Rogue Mage (Hadrian)

[Sondra]

TS: Around midnight, Day 1, Fall 511 AV “Where in Hai have you been you son of a bitch?” a furious growl from the dark. The Konti had found Hadrian wandering near the where they had last spent a normal evening. The mages gait was somnambulistic and his normally keen glances were stumbling across what it saw. Neither of them looked the best versions of themselves, but Hadrian was the worse of the two. Sondra looked like she had been sustaining worry longer than any creature should, but Hadrian walked like his legs had only been recently attached. In a completely uncharacteristic gesture, the Konti grabbed Hadrian with both arms. The embrace was less affection and more a desperate insistence to keep him from moving. “Ivak petch you sideways, Hadrian!” she let go, with equal parts relief and dread. Her gestures spoke gratitude but her expression was all anger. “Kendall and Ethan were petching sick over you.” Pretending she knew some of her healing sisters’ arts she gave the mage a scrutinizing glance. “Inside, now.” She jerked her head toward where the lodgings stood. Sondra was practically leading Hadrian, free with her usually hoarded touch. All the way to their destination she muttered what might have been wards or swears in Kontinese.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian had spent a good deal of time on another world, an artificial construct above the sky. Perhaps when his mind recovered from the shock and awe, he would have new insight into the star charts Seven had shown him back in Syliras, would have a new understanding of the mechanics of his summoning, but for now he was just trying to get a grip on the world again. He was fairly sure that he had been back in Ravok for while, but it was only now in the unlikely embrace of the world's hardest Konti that he began to touch base with that reality again. His body was rigid against her at first, but like ice, he began to melt. Of course, that was when she pulled away; intimacy averted. He blinked at her, using her familiar face as a reference point even if the emotion writ upon her aura was not familiar at all. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," quoth the strange one, adages learned as a child coming to mind as he tried to piece everything together. But the mention of Kendall and Ethan coupled with her own face planted a lump in his throat that took all his will to keep from transmuting into tears. He nodded and followed her lead into their temporary home. Shocked by the sudden association of any place within Rhysol's city as home, he very nearly lost it again, but then she was pulling him along, a convenient means to forget again as he was wont to do, a momentary shunting away of glittering glass blades of memory that would cut him if he didn't wait for them to be tumbled into safer shapes with time and discipline.

[Sondra]

The Konti was running her hands through her hair as she maneuvered through the lodgings. Hadrian was given sidelong glances as both pretended they weren’t slowly unraveling. Sondra didn’t know what to expect, what she would find when she chose to remain. It was only a stubborn loyalty that kept her in Ravok, patrolling the canals like an Ebonstryfe. It was half madness, but she had done stranger things for less. Hadrian had vanished without word or warning after being so deeply entrenched with the lot of them. Hadrian, the mage who didn’t breathe without forethought, leaving on a whim? It didn’t make any sense at the time. His disappearance was a rock thrown at flock of birds. They careened then scattered, trying to find balance. In the wake of all that they had experienced, it was a small flourish that pressed them closer to delirium. Sondra was used to lonely hours, so she stayed in Ravok, bidding the others farewell. Avanthal was too far a road for her and its cold ground too full of blood and memory. But what of Hadrian? There was something malevolent or mystic about his absence. Everything had been left behind, as if Wind Eagles had plucked him up on a whim. She had been carrying his things with hers and leading his vicious horse. The extra weight was a constant reminder. Each avenue seemed emptier than the day before and wilder ideas took root with every hour. It was Ravok, after all, Rhysol’s city. It made her skin itch even when things were going well. Now he was found and she was dizzy with reactions. She fumbled with the key at the door, her hands losing dexterity. Sleep had been often forgone at first, when each hour seemed dire. Then it was missed out of habit, her mind in mutiny against her body. She pressed the door open revealing a meager space, but it had a window, more than she could say for her home in Syliras. They had made it. She had done what she promised. After closing the door. Sondra shed her packs, untwining the straps and pulling at the buckles. A waterskin found its way to Hadrian’s hand. The Konti then leaned against the wall, closing her eyes briefly. Her knees wilted until she was on the ground, slowly peeling away layers. She didn’t say anything for a while, letting their cramped bodies expand in this relative safety. “You’re in one piece.” More statement than question.

