[Semi-Open] An Esteemed Guest of Lohkimareen

[warmare]

WHO: Hayame (warmare) & Makoto('s Head) (affal) & You
WHAT: Visits, interrogations, supply drops, medical aid, nightmares, maybe an eventual rescue?
WHERE: Lohkimareen, near the Valley of the Innocent
WHEN: Throughout Sekiseri (Sept.)
WARNINGS: there is a living severed head in this log and almost no one is going to be nice to him + a variety of referenced CW's (torture, amputation, SA, etc.)

[There is a new resident of the forest of Lohkimareen, to the west along the border with the Valley of the Innocent. It had taken portals and days of travel to make her way there, but Hayame (and her unwilling "guest") now call those woods... "home", following the advice of the aion Tehri, who assured that the Regent's eyes should not be able to penetrate the trees. So for now, Hayame and the severed head of the Kenoma Makoto tied to her withers spend their nights in hollow trees and caves, moving location each day, just in case, even though the forest is supposed to protect them.

Perhaps she would have spent those days quietly, putting her efforts into recovering from her injuries... if Makoto would stop waking in the night and mouthing off at her, and if he was not a valuable potential resource to the Pleroma, some of their number which desire to speak to him. But she will not trust his "care" to another, not when he was... something. Her trophy, her hostage. Even when others come to call, she refuses to leave the "room", even if she will largely leave them to their devices as long as the visitors do not touch or attempt to mess with the shard in the man's skull. ... There's a bit for when he gets too mouthy, blinders and earplugs for when sensitive information needs be discussed between only the Pleroma. Other than that, he looks... almost well taken care of.

Supplies need to be brought, Hayame needs medical care for the raw eye socket where her left eye had been, there are interrogations and talks with Makoto to be done... But what business has brought you here today?]

starters and wildcards go below! please use the OOC plotting post to check-in first, plz and thanks!

Comments

[leicesters]

Can't say I see myself a "Pleroma" or an "Aion" or whatever, myself. I'm a person, like everyone else. [He looks at Hayame as he says that; 'everyone' includes her, too.] Not a tool for some... cosmological force.

[An indirect way of saying, too, that he doesn't see himself as fitting into that group, something that they have in common. He's used to being an outsider, so it's all to easy a mindset to slip into.

Still, he frowns when she mentions trophies. The idea is distasteful to the way he'd prefer to wage war, even if he has little pity for the enemy.]

And what will trophies get you? Glory? A hostage? What's your angle, here? [It has to be more than just revenge for what happened in Achamoth, surely...?]

[warmare]

Whether you call yourself a Pleroma or not, you won’t be able to escape being an aion.

[She’s tried. And when their bodies were like they were, when people could die and not stay dead, when bodies would just regrow around a shard and people sprouted dragon wings or manifested weird magics…]

I could put a hoof through your skull right now and you wouldn’t be allowed to die.

[What an accursed existence they had been forced into.

Her fingers continue to rub at the wax long after the need to inspect its quality has passed. What he asks makes a defensive, insulted reaction surge up in her, and she tries to fight it… but her lips still twist and her hands still stiffen, the glare from the remaining eye sharp as if to make up for the other, hidden beneath its half crusted bandage. She had meant to speak of Kenoma and their hostages, how they’d flaunted them in the city like prisoners of war and used them as bait, but of course. Her and her trophies were the problem.

Hah. Another one who didn’t understand. Why is she still surprised?]

Both.

[She had meant to have both. Some sort of victory attempted to be scraped from the bottom of the barrel in the face of devastating failure to soothe the pain. A hostage of their own, a gem she could put in the hands of people who were smarter than she was, who might use magic of heads full of letters and schooling to figure out how to purge the sludge from Kenoma shards, and yet instead she had ended up with a living, talking head that threatened to call down the power of the abyss that had ruined the Sanctifier down on itself and anyone close if a finger was laid on its shard.

Of course she did. Of course the one thing she thought to do “for Pleroma” would become something that brought ridicule and doubts upon her instead. But-]

I promised I would bring him their heads and their shards.

[Every one of those faces she had seen in communion, who played a part in that death…]

That I would capture and not just kill them, so that they could be studied and a way could be found to remove the foul taint of the Regent from their shards.

[And instead, she had this. (And perhaps, deep inside of her… she still hopes. She still prays that what she had could be a “hostage”.

Hostages can be exchanged.]

[leicesters]

['Him'? Who? He's curious, but he wants to take one thing at a time. At least she has a practical use for such a trophy -- it's less repellent than something she had taken solely for some sense of personal prestige. His own homeland revelled in battle and would take all manner of loot and spoils when it came to waging war, and Claude had always hated that side of it, even as he trained to ride a wyvern or shoot a bow in just the same way. He still saw their enemies as people, even as Almyra saw itself as conquerors and its foes the conquered, its prestige divided solely into the weak and the strong. Beasts to be hunted, and humans. Enemies and fellow countryman. He himself was too used to being seen by his own countrymen as the enemy, and that national warrior pride became a source of his resentment.

