divergentresolve | 1332 AE - Jora's Keep, Bjora Marches

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1332 AE - Jora's Keep, Bjora Marches

It's cold inside the keep, even when the storms of winter have been driven back and held at bay. Inside the barracks, even sitting right in front of the fire, there seems no way to get warm. The norn in this place feel it too. Despite all their customary resilience to frigid climes, Vrenille has caught more than one stamping their feet and rubbing their arms when they think no one's looking. And it's best, always, not to be looking--not to leave anyone feeling too looked at--not with tempers as brittle as dried out bones.

They've been here ten days. Maybe. It's gotten hard to keep track.

Ten days since Bangar vanished from the All Legions Rally, since Sesyria managed to secure release for Hakkyuu and Vrenille from the Grothmar Valley brig--the two of them along with Polemos, who'd refused to leave their side the whole time. Ten days...or maybe twelve now. The count is getting...strange. It's easy to get confused in this place.

Vrenille remembers clearly things that happened. Remembers sequence. Remembers (mostly) cause and effect. It's only duration that gets muzzy in his head, though muzzy has a way of bleeding through. Start to second guess one thing and you easily feel you need to second guess them all:

There'd been a scuffle. More of that One charr bullshit. A pair of humans drew easy attention, and even a charr companion at their side wasn't enough to take the crosshairs off them, especially not a charr so readily read as Olmakhan, no matter their heritage. Polemos was raised in the Legions, he knew what to do to deescalate, but the renegades egging each other on weren't interested in deescalation.

Maybe if the others had been there--the rest of the guild, their other charr allies--it would have been different. Maybe this all would have been different. But Hakkyuu and Vrenille could hold their own--they did hold their own--and when the guards arrived it was easy for the finger pointing to go the wrong way, make the targets look like the perpetrators. Bangar had stonewalled their release for days, but clearly they weren't the only ones.

By the time people realised how many rogue warbands had followed Bangar north, the whole assembly was in disarray and no one much cared about keeping detainees in the brig anymore.

Vrenille isn't sure anymore whether the call for relief teams in Bjora Marches came then or later, or when exactly he learned Almorra was missing, when he learned of the massacre here at the Keep. He remembers only that the cold had sunk in by then. But the cold, he thinks, started to sink in early.

They'd travelled here through a long alpine climb, the route wending its way north through dwarven ruins still held by the Stone Summit and towards Darkrime Delves along a path deeply rutted by the treads of tank tires. They were on the trail of Steel--tracking Vitrax who, after a drunken disagreement with Ghila and Havoc, had been seduced by prestige and promise (and probably one prototype TT6-B Devourer) into taking a recruitment offer they all suspected would end in his death.

There's no way Vrenille could say now whether it was mission creep or the sound of whispers that got him so turned around on what they're doing here: saving Vitrax from himself and his techno-romance temper tantrum, lending their aid to the relief mission called by the Vigil or to Jhavi in her attempt to pick up the pieces after Almorra's death, or something else completely.

And then Hakkyuu went out into the snow with a Vigil search team heading for the Aberrant Forest and none of them reported back after.

The world turned inside out. A voice slipped into the back of Vrenille's mind.

He lost track of how long they searched, how many times he found a guildmate's hand on his arm steering him back to the path when he started to drift, or how they moved together practically in a trance, snatching at moments of clarity like beacons to follow through a fog.

They had found bodies. So many bodies. The team Hakkyuu had left with, one by one, frozen in the snow, and sometimes worse--sometimes worse than frozen. More than once Vrenille believed they'd found him, thought he saw him there between the trees. He wasn't the only one who ran towards visions--hallucinations that weren't there. Mirages of the cold: he ought to know better. And in the end when they did find him, sunken eyed and cheeks hollowed with hunger, the voice whispered in Vrenille's mind.

He wants to kill you.

That was days ago. And the voice persists.

Hakkyuu's words have been disjointed, seeming nonsense, and now Vrenille doesn't know how many days it's been. But he knows that this morning he heard Kyinnlen and Sesyria speak, heard Kyinnlen raise the inevitable question: ought they not leave? They've lent what aid they can here. Hakkyuu is unwell, his mind assailed, his voice barely his own. Somewhere Vitrax is still out there, yes. No doubt the charr will want to push on. Perhaps, though, the guild ought to withdraw--heal, regroup, reassess, perhaps from back in Lion's Arch.

He overheard, and so did Hakkyuu, who he could hear interrupting them, having none of it. The conviction in his voice carried without Vrenille needing to see his face. He wouldn't countenance a retreat for his sake. (There, at least, he sounded clear--the voice of his old self, no ravings and no whispers. His will was firm: of course he wouldn't leave.)

