2021-09-07: Empty Vessel
- Log: Empty Vessel
- Cast: Gwen Whitlock, Timotheus Lovelace
- Where: Buckeye Station - Market District
- Date: September 07, 2021
- Summary: Timotheus catches up with Gwen, the recipient of a great working he had once conducted for a particular individual. He has questions for her -- but are they the sort of thing she can answer?
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"Whatever is the matter for such a pretty lady to have such a long face?" The merchant, plump and grandmotherly, signs the papers that the courier hands over to her, making a soft 'tut, tut' sound as she hands it over. "Usually you're as cheery as a sunbeam, but today you've been looking distracted since you got here. Did someone break your heart, dearie?"
Gwen accepts the clipboard, and chuckles, waving one hand. "Nah, nah, nothin' like that, but thank you kindly for the concern. Just had a lot on my mind lately, but it's nothing terrible. Y'sure you can handle the goods from here, Ms. Lacson?"
"Well, actually..."
What follows is a long montage of Gwen regretting asking the question, as the older woman uses her to transport the crates from the squatting Halcyone carefully into the General Store, including bags of flour.
Usually this place doesn't have the most calls for deliveries with the railway going here, but everyone needs the essentials, regardless of of the climate of power changing hands in these parts.
But it does mean Ms. Lacson doesn't have the usual strong backs to carry things for her, so, after some complimentary tea, Gwen looks outside the General store's windows, nervously, to some of the guards. "Thank you for your hospitality n' gossip, but I better get goin', before they decide my mode of transportation needs to be impounded."
"What, your chicken-looking thing? Bah, they should know better! It's because of it they get to have their gum and cigarettes tomorrow morning." Lacson tut-tuts again. "I've been keeping you for too long, though. It's nearly evening, and this is no place for a nice lady after dark!"
After the song and dance of the long goodbye some folk are found of, Gwen makes her exit, the bell jingling on the store door as she walks outside into the late afternoon air. "They don't make clients like that anymore," she comments idly to herself, pocketing the the tea bag samples.
<Pose Tracker> Timotheus Lovelace has posed.
Tap-tap-tap.
Tap-tap-tap.
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB4E7Avgf9g
The man leans heavily on his cane as he advances, making his way along the avenue. He is old, and beyond his need to use his cane, he has only his left eye, the right covered with a heavy eyepatch that covers nearly the entirity of the right side of his face. What skin is exposed -- hands, face -- glimmers with the tattoos of a Symbologist.
And yet, he still moves with intent as he proceeds.
Tap-tap.
Tap-tap-tap.
"Ah..."
He comes to a stop at last just alongside the young lady who stands outside this particular store.
"So that is what he did with it. He hid it well," remarks the wizard, his voice hoarse and threadbare as if he had swallowed a pot of boiling water. "But what I cannot yet discern is why. Was it merely to keep it out of my grasp? Or had there been..."
He trails off, squinting at Gwen slowly with that one dark eye of his.
He has lost favor, thse last few months. He knows it, even if his patron will not say as much. The messages and requests have thinned as has his staff and support. Even he won't so much as deign to drop by to simply needle him further, which means that he must be in it without question.
It had all started with the disappearance of his Magnum Opus, he is certain.
With the disappearance of that boy.
But the boy's time with him had left lasting marks, and through it, the arch-magus Timotheus Lovelace had been able to discern a...
...connection.
"He has been with you lately. Tell me now, girl, what is he planning?"
Even in spite of his predicament, he speaks as a man who is used to being obeyed without question.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
As a container, Gwen would certainly be an appealing one. She hides in plain sight, bearing an unassuming form and manner. Even knowing the secret of her right ARM isn't enough to know.
It would take a master to see a proper vessel where there is one, especially if all there was was just potential. Like a piece of marble, newly hewn from the quarry, identical to all others until the right artist comes along and frees it from its basic shape.
And it would be like the Stranger, to then veil it from an appreciative audience, letting it be covered in mud and dust if just to spite an admirer who somehow earned his ire.
And then, when that statue is located, it is then hollow, her exterior only a sore reminder of the contents she once held.
That would be one way of looking at it. Timotheus is not a simple admirer, and Gwen is a mortal, flesh and blood woman, not a marble object.
Gwen hears Timotheus's voice and glances over, her gaze still cordial, still unaware of the speaker and if she was exactly the woman he was looking for.
"....!" That warmth passes, the freckled face grimaces, as if disbelieving the plain fact of the man's presence, at first.
