[ once again, ponta and temenos are handshaking in every possible manner because yeah. that's a mood. he waves slightly towards the cafe - get something for yourself, this weekend needs it, and then nudges out the chair with his foot to welcome him to join him. ]
You and I both.
[ gods. ] To say our current state is fragile would be putting it very, very lightly. All of us, I believe, will be in need of a weekly turnover. If nothing else, it is a semi-fresh start.
[ ... okay, okay, if you are wordlessly guilting him into treating himself right, he'll grab a hot chocolate before they continue their conversation. ]
... I hope a bit of calm will do everyone some good, yeah. Hard to say how much the wounds will really heal without any closure, though.
[ He stirs his cup, sighing. ]
And we have a fearful ability on the loose, still.
[ yeah!!!! again the same hat energy here. unparalleled.
temenos smiles a bit at that though, and settles with his tea, though the mention of the ability has even his expression looking a bit more grim, immediately. ]
Indeed. [ ugh. ] ... I'm glad that we were able to catch Ace, and I pray that Captain Sigrun may rest easily because of it, but it is the very nature of the way Reigen died that made it feel so pressing, at the end. I hate to have let one get away in any sense of the word, but this is particularly vexing.
I do think you are right, that it was likely a person's unique ability. The creative utilization of it is... troubling.
[ Ponta pauses for a minute. This kind of thing is the elephant in the room - the thing that needs to be spoken about and is still easier to keep silent outside of the privacy of team meetings. ]
We have. We're holding off on taking it for fact - as long as there's still time, it's best to keep looking for alternatives.
[ Though it really feels like they keep running into walls on that front. ]
It's just us, your team, and Phoenix now - that we know of, anyway.
[ he's patient as ponta thinks it over - and after, temenos nods, setting his tea cup down and bringing his hand to his chin, thoughtful. ] That's as far as I know, as well; and it is the same, for us.
We have already lost one of ours to an attempt on someone's life, and I hate the idea of playing along into the hands of what we've been supposedly 'tasked' to do on a single source of information, with no way to verify it.
[ the (x) doubt!!!! its real!!!! ]
But if we take that into consideration outside of the sphere of you and I, or outside of the sphere of better judgement: unless the person who acted against Reigen was on one of those teams... perhaps the most bitter medicine to swallow of all is that their objective means nothing for the group as a whole. And that is the only objective that has even a touch of some understanding compared to one of pure malice or spite, and that is being extraordinarily generous.
[ ie: he doesn't love that, either, but he's far too realistic to think that people won't take that note as guaranteed truth. ]
I'll be keeping my ear to the ground in the next few days to see what might come around in terms of information.
... yeah. I figured you wouldn't just let this go.
[ And he's glad for it, too. ]
It's not a secret that I didn't like Reigen very much, but... Well, this is a thousand times more bothersome than it was to have him alive.
[ He and Reigen did somewhat make up the week before Reigen's death, too. It's all so... frustrating!! But they'll spin in circles talking it through, just like they did at trial. ]
By the way... When we went to that mock-up of your world, we met someone who's apparently a friend of yours. Crick? He was more reliable than he looked.
[ ...well, by now, temenos has heard it, but it doesn't soften the blow any. crick is an open wound, and whatever response he has to the rest of ponta's words - agreement, thoughts on the case, anything - blow away like dust in the wind at the mention.
he falls silent, and that's enough of a reaction, no matter how composed his face is, like he needs half a second to himself to deal the mention.
and then, his mouth pulls into a more familiar smile, placid, but it's tinged with something unmistakably wistful, and he lets out a soft laugh. ]
... My read on him was much the same. [ reliable. more reliable than he looks - his little lamb, his godsblade, the man who jumped terrified at the first sight of a monster and hid behind temenos, but came to be one of the bravest people he'd ever met.
more reliable, indeed. ] I imagine he made some sort of immediate proclamation to protect you...? He did tend to be the type.
[ Though Temenos is never one to wear his heart on his sleeve, the shift in his expressions is enough to alert Ponta that he'd better tread carefully around this topic. ]
We were trying to protect him, we'd thought.
