westwhere | [OPEN] words engraved in the sand

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[OPEN] words engraved in the sand

WHO: Eleven and every OPEN
WHEN: Travel month
WHERE: On the road to Taravast~
WHAT: All the things
WARNINGS: blood rain, and mention of sickness (thanks Xie Lian)

1. Riding Tips?

Eleven doesn't consider himself an expert on many things, but having won a few notable horse races, he feels somewhat obligated to approach anyone looking out of their depth when it comes to their mounts.

"Hey." He does his best to temper the amusement in his eyes and tone. "I might be able to help you, if you'd like."

2. Sick

Whatever enjoyment he'd gleaned from that first day of travel was swiftly lost that evening over dinner, and through the course of the day immediately following. Face pale and his expression tight with discomfort, Eleven fought down bouts of queasiness with the singular focus of not getting sick all over his horse.

Later, as the sun began to set, he brought his horse up to the nearest person he recognized and pitched his voice to a low almost-whisper lacking all usual vigor.

"..Have you heard when we're stopping?"

3. Camp

Once he's more or less recovered from his bout of illness, Eleven sets about camp with a familiar smile and eagerness to help. Setting up tents, supply distribution, relaying messages and with the self-appointed task of helping look after their collection of elk, horses, and donkeys.

Then with his non-toxic dinner in hand, he seeks out a familiar face to settle next to.

"Mind if I join you?"

4. Watch

He'd been forced to opt out of shifts for the nights he spent recovering from his illness, but determined to make up for it, Eleven signed himself up for every night thereafter.

Between the mists and the harpies, accompanied by the occasional voice on the wind, there is plenty to be watchful of.

"The horses are getting nervous," he observes with a frown and a will to go to them. Their ears twitch, hooves pawing at the ground on occasion.

"Do you think we should check...?"

5. Tar Collection

It isn't pleasant work, shoveling tar into barrels. Stepping in it, getting it all over his gloves and boots; black, stuck ink that enjoys staining everything it touches. He takes to wearing his cloak to cover his travel wear while he works, at peace at least with the idea that every ounce of muck they pried out of the waters would help the nearby plants and wildlife.

And well, after turning all his leftover coin to Wei Wuxian for supplies again, Eleven is looking forward to possibly having coin enough to treat himself to a good meal once they finally reach the city.

Sometimes, he thinks he sees something in the murk; an odd latticework of shadow reflecting back at him. After a few occasions of this over the days, he finally dredges up the nerve to ask:

"Is there... something in there, you think?"

6. First blood rain

The rain came unexpected, late into the night. He'd been certain there weren't clouds enough for rain. The wetness was expected, but then after, the smell and odd warmth, the thickness of it-

Eleven lifted a hand and smeared it like ink between his fingers, then called up a brief flame to examine it by.

"This can't really be-"

Heart in his throat, he snuffed the flicker of fire and let a new chill soak through him as he glanced wildly about for a source while it soaked into his hair and slid down his scalp. He couldn't suppress a grimace, or the shudder that accompanied it as the nausea from his previous illness threatened to resurface. His voice, taking a turn for distress as nothing seems to stand out.

"What is happening?"

7. Wildcard!

[ooc: hmu with anything adjacent to these prompts, or anything else that suits this travel time! feel free to pm/plurk if you'd like to work out anything in particular]

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The question and quiet observations gave him some pause, banking irritation in the wake of Archeval's outreach of empathy. An odd thing. Not that he didn't pity the undead, but for the air of death growing steadily oppressive, lacking a garden with which to counter it.

He paused, stretching his senses, knowing even as he did that he wouldn't glean the depth of detail that Archeval held. There was something else, though- closer and far more concerning.

"I feel death," he said with a frown, turning his attention on Archeval. "But you feel..."

Eleven lifted a palmful of fire, looking him over as though seeking injury. "..Are you all right?"