Now, hours later, Vrenille sits in front of the fire at the Keep, a fur wrapped around his shoulders as he stares into the light dancing in the hearth and wishes he could get warm. It's easy from there, egged on by whispers, for thoughts to spiral, and it's only at several long moments delay that he registers Hakkyuu standing near him, having walked up while Vrenille was lost thinking...what? What was he thinking?

His head swivels towards him, blinking the world back into focus, "Hakkyuu?"

He wants to kill you.

"You all right?"

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To Hakkyuu, everything makes sense within a state of turmoil.

When Hakkyuu after being rescued from the forest, so dense it felt like night all day around and time ceased to have meaning, there's a disorientation like he'd never experienced. How much time has passed? Where is he? What world? What version of it?

It takes him some time to parse through what's real and what isn't, what's his own anxiety and what is implanted in his mind. It's a frustrating process of unwinding the strands and to anyone on the outside, yes, he must seem deranged and unsettled in the mind, because to a certain extent that is precisely what he is.

On the whole though, to Hakkyuu, he shakes everything into place like sand through a sieve in relatively short order: he's in Tyria. He's in Bjora's Marches. He narrowly escaped being devoured by, or becoming, a Boneskinner. The voice in his head is familiar--Jormag's whispers of insecurity. And, most significantly, he's not in Duplicity.

In point of fact, not being in Duplicity is what causes his mind the most confusion to begin with. To him, he passed out thinking Vrenille has died in the snow and woken up in the keep, then two years were spent trapped in a sex-fuelled city far beyond Tyria's scope and knowledge, and now he's back in Tyria again.

He'd asked Vrenille at some point in the swirling mental haze in an urgent, panicked voice, where Stephen was and almost immediately regretted it; the lack of recognition was palpable and the dread set in colder than the blizzard outside.

Hakkyuu stopped asking questions, curled in on himself and held tight to the realisation that he was alone. Not literally, not in key ways that matter--Vrenille is here. The guild is here. They're alive. He's alive. And, almost devastatingly, Stephen's work had paid off.

And now that he's in Tyria, work needs to happen. There's no slowing down missions for him and his emotional state and there's no time to try and find the right words to share with Sesyria, who needs barefaced facts: yes, Hakkyuu is fine; yes, he can do his job, yes; they should press on; no, he's not a liability.

It's fine. I'm fine.

Except it isn't and Hakkyuu knows they all know that too. It's not the frigid voice in his head causing the paranoia now because he knows this voice well, has spent long enough in the city processing the fact the echoing words in his skull aren't real. Jormag's voice isn't the problem now.

It already feels too itchy though and like he needs to do something with all of this energy that he doesn't know how to manage fully. And there's only really one person he wants and needs to work on this with, the nervousness running through his body like electricity as he approaches Vrenille by the light of the fire.

He just doesn't know what else to do and the protracted pause before he speaks makes that all the more blatant.

"We need to talk."

After his panicked awakening, that's already more words in succession than he's offered in days.

Vrenille hasn't had the time nor the benefit of perspective to put the pieces together--the whisper is not yet Jormag for him. There's no identity attached to it beyond the marches and the woods and maybe the keep itself. It could be the storms. It could be the cold. It seems to have arrived with the cold.

Perhaps that makes it more insidious: not having a who leaves it more undifferentiated, harder to separate from himself. Still, it's not exactly that he's listening. Or he is listening, but in a neutral, removed sort of way--he knows what the whispers are telling him without knowing precisely how he feels about that moment to moment. Not seduced, at least. It's abstract, another aspect to an array of experiences that feel half unreal. Everything but the cold. The cold is insistent.

He blinks up at Hakkyuu. Talking is not something he's been doing much of these past days--almost alarmingly so. Come to think of it, talking's not something Vrenille feels he's done a lot of himself lately either. So yes, perhaps they do need to talk. Perhaps it's a necessary counterweight to listening. He nods.

"Will you sit?"

There are many people who will ask Hakkyuu to sit and a steady ripple of stubborn tension will roll up through his body like water freezing before often coming out his mouth as a curt I'm good where he will proceed to stand even more loudly without increasing his volume.

That ripple emerges when Vrenille asks his question, though there's no immediate strike down forthcoming.

He won't believe you.

Hakkyuu narrows his eyes, shoots a glare off the side and let's his lip curl in annoyance as he hisses a sharp shuddup, you're not fuckin' real.

It doesn't matter how real or not Jormag's whispers are—this was the mantra he felt toward in Duplicity and it became an anchor point there that it's something he can deploy here too, he's sure.

