2018-01-14: Take a Hint
- Log: Take a Hint
- Cast: Margaret, Loren Voss
- Where: Kislev-Aveh Front
- Date: January 14th 2018
- Summary: In the aftermath of the events in Hadal Temple, Loren wakes up and meets his rescueers.
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
Loren might have confused memories of what happened next. Cold buffered by the somewhat greased-up warmth of a chest. Being carried out on a stretcher. Military chatter, but the details are strange. There isn't much pain but there are periodic waves of heat.
Time passes.
He wakes up in a tent that is silky and smells faintly of incense and more strongly of essential oils.
The silk is mostly metaphorical but he is, in fact, spread out on a field cot - a primitive but not uncomfortable one - with several red silk cushions arranged to support his head and upper body. There is a thin camp blanket over him; any garments above the waist were removed and bandage wrapping is holding a dressing in place over that dire and grievous wound. Whatever the dressing is, who knows; the bandage wrap was competently done, at least.
There is camp furniture in there, mostly wood struts and canvas along with a battered chest of wood so dark it's nearly black. (That's where most of the essential oil-incense-y smell is coming from.) On top of that chest are the garments removed and neatly placed, though not laundered. A small table has a wood carafe of water, along with a flattish bowl.
There is distant conversation outside, and the smell of fire and cooking. The time seems to be afternoonish based on the quality of light.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Largely, he remembers the cold, if that can be called a memory -- drifting, insensate, an awareness of unawareness.
But also incongruously, the warmth of a body, of voices and words he can't quite make out... and little else.
And there were dreams, of a sort. They weren't good ones.
When Loren wakes up, it's in a wholely unfamiliar landscape. The scent in the air is strong. ...Someone's tent, he parses after a moment.
Memories of the events within the chamber below Wayside flood in soon after. A hand flies for where he had been run through and finds...
Well, it isn't bad for a surface-dweller bandaging job, he grudgingly allows after a moment of prodding and probing.
The wound on the other hand isn't great. It won't kill him -- particularly after he takes a breath and focuses, threading ether through the injury.
But it'll be a few days before can really consider himself fine, after an injury like that. He'll need to take it easy...
Which, he thinks, slowly lifting himself off the cot and swinging his legs over the side, is... probably going to depend on whose camp this is.
This is probably a large part of the reason why -- after he's able to stand and go about the business of gathering and putting on his clothing (and even more importantly taking back his kit (which he checks the contents of briefly)) he lingers a moment inside the tent, listening to the chatter.
But in the end -- the fact that he hasn't eaten anything in nearly a day playing a partial role in this, he steps out into the light.
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
The light...!
There is, of course, a harsh glare effect that may feel briefly blinding, for it is a sunny day out here on the surface of Filgaia. A couple of familiar voices pipe up. "Hey, he's awake!" "Is he gonna fall over?" "Careful now -"
"Well thank the Goddess," comes a more authoritative one. "I was wondering if I'd have to sleep on a rock tonight."
The glare fades. Loren can see that he is in a relatively efficient camp for about a platoon-sized unit. There is a wagon, and presumably, several horses. There is no stockade and the 'armed guard' seems to be someone with a crossbow about eighty meters off, eating something while seated on a stone.
Much closer are the crew. They would be familiar faces, from the time when he got run down in the waterways. They also have names now, though Loren may not have met them or had the time to hear the cross-talk.
GRIZ! The man who plucked him from the despair of cold waters. He's taken off his jacket and was smearing some kind of grease onto a smooth, muscular torso. He gives Loren a toothsome smile.
REX! Older man, early fifties perhaps. He's working the fire, where there is both a pot and a roasting spit. His mustache wrinkles a little as he gives Loren a benign look.
SILF! Short woman. Green slacks. Ignoring Loren in favor of steadily turning the spit. A glob of fat from -- whatever it is; some game bird -- falls into the fire causes a spit, a hiss, and a rise of smoke.
