westwhere | Two Swords

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Two Swords

WHO: Hendrik & you (yes you & don't forget to tag in!)
WHEN: Mid April
WHERE: Around Ke-Waihu
WHAT: Training of sorts
WARNINGS: None

Hendrik had borrowed Sandbreaker from the Luminary and was testing it out. In one hand he held his axe which was his favoured weapon. In the other he held Sandbreaker. It was the only thing keeping his mind going, doing what he was good at which was keeping the boy safe. However, said boy was dealing with the loss of his friend, one Lily Evans.

The knight was friends with her as well and she was one of the ones that had acknowledged his return. For that kindness, he had been grateful. And it was only after she had disappeared that Hendrik learned the truth of what she and the Luminary had meant to each other.

He swung the sword up and down in the air, and then repeated the gesture with the axe. With a sigh, he then went back to weighing both weapons in his hands until he saw someone pass by. And in an effort to help his companion, he decided he would ask around.

Once Hendrik spotted someone close, he nodded at them and spoke in a concerned tone.

"Have you by chance heard of someone here by the name of Lily Evans??"

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[ They are two in this quest, for all Lan Wangji comes bearing armfuls of inks and tattered parchments — a spillage of pedestrian provisions, bartered with difficulty from a stingy merchant's hands. He shares little of Wei Ying's artistic disposition, but the practice of calligraphy has tamed his hand to familiar curvatures, to lines and flinches of well-watered pigment, and she is still, for lack of his skill, depicted as a girl: angular, long of hair, slim. Her smile brightened the heavens.

When the curious, scant few who collect his sheets for inspection, before turning them away with an apologetic wave, ask — was she, perhaps, Lan Wangji's sister? His intended? Surely, not a daughter, for youth shrouds him tight, and he is still himself within his earliest summers?

He parts the sea of their questions with a deep scarcity of answers. What is there to say? He made no claim of the girl, past acquaintance. Kinship is a paltry bond, in a village reduced by poverty to constant, cruel reassessment of all relations, where men judge the conviction of their ties on their utility. Did she give you water? Sow your fields? Wash your linens? What was her use?

It frustrates him, bile spearing his stomach heavy in an acrid line. Stilled, in the midst of the marketplace, the world drifts by him: first waves of amused onlookers, then, once the sheen of his novelty has flattened, the indifferent consumers of his growing frenzy.

He stumbles in Hendrik more than he encounters him, a faintly familiar silhouette who shadows Eleven in their contingent — no stranger, no friend. And yet he knows Lily, they appear joined in purpose, and Lan Wangji anchors himself on the man's arm with a hesitant step of withdrawal soon after, when the crowd of milling marketers and harried villagers shifts around him: ]

Days absent, against habit. [ But his companion knows, else he would not waste breath with the asking. ] She was yoked to the Beastmaster's thrall, once.

He took in the sight of the man who took his arm briefly. Hendrik didn't flinch or move away and bore the weight without comment, judgement or even a second thought, weighted down as he seemed to be with his burdens.

But the man's words troubled him only slightly at hearing how Lily's absence wasn't normal. Then he seemed to be barely processing that, when he heard how she was in the Beastmaster's thrall once. And he put his axe away and lowered his other arm that held Eleven's borrowed blade.

"By that, do you mean to say she could possibly be under his influence right now?" It was plausible in his mind at any way. And it bit him even harder since he had spoken to the Beastmaster himself not long ago and he felt he would've certainly seen her if she had been there. And if she was, it would be nothing to go get the Luminary and go rescue her. But he would have to go find out.

Of course he had no idea where the Beastmaster would be found at the moment, but perhaps he could find out soon enough.

"Perhaps." A simple deduction, if inconclusive. He suspects there is more to the game of the Beastmaster's follies than what the first taste of his presence indicates. A village, awaiting him like a gold-bearing patron. Forests awed and thralled by his step. The mountain, harder in breath as the creature advanced. And his once companion, the Huntress requiring succour.

Pieces of weiqi, adrift on a stormed board. Where does Lily's fate fall in their arrangements? His gaze narrows, slanted and indistinct, and he is lost to himself, until the rustle of passing waves of fresh villagers wakes him, until one hand clasps his parchments curiously. He remembers, distantly, to show the paintings, to the gasps of a young maid when she hears Lily's hair was long flame, coppered.

