[Closed] A Rose to the Living

[Tom Cooke]

The East Garden • Brunnhold

Late Morning on the 65th of Roalis, 2719

H
e reckoned Ezre had a point; and whether he had a point or not, he was damned good at going on, and on, in that calm, even voice, and sounding like he knew what he was talking about. Tom felt his nerves settling, bit by bit. The word duty rankled him, but he didn’t think he was in the position to argue. Whatever else he thought of the wisdom – or chroveshit mungness, being honest – of pursuing that line of reasoning, he couldn’t dispute Ezre Vks was a guide, now, good and proper-like; the position wasn’t just nominal.

Ezre broke off when he spoke, looking vaguely dazed. It’d been offhand, him handing the galdor back his knife, but Tom found himself pausing, too, peering uncertainly down at the incumbent’s easy grip on the blade. He looked back up at Ezre and raised both red eyebrows.

Then, with a soft, pleasant sort of smile, he took the knife. Tom started smiling, too; he couldn’t quite help himself, though he tried to cram his face back into its professional frown. You can write monite, can you not? Oes, he thought, I reckon as I can.

But it wasn’t just pride. That was a strange, haphazard sort of pride, one he felt often enough but was just a pina scared to look too close at; it made him feel funny, being proud about something like that, something so golly, even if it was basic letters. Worse was the excitement that crackled up through him, prickling like static, fluttering like moths in his belly. The little jolt he felt when Ezre said cast together, and the spike of anticipation at do it again. He was a natt – and yet. He could feel the mona in the air around him, unsettled and porven; the thought of asking more of them today intimidated him, but –

Clearing his throat awkwardly, Tom moved to Ezre’s side and crouched. There was no grunt of pain, this time, no mutter about protesting knees. He was too distracted, glancing between the earth Ezre’d cleared and the hands, traced with ink, trying to get a glimpse of those faint long scars on the palm again. His face was full of frowning lines, but there was a light in his eyes.

Ezre met his gaze, then, his own dark eyes glinting mischievous. Tom’s lip twitched. “Hardly,” he murmured, and there might’ve been a shadow of a wry smile of his own.

There was a tightness in his chest, offering the Hexx his cupped hand. A part of him, tucked away, that part that was still through and through a natt tallyboy, hissed: this is fuckin’ moony! Oes, you seen plenty of sap spilt; you ain’t been a part of no blood magic shit. Another part of him, watching Ezre flex his fingers and roll up his great rustling sleeves, felt nothing but morbid curiosity and eagerness. He listened to Ezre talk like a boch listens to a story about the War of the Book.

Without a twitch of his face, he drew a thin line across his palm with the curve of the knife – one elegant, practiced motion. The line was almost invisible; then it went red, and thickened. One droplet pattered in the incumbent’s cupped hand, then another.

It was still warm with the life it’d given Ezre, and the thought momentarily took Tom’s breath from him. It was easy to believe the truth of what he’d said: he could imagine it humming with voo, even outside the breathing body. He thought of how he’d sought blood in life, spilling it like water, his and others’, indiscriminate.

He blinked. In the corner of his eye, the knife caught the sun; he glanced up, staring at it as Ezre turned it over, then looked at the young galdor’s face. This is fuckin’ moony, said the Tom he used to be. “Curious?” he asked, and heard his voice a little strained.

Tom hesitated, licking his lips. The sun’d got high, and it wasn’t so chill outside the maze; he wondered if he was lightheaded because of the heat. Wondered if it mattered. He realized he’d already made the decision, and held out a hand. “Ain’t like it’s my sap, ye chen?” he drawled, with a momentary grin; then added, shrugging, “If more blood’ll make it work better.”

If Ezre agreed, he’d watch steadily.

After a moment, he asked in a low, even voice, “You said – the mona flows through all of a body. Through all bodies. Human bodies?”

[Ezre Vks]

The East Garden

Midday on the 65th of Roalis, 2719

"I thought so." Returned the Hoxian, glancing up at the raen's flash of a knowing expression before turning his attention to the rather unorthodox—if not downright illicit—magical processes he'd just proposed without anymore care in all of Vita than he'd stepped into the hedge maze with in the first place. Once satisfied with his sleeves out of the way and finding a more comfortable balance in his careful squat, he traced a familiar path through his own layers of flesh with the well-practiced precision of a mortician in training,

"Curious." Ezre echoed, not looking up while he held his hand over Tom's offering of a cupped palm for a vessel, the metallic tang of irony not lost on the Hexxos, "Zjai. It is not documented whether or not a body's blood changes when the occupying force—when the soul—is replaced by a raen. Not everything works properly once one soul usurps the other, which tends to have physical consequences. It is why I have no siblings, for example—"

The Hexxos relaxed his tattooed hand once the slow dribble of life from his palm crawled to a thick, congealing halt. He didn't entirely finish his sentence, uncurling his inked fingers and relaxing for a brief moment, staring at what he'd left behind as if it held some sort of revelatory meaning, as if he was waiting for it to reveal some sort of premonition. He didn't want to speak for Tom's body, though he knew enough of various complications that came with existing in borrowed flesh from the stories of his umah and from other Hexxos raen.

Tom did not recoil from the small puddle still warm and precious in his palm nor did he object to the dark-haired boy's request for further contribution. Ezre's expression grew even more unreadable for a moment as he struggled to articulate, sifting through all of the potential responses with the kind of devoted patience only a Hoxian was capable of. He chuckled, choosing to riposte the raen's Tek back at him, strange though it felt against his Deftung-biased tongue,

"It is your sap now, Cooke-vumash, whether you wanted it or not."

It was with an unexpected reverence that he reached for the offered hand, eyes widening for a moment as if he was actually surprised, as if he hadn't expected such curious compliance. Careful not to jostle the not-Incumbent and just spill what meager pool he'd managed to squeeze out of his own body, he positioned the other man's hand not with cold precision so much as a warm acceptance. For a moment, Ezre was a little temple boy taking in offerings left by pilgrims and travelers while bells rang instead of just another galdor student doing research for some obscure, future-useless grade.

"More will allow us to properly form the symbols, though this may make room for connection between yourself and whatever is haunting this place. I am also taking the same risk." The Hoxian was honest, transparent, and as fearless as ever once he shifted his grip on the small bone-handled knife and set it against smooth skin without any hints of callouses. A galdori palm that Ezre gently drew a straight, well-practiced cut into.

Tom at least knew what to expect, he suspected, just as much as his people simply weren't ones to empathize with guilt. He wiped the blade on the inside seam of his flowing linen pants—purposefully out of sight—and folded it against his knee with one hand while the other directed the raen to drip slowly into his still-cupped free hand, dark eyes watching with no small depth of interest at the mingling fluid.

There was no hiding the sting of a sharp edge, for Ezre was no Living Conversationalist, not when he preferred the company of the dead. He didn't apologize, however, parting the flesh of someone else just to watch warm, red blood ooze from the thin line.

There was no distinction in color—it was just as red as the living Hoxian's. It was not thicker. It did not flow strangely. No one would have found visual fault with Incumbent Valqualin's most vital of fluids. Was there anything different that was simply not able to be seen?

