2022-10-25: Fasciculus Chemicus
- Log: Fasciculus Chemicus
- Cast: Hicalu Wilwisp, Seraph Harmaus
- Where: Guild Galad
- Date: October 25, 2022
- Summary: Harmaus claims his first victim.
<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.
Erica's Bakery is a little shop in Void 20 which sees a healthy amount of business despite its hole-in-the-wall status; the head baker, Erica herself, is a veteran with more guns than the ones which are her arms, but she's long-since retired from adventure herself. Under her tutelage, the young Baskar beastman, Hicalu Wilwisp, sharply advanced his understanding of baking..!!
And now he's out in the world again, he comes back and helps her whenever Lan leaves him in Guild Galad. (Hicalu kind of needs to be escorted and left places; he's terrible at reading maps, and far too cowardly for trouble.) This area is comfortable to him -- it's where he learned about the world, after all -- so he doesn't really get bothered, even by local criminal elements.
For one, the pickpockets know he doesn't have much more than two gella to rub together; for another, Hicalu bribed them with muffins. It's really a remarkably useful survival strategy.
Shifts only last so long, though, and he leaves the bakery with a cheerful farewell. He's all clad in light, Baskar desert clothes; a shawl over a strappy shirt and shorts which do nothing to cover the way his lower arms and legs are simply covered in Symbologist tattoos. These clothes are comfy, and easy to wear!
And thanks to his familiarity with the Voids, Hicalu is pretty fearless about taking the most direct route home, even though it takes him through a good amount of claustrophobic alleyways which almost seem more like afterthoughts than streets. Perhaps they were larger, once -- but the Voids aren't empty, and the fuller they get, the more space is at a premium.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
To make the flower he intends to sow in his garden grow properly, Harmaus knows he requires fertilizer. And quickly -- no doubt soon there will be those arriving to prevent what must be done. Of course, the best fertilizer will be those closer to the flower in question, but...
Variety, as he has so often learned, is the spice of life. And hasn't he gleaned some of the heart of his flower already?
Even if he were a real cat, he would have moved silently. As a Seraph, he moves more silently still -- most will not even witness his passage, and those who do, well. He is just a cat in form, after all, and Guild Galad has no shortage of those.
Amber eyes sweep the alleyway from his perch on high. Now... if he were to select one from the crowd...
Someone who has connections. Someone who has promise.
Aha.
He drops down from above, landing on his feet in Hicalu's path.
"It walks alone. Why?" asks Harmaus, eyes glinting in the artificial light of the Void. Once, twice, a longfurred tail swishes.
Nonchalantly, Harmaus begins to wash a paw carefully.
"It wonders me... the tattoos on its legs. It is sorcerer?"
<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.
Hicalu has no ancient destiny of his own -- surely! He is but a humble baker, a village-boy, distressingly normal in the face of danger. But he is so close to so many destinies, and drawing ever closer still, all those webs of fate all woven about him...
Surely, knowing enough people with shining futures is what causes him to glow. Metaphorically, that is. Literally, he blends in well enough, with the darkened streets, though his hair is brown to bronze and his ears a sandier shade.
Something moves --
And it is because of how distressingly normal Hicalu is that he has trouble focusing on Harmaus, though certainly he heard him. His gaze casts back and forth, searching, until out of the corner of his eye -- "Oh!" Hicalu exclaims, hand to his chest. "It's a kitty!"
Finally, he focuses on Harmaus, more or less. He puts the difficulty seeing him down to the poor lighting.
His relief is undercut, sharply, by the realisation that -- "Wait wait wait hang on here, the cat's got -- oh wow, Mana was being literal, huh, holy cow..." Hicalu looks as if he'd like to sit down in the wake of the horrific realisation that cats can actually get your tongue, and then use it to talk. Unfortunately, there's really nowhere to sit, so he just kind of puts one hand on his head as his ears airplane out to either side. "Wow."