It was ugly. There's no glory in war, and Hayame's damaged state in heart and mind is a testament to that, too. But he doesn't say as much. Focus on the practicalities, not on quibbles that will only invite argument.]

Do you think it's worth asking Tehri at the council? If there's a way to safely study his shard, someone with her kind of experience ought to know.

[warmare]

[Hayame cannot claim to be a noble-minded woman. Though she did not revel in battle, and felt no joy in the act of killing... She had striven to be the strongest in a world where to be weak was to be dead or live in humiliation, and she had occasionally reveled in her superiority over humans or the Armless. She had felt joy when she hunted down her own kind or felled an enemy, not because of the act, but because of the honor it would bring her and the further hope that she might be sold as a warrior and not a broodmare.

But she had tried. Even if ripping M's head from his body had been purely about revenge, finding something to fill in the hollow places in her shard nd hearts before Kenoma-tinted despair could... Stumbling out of Achamoth with it in her hand, she had hoped... She had hoped she would be greeted as a warrior who had done something worthy of praise.

Instead she hides in a cave like a criminal.]

That demon threatened to call upon the power of the Regent if any further danger or threat befell him.

[And maybe that wouldn't sound as horrifying to someone else, as it did to her, but. She grits her teeth, not wanting to say it to some stranger, but almost everyone in this world was a stranger to her still, so what did it matter- ? It was better than appearing weak for no reason...]

I was in communion. I felt it, when he used that ability in Achamoth.

[And it had been terrifying, dark and powerful and all consuming when he had punched through the chest of the... No, not the Sanctifier. She had finally felt Estinien, again, in the bond between Firebrand shards, it had been Estinien that M had helped murder. ... She keeps leaving out context, not just because she's not used to needing to explain herself, but also because she hates sharing about herself.]

- Tehri knows that.

[The woman had reached out to her, after Claude had bridged the gap. To arrange a meeting with the head in her charge.]

[leicesters]

[Claude's still watching her closely, listening intently, as if doing so might help him parse out what she's saying. But her thoughts seem so scattered and disconnected, he can only barely follow the logic of what she's trying to say, if not all of it.]

Okay. [He says it quietly, pushing off the wall he'd been leaning against. He can tell the enormous burden she's taken upon herself. She's sacrificed things, is continuing to sacrifice things, just to make it this far, knowing at any time her prisoner might choose to obliterate them both with the Regent's power. If he can, Claude wants to keep helping her, so she doesn't have to deal with so much of this on her own.]

Hayame, do you wanna just... I don't know, take a walk for a little bit? Get away from him? [He jerks a thumb over his shoulder back into the cave.] I promise I'll stay here and keep watch, and I'll contact you right away if anything happens. You deserve a break.

[warmare]

[Claude isn't wrong in his assessment of what Hayame might need most in this moment. It would be healthier for her to entrust the head to someone else, to take some time... some time to do anything. She has not been alone since leaving Achamoth, because the demon's head is always with her, and she can not show weakness in front of it.

She hasn't yet been able to grieve. She hasn't yet been able to rest.

The problem is... that may be no one in all of Horos that she would trust with the duty. She has no one who she would call "friend", and she doubts anyone else would extend that undeserved courtesy to her. Even "comrades"... She left the only person she'd called that hanging broken in the skies of the Regent's fortress. So who-]

Do I look weak to you?

[She says it sharp and sure, as if she doesn't, even though an eyeball has been plucked from her head, though there are obvious shadows under the eye not hidden by bandages, though her withers and equine joints are starting to look bony and thin, her mane and tail dull and in need of brushing.]

I am not the sort of person who shirks her duty so easily. I brought this demon back here, and I will keep him.

[leicesters]

Of course you're not weak. You're probably the strongest of all of us. Just take five, ten minutes, go do whatever it is you need to do, and come right back.

[She might be a woman on par with the Hero of Daphnel, or his own mother, a fearsome warrior queen to whom weakness was as good as death. Said queen tried to impart a simple lesson on Claude: that he should learn to fend for himself, not rely on her or anyone else. So he had. He ran off, alone, he learned to lick his wounds, alone, and though he'd never match their kind of physical strength, he learned to use his wits and his cunning to survive. Alone.

He sees that kind of self-reliance in Hayame now, but it seems less like strength him than the same kind of simple fear and paranoia he's always felt. She's just... surviving, too, and when he looks at her physical state, he doesn't know how long that will last.]

How about this. If you take a little time out, I'll tell you about the plan I've been divising for how to leverage our advantage. But only if you take time out. None of this will work if you don't trust me a little.