There was a moment of silent observation, expectant and sweaty, but Ezre felt Tom's slow breath and looked up with a hint of surprise at his question, straight-sliced and deep cut as it was through the humid, Roalis air,

"The immediate and harshly academic galdori response is dru—no, of course not. Humanity lacks the biological evidence of ley lines, the genetic gift of magic, and the favor of the Gods."

The Hexxos smirked at his own deadpan, emotionless, and almost parroted response, watching as the dribble of blood slowed and thickened, mingled now in an indistinguishable puddle of dark red liquid—life and death in the palm of someone else's corpse,

"My personal opinion is different—zjai, maybe. I can cast a spell and the mona willingly manipulates your body—I can even make a Clairvoyant connection with a human, willing or unwilling. A Physical conversationalist can alter the gravitational forces of an area of their choosing. A Living conversationalist can make plants grow. A Static conversationalist can carve mountains into works of art. And if all of those things are true, then who am I to set boundaries on where the mona ebbs and flows? No one."

Ezre shrugged, tucking his blade away and reaching a delicate, tattooed pair of fingers into the small pool of collective lifeblood. He gathered his field, drawing the airy particles of his favored discipline close to his person like gathering a cloud, and began to trace out several Monite characters around the perimiter of the circle, pausing to dip the same fingers and repeat the symbols on the other side. It was like drawing a miniature prodigium, though the items of focus were not things so much as the Monite being written. Some of what was written might have been familiar, but much of it seemed superfluous, too unusual to be a spell from any textbook. He indicated for the raen to trace his work, making it bolder with another layer but not necessarily pressing too deep into the dry, uncared for soil,

"If we all end up in the same Cycle, I cannot imagine humanity not having some place within it. That does not mean I like the thought, Cooke-vumash, as a galdor there is a curiously encouraged instinct to be uncomfortable. That said, as Hexxos, I am taught to recognize how equal we all become in death even if the mona does not bend to everyone's will the same in life. Perhaps that is not a straight answer—again, what I said was less well-founded research and more, uh, personal musings."

The dark-haired creature blushed, huffed, and let his eyes dart away from Tom's face like motes of shadow dispelled by candlelight. Once the Monite was written, he pressed a thumb gently into the center of the small circle like Yost the passive gardener might have done to plant newly sprouted flowers into the soft earth. Instead of setting a seed in the hole, however, he reached for the older man's wrist and carefully tilted his cupped hand to pour the rest of whatever was left of their mingled blood, thick now, through the well-aged lines of the not-Incumbent's palm and into the divot he'd made.

It wasn't a perfect plot by any means, but it would have to do, "You will most likely not know this spell, as it is not something typically found in textbooks."

Obviously.

Ezre settled again into his comfortable squat, forearms slung over his knees, folding his fingers together loosely so the inked lines met and overlapped from beneath tawny skin. As usual, the Hoxian's casting was soft and subdued in intonation, and while the invocation to his spell might have been familiar now that Tom had been around his casting before, this ward sounded different.

Roll for Ward SuccessShow

AvraeBOTToday at 11:24 PM
Muse 1d6 (5)
Total: 5

Staring into the dark stain in the center where the ground had swallowed their liquid life, the Hexxos Guide drew not on his textbook studies but on the old sacred grimoires of his home, his etheric field drawing inward instead of pulsing outward, gaining mass as if it were a thunder cloud on the horizon instead of a lazy summer fluff floating overhead.

Roll for Feeling Weird Monic Things™Show

Muse: 1d6 (1)
Total: 1

Totally feelin' em. Out of the park.

Strangely enough, something felt different in the eddied mona that swirled and pooled, that gathered and listened, something that could only be described as so achingly distinct but indescribable in that it was not a familiar sensation—Ezre turned a few phrases in Monite and both of them would feel the rush of unfamiliar: it was like a bird flew over head, casting a long shadow or like a breeze tickled the back of their necks cold instead of hot. It flowed between the Clairvoyant mona, it washed along side of it all like foam on top of the waves that crashed on shore in the Harbor after a storm. It was other and yet it more than simply obeyed, cloying at Tom's porven field, sticking to it like so much static, filling his personal space with a disturbingly noticeable ...

calm.

And then, just like that, as Ezre breathed his amandation to close the ward that sought to bind up the hedge maze like a bunch of Vydrag red tape and seal the entrance like slamming a door shut, that strange monic flow physically felt as though it disappeared into the dirt as if someone had pulled the plug in a fine copper tub and dirty, lukewarm water flowed away swiftly.

Both their stomachs would lurch, pulses elevated for no explainable reason other than runoff, ears ringing, and every hair on their body up and dancing for several seconds.

The dark-haired boy rocked back on his heels and poured himself into a seated position with a grunt, dizzy and so hot, suddenly flushed. He leaned back on his uncut palm and tilted his head toward Tom, almost nodding, almost smiling,

"My curiosities might be founded on something after all. As if nothing else has been strange—" He murmured about the obvious, needing a moment before getting up again and finally making their way to the Library, "—have I not said that was unexpected enough yet today?"

[Tom Cooke]

The East Garden • Brunnhold

Late Morning on the 65th of Roalis, 2719

T
he occupying force. Tom twitched a wince. Well, hell, when you put it that way. He looked at Ezre sharply, at first, when he spoke – whether you like it or not – and his eyes narrowed in a cold frown, but then, slowly, like he couldn’t help it, his lip was twitching. Amusement glinted in his eyes. Ezre took the incumbent’s other hand in his gentle-like, reverent, almost, and the tide of any anger Tom felt broke and washed back. It was a mant flooding effort not to grin.

Sap. Well, ain’t you a pina tallyboy? Godsdamn, Tom thought, but he didn’t say anything. Ezre was raising the knife, the sunlight overhead glinting down the blade. He just snorted, looking away.

Looking toward the incumbent’s hand, toward the Hexx’s bone-handled knife. It was, Tom thought now, a beautiful piece. Ezre had wiped the flat off on his tunic, but he couldn’t help but see a ghost of the galdor’s blood there, illuminating the warm steel, maybe more in the intent of the hand that held it – in the mixing of blood in his palm, in the touch of Ezre’s tattooed hand, in the words between them – than on the blade itself. He frowned deeper when Ezre warned him of the risks; again, he said nothing, and he didn’t look at Ezre, but he nodded once, grimly.

He tried not to think of it. A connection, the lad had said, to whatever – that thing was. No, he didn’t like the idea. But he reckoned as there were a lot of things he didn’t like the ideas of, now, things with which his life and body and blood and soul were inextricably entwined. Whatever is haunting this place, Ezre’d said, and Tom thought of a desperate help me, then resolved to think no more of it.

He still didn’t look at Ezre’s face. He didn’t wince, and he didn’t make a noise, when the blade finally bit into his palm. His lip curled slightly.