[Hadrian]

There was something about moving with a purpose that helped him put his mind back in order. Before his feet had wandered, and so had his mind. He might have been dreaming, but now he was awakening. Sondra was there, and he felt marginally safer indoors, but the others were gone. Cathan, Ethan, Kendall. It was Sondra, the one who didn't like him, didn't trust him, who had embraced him with such relief. Perhaps he was still dreaming. She sat him down, shoved a waterskin into his hands. He drank. This was what water tasted like. Had he not had anything to drink in days? Surely not, and yet as soon as the clean water hit his stomach, it began growling and moving around like a fist unclenching. She said something, but it took him a few moments for his brain to process the sounds into meaning. Slowly, he nodded, realizing it was true. "I'm alive," he admitted. He couldn't remember all of what had happened. Perhaps it was shock, perhaps he had lost sight of his sanity for a while. He was still piecing it all together. "I might have been dreaming," he admitted, "but I believe I was... Summoned. Elsewhere. It's... blurry now. "Or else I'm..." Crazy. Insane. Unhinged. He didn't want to say it for fear he would make it true. Words had power, created form. It was known. "Why are you... here? Where is...?" He looked around, still a little lost. If ever there were a time it would be easy to forget that he had mastered several elements, could manipulate minds and magic, now would be that time. "My mother died," he said, apropos of nothing, tears stinging his eyes, "last year. I don't know why..." He leaned over suddenly as if he would vomit his feelings out upon the floor. "Why I..." He squeezed his eyes shut so tightly they might burst. Tears leaked out, hot and painful for his dehydration. He had waited all this time to grieve for the woman, but now, weak and alone but for someone he had been sure despised him, he began to weep.

[Sondra]

There were a dozen things to explain and more to ask, but they were all overcome by the unhindered show of grief. Everything else seemed suddenly small next to this brokenness. Sondra could do nothing but feel the borders of what ebbed from Hadrian. Despite her mark and the gifts of her blood, the Konti knew she would never fully fathom an individual’s sorrow. It was a bitterness only they could taste. Sondra raised her fair head to look at Hadrian, her eyes tight with sympathy. She tottered to her feet and crossed the room in a few steps. Still silent, she sat next to the weeping mage, feeling his pain press against her, passing through the mark. Sondra had no talent for giving words of comfort, especially not in common, but her presence had a weight to it, like the assurance of a sturdy cane to lean on. Her hand moved over Hadrian’s back in a soothing cadence that bordered affection. And there they sat, defying their natures. Hadrian who did not cry and Sondra who did not touch. The Konti’s silence was broken with a murmur in Kontinese, it had the earnestness and grace of a prayer. OOC*Really* great post btw

[Hadrian]

When he finally looked up, he was a red-faced mess. His eyes were ugly and raw around the edges, but toward the painfully blue centers, they gleamed with more beauty and truth than a person could hold for more than a few moments. He sniffled piteously, searched in vain for something to wipe away his salt tears, and settled for his sleeve, snorting wet snot back up into his brain before it leaked out and embarrassed him. "Petching Azenth," he sighed, but he didn't mean it. Not entirely. Somehow he had managed to dance around those bottled up feelings despite living in the orbit of two Azenth, but now he was worn down and weak. With Sondra there, however, stern and steady, he didn't react like some might fear: he didn't seek control or power over the situation. "She got sick," he explained, because he felt he had to after that display. "She died last summer. We weren't close." Another little sniff and his flush was fading, his eyes alert, but aching. "Did anything strange happen when I disappeared? I seem to remember lights flashing and then being on a platform so high up that I could see the entire world at once. Or, at least, one side of it. It actually is a globe. Huh." It was one thing to work that fact out mathematically or hear it from wise men and women. It was quite enough to see it for one's self.

