RP:Lola Returns

Background

This is part of the Kurgan's Run story arc.

Kurgan meets once again with the erstwhile love of his many lives, known to most as Caedan.

Elsewhere in the Fortress: The Main Hall

Caedan was a girl on a mission. She had been tracking the faint touch of Jolie's presence through Vailkrin and down the plains toward the headquarters. She had a mind to find the sineater and whine about her latest misadventure, and a vague, gnawing need for a substance she'd be much better off without. The psychic marched up the headquarters and squinted up at the archway. It shuddered, dipped, and pulled itself upward, as if trying to avoid coming into contact with Caedan as she passed through to the interior. She single-mindedly headed for the anteroom, moving through the hallway without sparing a second to greet anyone there, until she reached the middle archway, where she paused and narrowed her eyes. Her hands came to a defiant fold across her chest as she stepped toward the pool, which was preternaturally calm until she made too close of an approach, and the black waters recoiled, folding back on itself. "Give her back. I need to speak with her."

It should have known.. the severed, corrupt soul of the man who'd loved a girl throughout the span of all time, even as it curled back on itself, should have known she'd come. But it was a mindless thing, the mind that ruled it once a fractured, shattered mirror image that had somehow managed to go on existing without its mirror. The Obsidian Pool shrank from its equal and its opposite, its nemesis, even as it surged around her because it could not help but do so. Her touch was agonising. It was thing fragile as an insect's wings, as freedom. The Pool hated her. It loved her. It wanted to absorb her, and spit her out. It was not aware, truly, of any of this, in any clear way. It shivered, and moped and sulked back into its well, to lie still and pretend to be dark water, in which dark little fishies swam and all was.. well... it was.. well.

Caedan stepped closer, provoking the pool because it's what she did, and she didn't know any better, or didn't want to know any better. She crouched, coming close enough to be swallowed up in its infiniteness, but secure in the knowledge that it would not, and could not. "Give her back. I need to speak to her." The Pool twisted back on itself until a faint silhouette of Jolie arose there, mocking the psychic before it dissolved into the inky, viscous waters that so antagonized her. Caedan grew frustrated. Demanding only went so far, and the various daggers upon her person wouldn't make the pool any more agreeable to her request.

Kurgan was .. 'elsewhere' is quite the wrong word for it. There may not even -be- a word for where he was, or what state he inhabited. But the inky waters forged from his essence were roiling, he could feel it... "Excuse me a moment," he said, to a priest, "But I must see to... something...." And then the lost mage buckled and fell over in a heap, having lost his mind, or whatever shard of it was allowing him to hover in the shadows of sanity.

It was boggle-eyed and the colour of oil, and waggling a fin at the psychic as it popped its head up from under the black liquid, its wide-lipped mouth gasping while words popped out. "Lola." Then, "No. No." Then, "Not yet. Not yet, no." The fish made of darkness gawped and gaped. “I knew it. You came, Lola. Help me..."

Caedan narrowed her eyes at the scaly representation of Kurgan, and she shuddered under the weight of her memory, memories, some of which didn't belong to her. She rebuked the pool immediately, and stepped away as though she'd been struck. "No. I am not her. I have told you. I have told all of you." A butterfly descended from parts unknown somewhere along the cavernous, vaulted ceiling. It made a beeline for the fish and disappeared. "You will tell me where she is. I am here for her. Not you." Nevertheless, she squinted curiously at this latest representation, so unlike the imposing, authoritative figure he'd cut during one of their many, many first meetings.

In another pocket, hidden deep within the shell that housed the remnant existence of the greatest illusionist Lithrydel had ever produced, Kurgan's illusionary body twitched and moaned. In the pool, the fish - the shard - ducked under the dark water to avoid the fluttering light that hurt its eyes like white splinters of glass. "You. So cruel, Lola. So cruel. She. She is the Key. I am the Lock. Time. In time. In time. Not. Yet." In that comfortable room, where tea had been served, the man-shape groaned and retched, vomited up a flood of black liquid that sank int the stone and was gone. The fish said, "No time. Not now. Come. To me. To me."