Well, that had certainly backfired nicely. It wasn't hard to guess what Eleven might be feeling around Archeval specifically right now; he paused for a second in thought before giving a little sigh, waving off the concern with an absent gesture.

"You seem to ask me that quite often lately," he observed in his low, dry drawl.

"I'm well enough. This place is not conducive to good rest, but I'm sure that's been the same for most of us. What you are sensing at the moment--..."

It was on the tip of his tongue to simply lie, but. Standing here in the dark, streaked with blood amid this pass full of death and still standing out above and beyond all of that to Eleven's senses, he didn't know that he could expect to be believed. Their respective powers might work differently, but El was hardly stupid.

"...in your parlance I suppose one would call it dark magic," he shrugged at last, and for a little while simply stared out toward the black sky overhead as it continued to spit out crimson rain. It was a bit hard to know where to start -- he'd never really had to explain the Force walk out loud before, certainly had never had a desire to teach it to anyone.

And, well. Part of him already knew the nice boy standing next to him wasn't going to understand, or approve.

"Ah... Let me see. You have an affinity for the light, this is known. Born with it, I believe you've said. Hm, how is that coming along again, by the way? Re-cultivating that power of yours?..." Not that El was likely to let him get away with changing the subject, but one had to try. And it was something more pleasant to talk about for a moment out here in this blood-scented gloom.

Eleven tipped his head, brows furrowing. The question was a short-lived distraction, as there wasn't a great deal to say about it. And the more he focused on Archeval's energy, darker than he ever remembered, the more concerned he grew.

"It's.. not much better, really. I think it may take years to be nourished back to full strength at this rate. Naturally, anyway."

He frowned over Archeval, studying his face in the flickering light. "But you seem darker to me, as though you've awoken new depths."

Eleven swallowed a flutter of nerves reminding him he'd left his swords back in his tent at camp proper- not that he needed them, surely.

"..Should I be worried?"

Edited 2021-07-07 07:28 (UTC)

There was a glint of green eyes in the dark as Arche's gaze flicked toward Eleven again, sharp as always. It was hard to tell in this lighting, but he might even have looked a little amused.

"Is that fear I smell over there, hero? You've nothing to worry about from me. That hasn't changed." And how kind and trusting of Eleven to presumably take him at his word once again, but he moved right along from it, hugging his arms across his middle as he stared out into the blood that surrounded them.

"As you have your inborn affinity, so I apparently have an affinity for the dead. I don't know that it exactly works the same here, but the ghosts of the powerful... Force Ghosts, we call them, back home... I'm told I stand out to them. My presence riles them up at times, evokes strong emotions, so they're drawn to me. I learned to use that to survive situations of extremity. Any powerful, restless being, separated from its body, not ready to move on yet -- I can invite it inside me under a pact, under my leash, and draw on its power as my own. Or--"

He pursed his lips.

"If it's something causing harm, that very much needs to be removed from the world around it. I can also take the less willing."

Eleven held his gaze, intent on refuting that fear. But it was a resolve that softened once more into dread and worry.

A part of him mourned as the man spoke, feeling a distance yawn between them. The impression lingered even once Archeval had trailed off, stood silent with only the rush of cursed rain falling around them.

A chasm spiritual in nature; a reminder of how truly different they were. Even beyond his dark power, Archeval could house and draw on spirits of the dead- the light within him dragged deeper still. By choice, it seemed, however necessary. A brilliant star cast in shadow, growing steadily in a world suited to him.

Eleven lowered his eyes with a soft sigh, suspecting what Archeval might mean but hoping he might be wrong.

"...What happened?"

"You can't guess?"

This time Arche definitely sounded amused.

Blood continued to pitter-pat onto the ground, running in rivulets down the rocks nearby them. It was an almost obscene sight, tempered only by the lack of light that made the viscous liquid look nearly black, blocking out the stars and dimming the few lights that remained in the campsite nearby. It didn't soak cleanly into the ground and disappear like rain might; instead Arche could see that a few feet away from them, small puddles were starting to form here and there, the spatters calling to mind more and more an aftermath of some pitched battlefield.