AND... MARGARET, who has a lit pipe and is sitting with one leg crossed over the other. She is not in her purple-black evil-looking runners' dress and kinky boots, although the butternut cotton chemise she's wearing makes her heavy eye makeup look even stranger.
"How are you feeling?" Margaret calls to Loren. "Here, come, have a seat. Take it easy, you've got a devil of a hole in you."
Loren might have the feeling he is not a prisoner. But appearances can be deceiving.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's bright, particularly for someone who has spent his time of late being 1) unconscious or 2) in a dark place. These have not been mutually exclusive.
But once his eyes adjust, he realizes something important. He knows these faces. It takes him a few seconds to put the incident in question to the faces, but he's seen these faces before. He glances from one to the next.
The woman at the spit. The older man. And...
...He doesn't smile back at Griz, instead having the vague sense that something possibly embarrasing -- considering the man's a surface-dweller -- happened while he was unconscious.
Perhaps wisely, he opts not to interrogate that memory further.
And then he beholds... Margaret. Who presents the so-called 'elf' mutation, he notes distantly.
"You've got a devil of a hole in you."
"Yes," Loren responds, tone flat and sarcastic, "I noticed."
Even if he's normally paranoid as all get-out -- and perhaps then some at present, as a result of the Primarch's touch -- logic intrudes. If he were to capture someone, he wouldn't simply leave them in a position where they could walk away, no matter how badly injured they might seem. Appearances can be deceiving.
So he goes over and takes a seat, if stiffly, setting down the kit and crossing his arms over his chest.
Silence reigns. He lifts a hand to fidget with his glasses only to realize they're not there.
"What happened down there?" he finally opts to ask, deciding he might approach the matter obliquely and hopefully avoid showing too much of his hand.
Even departing right now would be a bad idea, if he's aiming for an uncomplicated extraction.
Great, he can't even get injured without causing himself additional problems...
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
Griz seems satisfied with whatever was going on and gets up to roam off. Maybe he has work to do.
Margaret sucks on the end of the pipe lightly. "Mm," she says at Loren's reply. As she exhales to the side, she doesn't answer immediately.
"We weren't there for the entire thing," Rex says, his voice placatory. (Margaret is watching Loren closely. She makes no attempt to hide it.) "But from what I can tell, the captain here ran on ahead, on account of her -"
Rex stops immediately, perhaps having been given the hairy eyeball by Margaret. "She was able to get there more quickly than the rest of us could," Rex continues, giving the pot of whatever it is a stir. "I expect you were present, and from what she told US, some kind of magical creature, an experiment? Was sucking on the lines of force throughout the Blue Star here, getting big and fat off the land."
Silf keeps turning the spit.
"So what brought you down there, young man?" Rex asks Loren, tone genial. "I suppose you're a Drifter but that's a hell of a situation to get yourself into. My understanding is most of these people are young middle-class women."
Silf snickers nastily.
Margaret says, with another drag exhaled in the process, "That was a rhetorical supposition because I was frustrated, thank you. It does seem somewhat disproportionately skewed in that direction, yes."
Margaret's attention turns to Loren with searchlight intensity then. "I'm curious," she asks him, with deliberate and extremely false neutrality. "Where did you get that gear of yours?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Oh good. She's paying attention, he thinks dully, wondering if they went through his kit, and just how much of it raised questions. Fortunately, at least part of it's fairly standard if somewhat above average quality for a Drifter, or so he's been lead to believe. The rest of it... potentially less so.
Such as, say, the tablet. Which at least requires an authentication lock to be bypassed.
"Yeah. I was there," he acknowledges, then winces faintly, a movement that isn't all faked. "My memory's a little hazy, though." Let them think he's had a rough turn, it'll help excuse in any gaps that arise.
Blue Star.
Oh. They're some of those people from the Moon.
His general expression of vague uninterest is a well-practiced one; it maintains even after that statement from Rex.
