2023-04-26: Lost in Time and Space
- Log: Lost in Time and Space
- Cast: Eleanor Klein, Josephine Lovelace
- Where: Memory Maze
- Date: April 26, 2023
- Summary: A few of those who have escaped through the maze have a moment to pause and talk about the next steps.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
There is ample room in the Memory Maze. Pillars of stone, and sand as far as the eye can see. Eleanor has, in a moment of solitude, stepped away from the group to sit down by a pillar, pensive. She is dressed still as she was when they left the Heimdall Gazzo--well, 'left', in ruined magical attire with jewelry that is broken in places. Her yellow eyes stare into the distance for the moment, her hair a little disheveled, despite herself.
And the place is quiet; time is still. Everything is still.
She starts to pull a green book, and look through it, as if the answers might be contained within its pages. It is unreadable to almost any, though.
The others are close enough to reach easily, but far enough to be out of earshot. So Eleanor thinks is true for all of them.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
She hadn't been dying when everything went to hell, but that was still a far sight from being perfectly healthy and well. Vinsfeld had played for keeps, suffice to say, even if it meant taking the whole world down with him.
Very nearly, he'd taken them out with them, at the least.
Maybe the baker might have managed. He's got a whole damn demon in him, or something like it. But they would have been toast--
If something else hadn't interceded.
That had been then. This is now, in a place that time forgot. Or, perhaps, Josie has thought since she's found herself there, perhaps it liked it a little too well.
"Find somethin'?" she drawls. Eleanor is not nearly as alone as she thinks. Josie leans against a broken pillar and exhales smoke; of course, she has a lit cigarette in hand.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
When Josephine approaches, Eleanor blinks once and looks up owlishly at the other woman before, "Oh!" A pause. "Ah, we should make sure you're still all right. I'm sorry, I told you to get some rest and then didn't see to you again..." Obviously she's already done some healing, but Eleanor goes for her bag immediately to find some more Berries to infuse Josie's vitality with. In the meantime, as she does--
"Not really," she admits. "I..."
She glances at the cigarette, and at Josie. "It's been a very long few hours," she settles on. "In more ways than one. How are you feeling?"
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Josie grins, lopsidedly. "Don't you worry 'bout it or none, kiddo," she says. "I ain't fixin' to dance a jig, now, but I figure I'm a sight better than I would've, otherwise." She gestures, broadly, with her cigarette. "Right? Ain't every day I get to dance with the reaper... or get stuck in some..."
She pauses for a long moment, regarding the horizon. She takes a long drag of her cigarette during.
"...place," she settles for, finally, only to shrug. "So, nothin', least of all where we're at? Heh... well, at least we're alive."
It would have been alright, she's figured since, if that was the end of the line. But she's alive and so... hell with it. She's apparently still got more story left to tell.
"Like I said, could be better. Could be a hell of a lot worse."
And she settles again into silence, regarding the horizon.
"...Want a smoke, Nora? Or a drink."
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
"That was a dance with the reaper all right," Eleanor agrees, looking down at her ruined Fire Ring, which she hasn't taken off yet because... she hasn't. Maybe soon. But she glances back to Josie as she answers. 'Place'. "Well, we are alive. That's true. Everything is possible so long as we stay alive." She is optimistic--just tired.
"I'm glad you lived, though. Even if... Well."
There are reasons she shouldn't be. But could be better, could be worse. Eleanor pauses, at the offer, and then--
"You know what?" Eleanor says, "I could use a cigarette. That would actually be quite welcome."
Cigars and the like aren't usually her thing, but at the moment, she'll take what she can get.
Eleanor starts to rise to her feet, dusting herself off. "At least we know in theory the way out," she says, gesturing to the other horizon, where the great structure rises.
"Did you know that I've been here before?" she asks. "In visions, at least. it's... very different, to be here fully physically."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
A touch tiredly, Josie smiles. "Told me all I needed to know 'bout Antenora's reasons," she tells Eleanor, perhaps a touch cryptically.
But they are alive, and as long as they're alive... well, that's something. That's another step on a road that hasn't come to its end just yet. And she's not done, yet -- just as she told the Trial Knight.
"Same, here," Josie remarks, and here her smile blooms into something more honest. "Be a shame if you went through all that just to never meet your baby sibling. Your mother's due any day now, yeah?"
After all they've been through, Eleanor says. Josie actually looks a little taken aback, if just for the moment. "...Well then, who'm I to take it back? C'mere," she says, slipping her own between her lips as she goes fishing with her good hand.