“The genetic gift of magic,” he repeated emptily; “the favor of the gods.” He watched Anatole’s blood spill from his palm, drip down to mingle with the blood already cupped in his other hand. The smell of it was sour in the hot, humid Roalis air. Familiar. He had expected –

He had expected to see something different than what he saw. Not because he was a raen; because he was a galdor. He supposed it didn’t make sense, being as Ezre’d already spilt sap that was warm and red, being as he’d spilt the sap of galdori before. But it was strange to think that Anatole’s blood was red and warm and sour-sweet smelling, just like his had been, a year and some ago. Everything on the outside of him was different; he had thought maybe the inside would be, too.

Where did it live? The gift? The Circle’s favor?

He watched the red line grow thinner; he watched the blood seep out. He flexed his palm, and eked out more, like wringing water from a cloth. “When I was a man,” he said simply, carefully, “I didn’t think of the mona as being in all things. I thought of magic as separate. Unnatural.”

Still cupping a palmful of blood, Tom watched Ezre trace out a plot. He couldn’t say what he was feeling. He recognized symbols, here and there, recognized words.

“I had spells cast on me by galdori, when I was still a natt. It never felt like a manipulation of something that was already there. It felt like a –”

Violation. Ezre was looking at his face, he knew. He broke off, clenching his teeth. No point in it. No flooding point in it, he reminded himself. With a flush of embarrassment, one that even crept into the few settled mona in his field, he shrugged. “Dze,” he said. “It’s a damn good answer, Ezre. A damn sight better than anything else I ever heard on the matter. I reckon we’re all learning.”

Once he’d finished writing, Ezre took his wrist with the same gentle purpose and tilted it, so their mingled blood leaked out into the hole he’d pressed in the middle of the plot. At Ezre’s mild warning, he found another smile from somewhere inside him and offered it to the Hexx. He didn’t say anything this time, either; he just nodded his head, straightened his shoulders, and prepared himself.

Ezre spoke.

Tom followed, as best he could. He followed the strange words; he felt them out in his mouth, and found them not so difficult to trace with his lips, for all their strangeness. He stared at the dark sap in the plot for a long time, then shut his eyes, ‘cause he could feel them stirring round him, the mona, could feel Ezre’s field drawing back like a wave, building and building, etheric.

He felt it. Discomfort twitched over his face. He didn’t stumble in his careful echo, but he felt it, and he felt all the hairs on his arms stand on end, despite the Roalis heat.

It was different.

He’d told Ezre true. He’d been cast on plenty as a natt; he’d felt plenty of fields, Circle knew, in his work for the King. He’d known what the mona felt like even then, and he knew even better what they felt like now. This wasn’t like the mona he – chroveshit. Don’t think about it. He set himself to focusing on the words; he told himself, with a force of willpower he hadn’t known he had, not to read between the lines, or to look into the shadows of things.

But he felt it, too, the way it settled on his field, calm. He felt the calm with something like physical pain; he wanted it more than he could say. But Ezre carried out the amandation, and he felt what’d been slip away quicker than water down the drain.

“Fuck,” he snarled under his breath, when the spell’d been curled proper. It came out less a word and more a gag; he pressed his hand to his lips, squeezed his eyes shut, and swallowed bile. He rocked on his haunches a moment. His pulse roared in his ears, and he felt gooseflesh everywhere there was flesh to have geese. He found himself shifting to cradle his face in his hands.

The sick subsided slowly, but in its wake, the scrape of his porven on his nerves made him nauseous. With a shuddering groan, he rolled back on his erse, unfolding his aching legs. “Godsdamn,” he breathed, barely a whisper.

He looked up at the sound of Ezre’s voice, wan and slack-faced. He couldn’t help but let out a spluttering snort. “I reckon you ain’t,” he slurred, running a clammy hand through his hair. “Alioe on a kenser, I’ve never felt anything like that. Do you have any idea what the fuck that was? That can’t’ve just been because of my blood, can it?”

[Ezre Vks]

The East Garden

Midday on the 65th of Roalis, 2719

The raen struggled to hold back humor, the hints of an amused expression beneath the surface of his borrowed face, and Ezre appreciated the light in the not-Incumbent's pale eyes much more than he appreciated the fact that he neither flinched nor complained about the steady slice that was made in his palm.

Perhaps, in some way, had Ezre not known better already, the dark-haired boy would have expected Tom's blood to look different as well. Perhaps, had he not been born of a woman whose body had once belonged to someone else, someone who had willingly surrendered to an unknown fate for the centuries-old soul of Llreya Vks—or whatever her name had once been all that time ago—could use her lungs and her heart, then he would have, in the same wary suspicion, expect something different out of the red dribbles that joined his own in Tom's cupped hand.

Had he been a Living conversationalist instead of a Clairvoyant, could he have perhaps investigated further? Were there unseen secrets he did not have the ability to examine? All he knew is what he'd read and experienced first-hand, and, well, from what he could see, strangely enough, the blood of a raen looked just like the blood of the galdor it'd once belonged to.

Dark eyes flicked upward at the once-human's thoughts on the mona and magic, the curves of his eyebrows raising before he glanced downward, waiting for the inevitable congealing of the wound,

"I am incapable of seeing the mona as separate because I have lived nearly my entire life in such close communion with it, though I can see how humanity would be forced into such a view. Textbooks here even on Brunnhold's campus teach us that we share a common ancestor, that there was a time long before the War of the Book where no man could raise his voice and feel the mona acquiesce to his request. Natural or unnatural, well, I admit I have not thought in the direction of such a consideration."

Ezre seemed to genuinely mull such a statement over, pausing for a moment as he gathered his field and prepared to cast, finding the thought process one he would have to pursue when not in the East Garden with ghosts wandering hungrily on the other side of a wall of untamed hedges among strange roses and gnarled roots. It would be an interesting bit of research, and one he was sure would eventually lead him back to the quiet, ancient collections of dusty old tomes in Kzecka.

Monic cloud of Clairvoyant particles drawn close around the Hexxos Guide as he drew in the circle of dirt with their mixed blood, he frowned at the realization that he'd never considered what it must be like for a non-magical being to be subject to magic, whether the target of spells or an innocent bystander in the wake of someone's casting. He blinked slowly, tattooed fingers tracing familiar Monite symbols, and his voice was subdued while he weighed his words with Hoxian care,

"Academically speaking, I do not have an answer. I have never heard a human perspective on magic in any capacity. You are in a unique position to present information I have never been privy to." The young galdor admitted, curiosity obvious in his otherwise typically unemotional tone of voice. He didn't quite acknowledge the expression of embarrassment in Tom's features, if only because he wasn't confident that the answer he'd given to the raen was actually a good one. It worked for this moment, and he took note to search for something better to offer again later.

Pouring what little of their mingled, red essence into the small indent he'd made in the center of the circle, Ezre's gaze lingered on what clung to the other man's palm, staring at the stubborn stain as he rehearsed the spellwork for the Ward he planned on casting silently in his mind, shoving all of the distracting stray thoughts from their loud places as they sparked and wafted like so much sweet incense, tempting him away from his purposeful direction.

Casting after such a conversation felt far more enlightened than usual, and yet even if he'd not been paying particular attention to every sensation and nuance of the motion of mona for a fleeting series of heartbeats, the strangeness of something other and unfamiliar was impossible to deny. It felt similar, it felt like something he'd always known or something he should already know, and yet it also felt so incredibly alien that he couldn't help but chase it in the wake of his spell—field still etheric and light, reaching outward with all of his senses as if he were trying to catch dragonflies with a string.