[warmare]

[Whatever it was she needed to do. Hayame's remaining eye narrows, her fingers still, no longer pretending to be concerned with the quality of the bow wax.]

What is it that you think I need to do that I can do in five minutes? Take a piss?

[She would leave it at the dare for him to risk her anger by telling her just exactly what he, a veritable stranger, though she needed to do (scream, cry, give up), but his attempt at a deal... ? Acting as if he had something figured out but wouldn't tell it to her unless she acquiesced to his silly demands?

She snaps, her tail flicking out angrily behind her, unable to see his words as anything but either flippant or an attempt at a power trip, just to see if he could influence her actions to his orders. And she'd been following the orders of humans all her life. All her life but two precious months.]

None of this will work if you don't have a head.

[... She mean's M's head. But.]

[leicesters]

Maybe? I don't know. [He's joking, for a second, but his smile fades into something more serious.] If you really want the honest answer, I'm worried about that shard of his. Sure, he might not intend to use it to blow all three of us into dust, but what if it means the Regent still has some subtle influence, even here?

[Like an invisible miasma of corruption, staining the air, a constant, subtly oppressive presence. The two of them can block their sight with magic, but they can't exorcise their presence completely. Hayame's suffering would be a huge draw for it, especially if what Ryunosuke said via communion is true.]

I thought if you got away from the bad vibes for a bit, it'd be like a weight off your shoulders. But if you don't trust me, I get it... I'm not the most trustworthy person to begin with.

[He can't force her into anything, and it's ultimately Hayame's call, but it's worth a try to get her to worry about herself even a little.]

And yes, this plan of mine does need the head. I plan to raise it at the council meeting, but it does hinge on you trusting me first.

[warmare]

[Thankfully for him, Claude's joking smile fades in the three seconds that Hayame graciously provides before deciding to wipe it off his face herself. Nothing about this is funny to her. Very little since coming to Horos has been funny to her.]

His shard is covered, so even if the Regent tries to peer through it, he should see only black.

[What he says first... Isn't something that sounds impossible, in a way, not after what she'd seen the Regent do in that courtroom of shadows, in the sky above Achamoth. But what can someone like her do? She'd made sure to style M's hair to cover the shard in the divot in the back of his skull to "blind" anyone spying through it in a way she could picture, but- Anything else?]

If there is some foul miasma leaking from him, I am already poisoned. Five minutes will not save me. Someone can call a mage, if he must be inspected.

[Perhaps if she could wrap her head around the idea that "hope" and "despair" were real, concrete forces in the world much like fire or water, as Ryunosuke had tried to claim. She isn't about to discount the effects of feeling those things, but... them being some sort of... magical fuel for some crazed being? She can't even begin to imagine it.

She knows that if it's true... Then she is valuable to the Regent far more than to the Pleroma. And how disgustingly ironic would that be? Still, she can not find it in her to laugh. Only to half-growl,]

And my trust hinges on you telling me what your damned plan is.

[leicesters]

All right, all right... I'll tell you. [He throws up his hands in defeat. He's nowhere near as stubborn as she is, so it does occur to him there's no point in butting heads over it. Depressingly, she might be right, and there might really be no reprieve for her now, so he'll just have to throw her a lifeline in another way.]

If this M guy is really that important to the Kenoma, it's inevitable they're going to go looking for him. You've done all you can to avoid that, but when they do come, I thought we could use our own hostage to give them a taste of what they did to us.

Once they come to the forest, I'll use myself as bait. I'll pretend I have his shard -- with magic that blocks scrying, it's not like they'll be able to tell -- and I'll lead them away from you and right into a trap. In the meantime, I'll commune with you to warn you to get moving.

If they attack again, we'll just keep leading them in a merry dance around the forest as many times as it takes. The terrain's against them, their supplies won't last forever, and if they have any common sense at all, they'll give up and come to the negotiation table. At which point...

[He nods meaningfully over to the cave, hoping she catches his drift how the rest of the plan should go.]

[warmare]

[She listens.

It is not a poor plan. She cannot imagine a way that the Kenoma would know for sure that M was still alive, so surely they could not doubt if someone claimed to have his shard... She could show it to Claude before he left, in order that he might make a replica in case the Kenoma who showed up knew such an intimate detail about the demon...]

I have been laying traps.

[She supplies just that, at first, as he describes leading their enemies through territory that was foreign to them. In her moving between safehouses she has left snares and traps for hunting that would do just as well against a humans, she had backtracked and left false trails...

But then it comes to the end, to the actual issue at play, which is that-]

... At which point, you would ask them for what?

[She had tried to kill that man purely out of hatred, in the aftermath of watching the death of the Sanctifier. She had taken his head with her to try and claw some sense of glory or use from her loss. But M's threats of calling on that abyssal power stymied that plan... and though someone had suggested to her he might be a hostage, a hostage that could be exchanged...