No answer, past the dark aftertaste of their vinegared apologies. He withdraws, keeps the portrait. Returns to Hendrik, and locks in step.

"The woods are deceptive." Long to traverse, quick to snare. Illusions abound, and he will not waste time in that enterprise without first scouring the markets. "The village best questioned first. You have had answers?"

Hendrik had no idea if this man somehow seemed to think that Lily was somehow in with this Beastmaster or not. But as he thought about it, there really was no indication. She could be in a cave or in any number of places. And the knight wasn't going to go alert the boy and go on a wild chase. He would find out where (if anywhere) the girl was and then go get him.

This knight is not his former companion though that man's soul is in his armor now and the cloak that he has set aside and put in with the Luminary's provisions. So this knight is far more patient, waiting for the newcomer to tell him something because he seems..distracted.

But once the companion speaks again he has to nod along. The woods weren't their friends, that was completely true. Still, Hendrik shakes his head. "I have not begun to interrogate the villagers myself. However, my companion has asked a few and have found naught for answers." He sighs and shifts his weight. "But that might be a good place to start as any."

"We make attempt," he murmurs. Where there are scraps to kindle flame, hope will burn. They may yet stoke it. He feels briefly adrift, aghast with his petty, paltry paintings, his lack of recourse. As if he were a child, plaintive, begging the people of the market to locate his missing mother. Perhaps he is no better than this, and perhaps too they shall log no success for their toil and their trouble.

A bitter truth hangs blunt between them. "Our contingent has witnessed disappearances before. One day present, the next dispersed."

Ghosts, silhouettes, names wandered. Alina, he does not say, but mourns her with a heart heavy and its wounds poorly stitched. Alina Starkov, now Lily. Before them, Lee Chang. Enough faces that they could people a gallery.

The knight nodded. "An attempt will be enough for the moment." Hopefully someone knew something and hopefully they would get more joyful news than they had at present. Somehow he personally doubted Lily would be found, but this was really more for his companion than himself.

Blue eyes then gazed at the other man when he heard the next part and his head lowered some. He recalled his own disappearance, and it wasn't one he'd planned. "This place seems to have that ability. For I do know that I myself left the Luminary's company when I had most certainly not planned on it. However I did somehow return recently. And if Lily is gone, perhaps she shall have a return as well."

That too was said because Hendrik personally would will it to happen if he could.

"But as you say, an attempt shall most certainly be made to locate her."

What is hope if not light squandered, then stoked once more, despite howling storm? He thinks, they are such famished things, starved for the delusion of gladness. Contentment finds them seldom here, rare — serenity poorly won after the tempest of wounds freshly gained, dignity recently tattered.

But happiness is a threadbare cloth, gossamer under light. It does not dress their injuries without showing the hemorrhage of doubt. It cannot last them.

He is trivial with his inks and parchments, a rush of them gathered in hand, crumpled. Later, he may well grieve the expense, for the word of Lan Wangji is no one's bond here, nor likened to silver shavings, nor gold. He cannot make waste of their scant resources, trickled so often between their bruised fingertips.

"We do not know the hurts she returns to," he counters, faint as the objections of a sullen child, perhaps no more than a token. If he speaks them now, first, fate cannot flagellate him with their reality thereafter. Better, he need not say, if she has not gone. "Which corners of the village have you sought?"

They may pursue the rest, sweet-tongued or sour.

The man's words bother him, but it was more an irritation of his own than anything his companion stated. If he returned once again without the Luminary, well he didn't want to consider that. However, it bothered him further to think that Lily might be in danger.

It wasn't something he'd asked Eleven about because the boy didn't seem up to the task of talking about her much. The boy would know far more about the girls' fate or what plight she may return to. And it hurt to not be able to fix the situation for the Luminary.

The question posed had him raise his lavender topped head and he considered. "I have not sought as of yet. Nor have I thought about which part to start at first."

A strategist he wasn't, that was Jasper's thing.

"However, I planned to start tomorrow and complete it within a few day's time. Is there a part in which you believe that I should start?"

It didn't hurt to ask.

A hunt begun without savvy of the lay of their land. Odds do not favour them, yet if ground must be covered, let them make attempt.

He hesitates, eyes faintly shuttered as if roads traversed and deeds done can align before him with military precision. A review, tidy.