There's another pause, a frown as the not-real voice whispers He thinks you're raving mad.

"Not you," he says, this time directly to Vrenille as he locks eyes eyes him again.

They won't be able to trust someone who is not sound of mind.

Hakkyuu does his best to ignore it, sighs long and deep, then steps around to take a seat beside Vrenille.

"I forgot how much this place is a real bastard on the mind and senses."

So Hakkyuu's hearing it too.

That's not exactly a shocker but it is a significant confirmation. Vrenille's had his suspicions--about Hakkyuu, about everyone. No one has directly said as much, but he's gotten the feeling that he's not the only one hearing profane whispers.

Granted, no one else is talking back to the whispers, which is a little concerning. But better talking back than listening to, he supposes.

What does that say about you then?

But Hakkyuu sits, which at least is something. And then speaks and Vrenille's brow furrows.

"You...forgot?" He's not sure in what interval Hakkyuu would have had a chance to forget.

A mild wince passes through Hakkyuu, mostly in his face as his eyes squeeze closed and his mouth pinch off to one side. That was a more careless slip on his part, a messy declaration from a place of disorientation and not exactly the opener he would want to go with were he more in control of his mind and senses.

It's opened the door for the conversation though, even if it's more of a sudden slamming back on hinges rather than a gentler, slower swing as he'd like.

He doesn't rush though. Instead, Hakkyuu keeps his gaze lowered, hands nestle in his lap, the fingers of his right hand toying with his left wrist. In a mixed blessing kind of way, at least there will come a time when Stephen can be a smug bastard about his work.

"If I said the word 'duplicity,' what's the first thing you think of?"

The furrow in Vrenille's brow deepens with confusion, watching Hakkyuu's fingers on his wrist--touching something new there that Vrenille hasn't seen before, some sort of trinket. ...Odd.

Don't leave it with him.

He focuses on the question, which is also odd, but it's a reference to the whispers, he assumes.

"Double speak? Deceit? A...voice that wants to convince, but isn't trustworthy."

It's not trustworthy, this whisper. That, he thinks, is what they're speaking of. So he does not ask about the trinket. Not now, not yet.

The way Hakkyuu's stomach sinks is more like air being let out of a balloon through a tiny hole than the sensation of a piano crashing through floorboards. It's not terribly surprising, but it's still disappointing all the same.

He's alone with this. If Vrenille doesn't remember, Sesyria won't remember, and if neither remember and he's the only one who does then he's going to sound insane talking about it.

Are you sure that you're not? What if it's not them, what if it's you?

The lack of expression in his face is surely enough to indicate to Vrenille that wasn't the answer he'd be hoping for; Hakkyuu's unreadable expressions to others are rarely illegible to Vrenille.

As the pad of his thumb swipes slowly back and forth across the engraved white gold rune nested against his pulse, Hakkyuu considers what he wants to say next within the context of everything. He could expand, he could jump right in with both feet, just throw everything out there and grasp for Vrenille in panic in a rare sign of desperate need for reassurance, but Hakkyuu isn't that far gone and never that weak. He can handle this. And he can take his time.

"You hear it too, huh."

He lifts his left hand then, lightly tapping his forefinger to his own temple.

"Cold whispers from the snow."

It's not really a question, just a presumptive assertion.

"It's a bastard. Try and ignore it. It's just tellin' you lies and when you start listenin' it'll have you walkin' circles lookin' for phantoms or worse. So don't feed it by givin' it attention."

He waves his hand in Vrenille's direction.

"It has me believin' I was travelling with someone from the Vigil who never existed. Had me thinkin' the guy froze to death in the forest. He looked just like you, and for a while I couldn't tell which way around it was--had you and me gone out there and I got so turned around I thought you were a Vigil soldier? Was I with a soldier and he looked like you? Or never looked like you at all? Or was I always just out there on my own and my mind and the whispers made the whole damn thing up."

His eyes drift to the flames as he runs his tongue over his back molars with a sigh. This doesn't feel like something that happened only days ago, but years, for Hakkyuu. He's had time to think about it all, to process and turn it over and examine it like a chunk of glacier broken off and clear against the morning light. It hadn't been Vrenille and everything else was irrelevant except the definitive conclusion, which bares repeating.

"So like I say, it's a bastard. Don't listen to it."

"We heard you went out with a Vigil crew. When they didn't report in, we went out looking. Found--well, we think it was them. Found 'em one by one out there in the snow. Some in the forest, some before it."

