2017-05-18: The Chains of Heresy
- Log: The Chains of Heresy
- Cast: Riesenlied, Lily Keil
- Where: Starfall Saloon
- Date: 18th May 2017
- Summary: Riesenlied and Lily speak of their experiences with Malevolence, and how they are shunned by the Gods...
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
It had been a couple of days since Lily and Riesenlied last met -- this time, the winged woman is seen returning to the Starfall Saloon closer to the latter part of the afternoon, just as the sun was about to set. She looked a bit scuffed and tattered, likely from a Dig she'd just gone out to do, reinforced by the fact that several pieces of pottery and artwork were with her in a basket that she'd found. She thought that she would be all right to leave them to Ambrosius, but a few pieces had caught her eye... and she wished to inspect them personally, for cultural value.
She also carries a rather badly charred rapier that's more or less seen the end of its lifespan. Just what happened to it?
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
It's been a busy few days; Lily has been out of the city for part of that period, but not terribly long... And like clockwork whatever outings she might briefly have elsewhere see her right back upstairs in the inn room she's kept reserved for herself.
Not at the moment, though; as luck would have it, sunset sees Lily at the bar, passing over money for a bottle of amber liquid and glancing to the new arrival. "...I'll be right back," she says to the woman at the bar, and steps over towards Riesenlied.
Lily looks about as fatigued as she did before; more, if anything, signs of it under her eyes. But she's sharp-eyed and alert. "Riesenlied," she greets. "...I'm butting into your business again, but what happened?" She glances meaningfully to the rapier and to th scuffs and tatters.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
The horned woman quietly claims a table and winces as she sets the rapier down, which still threatens to let out an errant puft of smoke. "Ah, Miss Lily," she bows her head. She doesn't look too bad off, really -- her weapon certainly took the brunt of it. "I went north to that excavation site that a Golem had recently been unearthed from... 'Lolithia's Tomb', they called it."
There's a pause. "I felt a presence within and pursued it, but it seemed that my premonition was slightly unfounded," she chuckles weakly, looking down. "I will have to find another replacement... I've had no luck with swords around the region lately."
There's a pause, as she expresses, "You look worn yourself, Miss Lily... I hope everything is all right?"
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily stands with arms crossed, in her usual black, examining the horned woman before her. Only once she's satisfied does she look back at Riesenlied's face. There's a brief pause before she nods.
"Ah." She's a little humorless most days, and watches through the laughter rather than diretly replying. After Riese expresses her own concern though, Lily at first... ignores it.
"Mm, there would be more talk of Golems given that. Pity about the sword. ...I prefer an ARM if I'm going to use a weapon." If. "A rifle if I can help it."
She finally glances to the side, and answers, "...My research has been tiring." Her voice softens, "It's nothing to worry yourself about. I'm just running low on makeup to conceal it."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied lets herself down, rather obviously worn from her trip back, and reclines against the chair for a moment, sighing in relief. "I would use an ARM if I could, but... I find that most models tend to not react such to me," she chuckles faintly. "That and... there is more control afforded to me, with a sword. I prefer to not kill when I can absolutely help it."
She tilts her head as she begins to sort through her basket. Lily can see several different kinds of artwork -- depicting battles from ages past, it seems, though the interpretation is a little up to the viewer... columns of flame, frost, the list go on. "What do you research...? Or did you mean your reading?"
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily takes a seat as well once Riese does, aware that she hadn't actually asked. "React?" she asks. A pause before, "...That's reasonable. I don't have the model of ARM I prefer, myself, though I admit to killing more often than not. My battle sorcery isn't particularly safe."
A glance down, and this lets her see the battles of age past, the... Well, she's not sure. "...I apologize for talking so much," she says first. But then...
"Lately I've been researching events and creatures like those spawned to invade Port Timney, and the... forces involved. I've had little success, even after two descents into what was once the Baticul Grotto."
"My reading I have less time for. I've found nothing, but I've barely scratched the surface of local texts."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied's breath is a little short at that, as she puts the basket aside for now. She did not mind that Lily joined her -- she seemed cheered, to have the company. The days had become lonesome indeed. "I speak of... synchronisation. Most ARMs do not react too well to me, it seems. I have never been able to make good use of them, nor sorcery... a simple sword and a firm word have been my tools all this while."