Caedan endured all this meaningless, meaningful chatter with stoic resolve, waiting to be presented with the person she'd come to seek. "Stop it. I am. Not. Her." She hated him, this place, so much; she could feel her frustration grow by the moment until it was bubbling below her composed exterior. She couldn't take it any more. The psychic fell to her hands and knees next to the pool and thrust her hand through the fish, dissolving it instantly as it fled her touch. She was persistent, grabbing at the water when it shrunk away from her hand. Her cheek was flush to the obsidian stone siding as she continued to dig around in the water that attempted to both recoil and cling to her at the same time. Eventually she came upon what she was looking for, and with a mighty heave, she jerked a black figure toward the surface of the pool, and fit his hand to the side before flopping onto her back and staring at the dark ceiling above.

Kurgan would, if Leifong happened to be looking his way at that moment, seem to abruptly be swallowed by the floor, leaving the priest alone in the room, utterly, but for the faintly steaming teapot.

No time at all later, he was clutching the side of a well, gasping much like his icthyonic avatar, the liquid seeping off his hair and face like leeches escaping, fat slugs of it which plopped back into its remainder. Kurgan took a moment to gain his bearings, his eyes black as the water that'd birthed him here fixed on his erstwhile midwife. "Or.. I can come to you?" His pale features seemed to shed melancholy like an old cloak when his lips spread to a grin. "Lola. You've no idea how I've missed you. Welcome home. Oh - and your friend, the Key. I'm afraid..." he hauled himself out, shook tenebrous liquid off. "... she's a little indisposed, currently." All humour fled. "As, apparently, she's quite busy..." he shrugged. "Killing me."

Caedan picked herself up and put some space between Kurgan and herself, despite the fact she was happier to see him than she had been to see the fish. "This isn't home. My name's not Lola. Now look. I need to speak to her. You find her! Landlubber." It's the worst curse she knows; or rather, she knows a few, but this is by far the most insulting in the minds of those she's stolen it from. "Maybe if you were more agreeable she wouldn't be trying to kill you. Which she can't anyway. You'll just come back. I know. But if you hurt her, I will never come here again. None of us will. Ever. I will make sure every one of me knows never to see you again." She has no idea what she is saying.

Kurgan's features were a mask, all aspects of personality gone. Thus he'd remain for a time, simply staring at her, with vacant, dark eyes. Finally, his lips moved. "You must understand. She is the Key. I am the Lock." That said, he was suddenly animate again, smiling faintly, his long fingers smoothing down displaced ruffles on what was terribly antique-styled shirt, out of fashion by several thousands of years. "That's what it's all about, my dear. Killing me. It's what she was meant to do, all along. A most terrible trick. And really," he waved a hand toward her, cupped as if it would press to the shape of air displaced around her waist, ushering her toward a stone arch. "we ought to stop her. Or it'll all end, Lola. All of it, ended. Unraveled, gone." He stopped, gave her another faint curl of lips. "And we wouldn't want that."

Caedan took a step backward as soon as Kurgan's arm came up, despite a seemingly overwhelming compulsion to come closer. "Stop it. I'm not … No. I do want it." She felt the lie in the pit of her stomach, and wondered why it was a lie at all. "I have to find her." With that, she spun on heel and ran deeper into the building, which shimmered and bent around her, to both accommodate and hinder her flight. She knew Kurgan could find her easily, but for as long as she could run, he wouldn't find her accessible. And so she did, until she came to a dead end, slumped against a wall, and tried to dream herself away from this place.

Kurgan groped wildly at the space Caedan had occupied, his feet not quite catching on that motion was required of them to chase the girl until it was too late, and she'd fled into the darkness that was made of himself, and in which he, currently and somewhat ironically, possessed no means at all of finding her. "Lola!" his cry rang through empty halls and passages, into impossibly-constructed chambers, reverberated around the vaulted domes of ceilings. Its echoes fell to silence, then, and the once-man's shoulders sagged. His turned his inky eyes toward the Pool, and said quietly to himself, "She'll come back." The Pool was still, a black mirror, a dark eye staring at him. "Of course she'll come back," said the sundered illusionist, a little indignantly, as he trudged toward a corridor of stone and air. "She always does."