Slipping through his grasp, fleeing just as quickly as it had appeared, the strange monic signature as gone before he'd had much of a moment to even acknowledge whether he'd actually felt anything that different or whether he was tricking himself into believing so.

It was the moment of stillness in Tom's porven, entropic field that really surprised Ezre, however, and when the dark-haired Guide's eyes fluttered open again, he stared at the raen, letting the older man's harsh words of equivalent shock wash over him without gentleness.

"I do not have even the faintest of theories right now."

The Hoxian managed to admit, mouth making syllables more out of instinct while his attention traveled elsewhere, senses truly stretched to their mundane limits as he hungrily sought to feel that strangeness one last time. It was a useless attempt and Ezre frowned, deeper than his well-practiced rhakor usually allowed, "I am not sure if it is because of this place. Because of the ghosts. Or because of you. Or because of something else entirely that I am not taking account for. Part of me wants to say I have felt it before, but my entire inner self recoils from that statement at the same time."

He sighed, grounding himself with the very faint, extremely difficult to detect vibrations that seemed to emanate from his warding through his whole being this close to it while activated, a sensation he now wondered if Tom felt as well.

Sitting for just a little bit longer, looking back to the hedge maze as if he half-expected the shadowy ghost of who he assumed to be Couldin and his glowing maw to be waiting for them again, Ezre's teeth pressed into the tattooed line inked beneath his lower lip, tide of hypothesis, conjectures, and suppositions threatening to drown him while his too-supernaturally-aware mind reached into dark places his physically present self could not. Was it the raen and the restless ghosts that caused the strange monic experience or the strange mona that caused the spiritual anomalies instead?

Those thoughts felt like his too-fat osta chasing it's own tail and the Hexxos Guide grunted some hiss of consonants, shaking his head,

"I must experience more or do more research before I can even pretend to draw conclusions—" Shoving himself back to his feet with his uncut hand, he tucked his knife away again into the wide belt at his waist and huffed impatiently at loose, moist strands of dark hair that had drifted from their place knotted above his head. Reaching out to offer that same inked hand to help Tom to his feet, he also offered a faint flash of an impish smile,

"—although, you are the only raen I know in Anaxas, Cooke-vumash, so that probably means I will require your assistance in such research. First, however, this whole East Garden situation needs taken care of. To put it all finally to rest, if you wish to participate in my morbid sense of humor."

He waved his scabbed palm in the direction of the hedges, aware that beyond them lay the roses—

"Ah."

That same palm slipped between sweaty layers, making sure the roses hadn't disappeared once they left the vicinity, making sure somehow his ward or that strange monic disturbance hadn't somehow destroyed them. He felt the thorns first, gently brushing the petals before he ran fingers up over the tattoos on his chest, over his face to brush more hair away.

"This is all I can do for now. When we come back, I will be more prepared than just an aquamancy cup and a knife." Tilting his head away from the garden in the general direction of the Library, Ezre implied it was most likely their time to tactically step away from one situation and into another, "I apologize in advance should anything strange occur due to the sanguine connection I have so unorthodoxly used, but strangeness seems to be the unforetold thematic direction for today."

[Tom Cooke]

The East Garden • Brunnhold

Late Morning on the 65th of Roalis, 2719

H
or a time, Tom was too dazed to think much of anything.

Ezre was getting to his feet, leastways. Then there was a slim, tattooed hand; Tom sat a moment before he took it, but he took it firm enough and levered himself to his feet with it. Soon as he was upright proper, his stomach gave a flip, and he shut his eyes against a wave of dizziness. But that subsided, too, quick enough, and when it did, he became aware of Ezre’s voice.

He didn’t look down at the ward in the dirt. He shook his head, as if he could shake up all the shit the last hour’d dumped into it, shake it up and make sense of it. His field was back to its usual porven; it usually grated him, but he was almost glad of it, today.

He didn’t like thinking of a connection between his sap and that thing in the maze. He didn’t like thinking there was something special about his sap, neither; it was hard enough, coming to grips with the fact he wasn’t natt anymore. Ezre rattled off the options calm-like as ever, clinical, almost; Tom wondered if that was a note of excitement he heard.

More experience! He just shook his head. “There’re some questions I don’t want the answers to.” He dusted the dirt off the seat of his trousers, clicking his tongue irritatedly. “Though I’ve got a feeling we’re going to get them whether we want them or not. Lucky you, eh?”

He glanced over at Ezre, then back over the garden. The path back was calm as it’d been before whatever the hell’d happened. Funny to think how the rest of campus — such as it was, in Roalis — was going on about its business unaffected. He thought of the poor Tamika lass, and felt a pang. Maybe he wanted to get this sorted, after all.

Unforetold thematic directions.

“Hell,” scoffed Tom, running a shaky hand through his hair. “Strangeness seems to be the only thematic direction, these days. But I wouldn’t call it unexpected.” The sweat he wiped away from his forehead was cold; his headache was chiseling away at the back of his skull, and he winced when he took his hand away from his face. Still, as he looked back at Ezre, he managed a weak grin and a nod.

The library, then. He suppressed a groan, rolling his shoulders and feeling the muscles crack. The ward still buzzed at the back of his mind; it buzzed in a way he couldn’t’ve described, even if you asked him, buzzed to a sense he hadn’t known he had.

He was happy enough not to look back as they left the maze behind, though he saw Ezre’s backwards glances. He hadn’t realized how quiet it was, unearthly quiet and still, ‘til they left. ‘Til the birds started twittering again, proper Roalis birdsong, and the wind started rustling the branches and the leaves of the trees. The sun was up overhead, and Tom wiped more sweat from his forehead. It wasn’t cold, this time.

He only looked back as they passed through the old red walls, the gates with their soldered flowers and fauna. “Hells,” he muttered again, and looked over at the Hexx.

Maybe it was the sight of the lad’s face in profile, slick with sweat. Long way from home, he thought suddenly, unexpectedly, and felt a pang.

It’d been important, what he’d said back in the garden. He’d been half too busy getting bled to say much, or pay too much attention, but now, he thought — it’d been important. Damned important. Tom frowned, looked down at his shoes, moving in and out of dappled light. He remembered the curiosity in Ezre’s voice. He was tired, and he wasn’t sure what to think, but he knew he hadn’t expected it. It was oddly touching.

Long way from home, he thought again, heaving a sigh. He thought of Kzecka, high up in the snowy mountains — snow in Roalis, sometimes, Ezre’d said once — and he thought of Ezre’s umah, up there right now, doing Circle knew what. Living, he suspected.

“Do you wonder?” Tom offered into the quiet, too tired to care it was a non-sequitur. “I couldn’t’ve imagined what it’d be like, being a galdor, casting, all that shit — before. You’d told me we had a common ancestor, that my kind’d been able to talk to the mona, once, I’d’ve laughed in your face, I reckon.” He sucked at a tooth, and shrugged, and smiled wryly sideways at Ezre. “You got raised by a raen; d’you ever wonder what it’d be like, being somebody else? Something else?”