Estinien was dead (he had to be dead), which means... Hayame does not want anything from the Kenoma.

So what did Claude want?]

[leicesters]

[He grins, a little strained, when she mentions her traps. He likes to think he's good at spotting these things, but chances are he could have triggered any of the sneakier ones on the way here and only narrowly avoided them, none the wiser. But they can return to that later, as for now, he focuses on her question.]

That depends entirely on what they have to offer us. If Estinien is still alive, we do a hostage swap. If not... it'd be an interesting little test to see just what they'd be willing to give up to claw back the Regent's favourite.

If they offer a lot -- weapons, artefacts, ransom money -- that will tell us M's real value to the Regent. If they don't offer much at all, we'll know he's not valuable... or perhaps that his allies don't hold him in high regard. That'd be a hole in the Kenomas' ranks we could easily pick apart.

[warmare]

[Luckily for him... She didn't set them up near whatever safehouse was using the day she was expecting visitors. If he happened to trip one on the journey there, though, or if he wandered in the wrong direction... Well, yes. That would just be on him.]

Estinien must be dead.

[That sharp, angry answer is all she provides to the first and most logical sort of bargain, a hostage for a hostage. Estinien must be dead. He should be dead. She wishes he was dead, rather than be suffering humiliation unbefitting of a warrior, than be somehow still alive with the horrific injuries she had seen wrought on his body.

She sounds just a little bit too desperate to believe that, to truly, actually think it was sure. A bit too much like Estinien has to be dead, because if he weren't, and she were just here in some cave in a forgotten corner of the woods instead of calling him back as she had promised... Hayame can not bear another failing, not now.

Never mind that if she truly, truly believed that there was no chance she might be able to use M in that way... She would have done as Johnny told her, and threw the goddamned head in a lake.]

I do not know his exact standing. Only that he possesses a power that is dangerous, that is tied to that regent...

[She wants to believe that means he is high-ranking and valuable to the Kenoma, but in truth she has no idea the way in which that thing measures success or loyalty. But M had brought a traitor and helped bring down the Sanctifier, so surely...

The only problem is-]

There will be no hole.

[If it were a normal man... By showing him that his so-called comrades didn't value him, you might be able to turn him to your side. But if there's one thing she'd learned spending a week of the Firebrand moon with M almost always in contact with her body against her withers, always sleeping beside her...]

That demon will never leave the Kenoma.

[leicesters]

[Estinien must be dead. Claude expected that denial, but he doesn't bother to entertain it, or her obvious lack of proof. Had she even tried communing with the guy, or was she just telling herself it as a way to cope? Instead he just gives her a long look and moves the subject along when she does.]

Won't leave, or can't, with his shard the way it is? What if he was forced to join us, if his cause for survival was flipped on its head... if the thing holding his shard together became Pleroma instead of the Regent's power?

[There are a few ideas bouncing around in his mind, but this one seems the most interesting, so he decides to pursue it.]

We all know the Pleroma is nice and cosy and the Kenoma is destructive. What if we forced the Pleroma into his shard, and it could, over a long period of time, heal the damage done to his soul?

I'm not saying this as a charity case. Plus, this is all purely hypothetical; we don't even know if it's possible. But if he wants to survive the war at all in that scenario, wouldn't it be in his best interests to stay our hostage for a long time? He might accept the Pleroma for the sake of self-preservation alone.

[They'd be taking a valuable piece to the Regent off the board, and severing their tremendous influence. If it ever becomes possible.]

[warmare]

[A long look isn't enough to shake her conviction. Estinien must be dead, because she cannot stand if he were to be alive in the Citadel somewhere, now that they have no means at all to make another ingress into that fortress. It had been a sick miracle that it even worked the previous time, and the cost was one she hadn't wanted to pay, so no-]

Won't.

[It isn't that Claude proposes something that sounds incorrect. For all this place worked, if "hope" and "despair" were real elements of the world, perhaps what he says, something that sounds utterly insane and magical... Maybe it was possible to heal a Kenoma that way.]

Perhaps on another...

[On Liem, she was sure it would have worked. If they'd just been able to purge the black sludge from his body... But this man, this demon she now keeps muzzled, blinded, and deaf... The week they had spent together in the remnants of the Firebrand month, their legacies bleeding into one another... She'd become sure of something in that time.]

The Kenoma did not twist him into serving the Regent. He was a demon before, and he would be a demon after.

[Could the force of the Pleroma do that much? Do like the black sludge of the Regent supposedly did, and change a person into one who would more easily accept that way of thinking and view of the world?]

His shard is cracked strangely, but...

[Would repairing that do anything? Perhaps it would... remove the Regent's more dark powers? It was a start, it wasn't bad, but... To attempt to to do is also to risk the threat of their own deaths in the process. Most aren't that willing to jump towards such a thing.

Even if a part of Hayame is.]