Vrenille (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cryfrustration) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
divergentresolve2023-08-30 09:47 am
cryfrustration) wrote in divergentresolve2023-08-30 09:47 am
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?"
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?"
no subject
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?"
no subject
"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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
"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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
"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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
"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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
"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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
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?