He raised his brows, then laughed, frayed. “Epaemo. I’m so tired, I don’t know what the fuck I’m saying.”

[Ezre Vks]

Campus Proper

Midday on the 65th of Roalis, 2719

Ezre wasn't entirely sure if Tom was being serious or sarcastic when he spoke of questions better left unanswered, both the concept of such a mindset alien to the Hoxian often too curious for his own good and the tone of voice the words were spoken with somewhat ambiguous despite how long he could claim to have now lived in Anaxas. He blinked, attempting to navigate the emotional landscape of a man he only pretended to know by supernatural connection instead of by time-tested experiences.

"I would not call this luck, though I am of the age to enjoy too much risk-taking behavior. So I have been told." The ninth form smirked, hovering what would have otherwise been deemed closer than socially acceptable or even necessary to the older galdor, dark eyes drifting over his shaking hand and not missing the wince. He remembered their previous experiment in Bethas and had not yet forgotten how spellcasting gone strange had affected the raen then as well, so his proximity was clearly an act of concern.

"I suppose neither of us can help but expect strange things, given who we are despite our diferences." Ezre couldn't deny the truth in that: all of what Tom lived and breathed in someone else's flesh was surely strange and the Hexxos Guide knew too much to see the world as anything but abnormal on a daily basis. As if that were a cue, he couldn't help but glance back toward the hedge maze, brows drawing together as he let his attention flick over roses and overgrown roots, searching for that dark shadow of a ghost's visage just one more time.

His shoulders sagged, sweat-soaked linen layers dragging against tattooed skin, and his ears rang not with the sounds of insects in the Yaris heat but with his own pulse and the runoff from his own magical exertion. The ward tingled against his monic senses like an unseen breath disturbing the airy flow of his field.

It was good to walk, to begin walking, to put some distance between himself and what he'd left behind, to stop lingering in front of a mysterious anomaly every teenaged chord of restlessness in his temple-raised, hand-inked body longed to explore and solve with the tenacity of someone who was seemingly unafraid of the dark. He was grateful for the return of the dry season breeze, for the sounds of birds, for the sudden faint hum of student voices in the distance. He was grateful for the reminder that most of Vita still carried on as it should, as it always had, even if parts of it were clearly no longer following their set orders faithfully, souls included.

"I did not say that pre-humanity could once communicate with the mona. I said that perhaps, if the theory is correct, pre-galdori once could not. The difference is subtle. Or maybe it is all—what is the Anaxi compound explative?—chroveshit." Ezre corrected, delicate lips curling into a sort of grin that implied the emphasis was important. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was all just made up. Perhaps it was something else everyone still continued to falsify for their own self-righteousness, "And you can laugh even now—it sounds ridiculous, Cooke-vumash—but, then again, if I told anyone else on this campus—anyone except for perhaps Lilanee who still does not know the truth—that my own mother was just a borrowed corpse housing some stranger's centuries-old soul, would they not laugh as well?"

He'd not experienced some of the same cruelties in Hox as a young child first sent away to school that he'd come face to face with as a young man upon first transferring to the Kingdom of Anaxas' most prestigious Brunnhold. Jokes about his consonant-heavy accent, comments about his surprisingly obvious tattoos, and distaste for his somewhat generally unappealing fascinations with death and burials were admittedly shallow in comparison to the depths of cruelties committed against the lower races by his own kind, and so Tom's question stole his voice for a moment.

The dark-haired boy's expression faltered, softening from severe and deadpan to something sensitive and thoughtful. He swallowed slowly, thirsty and dry-mouthed from the Yaris heat and so much spellwork, feeling the motion like sandpaper against the back of his throat,

"Zjai—all of my life. I grew up among Vessels. My umah is not the only raen in Kzecka, in the Hexxos. I have met a few. I was also raised in relative isolation, high in the mountains of Hox alongside what may be called rather austere, obscure, or even ascetically spiritual galdori. What I know of the world now is because I purposefully seek to experience it, to understand, to observe. Have I ever wanted to be someone else? Well—"

Ezre tilted his head as he led the way across the well-manicured, better maintained sidewalk of a main campus thoroughfare, bright sun searing Tom's borrowed galdori body into a silhouette for just a heartbeat, catching for a moment his fading red hair and sharp, Anaxi features. What had the raen resembled in his first life? What had his mother looked like in hers?

Had she even been a woman then? He realized, he had no idea.

Had he been blessed with siblings, he could have perhaps chosen to follow a Vessel's path instead of a Guide's, but that would have meant he'd have given his life freely, ending his existence for the sake of another instead of gaining the entropic chaos of immortality a displaced soul pretended at in undeath. It would not have allowed him an opportunity to be someone else, and, as far as he knew, it might even have caused a complete destruction of his offered soul entirely. Being born of a raen did not, as far as he'd come to understand through his limited but thorough searching, guarantee him to also become a raen upon his death, either, so there was no need to foolishly rush into harms' way in hopes of such a flight of fancy.

As far as anyone knew, it was random and unfortunate—no purposeful ritual or experiment had ever succeeded in forcing a ghost, let alone a raen into existence.

"—of course. Taller, I think. I have more than once longed to be taller. Or a woman, but not in a Kingdom as oppressive as this one. Maybe even a Naulanese in their lost jungle full of the bones of their sacrifices." Ezre grinned, taunting Tom with the straightforward lack of emotion in such a statement, pausing for effect, before he laughed a warm, shy, almost musical noise, looking away just as suddenly as he'd looked over,

"But, in all seriousness, I have more than once wondered if the experiences of other races would even be something I could actually endure. There are other galdori who can live content in their ignorance of hard labor and hardship, but as a Hoxian, I can at least imagine. I can admit I do not envy or aspire to the difficulties of humanity or of passives without magic, nor can I say I wish to be limited by mixed bloodlines as a wick. I know that is revealing of my comforts in this present life, here and now, and I have often been curious as to whether or not it is possible to read into the past of a soul to see who—or what—it has been."

Ezre knew he couldn't deny how very attached he was to being galdori, but he at least attempted to do so with a humility that his peers would have claimed none of the lower races deserved,

"Maybe this is why I have chosen Clairvoyance as a magical focus—I can briefly inhabit the mind of and experience the existence of a stranger, willing or not, but I do not have to become them. And as a Hexxos, I can read the life once lived on the bodies given to my care for burial, but I also share in the process of passing a soul onto whatever comes next."

The Hoxian shrugged, aware of the honesty he spoke with so freely here in public view without his usual reserved concern, begrudgingly thankful the dizzying heat kept most loitering students elsewhere at this hour. Ezre dropped his voice, stepping closer, airy field dampening in reflex of the movement into a more intimate proximity, acquiescing to the entropic wash of the other man's porven, unreconciled aura,

"You do realize that you can change bodies whenever you like, Tom Cooke, though it is taking the life of someone else in the process. You are not bound to the vessel you chose upon first awakening."

[Tom Cooke]

The East Garden • Brunnhold

Late Morning on the 65th of Roalis, 2719

I
t was easy to laugh. Maybe it was everything that’d just happened, or maybe it was that flooding grin, and the shy, sheepish laughter on its heels, no less warm for its rarity. It got Tom, every single time.