A moment later, he shakes his head, and gestures, conciliatory, to Harmaus. "Oh, sorry, sorry! I'm being rude! I'm just on my way home -- I'm pretty comfy all 'round here, so it's not dangerous or nothin'! And, ahhh, I guess I am, but," he stretches an arm out, to show off the tattoos there, "it's not like I'm some super-cool Drifter or somethin'! Y'know, most of these are for utility. Like, see here?" He taps at a flaming tattoo, near his wrist. "This raises the temperature of a fire, so I can make sure my stuff's cooking just right! 'Course, you also gotta have this," he gestures to a black band around his upper arm, sharing the details so, so freely, "and that's tapping into the shade to make things cooler. Pretty neat, huh? Most people go for Ice tattoos to do that, but I guess I must've been too attached to the Shadows, haha!"
... he seems awfully cheerful for someone attached to such a thing.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
Harmaus' response is a simple one: he watches Hicalu with vaguely bemused curiosity as the young man flits from one emotion to another, trying, failing, and ultimately settling on the revelation that, sure, this is a thing that can happen in this world. Why not?
"It sees not such as I before?" Harmaus says at last, tilting his head slightly to the right. "Ah, is first time, yes? Makes this easy, perhaps?"
Makes... what easy?
"Ah... Knows I some of tattoo magics. So it is... practical, yes? Use of magic. Remembers me much of practitioners I knows. Ah, but different, different yet! And is others waiting for it? Wonders I what knows it. Who has it at home? Others with shadow tattoos? Fire tattoos?"
Too many close to the kid, and he'll have heat on him before he can even get part-way to the garden he is preparing. But not enough, and no one will eve notice what he's taken away. To apply fertilizer properly, one cannot use too much or too little, as the flower requires.
He is familiar with this art. Such was it with his first body, taken from this world.
"My name," Harmaus says, by the by, "Is Harmaus."
<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.
"Haaah..?" Hicalu's expression scrunches, quizzical, head all canted and one ear to the side as Harmaus asks his questions in his particular way. "Uhhh... you're the first talking cat I ever met, if that's what you're gettin' at..."
He's not really familiar with the accent, but he is still pretty sheltered. He must just not have met anyone from Harmaus's neck of the world!
Hicalu is a very trusting sort of fellow, really; for all his fear, he doesn't think the worst of people, and certainly not of cats. "Uhhh," Hicalu approximates, again, "nah, not really? Like, I'm prob'ly one of the biggest Symbology users back home, I kinda stand out... oh, but Lan communes with Rigobrite! Cool, huh?" Hicalu asks, with a broad grin.
"Oh, that's back in Little Firelight, though -- Lan and me are travellin', so, like, in a place like this I reckon you could find all kinds of sorcerers! Prob'ly ones way better than me, honestly. Lan just kinda leaves me someplace safe when she goes and does her Drifter stuff, I am way not useful for all that." Hicalu laughs, waving a hand.
His hand comes to rest at his hip, as his tail swishes, behind him. "So what's up, Harmaus? You need a Symbologist for somethin'? I can prolly help you find someone who can help out better. Like, Master Erica insisted I go get some combat tattoos when I apprenticed under her bakery, so I went and saw a guy called, uhhh..." He snaps his fingers, once, twice -- "Arlos! Yeah, that's it! Arlos Graven! Scary name, but he's a cool guy."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
To be fair, even on Lunar, there are many unfamiliar with Harmaus' particular cant. Not only was it a remote village in which he had spent most of his 'adult' life... but it was a village that had faded into nothingness long, long ago.
If there are any who still remember it other than Harmaus, they can be counted on one hand. Against a plague, Pohjola had not a a chance of surviving.
"Not many? Hmm... where is its home?" Harmaus muses, tail swishing again. "...Rigdobrite? Remembers me... yes, yes. Guardian, is it?"
He has, as always, endeavored to learn much of the world in which he swims, even if time has not yet permitted him to delve deeply.
"'Little Firelight', ah... Remembers me this. Then, it travels far? It travels far with others? Tells me of others--"
So he's friends with Drifters, is he. Harmaus' pupils slit. Ones who would notice if he were to suddenly go missing and raise the alarm...
'She' is so very well connected with many of them. Eventually the word should reach her ears, and she should come--
And if she will not, he will simply release them once they've been awoken. Once released out into the world, soon she would be surrounded nonetheless by the sorts that could complete her transformation.