"Unhalad," he sighed out at last. Might as well get this over with.

"I wanted to be sure he was truly done, never to trouble us again. And, frankly, we might need more strength to defend ourselves in the days to come. Who better to contribute than one who could well stand to make up for some of what he's done?"

At least...if this all went well, anyway. That was still up in the air. The things he'd felt when trying to connect with the spirit of Unhalad so far, when trying to communicate--... Well. He'd known already that things worked differently on this world, so he had only to figure out what those differences were. He always did, eventually.

Edited 2021-07-07 18:15 (UTC)

Unhalad. Of course it was.

Eleven grimaced, then closed his hand around the flame he held to leave them in full darkness once more. The man wasn't injured, anyway.

"You idiot," he breathed, irritation resurfacing alongside the concern he'd drawn up since. "Who knows what that could have done to you? After what he did to so many others. And you call me reckless and self-sacrificing."

The heat of his glare in the dark was short-lived. His fingers clenched uselessly, with nothing to heal.

"Goddess above, are you all right? Please tell me you aren't slowly becoming undead."

Edited 2021-07-07 18:34 (UTC)

That wasn't quite the flavor of reaction he'd expected, and Arche just blinked over in El's direction for a moment, trying to readjust to the full dark and to the... concern.

He'd figured he'd earned a little loyalty by now, but enough for the first reaction to 'I swallowed our local undead overlord' to be worry rather than suspicion? Sometimes Eleven really was far too trusting.

It was. A surprise, to be sure. ...maybe a little touching, a little. Not quite sure what his feelings were doing, Arche moved right along from that faint flutter in his chest to deal with the present moment instead, giving a careless shrug. The movement of his black-clad shoulders was only just barely visible against the backdrop of red-black rain.

"What can I say? I'm good at beating the odds. And no one else here has a power like this, as far as I know," he went on as he spread his hands. Certainly, even if Wei Wuxian was capable of borrowing ghosts' powers for his own, Arche felt fairly certain that Lan Wangji wouldn't want him trying it regardless.

"I'm fine, though. I've done this many times. My body is well adapted to this sort of thing." And after all the time and trouble he'd gone to in order to make it that way, he refused to believe Unhalad would be the first creature to get the better of him. If Ergast himself, the first Forcewalker, hadn't been able to resist the will of Darth Imperius, why should Unhalad be any different?...

"And-- anyway. If nothing else, what do all of us need more than information? You shouldn't just let an enemy go if you can extract useful intelligence out of him. We have precious few resources in this place, and I wasn't about to let such an immense one slip out of my grasp."

Eleven loosed an aggrieved breath that had little to do with the rain and the blood drying on his skin. He had faith in Archeval's strength to endure and believed him when he said he'd done similar things before, but.. in a world where everything was different from what they'd known, the outcome could have been far different.

"Reckless," he repeated, as though there were an official tallied score counted between them to be added to.

And it was fairly disturbing to think that the spirit of an undead warlord lingered in subjugation within a person he considered to be his friend. For all their spiritual distance, they'd forged an unlikely bond he hoped would be enough to loosely tether them even as their respective spirits grew or diminished in turn.

"..Have you been able to speak with him? Or.. glean anything from his spirit?"

"I suppose I won't bother trying to claim I'm not reckless," Arche drawled out, giving another little shrug in the dark.

"But... ah, we haven't spoken as yet. No."

His gaze turned away into the unsettling cascade around them again, watching the dark sky overhead as he pursed his lips in a vaguely frustrated frown. He reached up to scratch his head a bit as he spoke, grimacing as he realized some of that blood had already begun to crust in his hair.

"In truth I am... much more accustomed to inviting along willing passengers. I can draw on his power, but coaxing one to speak who doesn't want to be here, that I have less practice with. But I think it will simply take time -- to build up more of a connection, a rapport. As you might expect, he's not the same as the ghosts I'm used to working with, but somewhere I'm sure I can still find an in." He paused to give a little snort.