Her right hand just hangs loose at her side.
The pack is tossed Eleanor's way in short order. "In theory?" she says, raising a pale eyebrow as if to urge Eleanor to go on.
"...Really. That Sage business again? Well, ain't that a handy little trick. Don't suppose your visions've shown you what we do now?"
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Antenora's reasons... No, it doesn't entirely register for Eleanor what that means, but it seems something important to Josie. Maybe she'll figure it out later. "...Thanks," she says. Eleanor nods. "That's right. Any day, now. I don't even know her name yet! They never do share until they've given it to the baby." ...This is not Eleanor's first little sibling, after all. "And I have no idea how long we'll be gone..." It's kind of depressing, so she accepts the cigarette, all right, and takes one from the pack when Josie gives it to her. She doesn't need a lighter or a match; she just sets it up to her lips and points at the end, setting it lightly afire with a thought.
She inhales and exhales slowly, before she does anything else. Then, "...Well," she says. "This place is called the 'Memory Maze'," she says, answering both questions at the same time. "If we want to escape, we must traverse the maze, and solve its riddles. However, no one's ever done it, as far as i know--except for the one. And she might not have done it yet. I'm not entirely sure."
"So that's what we do. Anastasia will guide us as far as she's able, I'm sure, but it will still be difficult, and there are many monsters that guard the ways of Time."
"Unfortunately the maze itself is well outside time and fate... so without the connection to someone here to see from outside, I don't know anything about the dangers awaiting us; I've had no visions of them."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Eleanor lights it with but a gesture and a spell and that's when Josie knows that -- as different as they are and will continue to be -- she is in some sense a woman after her own heart; this earns her a fleeting, lopsided grin. Why mess around with a lighter when you've other options at your command?
"Don't I know it," she says, on the matter of a younger sibling. "Even if I can only barely recall the same, myself. I was only four, you know, when my sister was born."
Her first and only sibling by blood, for their mother had passed from this world only days later. All the power of Symbology can't do a thing against death's grip.
But Eleanor gets down to brass tacks.
"...The 'Memory Maze', huh. So, how'd you know about this? Sage business again? Or is this common knowledge out with Sielje and all?"
She furrows her brow at that 'yet', perhaps already wondering -- guessing -- at the meaning behind it, which... Eleanor provides, after a fashion.
"So this ain't a place, proper, but a 'when', you'd say. Or maybe a 'what', or 'why', all mixed in, even..."
She takes another drag on her cigarette and then asks the real million gella question:
"Anastasia who? Some kinda guardian of time?"
The lowercase 'g' is very important here.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
At least ther's something in common. Eleanor lifts an eyebrow, but doesn't quite get it. For her it's just the natural thing to do. She continues to breathe in and out with the smoke, though. She doesn't cough at all; apparently while this isn't a habit of hers, it's one she's familiar enough with.
"Oh! Yes, I see. ...I was too young to remember when Danielle and Tristan were born, but..." After that, she could. After that, she was old enough to remember much.
Crest Sorcery can't do anything against death's grip, either. Perhaps not even Sage magc.
"It was explained to me when I was here before," Eleanor continues, when Josie asks. "It's not common knowledge at all; spaces like this are only theoretical as far as the Academy is concerned." Well, that she knows of.
"...Yes," she says. "Exactly. It's sort of all of those things."
"Anastasia... Is another person who is trapped here. Anastasia Valeria, the Sword Magess. She was trapped here long, long ago. And unfortunately, so far as I know, she must remain here, even when we leave."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Even Wizards at their schools experiment with this or that; Josie's been to Linga before, and it wasn't any different in Marze among the older students. Hell, she had her first real drink long before she was of age.
Perhaps nothing can. She'd known, even then -- as a child, and again in that burning building -- that it had been far too late.
But, even so--
'When she was here before'. This prompts Josie to wrinkle her brow and frown, as if in consternation -- sure, she knows it's because of the visions, but it's still a strange thing for her to wrap her head around. "Sure ain't never heard of it before, like," she remarks, leaning more heavily against the pillar. "But then, I never did pick up more'n the basics of sorcery. Marze tradition, even. You'd have to ask my sister 'bout theory, and..." She shrugs onehandedly, as if to say, 'there's no helping her there'.
Their father, of course, probably knew even more than even the real Josie ever did, but that man would have been a poor resource indeed -- even if he weren't dead and unmourned.