He reckoned it was only fair, what with how he must’ve looked to the Hoxian. He wondered, not for the first time, if all his tongue-in-cheek snappishness and raised brows were just as bewildering to Ezre as Ezre’s calm, even public face was to him. He supposed everybody had their own sort of rhakor.

A woman, though! Tom cast a brief glance in Ezre’s direction. He supposed he shouldn’t’ve been surprised, not with their talk of cxil, of Anaxas’ failings. Naulanon and forest priestesses and bone rituals were about the furthest thing from Tom’s life he could imagine, but then, two years ago, Brunnhold and magic had been nothing but vodundun.

“Naulanon’d suit you, if not for the heat,” he shot back, easy-like, then wrinkled his nose. “I’ve never been a woman,” he added slowly, like a mung, as if both of them didn’t flooding know that. “Never, uh, occurred to me. Never given it any thought, I mean.” He cleared his throat and didn’t speak for a few more moments.

They came under the dappled shadow of a well-kept tree, and he looked over at Ezre in the momentary shade.

Weren’t many galdori who’d’ve admitted all that. Hexx were strange birds, but Tom, for all Ezre’s daredevil ghost-hunting dove him to his wit’s end, appreciated as much.

He studied Ezre’s profile contemplatively. He’d never thought about it before, not with anybody. Now, he tried to picture it: what Ezre’d be like as somebody else. A natt, maybe, he thought, a little bemused, a little unsettled. It struck him like a bolt that in life, he could’ve been taken just the same as Anatole, and probably by some poor, confused laoso like himself. Maybe even by a galdor.

Maybe by somebody like Ezre. On another day, it might’ve horrified him; now, he just smiled faintly, his eyebrow raised. You’d be surprised what you could endure, he didn’t say. “Taller, oes. I used to be fair tall,” he mused. “Six and a half feet, just about. It’s useful, seeing over most of the heads in a crowd, and I was a big man, so I could throw my weight round benny enough. But you bang your head on a lot of door frames, if you’re not careful.”

As they came into the light, he shaded his eyes against the high sun, squinting round the courtyard. It was a lazy sort of sun; it was the kind of sunlight that whipped the air to a warm froth, made every motion sluggish.

They’d well enough crossed out of the east garden, by now, and there were students milling about, though not many. Across a stretch of shrub-dotted green, away from the walkway, a couple of first- or second-years sat cross-legged round a spread of blanket, with a basket of yats and a stack of books. What looked like a professor crossed quick-like, arms pumping, from one building to another, sticking to the shade; the sun caught his hair in a coppery sheen. An older lass lay in the grass not too far distant, dark hair spread out behind her, her face covered with a broad-brimmed hat. She might’ve been dead, if not for the rise and fall of her chest.

Tom couldn’t feel their fields from here, though he knew they must’ve had them – all of them must’ve had them. He thought, again, of what Ezre’d said. Where had the mona come from? he wondered. He knew better than to ask; he knew there wasn’t an answer. Did it matter? The haves and the have-nots of the arcane were a part of life. They were written as deep in the fabric of Vita as the scars on Ezre’s palm.

His own palm smarted, newly-cut. These things, he thought suddenly, with the weight of a premonition, were not immutable. He didn’t much like the thought; he shut his eyes, putting it down to feverish imaginings.

The brush of Ezre’s field as the Hexx walked closer beside him tore him from his reverie; he was grateful for it, if not for the words, spoken just as soft and even as the rest.

He snapped, half through his teeth, “You don’t have to remind me. You seem to enjoy doing just that.” But there was still something like a smile on his face, and he rolled his shoulders in what might’ve been a shrug, sighing. He shifted to walk a little closer to Ezre, himself, and lowered his voice.

“You think I haven’t considered it?” he murmured. “Your raen – do they turn their noses up at a vessel, ’cause it happens to be a little old, or a little short, or ’cause they don’t like the face? With my qalqa, I’d like to think I know the weight of a life.” He looked at Ezre sidelong. “And what about you? If you wound up in one you didn’t much like, out of necessity? A human, say?” Maybe I don’t have a right to ask that, he thought, then pushed the thought away with a spur of anger. Ezre’d asked in the first place.

[Ezre Vks]

Campus Proper

Midday on the 65th of Roalis, 2719

"Iwant to pursue post-graduate studies in Mugroba, but I already fear the temperatures there." Ezre smirked at Tom's galdor features, scrunched so that the older man's face looked even older still. He almost giggled in his quiet, shy way again, but instead his own expression softened as if melting in the bright end-of-Roalis sun not because he attempted to imagine the body he walked so purposefully away from the East Garden with as a feminine one so much as he considered his own,

“My umah struggled to have a single child—I am the only one to live—and yet I have always envied that gift of bearing life, perhaps because as Carriers of the Dead, we mostly see the end of it, not the beginning. I hope to give her grandchildren instead—one day. I am not in a rush, obviously—I—uh—I have perhaps given this too much thought.” The Hoxian's dark-eyed gaze skipped away from the raen's face, visibly both embarrassed and yet genuine in his admission of both curiosity and altruism in the same breath. He'd always simply imagined that a different body would simply be a different experience, and while he was hardly experienced in his masculine shape as it was, surely, in his freedom as cxîl, he was allowed to wonder, right? He was aware of the foreign privileges his claim to maleness gave him here in Anaxas, and while he was also quite aware of his apparent preferences when it came to attraction, he wasn't entirely convinced that body shape would really matter to his heart had such things been different.

“You have never been a woman that you remember, but who is to say where you have been before you were Tom Cooke's trapped soul? Some other journey through the Cycle long before now." He added with no small amount of coyness—or perhaps it was innocence, honestly, light-hearted and full of an untarnished hope—blinking slowly.

It was so hot.

He glanced around campus, the red stone buildings that gave Brunnhold its name so very different from the volcanic rock he grew up around.

Ezre couldn't at all imagine the height that Tom described his once-human life to have towered at, the northernmost reaches of the Six Kingdoms a harsh place that demanded too much of bodies too large, and so only those who dwelled on the Steppes between the mountains and Mugroba's sweeping deserts ever seemed to grow that tall.

He licked dry, tattooed lips in thought, shifting their trajectory once in the more open, bright stretches of well-manicured grass that made up the spaces between classrooms and residences and lecture halls and everything else, toward the library proper. His demeanor shifted, now far from the tingling sensation of the ward he'd left behind, now more within the public view than he'd been in the East Garden, and Tom would feel the tautness in the Hoxian's field as though he stretched across himself a tangible sensation of his otherwise invisible rhakor.

"It is not a pleasure. It is—" Ezre weighed his words carefully. They were hot stones passed through his inked fingers, and yet the Hexxos was not apologizing for the disquieting reminder, tilting his head slightly to glance over at the raen who was, despite his tone of voice, still smiling just a little, "—interest. It is an attempt to offer Guidance, as is expected of me. I have done so poorly, it seems."