"If nothing else -- everyone gets bored eventually, even a spirit. Perhaps especially them."

More odd than absorbing an undead warlord: imagining any spirits might be willing to merge with a living host.

..Well, beyond possession, anyway. He shivered, missing the warmth of his coat for all its bloody staining.

"He's likely to resent you for awhile, I imagine." At least, for all he can imagine it. How it actually all works escapes him, so there's little else to work with. "I'd be worried, I think, about what an undead spirit that's used to being powerful might try.. I don't have much experience with exorcisms."

But he'd try, if it came down to it. If he could use his light to banish Unhalad in some way if he threatened to overtake Archeval. Though he expected the man might not appreciate the effort so much, in the end.

"You don't need to fret. I can expel or destroy such spirits as I wish. I've taken extensive measures to ensure it, believe me," Arche drawled out. If he did in fact have any doubts on that point, apparently he was very determined to keep them to himself.

"You are likely correct, although... Actually... it's strange."

His brow furrowed again in the dark, a thoughtful little frown curling Archeval's lips. Staring out into the lamentations of a spirit made manifest, contemplating the resentment of another. Apparently it was a night for such ghost stories.

"I expected him to be angrier about his defeat, to try to take advantage of his new position and attempt to drive me mad or the like, being his hated enemy and all. A common reaction. But... thus far, when I've tried to connect... It's difficult to feel real consciousness there at all. More a roiling mass of... Despair, want, fear, a reaching out for--... Well. All a jumble. It's been too overwhelming to entirely make sense of so far." He bit his lip a little in deep thought, mind turning more fully back toward interpreting his strange experiences of the past weeks.

"It's disordered, too complex to compare to an animal... feels a bit what I would imagine a sentient experiencing a complete mental break might be like, but too intense even for that. A puzzle, to be sure." He gave a little sigh.

"I'm not certain yet whether it's being thrown at me intentionally to block my probing, or...if that's simply the nature of this being." If so, it would certainly mean this was far more uncharted territory than he'd ever imagined he would find, but -- he was already standing in the middle of said territory now. Shying away would only leave him further lost, with no answers and nothing useful to show for his efforts. As always, the only path forward was through.

His worries settled a bit at that. If Archeval could expel spirits, if it didn't feel like Unhalad was trying to take him over but rather unravelling. A thread of unexpected sympathy rolled though Eleven. Unhalad's position was less difficult to imagine than he'd thought. There was an argument to be made that the undead warlord more than deserved it, but still he wouldn't have wished for it.

Eleven let his senses fade and regarded Archeval quietly for a few moments. Complex strains of thought touched on their opposing natures yet similar values, but wherein they had different ways of approaching a problem.

"Light and dark..." he mused with a soft sigh. "Well, I hope he doesn't give you too much trouble."

It wasn't uncommon to see a grim, sour stare on Archeval's face, but even so, he too looked somehow a little solemn right now as he stared out into the dark. Perhaps he wasn't completely unmoved by whatever he'd felt reaching out to Unhalad either.

"Only time will tell. I must meditate a great deal more on what I've learned before my next attempt," he sighed after a moment, reaching up to at least try to brush some of the dried blood mess out of his hair. Who knew if there was any point really, considering how long this storm had already gone on with no sign of abating yet, but it was the principle of the thing.

"Certainly don't imagine I will have the werewithal to try again tonight, if all the other dead around here are riled up enough to do this. Whenever I think I might finally have seen everything, the galaxy rushes to prove me wrong..." He shook his head at the dark cascade with a disbelieving grimace. Out beyond their hiding spot, the uneasy murmur coming from the various tents and shelters had not abated either; here and there people darted from cover to cover with soft wails of discomfort, and a few had thrown coats and blankets and oilcloths over themselves to try to tend to the pack animals as they grew increasingly spooked.