But then Lily speaks of her experiences with Timney, and the Grotto. "You speak of... Malevolence," Riesenlied hushes her voice just a little, perhaps half out of caution and half out of respect for her. "I, too, had descended into that cavern..." she glances aside. "Did you see it too? That sacrificial pyre, wreathed in its cradle..."
She closes her eyes. "I found naught but a miserable, horrific pile of corpses, animals and humans, at the depths..."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily reads enough cues to feel comfortable having sat down, her gloved hands set to lightly grip the table before her. "...Ah. I wasn't even thinking of that," Lily admits. "Those aren't bad tools. I may be a sorceress, but I still keep my old combat knife on me, just in case."
Riesenlied names the phenomenon, and Lily inclines her head. "...I've heard it called that." She keeps her voice low as well--lower even than her usual. Riese mentions the pyre, and Lily's golden eyes go sharper for a moment, pupils smaller as she remembers, and it is not a good memory.
"...I never made it to the depths," Lily admits. "I reached the pyre, and offered my own blood to it. My companions were horrified, but I had to /know/. And yet, I found no way past the monsters at its depths. I wouldn't say I came away with nothing, but..."
She shakes her head. "I can sense it for myself, now. But the rest eludes me. So I keep digging."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied has a short, clipped breath for a moment. "I see..." she nods gently. "I, too, shed something important to me. Perhaps the flame did awaken to that... or perhaps it was my companions'," she wouldn't know too much of its nature, after all. "I had trustworthy allies at my side... I would not have made it half as far on my own."
She narrows her eyes. "But even as I make it to the depths... I feel nothing. And that... frustrates me, Miss Lily." She holds at her heart, closing her eyes. "... it bothers me that I cannot feel what makes others suffer so. My closest friends writhe and grapple with it, yet..."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
"Who can say?" Lily asks. "But the flame I saw, the flame I kindled, was hungry. ...My companions claimed I didn't need to offer anything. In fact, none of them did. They were too busy dealing with me." A glance down. "Trustworthy allies are the most important part of such an endeavor. My partner and I could fight any battle together, but we learned quickly we needed others to succeed as Drifters."
Lily looks up at Riesenlied, and studies her expression again, closed eyes and all. "...You have a generous heart," she says softly. "But being honest, there are two things I should say. The first... Is that I would find it just as maddening. It is, isn't it? An affliction that plagues others that you can't even see, let alone treat. My need to understand it is what brought me to those depths."
"But..." She lifts a hand, holding up one finger. "...The second is that I already knew you don't sense it. If you did, you would have reacted differently to my presence." A pause, "Please keep that quiet. But I can answer questions, if you have them, about the phenomenon."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied's expression, as Lily studies it, is quietly pained. It is the expression of someone who's seen such sorrow, and much of it; yet, there is little of the weariness that she's seen in those who have chosen to let the world pass around them, too tired to continue. It is the pain of someone who empathises, and yearns to understand.
The horned woman's eyes widen just a moment as Lily admits her condition, and she glances just a moment to her sides, nodding. "... are..." She pauses, in hesitation, before expressing, "First I should ask... are you in danger, Miss Lily? Though I am unable to sense it... there ought to be some that I can speak to, to assist you..."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Even Lily herself tries to wall herself off; that much is clear about her. Seeing that quality in Riesenlied puts her in mind of something almost innocent, difficult to touch. That sort of pain makes her own heart hurt to see it.
But she says nothing of the kind, just stares overlong by a few extra seconds.
Lily lowers her eyes again so that she can close them in peace, raising a hand and shifting it side to side as if to forestall the concern. "I'm in no danger, just tired. But I have a medicine to help me sleep."
"More to the point, I'm not... one of those creatures. It's unpleasant, but not harmful as far as I can tell." She looks up at Riese again, "I would request that you not try to find such a person. I don't want it mentioned at all. I've kept it secret; I told you because... You seemed to be..." A shake of her head, "This is silly, but you seem to be something of a kindred spirit. Regardless, while I don't have any useful information, I know some of how it feels."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
There's a soft noise of understanding from Riesenlied, and she nods gently as she laces her hands together. "I-- feel much the same way, I admit," Riesenlied expresses. "Even if we've just met recently..." She can't quite express it. Perhaps she just feels like Lily is enduring some of the same things she has, and is at the moment? Some feelings don't exactly need to be expressed into firmly into words, however.