That's the easy part of the answer. At least on the surface it seems factual and straightforward. Did one of those Vigil soldiers look like Vrenille? A passing resemblance maybe--surely not just like him...although some of them, what had been done to their bodies...and how confused he'd sometimes felt when they were out there searching--no, he can't be absolutely sure, and his frown probably says clear enough that he's second guessing himself. He doesn't know which one of them has things the right end round right now. He doesn't know if either of them do.

"You talk like y'know what it is," that whisper. And maybe he does. Maybe some clarity of understanding came into his mind while he was out there in the snow, alone. Vrenille isn't the sort to insist that insight can't come through altered states of consciousness.

It doesn't explain why Hakkyuu would be so disappointed by his answer though, and he can sense in his gut that he was. He looks at the strange rune under his thumb and then back up at Hakkyuu. Perhaps an alternate explanation: "Is it 'cause of that?"

Vrenille's question earns some expressions flickering past Hakkyuu's features in quick succession, first confusion, then mild annoyance. There's a knee-jerk reaction where wants to tell Vrenille to stay on topic, but that's neither right nor fair because to Vrenille that surely is on topic, and besides Hakkyuu has already seemingly bounced from unrelated subjects himself already.

"No, it's not 'cause of that," he said simply, and while there's a temptation to tug his sleeve back down over the rune, Hakkyuu just barely resists it.

"They told me, the Vigil crew, that they knew some guys matching the description I gave, but no one like that went with the group I was out with. No one with the name he told me either. So someone, or something, made him up. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was Jormag. Who knows. It doesn't matter because if he did exist, he's dead now. And if he never existed in the first place--"

He gives a light shrug. Callous though it might seem, digging at that spot is a path toward going insane for real.

"Jormag--?" Putting a name to the whisper--putting that name to it, brings him up short, straightens his shoulders as his sits up.

That is a good deal more significant than the name of a hypothetical Vigil soldier, more significant than the question of a man with Vrenille's face. Those things, if it's true, would just be window dressing, a diversionary tactic to keep attention from what's behind the curtain.

But what if he's wrong? That is, after all, a very strange rune. He guards it so closely.

"You think the whisper is Jormag?"

The space Duplicity afforded Hakkyuu to listen to the whispers relatively free of the needling force behind the words has been valuable. After the initial recoiling, he came to feel the difference between the way the whisper felt in Tyria compared to in the city. In Duplicity, they really were just words, possibly an echo or memory of an experience, or the residue of magic cut off from the source like stepping under shelter from a monsoon and just needing to wait to dry off.

It's meant he could listen to the voice more closely, but safely, parse through theories, piece together information with a clear head without the immediacy of danger on the doorstep. If nothing else, Duplicity allows that safety space anyway from Tyria itself.

Though, as Hakkyuu has already experienced, what Duplicity affords its transported guests while in that world doesn't come home with them when they leave, so any theorising, any skills gained, any knowledge obtained within the city is functionally useless.

This time, the experience is different. Hakkyuu remembers, and the sensation of the whispers is far more intense and gripping, several fishing hooks threaded into the mind and tugging in a way that feels like the skull is cracking. If nothing else, it does confirm for Hakkyuu the source.

"Well it ain't Mordremoth," he says glibly, then after a brief pause and a mental course correction, "Yeah. I think it's Jormag. And it's still a bastard. Hell, it's probably tellin' you not to trust me either. Maybe it's sayin' I'm paranoid. Maybe it's sayin' you can trust it, that it'll keep you safe, that it knows the way. Maybe it's sayin' the guild doesn't need you, or thinks you're weak. Maybe it's sayin' you should go clear your head by taking a walk in the snow, or that you should get out there any be more help."

He shakes his head.

"Doesn't matter what it says, don't fuckin' listen to it."

Hypocrite.

"I didn't think we were close enough," Vrenille murmurs vaguely, though of course here they are in the cold and the ice. There's no reason not to think of this as Jormag's domain.

The dragon's not awake though...is it? Not properly. Bangar's forces are marching north to try--marching because he's convinced so many rebel warbands of his bogus symmetrical escalation doctrine, like that's worked so well for the charr in the past. History repeats itself: now an elder dragon in place of gods. But still, at this point it's aspirational, a fool's dream.

And maybe that's what all this is: Jormag and Primordus had been coming awake before the events in Draconis Mons sent both back to dormancy. And who's to say that Jormag cannot whisper from within its dreams--that there isn't some form of lucid sleep it's been sent into. Maybe this is all a frozen nightmare of its making.

All that's probably academic though. Whether it's Jormag itself or one of its adjutants makes little difference to the ultimate alignment of things. Vrenille doesn't confirm or deny Hakkyuu's hypotheticals. The whisper has said some of these things to him and not others and more beyond them. He doesn't split hairs. That seems a diversion too.