"I suppose we should just be grateful nothing has yet crawled out of this storm trying to eat us."

Eleven shuddered, finally turning away from Archeval to focus back on the much greater unpleasantness of the thickened rain. He eyed the growing puddles with distaste and the flitting shapes of people scrambling beyond them.

"Yet," he corrected, not at all sure they wouldn't suffer worse before much longer. "I'll have to go back to get my swords if that happens."

While his magic was serviceable in defense of himself, it had a tendency to drain quickly. He only managed through the siege with minimal applications of it and switching shifts with Hendrik.

"Merciful Goddess," he breathed beneath the heavy fall, head tipped to search the skies for any signs of relenting. "Soothe these restless souls..."

"Well, look on the bright side." Archeval's low drawl was quite sardonic indeed. "The harpies won't want to fly down through this mess, so any creature actually likely to attack us right now would probably be far less corporeal. If anything those sleeping might be in more danger than those of us awake to keep watch."

He spread his hands in a shrug, probably well aware that his calling his 'bright side' less than comforting would be a gross understatement, and went back to staring out toward the storm.

"Far less corporeal," Eleven repeated doubtfully, with an equally dubious glance back at his companion. He crossed his arms and shook his head, then grimaced along with the feeling of heavy, stiffening strands brushing against his skin.

"..That would make them even more of a nuisance to fight."

He wished it were normal rain. At least that would be pleasant to watch, if not to travel or sleep beneath. Not that he could imagine sleeping at all, now. He sighed resignation to a long night.

"It doesn't look as though it's going to let up soon, does it?"

"I haven't the faintest idea, but if I were to guess based on our little group's track record thus far on this world, seems a safe bet that we're stuck with this until we've all reached the very end of our endurance," Arche drawled out, a grimace of distaste crossing his face.

"...honestly I've never seen anything like it. I've visited worlds that were mostly underwater, worlds where just breathing the air would slowly kill you... but blood rain is a new one. I'd wonder if there was something to be done about it, but--"

He glanced around one more time uneasily in the dark.

"......seems so quiet otherwise. The silence of the grave out here, for once."

With a frustrated, perturbed sort of sigh, he finally shifted to put his back against the cliff rock and simply plop down on a clean portion of the ground, pulling his lightsaber from his hip to rest in his lap as he continued to look about keeping watch.

"I suppose the only thing to do is settle in for the long haul."

Eleven frowned, humming a short, thoughtful note.

"I'd guess the dead need to be appeased, but.. I don't know what that means. Perhaps after some time, their grief will ebb."

A guess, based on what little he knew. Archeval's earlier observations, the simple fact that these were restless undead spirits and this bloody rain was their doing. He'd mull through possibile solutions, but given nothing was immmediately forthcoming, Eleven plucked up his coat only to toss it bloody side down near Archeval and settle onto the relatively cleaner lining of the fabric.

Other ideas had slowly begun to click together the longer he'd had to think about them, alongside the more Archeval alluded to.

"Other worlds," he sighed, able to imagine it now after having spent weeks subconsciously piecing together context on a cosmic scale. Grand concepts he'd only loosely grasped before and skimmed over for the simple fact that they felt too large to think about felt more solid, now.

"Sometimes I feel like this one is made for damned souls, so full of darkness and death that the hope of life and light seems futile. Testing my faith in such things.."

Even the garden at the farmhouse, so full of preciously tended life, trampled in the aftermath of battle had dragged at his spirit. It was such a small, insignificant thing in the scale of the fight and their lives, but still he'd keenly felt its loss.

Eleven folded his hands in his lap, laced into an unconscious, inert prayer.

"I wonder if things were different, thousands of years ago. If maybe the answer to all of this is written in an ancient text of this world's history somewhere."

"If there is an answer to be had," Arche shrugged, staring out into the downpour with pursed lips.