"So it's a headache!" Josie says, a touch overbrightly. "But at least I'm equipped for that." She's still got most of a flask of liquor left.
But Eleanor explains who Anastasia is, and--
"...Wait, seriously?" Josie has peeled herself away from her pillar. "The Sword Magess? But didn't she die fightin'..."
She pauses, as if to let herself linger on that thought a moment more.
"Well. Don't that beat all," Josie settles for in the end.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
It was the same for Eleanor, of course, at Sielje. She knows enough not to smoke near the books, though. That could've gotten her in big trouble. ...Drinking near the books is a problem for other reasons.
Even so...
Eleanor is used to thinking in terms of paradoxes, at least, so while she's still tired, it doesn't seem to give her much trouble. As for hearing about it, "The only reason I even know the theory of such a place is that my post-graduate work focused on Time-based magics. This was of course before I learned I was a Sage, which is the presumable reason I've had such a facility for such things." Her sister... Eleanor nods
no, couldn't ask her, for sure. And with that in mind, Eleanor is not inclined to chat about her understanding of the Marze tradition.
"A big headache," Eleanor agrees with a smile. She needs her head clear, so she doesn't ask for a drink. Her tolerance is fairly low. Still--
"Indeed. She was trapped here. Marivel is her friend," the Sage explains. "...And Marivel has been here with her for a long time. She's going to escape with us, I think."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
"Time-based, huh? Well, there's a how-you-do," she remarks, perhaps a touch cryptically. But of course, she is the daughter of a mighty wizard and is well familiar of some of the... particulars of wizardly morality. "Still, guess all's well that ends well. Here, we've got you with us so perhaps getting stuck in some, eh... when and where in time ain't gonna be as bad as it might've been otherwise."
She pauses.
"Though, no pressure, eh? Ain't like even an age of research'd prepare one for this," she says, gesturing widely with her lit cigarette. "Tell you what, though... we get out of this alive?"
She winks at Eleanor. "Drinks on me."
She'll just keep mum for now about her empty coinpurse. That's a problem for future Josephine.
"Fair enough. And it's the kind of trapped where we can't just, like, take her with, right? Marivel, Marivel..." She screws up her forehead. "The little blonde girl, yeah? I remember her. Weren't she with... wait, don't tell me... this is another one of them paradoxes. Yeah?"
She turns her gaze towards the horizon of this broken land. "This's where it starts."
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
"I'd be happy to show you my papers when we're out of here, if you're interested," Eleanor offers, and while she may or may not know right from wrong, she is still a wizard and that can get a little bit flexible sometimes. It's fine. "Hopefully," Eleanor says. "On the other hand, it may be worse in some respects; the Hounds of Tindalos don't like me much." Pause. "They don't like anyone who interferes with time."
But no pressure... Eleanor smiles. "I'd appreciate that," she says of the drinks, and lowers her cigarette for a few more moments. She has no idea about this empty coinpurse. It's fine.
"Excatly," Eleanor says. "I'm not sure what happens if we try, but something bad, I think. She would know more than I would." She then nods. "Yes, the blonde. She's actually an ancient Crimson Noble, if you didn't know." Pause. "...But yes, it's a paradox. She escaped the Maze many thousands of years ago from our perspective."
But there, on the horizon... "It is," she says. "...Shall we get back to it, and the others?" Eleanor says then, finishing off her cigarette with another few breaths. "I for one feel much refreshed. And ready to get to work."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
"Hounds of Tindalos? Heh, I guess even messing with time's got its dangers. Well, if they come for us here, I've still a few rounds," Josie remarks, as casual as you please about abominations that patrol the flow of time.
But then, as others would recall, she had been eager to tangle with Gryndille.
"Right, then! You get us out of here, and I'll treat," Josie says, gesturing a flourish with her lit cigarette. Honestly, whether or not she can afford it is at this moment the very least of her problems. Maybe she can ask Yvain for a loan.
Seraphim like him probably know where the loot is buried, anyway.
"...Thought so," Josie says, grinning grimly. "You'd said she'd been here a long while, and I know you and she were in contact not all that long ago," she adds. "Time don't flow properly here, neither. And so! There's only one right answer," she says, triumphant. "It's a paradox."
And paradoxes, at least, she knows well.
"Right you are. I've had enough lingering about. Let's see if the boys're ready to get a move on," Josie says, peeling away from her pillar at last. "A little exercise'll set things right, I figure...!"