[Sondra]

She often forgot how young Hadrian and Kendall were, and how brief human lives could be, but that achingly bright iris reminded her. Her own seemed unyieldingly metallic in comparison. “No such thing as a mother you aren’t close to,” Sondra answered, “Even if they leave you behind.” Sondra made a face that was a cross between baffled and surprised when Hadrian explain his departure. “Not that I know. Petching vanishing was weird enough for me.” The Konti removed her hand from Hadrian’s back leaned forward, her wrists on her knees and her hands dangling. She was trying to assemble the strange information. “I don’t know whether you’re Zith-shyke crazy, or something miraculous happened to you.” She sat up and made a sharp gesture, “Either way, I’m making sure you get grounded for a bit and am then punting your ass to Avanthal. Ethan and Kendall already left.” To distract from any idea that Hadrian had been abandoned she said, “They figured you might be on your way already.” Sondra shifted her weight on the bed and rubbed the knotted space between her neck and shoulder. “And- uh- I stayed here in case you’d pop up.”

[Hadrian]

Perhaps she was right, at that. There were times when his consciousness was suspended between waking and dreams when he could recall a scent, the thump of a particular heartbeat -- not his own -- beating alongside his own. Not a lover, but perhaps Plotina Aelius. Of course, she wasn't a name in that strange sea, but an infantile epithet for the gods, for government, and the one force of majesty and intelligence obeying the call of pity, hunger, pain, cold, dark -- mama, mama, mama. He stared at the least maternal woman he knew and caught a flicker of empathy choked back behind her walls, a heart that had the potential to be her sword and armor rather than the soft, vulnerable underbelly she imagined it to be. His hollowed out eyes looked away. "Thank you," he said simply. Then his stomach growled and roiled anew, the proof of life. Only dead people weren't hungry. "I need to eat," he said. "You don't have to make it, just... is there food?"

[Sondra]

Sondra almost laughed. "Food?" she had expected a more profound request, "Easy enough." She'd been a liquid diet more than anything. Scraping the bottom of her coffers, she was not beyond taking the rejected heels of bread others would leave behind. While she had Hadrian's purse, her honor (and pride) would not permit her to take anything from it, save what was necessary to mind his demonic horse. But now... it was for his benefit and she could spent it like a drunken Svefra. She dug through their things fetching both Mizas and his canteen. As Sondra was shutting the door, she hesitated, looking at Hadrian a little worriedly. Could he vanish the moment she lost sight of him? "Don't go anywhere," her textured voice was strained with apprehension, "Understand?" Nervously, she finally shut the door and noisily ran along Tarsin's floor, in hot pursuit of anything edible. The Silver Sliver was the closest tavern in the Nitrozian square. When she returned, her arms were laden with its fare wrapped in cabbage leaves. Chunks of bread and meat, apples, strips of pumpkin, chestnuts and the canteen full of ale. With child like relief she let her parcels tumble onto the bed beside Hadrian. "Must confess, it'll be the best I've eaten in weeks. Don't mind me joining the celebratory feast." She shook the canteen at him, "Ale, if you've the stomach for it."

[Hadrian]

A crooked smile answered her command, but he nodded and stayed where he was until she returned, his mind drifting back to where he had been only to stutter and run back toward this reality. Perhaps it had only been a dream, or he had just overgiven some in the defense of those people and himself. Or it might have been some trick of Alander Jin's and his crowd; certainly, they were dangerous and well-equipped to pull off such mind-bending games if game it was. The smell of food assailed his nose, instantly rousing his stomach to make raucous alarums of its need. "You should have used my coin if you had none," he groused, though his hands were quick to take pieces of things. All the same, he ate slowly, wise enough to know that stuffing himself would only waste the food when it came back up. "I made a pretty miza enchanting things, and you could have fattened yourself up like a sacrificial heifer without putting too great a dent in my seed money." But then a niggling detail that he had overlooked for his hunger struggled back into his consciousness. "You are not coming to Avanthal?"