"Could we really be so lucky as for there to be a single source that this place's whole undead problem started from? If the Sa-Hareth region is not unique -- I can't imagine an entire world's ills could be summed up so neatly."

He raised his brows out toward the storm then with a wry look.

"Suppose I could see this as some kind of afterlife, though, if that exists."

Certainly, he didn't remember dying this time around, but he had only the barest recollection of how he'd gotten here at all. Some assassin getting the drop on him at an opportune moment with a way to negate his powers was never entirely out of the question, particularly given that even Arche himself didn't have a full explanation for everything he was apparently capable of.

"I would've hoped to become one with the Force at my death, but perhaps that's not possible for Sith, or. Perhaps just not for someone who's cheated as I have." His lips twitched into a humorless little grin in the dark, but after a moment that expression smoothed out into a more thoughtful one as he slowly turned his head back over El's way.

"...though if this were such a place, I'd have to wonder what you are doing here. You did say something about having traveled to a Void when we first met, didn't you? Do you think your goddess would really test your resolve in such a fashion? Can't imagine you would ever find your way to an afterlife full of the damned on your own merits."

Eleven smiled; perhaps that had been a little too optimistic.

"Maybe not one source," he amended. If the answers were out there, maybe they could piece it together from multiple tomes. ..Provided of course, that he learned to read the language- which admittedly, was something he'd considered asking Archeval before. Perhaps he should.

He breathed a sigh, smile slight in the dark, though waning. To think the man still thought so well of him.

"It's true She isn't a vindictive goddess, but this world could serve as a vision of what Erdrea might become if I don't manage to restore Her- a reason not to fall to despair."

Eleven raised his shoulders in a shrug. "But what do I know? It looks like we're relying on you for answers, now. I might not be able to help with Unhalad, but if you could use extra eyes on research, I could try to learn.."

"Well, if you think this is your great tree telling you to pick up, take heart and keep going, then at least she's a sensible soul."

As firepits across the camp guttered, their last embers starting to die under the dark downpour, it grew harder and harder to make out one another's faces in the night; but Arche's murmured voice sounded quite wry again indeed as he watched Eleven quietly.

"Research, though?... Ah, you mean the language. Well, if you want to see what you can make of the things I managed to rescue, you're certainly welcome to it." He scratched his head with another half-visible grimace in the dark.

"With the mess the farm was in, a number of my things got caught in the crossfire. Saved the most useful of my personal notes, so that's something, but a number of books and things I'd collected didn't make it -- to say nothing of that old study, of course. Still. There should be enough preserved to start showing you some essentials, I think, if you're truly interested."

Eleven winced. While the farmhouse had ended up in disaster, he'd been largely responsible for the state of the study. Books, documents and the like had been deemed largely unimportant in his haste to shove them out of the way to make way for medical supplies.

His hands twisted in his lap. "I think I should try to learn; there's too much we don't know and topics I want to be able to research that might not be of interest to many others. But I don't expect to manage quickly, so if teaching me takes up too much of your time.."

"And what else exactly am I doing around here?" There was no mistaking the amusement in Archeval's tone.

"Don't be so modest, hero, I've already agreed. I think we should have as many eyes poring over the documents we've managed to collect as we possibly can, and if you want to try to bring in extra intelligence for us so much the better. Though I suppose only time will tell if Sa-Hareth's local language proves any use at all over in Taravast." He shifted to glance around a bit in the dark some more, perhaps still keeping watch for threats, but there continued to be nothing to see out in the dark save the eerie storm above them and the uneasily quiet camp.

"How many languages have you learned before?..."

Eleven ducked his head with a flush he was grateful Archeval wouldn't be able to see. Still, the rueful self-consciousness remained plain in his voice.

"I, ah, grew up in the mountains.." He was frequently reminded of his lack of education across his journey and since arriving in this world, but largely, he managed well enough that it wasn't an issue.

"And I've only been travelling for just over a year now, so it.. I haven't, really.."

Edited 2021-07-15 00:10 (UTC)

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