"I think I remember something like that."
His gaze averts at the question. "...Bad timing." It's not technically all a lie; if he'd been there earlier, perhaps he would have been able to have placed the explosives and left ahead of any encounters. "I was exploring the ruins and came across the disturbance." He sighs, taking the moment to practice his Thespian skills, such as they are, and shrugs, as if uncomfortable.
Which, strictly speaking, he is.
"The rest's history. Fortunately, it seems like I'm not."
Margaret addresses him, and he turns his head to look at her. This was a mistake, he thinks a moment later, meeting her intense gaze. No one uses that sort of tone unless they think something's amiss.
There is a moment's pause as Loren -- quickly! -- sifts through his options. He's had enough of a failure over this past day that he can't afford to add security breach to the list.
"It's salvage," he says, at length. "I had a lucky break a few months back."
Maybe it's not the sort of thing that would stand up to intense scrutiny, but all he really needs is for the story to pass for now, at least until he can hitchhike his way back to 'civilization' and coordinate appropriately.
Or just to get enough time to transmit some sort of message, assuming there's still power remaining on the tablet.
It occurs to him then that he actually has no idea where he is.
So he asks, quite plainly, "Where is this camp located?"
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
"Well, lucky break," Rex says, tone still conciliatory.
"You've kept it up real well," says Silf. Her head turns to look at Loren and she smiles. There might be some echo of Seraphita in her gaze, but it doesn't help that her teeth are crooked when she smiles. "You hungry? The captain says we absolutely've gotta make sure you have something to eat before you leave, or it's bad luck."
Margaret seems to have no opinion on that.
She draws her legs up and leans forwards even as Loren settles into place.
"You," she says, "are very efficient in your questioning. But I'm going to answer your question in a way that you won't like, given that cold glint I can see in your eyes."
"This camp's location... doesn't matter! Because within twelve hours after you make your way back to Wayside, which is not that far away, we'll be so long gone that anybody that comes here won't find anything but the subtle remains of"
"THE OUTHOUSE," Silf shouts.
Margaret closes her eyes for two seconds. "Of the outhouse," she agrees finally.
"Because we," Margaret continues, "are the Hounds of Hell, and we stride across Ignas wherever we please. Nothing can trace us, and when we get going, nothing can catch us. Why, we've even run races with your locomotives."
Margaret takes another draw from the pipe and exhales, not quite at Loren but not away from him either. It has cherry mixed in with it, which may make things somewhat worse. "But perhaps you're just wondering how you'll make it back to town with your injuries, bound up as they are."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"I guess."
Lucky break. He wishes, it would be great if his fortunes could shift for a change. The odds of that happening, though...
That's not a smile he'd prefer to see. Faintly, he wrinkles his nose. But all the same: "Yeah. I haven't eaten in a while."
He's never been one to pass down free food even at the best of times. Right now, more than a day out from the last time he ate anything at all, with a hole in his abdomen (partially mended) and an excess amount of ether used -- particularly to keep himself alive -- that comment of his may be the understatement to end all understatements.
He's starving.
"...It'd be bad luck for me, anyway."
Which is about the point where he turns to Margaret and she remarks on just how to-the-point his questions are. "Are they?" he asks, lifting an eyebrow as if he weren't fazed.
His shoulders on the other hand, stiffen. How much is she reading into his words, he wonders vaguely. Or how much does she know?
He's silent during -- and in the wake of -- her declaration.
He recoils faintly once she's finished, as if edging away from a blast furnace. His expression is blank, the sort of blank you get when you don't know how to react.
"Er," the alleged finest Solaris has to offer (as far as class structure and 'raw aptitude' go, anyway) as he attempts to wrap his brain around what's just happened. The Hounds of Hell? Racing locomotives? The outhouse? "...Alright?" he settles for, at a bit of a loss.