[ Temenos' face here, Nimona's and the lamb's warning that Crick would be in danger... Well, things are sure adding up here and he doesn't like the way this is going. ]
But he did end up shielding me quite a bit when we encountered a monster in the forest. Maybe I owe it to him that I came back... well, alive-ish.
When I first met him, he cowered behind me in a fight, out of fright, like a little lamb.
[ temenos says this with no lack of quiet amusement - that wistfulness remains, but his mouth pulls up into a slight smile. how far crick came, in the span of such a short time: he'd get flustered and embarrassed whenever temenos reminded him about his brief cowardice, but in the end... well. he'd grown into a true knight. it sounds like whatever the others went through only proved it.
... ]
... What you all saw must have been a false version of Solistia, in the way that all of these little adventures seem to be. [ he's quiet, for a moment. for someone who is so realistic, there's a bramble here that's hard to overcome - the same bramble that keeps him from talking about any of the others, too, and temenos is about to answer him.
... but luckily i looked back and saw this was week 4 and remembered i promised you a memshare and didnt come through because it was a Week Of Things Happening it's still in time to produce a series of comic panels that put the answer out for him. ]
[ it starts with a conversation with crick wellsley. ( 42:37 - 48:02. )
crick wellsley, godsblade (newly anointed); your by chance companion, a man who has pulled you out of trouble by your vestments more than once just by existing in your sphere. a pure hearted, endlessly good knight, a lost little lamb desperately in need of guidance. someone you have come to be quite fond of. someone who told you hours before this heart to heart, with the sincerest expression on his face - I believe in the gods. And Temenos, I choose to believe in you.
yet, hours later, he asked you last night if there was anything in this world he could have faith in, and you gave him the answer that keeps you moving, realistic, cynical, honest. "That you must find out for yourself. Though I must warn you, there are few things worthy of our faith."
in his crick way, he calls you out on what is undeniable truth, that you don't have much faith in the gods. chosen cleric or otherwise, what you have faith in is the truth, the logical, the things that make sense. he knows this about you, but even so, he confesses his worries and his life story, tells you a fact that shocks you - that he met roi, once upon a time.
roi, a foundling just like you, who found you when you were tiny and terrified and banded together with you. roi, who attracted the kindness of the pontiff jorg, who was adopted at the same time you were. your brother, not in blood but in every other manner. and... you see so much of roi in crick: it's hard not to. they're both the same. honest. bright - so bright, they're hard to look at, sometimes. earnest. faithful. morally sound. the purest heart of the sacred flame.
but roi is gone, disappeared to the wind five years ago, and the young man who stands before you, eyes brimming with tears, is not. he tells you his dream is to cleave wickedness from the world. you can't help yourself but to poke holes in it, ever the cynic, just like you were for roi. just like you always were, for roi.
it's such a familiar conversation that you choose not to sit on it, for once. crick deserves a tiny bit of leeway, after everything you've put him through, and you push past your own guarded nature and pull the information like brambles out of your throat. casually, like it doesn't still feel like an open wound, you tell crick of roi's disappearance, and of the way he is the source of your cynicism and your realism, of the way you've mistrusted the church from the moment he disappeared, and how doggedly you searched for the truth for what happened to him ever since.
something shines in crick's eyes when he speaks to you. he looks sad - upset, even, in the way he does when you remind him that his world of faith is not so clean and bright, but he agrees anyway. he really is learning, crick - you wonder if it's for the better or the worse, that you could be jading something so pure. honestly, crick admits, there are problems in the sacred guard, and immediately wants to jump to work.
...but talking about roi exhausts you. the weight of your sadness is harder and harder to bear, nowadays, no matter how easily you hide it behind your cassock. you fake an excuse about crick's injury from an earlier fight, reaching out to touch his arm, and crick calls you out on just wanting time alone. it stings, a little, to be so easily read, but it comes with a mix of pride and affection, and you compliment him on his perception, though you've been left feeling exposed. he leaves you for the night; you head to the inn for a night of tossing and turning, something close to what's called sleep.