Then, with a degree of finality. "I have covered the north." With grudging if middling efficiency. He lacks Wei Ying's charisma in outreach, but height and the dulled shine of his pale clothes draw the eye. He has traded enough of the portraits that word must have spread, like pox and plague, of the search of the strange man afflicted with a silent disposition.

"Take the south." Between them, the village covered. "What is your method?"

This surprised Hendrik as he heard the other had covered part of it already. "So you have been asking as well?" Somehow he told himself that he shouldn't accept the help, but when it came to the Luminary, he would humble himself and do what needed to be done for the boy's sake.

And that's when his head nodded. "I will start there." But as far as method went, that he had to shake his head. "I will simply ask if they've seen Lilly and describe her. Unless you have a better way to inquire about these sorts of things."

Hendrik was aware of himself enough that he could come off pretty gruff and threatening, even when he wasn't trying to. This came from the other members of the group back home having to point that out first however.

He... has been passing his papers, drooping his head, holding idle glances no longer than the span of heartbeats. Making do, where he should have surpassed expectations, met his own standards and not allowed his conviction to dissolve against the tired, threadbare bleating of crowds, haunting. Too much pain has blinded him, stumbled him. The distractions of ingrained poverty and unmet requirements has steered him towards thinning his efforts to locate one of their own.

His head hangs, lead-like and heavy, downturned. Around him, the world spins, nudging him in a gentle progression to nausea that thickens his voice, directs him.

"Your way will suit." Lan Wangi's own will develop, come hell or the high waters this village has depleted. "Let us speak, within days, of our findings."

Between two men, surely, they must see outcome done. The sharp edge of Lily's smile should cut him, if they do not.

The knight watched as his companion's head went down and he wondered at the reason for it. Could the man know something he didn't regarding the situation? Hendrik immediately dismissed that notion because there was no reason the other would agree to helping him otherwise. People didn't waste their time searching for people if they knew where they night have gone or when they may return.

Finally though the other spoke and the taller man nodded. "Then after we search we will meet at this place again. And hopefully by then one of us has some answers."

Even if they're not the happy kind. But Hendrik would do anything to see his charge smile, especially at this point.

Eda, having just arrived, is mainly getting a closer look at the town and trying to find out exactly how this world functions. Maybe she'll also find out something about its magic? That would be great; though at leat her glyphs seem to work, she's tried that much out already. Not being entirely magic-less is certainly a relief for her, who was so used to having many types of magic at her fingertips for so long.

Right now, though, it's time to get the lay of the land. Mainly so she can figure out if she has or can make any goods or services she might be able to sell here. Or else, where the best spots for pickpocketing are. Either is fine by her.

When a stranger actually asks her a question, she shrugs. "Never heard of her."

Hendrik noticed the girl and couldn't recall seeing her around. But then again he stayed near the Luminary as that was his charge, as odd as that position still seemed to be to him in this place.

However, when she replied in the negative, the tall knight simply nodded. "In that case I thank you." Still, he wondered about this person he'd never seen before. And he somehow recalled that the last time he was here in this world, Eleven pretty much met people all the time and he hung back not wishing to be an interference even if he was only two to three steps behind the Luminary at any given time.

And then being on a mountain with the boy ran through his head and he lowered his weapons. "Since you were kind enough to answer my question, is there any way I can be of service to you?"

Eda takes a moment to consider this, thumb and forefinger framing her chin in a thoughtful gesture. She certainly needs several things, those being money, a way to keep her old curse at bay (because she's beginning to feel a bit feathery), and a way to deal with the all-new curse that's been bestowed upon her in this place.

She decides to try her luck with the latter. Seems like something this guy might know about, if he's also an otherworlder, and it's a somewhat pressing matter. One curse is enough, thank you. "What do you know about the curses? The ones the villagers give us?"

The knight's head shook at the question. He didn't even want to think about that curse even though he'd been dealing with it. It was a tough thing to deal with and not something he wished to speak about.

His body bore the scars and bruises that he ended up with daily and fortunately his armour hid it. He woke earlier than those in his camp to try and treat what he could and if they got up around the same time, Hendrik left the house for the day.

"All I know is that they told me some story about a Priest and his deity. They said something regarding needing to redeem the Priest or his wrongs." And he had absolute zero clue how to do that.

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Two Swords

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