There was some welcome offering of privacy when the not-Incumbent walked a little closer, when the press of his entropic field felt so effervescent in the airy, weightless shadow of his own Clairvoyant aura, and when he lowered his voice. The Hexxos would have smiled had it been appropriate, had Tom's words not been so sharp.

The other man had already proven he knew his way with a knife. He'd admitted to or at least hinted at experience with violence, too, more than once now, and here he was, not cutting his other palm for another spell so much as prying open someone else's skin to see how muscles moved beneath it all. The younger student's jaw clenched and his thick eyelashes fluttered for a moment, inhaling thoughtfully, exhaling slowly,

"All Vessels are the same age when their lives are offered, but have those like you who have become Hexxos-bound refused an offering because they did not like what was given? Have they ever made their own choices outside of our defined boundaries? Zjai. And Vessels have stepped away from their chosen path for themselves, whether out of fear or any number of other feelings for the life they almost surrendered. Ultimately, some things are not strictly controlled so much as hopefully given."

He paused, thinking of Ksjta Tzacks, some brief flicker of some emotion tensing delicate features before he tilted his head again, sweat tickling down the shaved back of his scalp to soak the bright-colored linen layers so high against his neck.

There was an undertone of challenge in Tom's voice that he felt more than heard, some wisdom the raen had earned in scar tissue or paid for in blood in a life Tom knew Ezre could only imagine (and poorly at that). He spoke of his appraising skills in the context of what the Hoxian struggled to interpret as some title in whatever his employment had been or perhaps a Tek word for his status, and the younger galdor did his best not to frown too deeply, not to let the sting of the cut bleed into the space around them through willing, emotional expression,

"—are you saying you know the weight of life because you have taken it? By what standards did you measure that value with? Was it based on something you wanted from them? On what you needed at the time? Or on what you were paid to bring their end? Did you wash their bodies? Did you bury them? Did you find those that might have cared about them and offered the living comfort and reparation for what you had taken from them? How big, really, were your hands, Cooke-vumash? Mine are small. I dare not claim to know the worth of someone else because I am not yet very skilled at measuring myself."

Inked hands raised briefly toward the sun in pointed emphasis and near-poetic expression, the dark inked lines on the back of them, forming their patterns that disappeared into his voluminous sleeves, gave way to the purposefully carved lines he'd repeatedly cut into his palms over the years in his curious explorations. Holding them up briefly, he dropped them again just as quickly, one trailing fingers over the back of his neck,

"We must all endure things we do not like, in this life or another, but that does not make one moment worth less, even when it is hard to see the value. I will not remember this instance, not like you do, once I have returned to the Cycle (because you have not), and there is no current evidence that suggests anyone is capable of remembering without being a raen. I—I do not know—I cannot answer for myself, for even I can admit that I am selfish, that I am comfortable. If I was born into a life of difficulty, then I cannot project who I am now into that life because it would not fit. I am sure that is something you understand better than I do from where you stand."

Ezre didn't like his own answer, as it didn't feel sufficient. It felt hasty and clumsy, breathless and untested as his nineteen years were when one got down to the brass tacks of things. He might have been pouting, making his dissatisfaction visible in his proximity to the raen, but then he looked away again, embarrassed at being so personal in public view or flustered by the revelation of his own limitations, by mortality and whatever mysteries were beyond his reach after death.

"Did you like the life you had? Do you hate the one you have taken? Would you rather—" The library was achingly close. It's familiar shape was within sight and the dark-haired student did not slow his steps as if he intended to linger, the events of the East Garden still thick in his mind, thorny vines attempting to choke all of this rather serious, rather surreal conversation he'd almost rather be having,

"—would you rather it have ended as it was supposed to?"

[Tom Cooke]

To the Library • Brunnhold

Late Morning on the 65th of Roalis, 2719

S
peak to me of comforting the living,” he breathed, barely above a whisper. He wasn’t looking at Ezre. There was still a faint smile on his lips, polite and mirthless. His eyes roved round the green as if restless, as if nothing they landed on was safe to look at. Finally, they settled on the distant bulk of the library, a crisp shadow against the sun. They followed it up, up, ‘til they could watch the dotted silhouettes of birds chase the updrafts round the tallest spire.

Ezre had sped up the pace. Tom followed suit, but his hip ached, and the sun was fair bright. He was still queasy, and he felt breathless. His cheeks were red.

There was nothing, for a while, but the darkness that pulsed at the sides of his vision, but the spire with its birds and the broad blue sky. Once or twice, he thought to turn on his heel and break with the path — streak along the lawn, away toward the Stacks. He didn’t know what direction the Stacks was in, but he’d find it, eventually. Or else he’d find some shady nook, someplace out of sight, to find his breath and his balance again.

Out of interest. Out of — Guidance.

If not for that last question, he might’ve been able to think clearly. He’s just a lad, a voice was telling him. He’s doing his damnedest to feel his way through some complicated shit; he’s doing his damnedest at a job he’s been saddled with, a job you wouldn’t’ve managed the tenth of, at his age. He might’ve thought of Ezre brushing shut the eyelids of somebody’s umah, steadying somebody’s broken rhakor, somebody’s weeping behind closed doors, with that soft, even voice. He might’ve said — boemo, that’s fair. I don’t understand death the same way you do; you don’t understand death the same way I do. It’s only natural.

If not for how Ezre’d come at it. If not for the questions, all building up to that last one.

Tom’s lips were pressed so thin they were white; his knuckles were white at his side. He forced himself to relax his fist and take a deep breath. He licked his lips and tasted salty sweat. “I appreciate it. I do.” His voice came out a little hoarse; he cleared his throat. “You letting me know I can have whatever breathing corpse I’ve the soulless ambition to take, on account of the fact that the one I’ve got now’s over the hill.”

It sounded harsh, to him. After all their talk of studying in Thul’amat, of what it’d be like to be somebody else — to be a lass — his eyes skittered out across the lawn, and he could still see the young student sprawled, the brim of her hat fluttering with her breath, her hair a coppery waterfall in the grass around her. His face went slack, for a moment, with something like terror. He swallowed cold spittle and dragged his eyes back to the path ahead.

How could they’ve been walking along, cheery as the sunny day, talking about it like it was nothing? Like it was a curiosity? Being one person, being another? Killing someone and crawling into their skin? Tom fought down another wave of nausea.

“I don’t know how big my hands are, to answer your question,” he said softly, “to whet your interest.” His voice was shaking; he quickened the pace without meaning to. “I used to think I knew what a life was worth. The last one I took — you’re looking at him. My whole flooding point was, I know what I’m capable of. I know what kind of a monster I am, and I don’t much like being reminded.”

His voice broke. Ezre’s last question bubbled up in his mind again, surreal against the backdrop of the peaceful, lazy-hot Roalis campus. A butterfly was drifting across the path. Tom couldn’t take it anymore, not staring that question in the face; the library loomed ahead, and he didn’t know he could go in, didn’t know he could play pretend with Ezre’s girlfriend and that little lass who didn’t know shit about any of it, who wouldn’t’ve believed them even if they told her, not ‘til something like what was in the East Garden got a hold of her and —

Tom jerked his head to look down at Ezre. “Yes,” he hissed, and stopped in his tracks. “Yes, I would’ve. It’s not about liking or not liking lives. What else is out there, like me, preying on the living?” He shook his head sharply and started to turn away. “I can’t do this. Gosselin, Kuleda — I can’t make them be around something like me, not even knowing the danger they could be in.”