--
in the morning, you awaken to a hubbub in the center of stormhail.
you've seen this hubbub before - the shocked crowds, the murmuring. someone died, last night - someone was murdered, and you imagine it had everything to do with the very same sacred guard and the truth you've been seeking all this time.
"That's one of them from the sacred guard, isn't it? How'd this happen?" says a concerned townsperson. another gasps, says a prayer. you ask them to move with a combination of politeness and your general aura as the inquisitor and stride through the crowd, and as it parts -
for the third time, a part of your world shatters into pieces.
slumped up against the brick wall outside of the headquarters of the sacred guard is crick wellsley. his body is mangled; blood seeps through his white cloak and down into the white snow, down his white, lifeless face. by some miracle of aelfric, at least his eyes are closed.
your stomach does an unpleasant, horrible twist, and his name tears out of your mouth somewhere between horror and despair ] Crick! [ as you shove past the last of the crowd to drop to his side, to check his pulse. it's the same thing you felt when the pontiff died - that the healing magic you have mastered is useless, that this supposed gift you were given is pointless in the moments it matters the most. you press your fingers to crick's wrist. nothing.
roi's disappearance, first. the pontiff, dead on the floor, mauled by a beast in his own cathedral. and now...
you don't really realize it, but like any number of mourners you've comforted before, you find yourself asking no one - why. the whammy of grief and frustration - why crick, of all people, even if you know the answer - burbles uselessly in the back of your brilliant brain, and it's as you're still holding his wrist that you notice the scrap of paper clutched tightly in crick's free hand. slowly, you uncurl his fingers, icy cold and stiff, and pull free what looks like a torn page from of a book, with a single line of writing.
"Surrender yourself not unto silent dusk. For the light shall fade."
it's the same words. the same ones scribbled onto a scrap of bloody paper in the pontiff's final book of scripture. it's a clue. it's a - it's information.
it's as you're holding this in your hand, eyes wide and head already starting to spin, that you hear the sacred guard bark at the crowd to leave. one in particular comes to the corpse, to you, and speaks with loathing. - "what are you doing here?"
you snap at one of many useless crows that he's your friend, that you want to help with the investigation, but you're called dead weight, and the sacred guard scoffs and sends you away. you go, without protest, clutching the paper crick died for in your hand, safely stolen away from the prying eyes of the crows.
for a moment, you look past them. you think of crick, his beseeching eyes and naive, pure dream. his want to fix corruption, the way roi had, the way you want to. the last bastion of goodness left standing in the church of the sacred flame, the little lamb who you'd grown quite fond of, now struck down - a lamb in the den of the wolves - and you stare at the paper in your hand. ]
Your clue is safe, and it was not laid out in vain. I will follow the path you've laid out before me.
[ and you do what you've done a hundred times in your life. you do what you did when you were standing at the body of the man who raised you, the only authority figure you've ever known and trusted. you do it now, at the body of your little lamb, who despite all the questioning you led him to, believed in you.
you close your eyes, and you tap into yourself, and say: ] The truth...lies in the flame.
[ invocation spoken, you let the world around you fade away to blue. (visual. to 55:06 - 58:03.)
--
by now, this visualization technique is familiar enough to you, but there's something different about feeling the light of the sacred flame form the ghostly shape of crick wellsley. silent and unspeaking - they never speak, when you see them - he walks up to you, and waits patiently for your guidance.
you feel something heavy in your heart as he does - waiting to be guided, like always. a lost little lamb, expectant. waiting. you want him to be able to move on in peace. you close your eyes, in the midst of the visualization, and regard him after a slow, deep breath. Crick. I swear to you, I will carry on the work you were torn from yesterday.