Then he gets a puff of cherry-scented smoke somewhat in his face, prompting him to outright wrinkle his nose and grimace, averting his face. "That... was what I was asking, yes," he says a little too flatly. "You said that we're near Wayside?"
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
Silf keeps turning the spit as she looks at Margaret, for a moment, and then to Loren. Rex chuckles with some unease.
"I said a lot of other things along with it, yes," Margaret says, her tone matching Loren in terms of flatness. She takes a deep breath -
But something seems to occur to her. Her eyes close, she exhales, there is a moment where she is visibly centering herself. Silf fills the silence, speaking in a cheery tone that Loren may start to think is actually as much of a monotone as he himself may have been exhibiting.
"This is hard for us, Mr. Mystery, because we had to do a lot here and while nobody got killed or even badly hurt sometimes we come off like we're ending up the lone rangers on this dumb planet of yours and we're probably all going to die alone far from our families and everyone we ever knew who lived or died and you'll probably throw us into a pit if we don't end up having to marry into your families and noble houses for the sake of raw survival!"
Silf beams.
"Do you want sauce with your fowl?"
Rex uneasily chuckles. He's good at it. Lots of practice. He picks up a camp plate and spoons out what are revealed to be beans, while Silf draws a worryingly large knife from a previously unsuspected leather bucket. "You're probably having a very rough day, I reckon, Mr. Mystery," Rex says, "so I don't blame you for being out of sorts. We all know what it's like."
Margaret speaks up with crisp efficiency. "Indeed. Do forgive me, Mr. Mystery, because I've been under a lot of strain. Silf didn't exactly put it politely but she was certainly a little bit on the nose, indeed, almost worryingly on the nose." Margaret's eyes open to give Silf a brief glare, even as Silf scrapes off some thigh meat and some from the breast as well.
"To answer your crisp, efficient question in a crisp and efficent way, we're about five miles from Wayside. If you're too sore to make the walk, we'll be passing by after we strike camp, and you are welcome to ride in the wagon. But!"
Margaret leans forwards and smiles in a way that somehow manages to be completely without mirth. "I'd LOVE to hear more about you, Mr. Mystery. Tell us about yourself! We've shown EVERY sign of hospitality and you are an alluringly mysterious figure, getting even more alluring by the second. Surely you've wandered these wastelands at length, seen wonders and horrors a-plenty. The Goddess knows I have!"
Rex mouths to Loren: 'tell her something'
Silf mouths to Loren: 'do you want sauce'
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Loren has the vague sense of something amiss. Some misstep in the conversation--
Silf proceeds to say -- in quite possibly the most cheery monotone he's heard -- more in one go than he's sure she's said up to this point, period. He draws up a touch, at once faintly impressed and faintly concerned.
"To start with, what do you mean by--"
Silf asks him what he wants on his bird. He hesitates, metaphorical legs cut out from under him. "Well," he says, stalling.
His gaze falls on the knife the moment after. His forehead wrinkles, perhaps in mild worry. Is it normal to use a knife that big for cutting up a bird?
Rex, himself, makes a pointed comment.
Loren's starting to get the picture here.
He narrows his eyes as Margaret joins in on the commentary making the rounds and unfolds his arms.
He can take a hint.
Lifting a hand, Loren rubs at the bridge of his nose, exhaling a long breath. They're just going to keep on with this, aren't they.
And quite possibly, the thought briefly occurs to him at this point, going to kill him or leave him to the tender mercies of the desert (also known as: kill him).
Thus:
"Fine. Alright. Yes, I understand the point you're subtlely attempting to make." Even the vague concern that comes with being injured and with strangers comes second, it seems. His hand drops away and he narrows his eyes. "The name is Thomas Blackwell, formerly of Bledavik. I used to be a medical student, but became a Drifter. It's a long story and not a very interesting one," he says, quite possibly a potential explanation for some of the more specialized equipment in the bag. "And you three are the Hounds of Hell. I don't suppose you go by other names?"
