more he sees me as his equal or his toy.”

Emrith looks almost comically surprised at Larewen's words this time, and stifles a laugh, followed by a grimace when he realizes what he has done. "His...affections. Yes, I had not thought so much of that. Were I a more jealous man, I believe that would trouble me more than it does. But I will trust you to do what must be done in order to keep him largely oblivious. If you should happen to have a knife handy during...well, during the event, however, would you stick it between his ribs for me? And give it a good twist." Emrith's eyes have suddenly turned almost flint-hard, bright green and direct. "He has earned that, and more. Can you do that to someone? Would you, if it meant at least a little more freedom? Or does the thought of being his toy...does that compel you in some fashion? If it does, I will do the deed myself."

Larewen blinks at Emrith. Unlike the elf, the banshee is a jealous woman. “Were I to drive a blade between his ribs, it would likely only fuel his desire,” she says, quietly revealing the depravity of her betrothal. “Trajek stopped being a someone the moment he was executed for his crimes; he is a ghoul. Sentient perhaps, and one of my most wonderful creations at one point, but still a ghoul.”

"Then tear him apart," Emrith amends. "Spark his passion, lower his guard, feign the lust you have not had to feign before, and when the moment is right..." Emrith makes an expressive little gesture with his hands, spreading his fingers as if flinging gobbets of flesh in all directions. "It will not be pretty, perhaps, but this should put an end to him, should it not?"

Larewen dips her head. “Aye, but for the magic necessary to accomplish that delightful act, I’ll need my body, and it will need to be well rested. I know the perfect spell for it,” she replies. Perhaps not the most comforting thought, but hey! There’s nothing she likes about this idea, though. Instead she reaches for Emrith’s face again, mismatched eyes seeking his. “I do not like this, but not for the reasons you might think. It is not compulsion or submission that bothers me,” she whispers quietly. “Do you think, perhaps, we will find happiness?”

"That," Emrith replies, "is a good question. The best path toward the answer comes in the form of another question. Is there a long-term future here? Something worth striving for? Because if not, it would be best for us not to even try. Too much pain. Too much loss." He falls quiet a moment, looking into Larewen's eyes without saying a word. Even though this is not her true form, the eye contact is strong, almost disconcertingly so. "This has to be something we both want, rather than the reaction to an action that we do not want. It must be because we seek it for its own sake, rather than because we cannot bear the alternative. I think that if we can both say that that is the case, that we wish to make another try because we love one another and believe there is a thing worth nurturing here, then that would be for the best...and really the only way forward. Aught else, and we might as well say goodbye right now, smile on the street when we see one another, and keep the fond memories while trying to eclipse the bad ones with blackness."

Larewen listens as he speaks, and focuses once more so that she is again mostly corporeal. She leans toward him, seeking to press her mouth to his. If he allows it, the gesture will be cooler than expected, but as really as kissing condensed air can be. “I like to think there would be; I want to spend my life at your side and with you at mine.”

Emrith permits the kiss, but warily, returning it - insofar as he can - only gently before disengaging. "Then let us try. Very, very tentatively. With the understanding that there may be a point where one or both of us decides that, much as we might want, it is not for the best." He eases back, doing it gradually so as not to appear to Larewen as if he is shrinking away from her. "We may have done all that we can do for the moment though, I think. To ask much more would be tempting the fates."

Larewen nods quietly. She wishes for more; she wants to feel his arms around her. But, courtesy of his own actions, that simply isn’t a possibility. “I should seek Gilwen, to let her know I’ve arrived. She’s requested my presence - an odd thing considering I spent much of the war in support of the drow.” All the way up until that moment Emrith’s life was in danger, anyway. “And I need to work out dealing with Corruption. I’d prefer having my body before I declare war on the Houses.”

"Well, let me know what, if anything, I can do, particularly on the sly," Emrith replies, standing as well. "Between the two of us, I think much can be accomplished. You know far more about the state of things than I." Larewen nods. “We’ve done it before.” And with that she fades from view - but not without a lingering caress as she takes her leave.