...and so, you must be off.
crick's ghost gives a near imperceptible nod, then turns around and starts walking under your guidance. you follow him, follow the path that he takes, into the rooms of the sacred guard, into a library. his ghost shows you a book that's a little too worn, and he touches it - you do the same, thinking it might be the book that he tore the page from, but as you pull the book, it's just the scripture on the creation of the heavens and earth. you frown at something scrawled on the inside about the heavens and making the earth shake, and when you look up, crick's ghost is turning around and walking outside - you follow him.
you see him again up in the rafters, and realization hits you, followed by a rush of affectionate pride, followed by a hollow sort of sorrow. clever little lamb, who read the clue, who investigated the 'heavens', who leads you to a pressure plate on a tall column that opens a door in the stained glass paneling of the cathedral. you follow his path as he walks away - you can imagine his startled expression but you won't, and he leads you down the stairs and to the stained glass.
crick's ghost stands before the door, his back to you. for a moment, you feel like you're standing in your home again, watching roi disappear into the distant night, and you realize that this is it. the ghost stays still. he doesn't look back for even a second. you swallow.
...You became a true knight before you passed, Crick. No ordinary man would notice such a thing.
you feel the power of the sacred flame pulling away, and you roll your shoulders back, and exhale, and release. the world around you flickers, and the ghost, his mission complete, fades away into nothing, framed and translucent by the holy sacred light that leaks in through the glass...
...and you're standing in the too-silent cathedral alone, the world in its normal light, carrying only the ghosts you always do. ]
I'm going to find the truth, Crick. [ you say, out loud. his ghost is gone now, but you promise him anyway. ] The truth you were diligently working towards.
[ and you step off into the darkness.
in the belly of the proverbial beast, you find the book crick tore his page from - you find a secret library, and you find the deputy of the crows, who informs you with a cackle that it was the head of their ilk who killed crick - that he had to die because he knew too much. you, by leading him to the truth, led him straight to the lion's den.
you're so angry, suddenly. angry for the injustice of it all. angry for crick, angry for the pontiff, angry that your intuition about these gods-damned crows has always been right, angry enough that it shows on your face when you ask where kaldena is.
the deputy points it out, and mocks you. "Does it hurt, knowing your cute little assistant's been killed?"
you don't respond, lest she know that she's right. the deputy tells you cheerfully that kaldena's gone, and you have to die, that the hound must be brought to heel, and you draw the staff of judgement with a kind of quiet, holy fury that you never show. ]
Fine. Seal your lips, you so called messenger of the divine. [ you snap, and with the other travelers at your side, you will walk out of here alive.
the truth, the truth that crick wellsley fought to find, must be brought to light. ]
[ .... when the memory ends, temenos is silent, pressing his lips together in a thin line. ]
[ The memory is as sad as it is intense. Being in Temenos' shoes is strange for how familiar it feels while being completely different. The two of them are people who have nothing in common, really, and yet... The loss of an adoptive guardian to an uncertain fate, at the hands of the organization you belong to, and... and people who are bright, too bright, so much brighter than you that it fills you up and almost threatens to burn you...
Crick is nothing like Cota. In fact, what Ponta values about Cota is precisely that he doesn't have ideology. But the comparison is close enough that Ponta can understand the loss, imagine its magnitude.
What does one say to a memory like this? Condolences hardly cut it. ]
... organizations always swallow you up and spit you out, huh? No matter the world.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
You and I both.
[ gods. ] To say our current state is fragile would be putting it very, very lightly. All of us, I believe, will be in need of a weekly turnover. If nothing else, it is a semi-fresh start.
no subject
... I hope a bit of calm will do everyone some good, yeah. Hard to say how much the wounds will really heal without any closure, though.
[ He stirs his cup, sighing. ]
And we have a fearful ability on the loose, still.
no subject
temenos smiles a bit at that though, and settles with his tea, though the mention of the ability has even his expression looking a bit more grim, immediately. ]
Indeed. [ ugh. ] ... I'm glad that we were able to catch Ace, and I pray that Captain Sigrun may rest easily because of it, but it is the very nature of the way Reigen died that made it feel so pressing, at the end. I hate to have let one get away in any sense of the word, but this is particularly vexing.