"I have heard of a few accounts... that it shrouds one's spirit, feeling a little like an -- illness, in many ways," Riesenlied muses quietly. "It touches at your deepest fears, and seeks to make you face them..." She blinks a few times, and rubs at the bridge of her nose.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
"Really?" Lily asks, and there's the ghost of a smile on her face for just a moment. It fades quickly, as she nods. She can't express it all, herself. There's just something. "Very recently," Lily admits. "But even so."
It surprises Lily for a few reasons. But it isn't necessarily a bad thing; she hopes that it isn't.
"...It resembles an illness," Lily agrees. "I'm naturally prone to brooding, so I'm not sure how much of that is influenced. But there's a knot in my stomach, a slickness, and there's a sharpness in my arms. ...As well, the wound I gave myself for the pyre aches, despite having healed."
"It hasn't made me face fears, exactly, but... Ah..." Lily glances back to the bar briefly, and back at Riesenlied, "I am not... Good... With people. They tend to make me uncomfortable unless I'm interacting with a specific duty or goal. This... Malevolence... has made that more difficult; it's as if they're louder, more pressing. And I've been somewhat more emotional."
"Does any of that give you insight?"
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
"It... does, actually," Riesenlied laces her hands a little tighter in turn. There is perhaps a deep irony in all of this, because Lily's account of Malevolence, along with everyone else's... "It... reminds me of a force that I encountered in the past... a similar spiritual experience."
She trembles just a little at that, in the way Lily perhaps has seen those with unpleasant memories suddenly react. "The metaphor of an illness is perhaps more apt... an illness tends to be a foreign agent that influences the body negatively, and this Malevolence... certainly acts much the same way to people. Similarly, my own experience was one with a spiritual force that rejected me, too... like an antigen, a body's immune response, trying to push foreign substances away from it."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily nods again, this time when Riese answers her question in the affirmative. For her part, she shifts unconsciously, rubbing at her left arm through her sleeve a little harder than she might need to. "Did it?"
Lily has training in dealing with exactly such people with their unpleasant memories; she recognizes it immediately. Her expression softens.
She doesn't entirely hide her surprise at some spiritual force acting as an antigen. "Almost an opposite effect within the same strain," Lily murmurs. "I've never encountered anything like that, nothing that would treat a person as some sort of spiritually foreign substance. ...Not that I traditionally have much encounters with the spiritual in the wild, whatever my faith might be."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
"As far as I understand it, Malevolence has some connection with the spirit... I just do not know what," Riesenlied theorises. "My own spirit is... you could say it is weak. Perhaps it is the same reason that I cannot sense this new strain of energy..." She couldn't really draw any conclusions from accounts alone, however, and she hadn't come into contact with the Guardians in a long, long time... not that she wants to. But with Catenna, with the Curan Abbey around, she has no doubt that she must encounter another shaman again...
She snaps out of that reflection, looking towards the golden-eyed woman. "I do trust that you will be able to overcome it, Miss Lily." She lowers her head. "My own research into it continues, and I would be happy to share with you anything else I find."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
"...If it has some connection with the spirit..." Lily is thoughtful about that. But before she answers it she moves to consider what Riese says about her spirit. It's not something she tends to expect to hear.
"I'll be fine," she says. "I always am." But she has her own thoughts about what she has to do, what dealing with it even looks like or means. "...I would appreciate that. It seems as if direct observation is the way to go." A pause, "I'm willing to share with you if I learn more about it."
She stops, hesitating before, "If it is connected to the spirit, maybe that's why I'm susceptible, when none of my companions were afflicted. But before you dismiss yourself... Even during the invasion of Port Timney, I didn't detect anything. That only came in time."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
"So it was a gradual process for you as well..." Riesenlied muses, reclining on her chair. She shifts just a moment, a little uncomfortable. Lily's bandage, she notices, is still holding up quite well, though it's likely time for a change, clean and redress soon. The way the bandage has stained further does lend some air to what Riese said the last time about the wound being slow-healing...
"I do hope I gain the ability to eventually sense it," Riese admits, concerned. "But -- when you say your other companions, did you mean the other Drifters at Port Timney? I am glad that they were not all influenced... if it had a truly virulent rate of spreading, we would be in an even more dangerous position..."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
"Yes, that's correct," Lily confirms, starting to slouch very slightly before she glances to the bandage again. She makes a note of its state, of the wound still healing. It's clear that she's looking at it, at that.