Magilou herself had told him. One will know the Lord of Calamity by the company she keeps. Could she truly turn her gaze away from her dearest friends -- from those who come and go? Whether it should happen now or happen later... it matters not the swiftness as long as it happens.
It matters not the swiftness, and yet he makes haste all the same.
Lies can run quite deeply indeed.
"Yes," Harmaus tells Hicalu, rising up onto all fours from his seated position prior. "Yes. Needs I a Symbologist. But, ah... not those ones."
A haze has begun to grow around the cat-shaped Seraph, a particular glow that seems strange in the glimmer and shimmer from the ends of the alleyway. "I hurts it not. It goes easily, and no hurt. No pain! Wakens it then, and all is well? Maybe others come. Maybe not," Harmaus muses, that light shining like strange baubles in the air. "But wakes it, and all is well."
They begin to burst before Hicalu's eyes, one then another, buring into the sort of light that remains even when one closes their eyes. It may burn, stun... overwhelm.
<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.
"Yeah! The Star Guardian!" Hicalu informs Harmaus, happily. He's not a Shaman, so he'll save the education for them, but he's pleased to name his Guardian. He's happy to talk about Lan, too -- really, she's one of his favourite topics.
He blinks, though, when Harmaus settles on what he needs. "Eh? Someone else? Well, sure, I'll do what I can... there's a school around here that can..." Hicalu pauses, ears wilting, as Harmaus becomes even more indistinct than he was.
"What are you..."
But as much as Hicalu believes the best in all cats, he can still hear underlying threats when they're this loud. He takes a step back, another. "N-no way!" He yelps, as he turns to run --
The lights, though; they're in front of his eyes, no matter where he turns. (Or perhaps they were simply behind him, just the same.) "LAN!" Hicalu yells, as his eyes scrunch shut, and he tries to flee, anyway. "HEL--lllll--"
He doesn't get far, before he falls flat on his face.
"puh," is his last, eloquent sound.
A single heal berry muffin falls from his pack and rolls, forlornly, into the alleyway.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"Yes, yes, it stands right there," Harmaus says to him.
And then everything, for Hicalu, takes a terrible turn.
Just a moment more and perhaps the boy would have -- but, ah, he has collapsed in the end.
"Jaeja," Harmaus sighs, padding over to investigate the fallen young man. He glances about, as if expecting some would-be rescuer to come swinging in at the last moment, but there is... nothing. Just the noise and glare of Guild Galad, muted this far into the alleyway.
"It is about itself, now!" he calls out, seemingly to no one and nothing all.
They come peeling out of the shadows themselves, stepping around crates and discarded items almost delicately. The Rosenwach do not speak, for such is not their nature. They hear, they obey, and that is enough -- ideal servants of the Rose Queen, lent now to her devoted servant Harmaus.
It's fitting, in a way. They travel now for a world of stone, and they themselves are stone in truth -- for all their delicate, insectoid outward appearance. If one were to squint, perhaps they would call them 'giant gilded stinkbugs', though the description would itself hardly be apt. They approach Hicalu's fallen form with care for all their great weight and, at Harmaus' urging, pick him up between them -- one arm for each Rosenwach.
"It carries it to our garden. At once!" Harmaus commands, for he speaks to her minions with the weight of her own authority. "I follows soon. It tells her such, yes? Much and more work has I, before garden is ready."
His gaze settles on the fallen muffin.
"Ah... Thinks I... yes. It gives me one sheet!" says Harmaus, about-facing towards the right Rosenwach, which dutifully produces a packet of papers and peels, seemingly at random, a single sheet from the whole. This, Harmaus siezes with his mouth momentarily only to toss it sidelong into the grime of the alleyway.
Then and only then does he nudge the single muffin atop it. It's a sign for those who follow after. A mark, to tell them where they must go.
The sheet after all originates from the packet claimed from the School of Mineralogy. Even with some of its context lost, surely, it will take those who seek the boy to the school, and from there...
When all arrives at the designated moment, it shall be as it must.