What he really wants to know is: "How d'you know?"

Vrenille's just been struggling to keep his head above water with the murmurs in his mind. He thinks many of the others have too. And Hakkyuu had been half frozen to death. "How did all this come to you?"

That's the real question, isn't it. How has Hakkyuu, no doubt to Vrenille's eye, rushed to this conclusion.

Hakkyuu can't tell how convincing he is right now, whether his initial panicked ravings when he awoke has poisoned his offerings now, or whether he is visibly more in control now that it's overridden the first stage of things, but he can tell that even with time all warped by the voices and the blizzard that this is a theory that probably seems like it arrives with too much certainty to count for reason and instead likely smacks of a kind of snapped paranoid resolution.

It gives him some pause, his hands lacing together to the thumb of his right hand moves back and forth below the lowest knuckle of his left thumb, up and down against the skin connecting to his wrist.

"I'm gonna sound crazy. This place makes everyone feel crazy, I get that. But--"

His jaw tightens at the back, the way it does when his back teeth effective bite down on the meat of something he doesn't want to share, his unfocused, lowered eyes setting into a frown at nothing in particular.

"You don't remember Duplicity," he says definitively as he lifts his eyes to Vrenille again, "The place, not the word. The city of Duplicity. You don't remember it."

As much as he's already convinced of the answer, it feels only fair to offer the space for correction, a glimmer of an opportunity to be wrong.

"... Do you?"

He does not remember, and what's more, it sounds like nonsense, but he can see in Hakkyuu's expression, in his posture and the way he holds his jaw, that for him the matter is something important, something grave.

Vrenille frowns deeply, and therefore, to answer that gravity, seriously considers it.

He lost his mind in the snow. Hallucinations.

If Hakkyuu is right about Jormag--and he might be--then the most reliable thing about the whispers may be their attempt to lay false trails in hopes they'll be taken as true. Ergo, entertain the opposite: he didn't lose his mind in the snow at all, and he's not speaking now of some hallucination.

All right, maybe. But that doesn't explain what he is speaking of.

"That doesn't sound like the name of a city, Hakkyuu." It doesn't sound like anything that makes sense. But then Hakkyuu clearly knows that, and it matters that he knows that--matters that he has the perspective to reflect, to question, to acknowledge. They're not always things he opts to do aloud, not when he's being his most intransigent.

So to make sure there is no ambiguity, that he is not giving a half answer or something intentionally tricksy, he'll say it direct and plain: "No, don't remember it. You're...saying you think I should?"

The smile that flickers across Hakkyuu's face at Vrenille's first assessment of Duplicity is brief and wry with a weight in his eyelids that make the heavy blink he gives slow and seem kind of tired.

"Yeah, I know it doesn't sound like a city, but they're not big on constructive feedback, so--"

The shrug he offers is equally weighed down, like he's got a mountain of snow piled up upon him as he thinks about what to say to Vrenille next.

On the one hand, this should be straightforward in terms of the answer he gives. On the other, it's not nearly so simple.

He takes in a deep breath through his nose, a kind of steeling inhale before he sighs deeply. There's a faint fuck it as part of it.

"Yeah. You should. We were there for a while," the length of time isn't as important as trying to lay out the land though, absurd as it will certainly sound. It is absurd as a concept, and Hakkyuu knows if he heard about Duplicity without experiencing it he'd think it was ridiculous and a joke. So he's trying to settle his mind on what makes sense from a purely Tyrian perspective.

The weight shifts in his body subtly, more resolute. He's going to do this no matter what it comes out like, so he's getting ready to ride this out.

"We know Tyria's not a singlular kind of place. We got the Mists, we got Fractals, the Underworld, all sorts of proto-realities, other places outside of Tyria and whatever. Hell, we know wherever the Gods came from and went to isn't Tyria. So there's stuff beyond here."

A strange little smile haunts his face for a second.

"There's a lot of stuff beyond here. Lots of worlds. Lots of different, alternate versions of those worlds. Different timelines, different states, different histories. There's... a lot out there. Bigger than us, connected to us, beyond us."

He presses his tongue between his lips with a pause, allowing the dust to settle around that statement. Then, he shifts to talk a little more with his hands, making circle gestures with his palms and fingers in chunking movements in the space before him.

"Duplicity, I suppose, is like a proto-reality too. Reminds me of the Heart of the Mists in a way, like a buncha little island-like spaces in the middle of some weird spacial reality.