Five miles. That's not great, but it's something he could work with.
Or, just take them up on the offer and work from there.
Wayside is probably not going to be a great place for him to be, though.
"And the answer's yes."
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
First things first. Silf dishes up sauce, which seems to be some kind of thin red thing. It might remind Loren of blood, but not closely. The resulting plate is tangy and the sauce is revealed to have vinegar in it. It's certainly edible if perhaps not at all what he's used to. The meat is pretty well cooked.
Silf carves off a drumstick, meanwhile, and starts to chow down. Rex makes another plate in the background as Margaret, finally, blinks.
"There!" she says, all smiles as if a switch had been turned on. "That's so much better. It's a pleasure to meet you, Thomas Blackwell. I," hand to bosom, "am the Black Pearl of Neo-Vane, Margaret, and this is Silf and that is Rex. The gentleman who was joining us and has gone off to check the perimeter for wolves and so forth; he's Griz. He was very concerned about you, you know!"
"Why did you leave your studying to be a doctor? Not enough leeches?" Margaret says, with a tone as if she is making a fond tease to an intimate, which, of course, is not a category Loren probably considers himself to be in, as of yet.
Then Loren reaches a favored subject. "Oh! Oh no no, darling. We're a hundred strong; this is just one detachment. We're a free company, you see; we're sworn to Neo-Vane, but for reasons that I suspect might bore you to tears, we're here, now."
Margaret leans forwards, crossing her legs and placing her arms on her knees. This would probably be more flirtatious in less casual surroundings. "You know," she muses, "I'm a little jealous of you."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Technically speaking, nothing on the surface he's eaten -- rations and the like aside -- is all that remotely like what he had grown up eating. But by now his tastes have shifted a bit from 'strange but calories are calories' and have since been well on their way towards 'actually this is pretty good' so few complaints are coming from his corner. As long as it isn't He digs in. Is that vinegar?
He lifts an eyebrow as if somewhat taken aback by this sudden sea change in Margaret's overall demeanor.
Also, it's as clear as day: the word 'Neo-Vane' doesn't ring a bell at all. "I see?" he asks, a little bit nonplussed. Just a little bit.
"...Are there wolves out here?"
A brief, fleeting departure from his earlier vaguely annoyed demeanor, apparently.
It's not gone for long. "Yes, not enough leeches. They're such wear and tear on the wallet," he replies, voice dripping with sarcasm and even going so far as to unneccessarily roll his eyes. "Family trouble," he finishes at last, opting perhaps for maximum prickliness. "It's personal, so I would prefer not to talk about it."
It's here that he notices with some mild alarm that she's... gotten friendlier.
He's not good with handling over-friendly strangers -- usually to his experience it means something unfortunate-for-him is about to occur. As the way he straightens and scoots back an touch might suggest.
One hundred strong? This is just the advance guard.
How many people out there came down from the Moon, he wonders. This is not the question he asks.
The question he asks is, "What is 'Neo-Vane'? A city of yours?" He makes an educated guess.
Before she asks him a question that makes him go completely silent and still, all attention on her as if attempting to figure her out. Technically speaking, his societal status would nominally make him a target of envy -- he suspects that's one reason why he was a favored target in Jugend, considering his family's fortunes made him an easier mark than most. But to her, he's just some wandering ex-scholar.
So, he asks, as leery as he is right now: "...Why?"
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
"Oh, NOW you're interested," Margaret says, sourly. (Rex, in the background, eats his dinner. Silf is hunched over her leg of fowl.)
Margaret takes a deep breath and lets it out, as if to compose her thoughts. "I'll answer your first one, first. Neo-Vane is a city that soars in the sky, riding above the world - our world, mind you, we call it Lunar."
"Some would call the Blue Star our moon," Silf says, looking up from her meat for a moment. She wipes her mouth furtively.