I do think you are right, that it was likely a person's unique ability. The creative utilization of it is... troubling.
no subject
[ It doesn't bode very well, if you ask him. ]
Hopefully they've obtained their objective with this one kill.
[ He won't count on it, though. Counting on goodwill hasn't gotten them anywhere this far... ]
no subject
[ the way temenos says this suggests that he does not have any hope that that is the case either. (x) doubt.
he frowns into his tea. ]
...In terms of objectives, therein I suppose lies the rub. I take it your team has discussed that note that has been passed around, in terms of quota?
no subject
We have. We're holding off on taking it for fact - as long as there's still time, it's best to keep looking for alternatives.
[ Though it really feels like they keep running into walls on that front. ]
It's just us, your team, and Phoenix now - that we know of, anyway.
no subject
We have already lost one of ours to an attempt on someone's life, and I hate the idea of playing along into the hands of what we've been supposedly 'tasked' to do on a single source of information, with no way to verify it.
[ the (x) doubt!!!! its real!!!! ]
But if we take that into consideration outside of the sphere of you and I, or outside of the sphere of better judgement: unless the person who acted against Reigen was on one of those teams... perhaps the most bitter medicine to swallow of all is that their objective means nothing for the group as a whole. And that is the only objective that has even a touch of some understanding compared to one of pure malice or spite, and that is being extraordinarily generous.
[ ie: he doesn't love that, either, but he's far too realistic to think that people won't take that note as guaranteed truth. ]
I'll be keeping my ear to the ground in the next few days to see what might come around in terms of information.
no subject
[ And he's glad for it, too. ]
It's not a secret that I didn't like Reigen very much, but... Well, this is a thousand times more bothersome than it was to have him alive.
[ He and Reigen did somewhat make up the week before Reigen's death, too. It's all so... frustrating!! But they'll spin in circles talking it through, just like they did at trial. ]
By the way... When we went to that mock-up of your world, we met someone who's apparently a friend of yours. Crick? He was more reliable than he looked.
no subject
he falls silent, and that's enough of a reaction, no matter how composed his face is, like he needs half a second to himself to deal the mention.
and then, his mouth pulls into a more familiar smile, placid, but it's tinged with something unmistakably wistful, and he lets out a soft laugh. ]
... My read on him was much the same. [ reliable. more reliable than he looks - his little lamb, his godsblade, the man who jumped terrified at the first sight of a monster and hid behind temenos, but came to be one of the bravest people he'd ever met.
more reliable, indeed. ] I imagine he made some sort of immediate proclamation to protect you...? He did tend to be the type.
no subject
We were trying to protect him, we'd thought.
[ Temenos' face here, Nimona's and the lamb's warning that Crick would be in danger... Well, things are sure adding up here and he doesn't like the way this is going. ]
But he did end up shielding me quite a bit when we encountered a monster in the forest. Maybe I owe it to him that I came back... well, alive-ish.
no subject
[ temenos says this with no lack of quiet amusement - that wistfulness remains, but his mouth pulls up into a slight smile. how far crick came, in the span of such a short time: he'd get flustered and embarrassed whenever temenos reminded him about his brief cowardice, but in the end... well. he'd grown into a true knight. it sounds like whatever the others went through only proved it.
... ]
... What you all saw must have been a false version of Solistia, in the way that all of these little adventures seem to be. [ he's quiet, for a moment. for someone who is so realistic, there's a bramble here that's hard to overcome - the same bramble that keeps him from talking about any of the others, too, and temenos is about to answer him.
... but luckily
i looked back and saw this was week 4 and remembered i promised you a memshare and didnt come through because it was a Week Of Things Happeningit's still in time to produce a series of comic panels that put the answer out for him. ][ .... when the memory ends, temenos is silent, pressing his lips together in a thin line. ]
no subject
Crick is nothing like Cota. In fact, what Ponta values about Cota is precisely that he doesn't have ideology. But the comparison is close enough that Ponta can understand the loss, imagine its magnitude.
What does one say to a memory like this? Condolences hardly cut it. ]
... organizations always swallow you up and spit you out, huh? No matter the world.