"Duplicity is a city at the heart of that world, but its got some strange, hazy boarders beyond it too, like if you just try and walk out the city lines you get all turned around and find yourself walkin' right back again and finding familiar markers you thought you'd left behind. Is there stuff out there really? I dunno, but it doesn't matter, because Duplicity is the gravitational center, and if you're there, they don't really want you to leave. It's... it's a--"

He frowns, the function of Duplicity itself and its goals feeling harder to coil his tongue around.

"An experiment. A large-scale social experiment that takes people from all kinds of realities, throws 'em all together with the locals of the world, and makes 'em comply with the programme they got running. It's... a trap. A big, damn trap and everyone shows up lost, confused, disorientated, from loads of different worlds with loads of different experiences. The only thing in common is no one asked to be there. And no one gets to ask to go home."

He doesn't dismiss it out of hand at least, and if for no other reason, that's because he can see for Hakkyuu it's serious--he can see that he's taking a risk, that leap of faith that leaves him vulnerable to a fall.

There was a time in their lives when that happened and Vrenille pulled back, pulled away rather than risk letting himself be taken down in the landslide, once when he put his self-preservation out in front and cost them everything. It's not a decision he wants to repeat.

That does not, however, make this simple. Not any of it. Not one bit. Even as he listens and he tries to keep his skepticism at bay, tries to believe because he wants to believe--not in this story per se, but to believe that Hakkyuu's mind has not been fractured irreparably by what he's been through.

"You're saying...we went into some kinda fractal and got trapped there, stuck there as...some kinda test subjects for--what? Whose experiment? The Inquest?" Conceptually, that on its own is hard enough, but there are also the practical questions, the places where it doesn't seem to fit:

"Why wouldn't I remember this? When would it even've happened?"

The mention of the Inquest makes Hakkyuu's face scrunch as he pulls back like he's smelt something unpleasant. It's just so out of left-field for him that he wasn't expecting them to be invoked in the same sphere as Duplicity.

"What? No. Not the Inquest. No."

He holds his breath for a moment, not from taking a deep-lunged inhale, just kind of arresting the natural rhythm as he wonders if now is the time he regrets bringing this up or if there's more yet to come. Probably the latter.

"Time's weird when you stretch it out and bend it around different worlds, at least that's what I'm finding. Different timelines, same people; different people, same timelines."

This isn't helping.

Hakkyuu looks to the side, really wishing this were more of a tavern than a recovery space. A drink or five would really help this along.

"I know how this sounds," he says after a moment, "I know. Weird sex city proto-reality, no memories, out-of-world weird experiment bullshit. I know how it sounds."

He hasn't mentioned the sex city bit yet and when he reaches the end of those stilted sentences he squeezes his eyes shut again, annoyed at himself. He has to give this gloss of the situation another try.

"Duplicity is a city that functions, when you get right down to it, as a wide-scale sprawling experiment. They say they're looking for people who don't have what they call the deceit gene, which they're pretty much convinced all their locals have. So they pull in folks from outside Duplicity, all sorts of times and worlds, trying to find people without these gene and, far as I can tell, they haven't found whatever they're actually looking for yet. But they keep bringing people in, keep looking for this thing that may not exist. And they reckon they can find it through monitoring sex acts. It's a whole dual-layered city that's one red light district."

Even saying this aloud feels exhausting and he gives a slow, heavy blink with a slight shake of his head.

"I know how this sounds," he repeats, exasperated at the whole thing.

Vrenille's brow lofts. Sex city is a...new twist to the plot, but it is at least true that the Inquest are generally not especially sex obsessed.

As for the rest--all the rest...

"Well at least you know this all sounds utterly fucking nuts." It's half muttered but it is true: Hakkyuu having the perspective to hear how it must land from a position outside himself does lend veracity to him not being utterly nuts, at least.

So okay, Vrenille's certainly not convinced, but this is Hakkyuu, so he's going to try and give the story all the credence he possibly can, do his damnedest to suspend his disbelief and just follow it through to whatever conclusion it's all leading them towards.

"All right, if--" and it's a big if for him, still heavily on the side of the hypothetical, "--if--you 'n I were both trapped in a weird sex city experiment fractal with a load of strangers from times and worlds we never heard of...why do you remember it and I don't?"

That is the million gold question.

It's a necessary question, but not one Hakkyuu really wants to talk about aloud. It's raw, tender, a massive gaping and weeping wound that he isn't sure how or when it going to heal or when gap is going to be filled again by the person torn away from it in the first place.

His hand upon his left wrist still and the expression on his face is probably one of the most unusual Vrenille will have ever seen on Hakkyuu specifically, a mix of grief, of longing, with an attempt to mute it with a strong-armed indifference.