[Ezre Vks]

Campus Proper

Midday on the 65th of Roalis, 2719

"My observations have nothing to do with your current apparent age." Ezre was not entirely capable of realizing his own isolated, Kzecka-born ignorance was just as boldly on display in this moment as the dark new lines inked fresh into his skin barely a week ago, shining in the sun under a layer of sweat, naive in his sheltered childhood, raised among the dead and the living without the boundaries and the definitions of what any normal Anaxi would probably ever consider comfortable.

While the last name Vauquelin could have—should have—been familiar in the sense that the once-Incumbent had a child of Brunnhold age, the Hoxian knew so very few students outside of his very small, very specific social circle here on campus that he had never made the connection. Besides, if nearly all of Anaxas' galdori attended their Kingdom's school—how many shared a last name without even sharing lineage?

Ezre had, innocuously—immaturely—allowed himself the illusion of the familiar, trusting with what could only be described as the most genuinely well-intentioned of innocence that someone like Tom Cooke somehow felt and thought and understood in the same ways that the Hexxos Guide did simply by the nature of his similar but not-at-all-the-same existence to more personal connections he had so recently been in contact with, given that he was almost literally right out of the airship from Hox. He had not once—not really, not deeply—considered the vast gulf of differences that separated himself and the raen he'd projected this illusion onto, not once wanted to lift the veil and stare too long at a face neither of them really knew in life. He had allowed himself the comforting lie that the two of them were somehow sharing saatri, sharing culture, purely on the basis of each other existing, purely on the basis of the other man being raen as if he was at all like any other raen he knew, as if he wasn't still so freshly human, when, in fact they shared very little in common at all—other than an inescapable awareness of the supernatural.

Ezre balked somewhere between the words life and worth and monster, eyes growing wide at the emotions that did not want to be, could not possibly be hidden in the other galdor's—in the human's—in the raen's—in Tom's voice. Ezre could not understand the use of the last word, could not reconcile whether the raen was speaking in that moment of what he had been—a human and a criminal at that, as far as the Hoxian had interpreted, albeit with a niave lightness, albeit with some idolizing innocence no other sane galdor would have passed over so easily—or of what he had become—a body-snatching, soul-devouring nightmare poured into someone else's skin with no direction, no answers, and no reason to exist other than the stubborn persistence of memory and the lingering will to live all souls seemed to possess.

He blinked, slowly, something too hot, too humid to be his own breath hitched in his tattooed chest, "Dru—that is not—it was not—"

Wasn't it, though? Wasn't it all his his intention? Wasn't it his point?

Ezre did not know how to make a village.

He had already admitted his inked hands felt too small.

He did not yet understand how to bring two things together, not in the right ways: Clairvoyant conversation had taught him how to span great distances between things that were separated and the mortuary sciences had taught him how to help others separate themselves, one last time, from those who were no longer present. Hoxian society had taught him what that some things were supposed to remain separate: his public self from his private emotions, galdorkind and humanity, the living and the dead—whether these things were right or wrong, true or false, he had still been born into a way of seeing. He had been shown, however, that this perspective was mutable, as the world was mutable through Monite, that separation was mutable through relationships (regardless of race) but he had yet to master his own magic, let alone his own metaphorical vision, let alone his heart or his handling of the hearts of others.

Lilanee was angry. He had hurt her.

He could see in Tom's body language and hear in the crack of his voice that he had hurt the other man, too.

His so-called religious upbringing had given him a unique opportunity to see what was otherwise believed to be unseeable, unknowable, and non-existent but it had not, could not, teach him how to reconcile what the rest of the world saw, each as an individual, from their own point of view. Not that anyone could, ultimately, teach him the one use for all of what he did know, not that anyone could, ultimately, put his somewhat esoteric, somewhat disconnected wisdom onto a better path. Not alone, and not without Ezre's willingness to bend to the journey.

The young galdor had, at least, left home, but he had not, not quite yet, left himself—most especially, though not specifically, not like Tom had.

What terrified, what disgusted, what horrified the man who had once been human and who now was something else, something entirely unwanted and unasked for was nearly everything that Ezre had been raised to accept as not merely normal but also relatable, lovable, and acceptable. What Tom could not accept about himself, Ezre did not know how to even question—not because he shouldn't have questioned; not because the other shouldn't have attempted to accept; not because Tom was not deserving of receiving or capable of giving love.

Perhaps, in different ways, they both needed to step elsewhere in order to see more clearly.

No one was ready to budge.

Ezre stopped when Tom stopped, though it was awkward and abrupt, though he was slow to turn to face the pained expression waiting for him, the taboo and blatant display of hurt creased into the features of a man the young galdor didn't really know, not in the way he thought he did. The honest answer stung more than the young Guide thought it would, though it shouldn't have been unexpected. It shouldn't have been a surprise, but for some reason it was. Was it yes, he liked his old life? Was it yes, he hated the new one he'd been forced to take on? Was it yes, he wished he was neither, back in the Cycle as it should be?

Of course it was yes.

All of it, yes.

His jaw clenched, field dampening like a shadow formed when a cloud passed over the sun.

"I have misspoken. I am sorry—" The Hoxian did not find the Estuan words sufficient and it showed on his face as pure disappointment. Apologies sounded so simple, so shallow, so flippant, "—I have been unthinking."

Narrow shoulders draped in bright linen sagged and dark eyes shifted from Tom's face, from his pale gaze, to the library for a moment. The building hewn from red stone and filled with opulent architecture, stuffed with self-important literature was supposedly the pinnacle of magical education, the richest resource of sorcery and academia in all the Six Kingdoms. Ezre had grown up among tomes older than Brunnhold, and so, in some ways, he was wary of the haughty Anaxi claim to fame (the claim had, in fact, been one of the reasons for his transfer, unable to contain his curiosity for the truth). Had he learned new things? Did he think he'd discovered all the secrets hidden here? Yes. And no.

The outside was still so jarring, but in the handful of years he'd been here, he still hadn't reached far enough beneath the surface of the library to touch the truth he sought.

The Hexxos Guide let his repentant attention drift back to the not-Incumbent, to the red-haired galdori exterior behind which a human who'd once been comfortable with death wrestled with everything but his own. Ezre frowned, suddenly so very self-aware.

"I have upset the balance here," Inked fingers tentatively traced the space between his tattooed chest and Tom's, not quite touching the other man, delicate brows drawn together and voice quiet, "by speaking from my excitement instead of weighing my words properly. This is not appropriate conversation for such a public moment, and I—I am wrong. I understand if—I can find an explanation for—"

Ezre nodded, looking down one of the manicured paths away from where they had come and not leading toward the library, other hand moving to rub at his wrist where a restless spirit had snatched him in a most unorthodox manner before he brought both hands up toward his face, palms pressed together, fingers brushing over his lip and under his nose. He could not find his focus,

"—you are a busy politician and we are children chasing ghost stories, after all."