Margaret continues. "We know this world as the 'Blue Star' because it appears in the sky as a bright blue star. Logical enough, yes?" Her eyebrows raise slightly. "Anyway, you'll probably note the 'Neo' - there's another city, once, Vane, that flew, and fell. We've built new glories with the best of the old, even if the old, as it always does, doesn't go away."
"Of course," Margaret continues, "as Silf said in such a charming way, we're probably going to die on your planet as it is. But perhaps we'll make another Neo-Vane here, with a little luck and plenty of pluck." She smiles, and says, with heartfelt sincerity wholly heedless of the grotesque irony: "Wouldn't that be something to see?"
Then Loren asks a different question. Margaret considers it while taking what is probably the last real drag off of that pipe she's been waving around, leaning back against her seat and uncrossing her legs in order to cross them again the other way. (She has smallclothes on, so Loren's purity as a wizard is not affected.) "Hmmm... it's an emotional reaction more than anything."
Margaret gestures. "So I don't really have a reason. But if I had to nail it down, it's that you have a place. Maybe even a home, however rough it is. You could walk back to Bledavik - I mean, don't, if it's the one I'm thinking of it's in the middle of a fucking desert, though I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know - but..."
Her head tilts upwards, to look towards the sky. "... Perhaps," she muses, "I'm just tired."
-=-=-
The other Hounds are solicitious but chatty, and say nothing of consequence. Loren would have a distinct sense that he's talking to veterans from deprived backgrounds, if he talks at all. Otherwise, he is offered a drink several times but otherwise unmolested.
The wagon-ride is surprisingly quiet. Some kind of spell and the great majority of the unit fan out with blurring speed, running at forty miles an hour or thereabouts (the exact rate varies.) Silf, unfortunately, stays in the wagon with him.
"Have a safe time, mister!" she says to him when they get to the turning, with Wayside just up the path a ways. They're not going any closer. "Say hi to the dragons for us! Don't get horribly killed! If I find any leeches I'll save 'em for you!"
Her eyes look funny. She's, probably, not making fun of him.
Probably.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Soars in the sky," Loren says, flatly, as if doubting what she's saying.
Soars in the sky, he thinks to himself, making a mental note to pass this on as some potential intelligence/something to follow up on with other alleged people from the Moon.
"More flying cities? It sounds like a fairytale," he remarks, shrugging his shoulders. He glances sidelong at Margaret. "Though I suppose considering you're allegedly people from the Moon..." He tilts his head slightly, as if to suggest it's not necessarily the most unbelievable part of this story.
Inwardly, his tally is going in a rather different direction.
They think they're going to die here.
They might be Lambs (of... a different sort?) but in his own way: Loren can relate. It's a familiar consideration.
But it also doesn't lead him to be -- overtly -- sympathetic. "It's possible. They say the deserts around here tend to swallow people alive. Not even a trace left."
He should be so lucky.
She answers his other question, considering it with particular care, he notes (broken only by the moment where he does avert his gaze for a moment, reminded fleetlingly of none other than Seraphita's dress code failures).
"A home? Is that what you're envious of? Hmm..." He sets his plate aside and folds his arms over his chest, guardedly considering this. "...Maybe. But I wouldn't walk back if I had the choice."
He wouldn't go back would be the more accurate of statements.
-=-=-
The rest of his time at the camp goes semi-awkwardly (this is normal) but without consequence, punctuated by a few offers of alcohol (which he refuses on the grounds of his injury (and really because he hates the stuff)), and eventually, he's seen off back towards the town of Wayside.
The speed of the ride is unusual. Magically-impelled, he'd guess, but beyond anything he's seen or heard of from non-Solarians (and non-Metal Demons and non-Veruni, technically-speaking). Another thing to pass on to command.
He climbs off once they arrive.
"...I'll look forward to it," he replies dryly, meeting her gaze.
That look is a strange one.
But he doesn't stay for farewells. He heads for the path.
...That headache's back, he thinks dully, a few moments later, no doubt as the cart rattles off again.