"I know a wizard," he says after a long moment of thought, more quietly than he would have liked, "He's good with this sort of thing. Multiverse shit."

"A...wizard?"

It's literally only the expression on Hakkyuu's face that keeps Vrenille from making some like-that-weird-floating-tower-in-Kessex-Hills? remark. Because as outlandish as it sounds, clearly for him it links up with...something--something deep and aching and profound that Vrenille only knows he doesn't know enough to make sense of right now.

That still leaves him with a plethora of questions though.

"Do I...not know the wizard?"

A faint, sad smile briefly tightens Hakkyuu's face, though he doesn't bring himself to look at Vrenille.

"Yeah, you know the wizard. Contracted to him two and a bit times. Clerical errors and whatever."

This time he doesn't wince when piecemeal information, just allows it to come out.

"Duplicity's got a pretty strict social class system in play, Dominants and Submissives. Pretty literal in its way. Think if nobles in the Reach walked people around in collars and leashes any time of the day like it ain't shit to blink at. That's what we're talkin'.

"Dominants get access to money, housing, business contracts and they move freely and easily wherever they want. Submissives gotta get into a contract with a Dominant who'll give 'em permission to do a lotta stuff like spend and earn money, and they got a whole--" he lifts his right hand to gesture toward his own throat, "--we get a black line right down the throat. It's not subtle."

He points at Vrenille with the same hand.

"You got dealt the Dominant card when we showed up and I got Submissive. So humour me, whatcha think we'd do in that kinda situation?"

Vrenille's brow furrows at the word contracted, which seems nonsensically obscure to him. And then Hakkyuu explains, and...okay, this he's going to need a minute with.

He's going to need a minute before he can even approach answering Hakkyuu's question because that seems obvious: they'd pair up. Deal with whatever problem was put in front of them as a team. Fine. It's all the rest of it he's having trouble with.

"Wait. Hang on. You're telling me that in the weird sex city experiment fractal that we were trapped in with a load of people from all different worlds...I was a noble??!"

Nope. Sorry. He was going with this. He was really trying to. But they might have just hit a wall. Suspension of disbelief: rattled.

The problem is, when Vrenille puts it that way, the only thing Hakkyuu can do is snort out a laugh that rolls into a quiet, ice-thawing chuckle before he shakes his head.

"I mean, you do own a big fuck-off mansion made outta glass out in the middle of a forest, so I dunno want to tell you. It's as close to a state of nobility as you're ever going to get."

The faint amusement remains on his face and through his tired eyes staring into the fire.

"But you're a good contract partner. You got all the skills suited to it. You treat your partners well, you're protective but not overbearing, you help people out when they need it, you manage your people well. 'cause the thing is, I can't say for the locals, but for the LIERs--" he glances up, gesturing between the two of them, "--we're the LIERs, anyone brought into Duplicity from another world, is a LIER. Anyway, LIERs typically look out for each other, know that whether you're marked or not is totally arbitrary and a contract's the best way to get on with shit, but we also forge strong connections with each other. Stronger than you might think."

He gives a light shrug.

"We both met real important people there. People we'd do anything for."

Vrenille stares. He has a pretty good sense, generally speaking, of the sorts of sniggering that signals Hakkyuu is having a go or amping up an ambiguity, enjoying an irony that he alone is in on. But that's not what this low laugh is. This is a laugh of...acknowledgement, an irony shared, and for a moment all Vrenille manages is, lamely, "Who the fuck makes a mansion outta glass?"

It's far from the biggest absurdity of the bunch. And then Hakkyuu is complimenting him in that rare, genuine way that always leaves Vrenille feeling a little unsure of himself, like maybe he's been putting on airs, tricking people into thinking that he's something he's not, someone better than he is--a feeling he knows is tangential here, a feeling that he swallows down.

He frowns, blinking as he thinks it through, tries to take it on face value and just let it sink in. Real important people. People we'd do anything for.

"This wizard, he's like that for you?"

It's easier than asking about what people he might have had himself--hypothetical people he has no memory of, and that he can't right now imagine, can't imagine anyone more important than Hakkyuu and Kyinnlen and Sesyria and the rest of the guild.

"Hey, look, we said that! How the fuck are you supposed to fortify a fuckin' glass house, right?"

It's the most automatic kind of response, almost like he's talking to Vrenille like they're both in Duplicity or at least both know about it, though the spike of enjoyment is short lived as he rolls his eyes.

"You inherited it, for whatever that's worth. No way you would've picked that shit yourself, c'mon."