Her eyes flicker back to Riese and her concern however. She has nothing she can really say to Riese's hope other than what she's already said, and just makes sure to keep looking her in the eye for those moments. The question however she can answer, "That would be dangerous, but no, and not the civilians I..." Pause. "They were all civilians. The noncombatants that I treated."
That's certainly a slip. Lily shakes her head.
"I only refer to the ones who accompanied me on my first delve into the Hollow. We were a group of four. Maybe the altar had something to do with it; I don't know. But none of them are affected."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riese paused at that slip, wondering... there were civilians that were affected too... and in the commotion, perhaps some of them had to be put down? It was unavoidable, with the scale of the attack...
On the topic of allies, though, "Ah, you mean from the excursion into the Hollow..." Riese nods slowly, frowning ever so gently, in that way that she does when she starts to think more deeply. "Ah, I could not help but notice... just earlier, you said, 'if it were a matter of the spirit'... if it is not too personal, what did you mean by that, Miss Lily?"
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily doesn't say, but the memories are the kind that make her eyes grow distant and her voice grow silent for long enough. That's what happens in those moments, before Riese says anything else.
Lily nods when Riese confirms what she said, mirroring the other woman's gesture there, and pauses herself when Riesenlied brings up what Lily said. She looks a the other woman for a few moments before turning her eyes aside. "...It's very personal, yes. However..."
"...I am a woman of faith but not a particularly good woman. For various reasons I... am not certain that God wishes anything to do with me more than He already has." A shake of her head. "If there is such a think as a pure spirit, it isn't mine."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
There's-- a sad-sounding chuckle as Riesenlied places a hand to her horn for a moment, sighing. "God..." She admits, she hadn't really thought that much about the Church of Granas, as it pertained to her. Much of what she'd encountered were the Guardians, who, from personal experience, she knows is /real/. It kind of... puts things in perspective. To have a divine being, protector of the planet, commune with you directly... and have them /hate/ you.
"... perhaps even if our spirits are not pure, I believe that our hearts can be," Riese offers. "When I say that spiritual force before... it is with a divine force as well. A Guardian." She has a... very rueful chuckle, glancing away. "What does that even mean...? To be cast aside like that... if the governors of life reject you so..."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily thinks more of her own faith, the Nisan Orthodoxy, when she considers God. At the moment she spots without really seeing the chuckle, the sigh. She's drawn into her own thoughts, with the little jagged additions of her affliction running through her. The nausea she mentioned is something she feels now, though she can largely hide it.
"Mm," Lily answers at first to Riese's hope, but the golden-eyed woman focuses on her when she further explains the spiritual force. "A... Guardian," she answers, repeating it and thinking it over. "I've never encountered one. I've only heard of them; Nortune certainly has none." A pause, "...I can't say that I know. It must be difficult." She closes her mouth, shakes her head. "That's insufficient. I don't know."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
"I have tried my best to not let it get to me," Riesenlied admits, though... there are certainly times when it becomes unbearable, and so painful, to recall the past. She looks towards Lily in that moment of quietness. There is pain there, perhaps from thoughts, or the Malevolence... or perhaps both... "There are those in need that I must protect and care for... and if the divine still so opposes me, then let that be so."
She glances over towards the window, to judge the movement of the sun. "If you were interested, the Curan Abbey nearby has information on the Guardians... there is a statue in town as well, I believe. It is not a popular form of faith here, but... it certainly does exist."
Her eyes trail over towards the rapier again. "I should run the rest of my errands before the sun sets--" she gestures. "I've developed something of a rapport with the weaponsmith, who expresses disbelief at how many side-swords I've gone through in the last week alone. When I return, ah..."
She places her hand to her shoulder again, sounding just a bit embarrassed. "Would you mind... redressing this wound? I would greatly appreciate that..."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
It's all one can really do about some things. Lily glances down as she realizes Riesenlied was looking at her through that moment, but only glances; she finds herself watching to watch Riese as she speaks. "...I see. That's an extraordinary commitment. I wish those in your care well."
Lily doesn't bother looking to the window or to the sun; indeed she shrugs slightly about the interest. "I admit... I have a lot to research already. It might be wise to brush up, but..."
Lily glances at the weapon again, as Riese mentions it. When she makes her request, the answer comes quickly.
"Not at all," she says. "Ask for my room at the desk. ...I want to get out of here before the later evening crowds come in."
"Consider yourself my patient once you're back. Go get your sword."