It's a bit of a temporary dodge from the real question though, one that he momentarily tries to dismiss entirely but Hakkyuu knows there'll be an expectant silence boring into him if he says nothing.

He does give Vrenille a bit of a look though, the mildest of defensive scowls and a clear indication that he'd really rather not put this into words before his shoulders sag under some kind of defeat. None of this is easy.

Finally, all he offers is simply, almost like a non sequitur, is "Stephen."

"Inherited it," Vrenille echoes in a murmur, just sort of accepting that he's not going to make sense of this bit really. People inherit things from someone. From family, mostly. And Vrenille's never had anything to inherit or anyone to inherit it from in his life.

Anyway, that doesn't really seem the salient point right now. Not in comparison to pretty much all the rest of it.

"Stephen." He watches Hakkyuu directly as he echoes the name, and he doesn't need to be told that whatever this man means to Hakkyuu it's something singular, something unparalleled in his experience, that there's a sense of precarity to it that makes him not want to look at it straight on. So yes, someone he'd do anything for.

"He...made it so you'd remember." So that Hakkyuu alone would remember. There must have been reasons for that.

With a soft snort, Hakkyuu simply lifts his left arm to let his sleeve flop with gravity and the white gold of the rune glint warm brass tones in the hearth firelight.

"He made a well-researched attempt at something and apparently it paid off."

He doesn't hold Vrenille's eyeline, instead looking off to some corner of the room with an irritated shake of his head.

"Bastard's gonna be so pleased with himself that ain't no one gonna be able to tell him shit for like a damn year when he finds out."

There's a subtle tightness in Hakkyuu's jaw, a mild restriction in swallowing as he huffs out a laugh and an amendment.

"Whenever he finds out."

Vrenille watches the light catch the rune on Hakkyuu's wrist with a little frown. He's following this all to an extent, and he's got, he thinks, more or less the lay of the land that Hakkyuu's trying to give him. There's still a certain point at which he feels something missing though.

Whenever he finds out. This wizard--Stephen--who's not here. And there it is: the megadestroyer-sized hole in the whole rationale.

"How is he gonna find out, Hakkyuu?"

It's a good question, one that is reflected in Hakkyuu's mind even when Vrenille gives it voice.

Hakkyuu has never been terribly good with wearing his emotions--they either come out too loud and open, or subdued and hard to see. In this case, it's the latter, but Vrenille is someone with attention to detail unlike many others, someone who will see the minute tension in the tiny muscles around Hakkyuu's eyes, the slight tightening of his lips, the way he blinks slowly with a downward glance.

There's a silence that speaks volumes too, a pause that says more clearly than anything I don't know.

And overall, there's a sense of remorse squeezed up somewhere in Hakkyuu's chest that only someone like Vrenille would be able to recognise as such where others might misconstrue as some kind of irritation.

"Maybe... If we go back. Or if he figures out some way to show up here, I guess."

He lowers his arm then, figuring Vrenille has seen enough of the rune.

"I've done it before. Been there, came home, ended up back there again. I didn't remember it last time though, which... I think is more common. Not all folks leave and come back to Duplicity knowing the place. Like they got their memories of the city wiped clean. And I don't think any remember Duplicity while they're back home."

Swiping the pad of his right thumb over the rune, Hakkyuu gives a harsh little snort through his nose.

"And y'know, I'm not sure which I'd pick if I had the choice now."

This is all a lot to try and take on board, and Hakkyuu is so clearly convinced of the veracity of it all that when it comes up to this one point of uncertainty, clearly it costs him. So Vrenille doesn't want to pad out doubt around that. It feels unfair and ungenerous, almost cruel.

He therefore tries to take seriously this possibility that seems so unreal to him: maybe we go back. We. Both.

Maybe this place that Hakkyuu is speaking of isn't just part of a past he can't remember, but part of a future he's destined to live...and then, what? To forget? He frowns, eyes on the place where Hakkyuu's arm now rests, even without the rune visible. A wizard arriving from another world somehow feels easier to wrap his head around than all that.

But there's another problem that, as much as he wants to get past, he can't quite resolve for himself: "You're saying there's been times before when you weren't in Tyria at all...and I wasn't in Tyria at all. But there's no times when I remember you being missing--not for that long." And even if Hakkyuu is inclined to more wandering absences and intervals alone, "There's no times when anyone in the guild's told me that I've been missing."

And wouldn't they have noticed? If all of this was true, wouldn't someone have noticed, at least, that Vrenille, who does not have a proclivity for wanderlust, wasn't where he was expected to be when he was expected to be there? Wouldn't anyone have marked their absences?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

1332 AE - Jora's Keep, Bjora Marches

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