"... It's you." Few people would be able to turn Gwen's tone cold so quickly. outside of a combat setting.
A quick glance towards the soldiers sets her wits back in place; to all observers, it would just be a young woman talking with an old symbologist.
".... I don't want no trouble."
She flinches at the question. 'He has been with you lately'.
She knows exactly which 'he' Timotheus means.
"I know a lot of hes. You're gonna have to be more specific." It's hard to keep her ire out of her voice, but Gwen manages, to her advantage. "And often what you've done, I ain't sure I'd want to volunteer any information at all."
In spite of herself, Gwen finds herself curious. Just why did the Stranger get involved with this man?
How could she extract that information safely?
<Pose Tracker> Timotheus Lovelace has posed.
"That thing that you have... hand it over."
He has a simple command for her.
His expression doesn't so much as twitch when she gazes upon him in naked displeasure. Indeed, this may be a natural expression to wear when facing a man as unpleasant as Timotheus Lovelace.
A man who has permitted his ambition to consume all else. It matters not to him that he has lost what remains of his family, destroyed his reputation in numerous countries, and made an uncountable number of enemies. Even his once-allies are turning on him. It's all irrelevant. When he has eternity, so he has told himself, none of this at all will matter.
But first he needs to again grasp that moment, and to achieve that, he must find and locate his greatest working.
"Speak plainly and you shall have no trouble," Timotheus tells her; he does not even look. Even with his reputation, it seems he is not readily recognized in this place. Or perhaps, no one has yet regarded him closely enough to unite the face with name.
"You know the one of which I speak, girl. That boy, who deals in madness. The one who spirits and monstrosities follow in a grand parade. He has left his mark on you as well as he has left it upon me. Now--"
One gnarled hand reaches out to touch her forearm -- her flesh and blood forearm -- suddenly. He may be old but his gnarled fingers are as hard as any oak; Gwen won't be able to easily escape his grasp. His lips move silently.
But he releases her after only a moment. To an outside observer, it would seem like he had reached out to take her sleeve a moment, perhaps to steady himself.
"...No," he hisses, that one eye of his narrowing to a slit. "No, it is here no longer. It had been, but it has been removed. Where has he taken it now, girl? Was that the meaning of his last visit with you?"
His other hand tightens about the head of that worn oaken staff of his, his dark knuckles paling with the tension but for the moment.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"... Sure." Gwen's answer is simple enough: she takes out a tea bag, dangling it in front of him like a precious medallion, then, thinking better of it, quickly tries to draw it back. "... They sell 'em inside. It ain't half bad, for tea mixes 'round these parts."
The soldiers are largely uninterested in the two, going about their daily goings-on. One does stop by the Halcyone, folding his arms in and flapping them while making clucking noises, much to the dismay of his female co-worker, who rolls her eyes.
It's exactly the sort of response Gwen would prefer, and much to the benefit of Timeotheus as well.
"What sort of business would you want, with a guy like that?" Gwen finally answers, deciding to follow along with Timotheus's questions instead of playing dumb. "He's going to do his own thing. He'll use you like he used me." And still uses her.
And she lets him.
Just like she lets Timotheus grasp her left arm, which yields to his touch like the arm of any flesh and blood young woman, with the same musculature that would be expected of someone who was just lifting heavy items earlier.
"... I would've thought you would've remembered which arm I used to--" She glances aside to the soldiers, then back. "... to visit. If that's what you're looking for."
Her eyes, fog blue, narrow. "But it ain't, is it."
How many of her friends would balk that she's even giving this man the time of day?
"Maybe if you volunteer some info, I might be inclined to do the same, if I'm convinced enough it ain't gonna lead to somethin' I'll regret. You look like he's already gotten what he wants from you, after all."
<Pose Tracker> Timotheus Lovelace has posed.
The way that the wizard slowly frowns might tell her how well precisely that remark of hers went over. But it isn't as if he could simply strike her down, right, what with the Guards right there?
Or maybe for a master of the arcane like him, it might not be impossible for him to destroy her and simply vanish before the guards could even get within paces of where he stands.
But her destruction is simply not his intent. Not when she has answers that she -- and only she -- can give to him.
He shakes his head. "Did he not tell you? He has taken something of mine. It rested a time within you, I am quite certain, but now it has vanished. No... not vanished," he settles on slowly, shaking his head.
"Taken. Yes, you are hollow within, but I can feel the vestiges of my arte. It has left a mark on your very being. That, your connection with him and, ah..."
He waves a hand in her face, as if to wave her off her arguments entirely and once again reaches out to grasp for her arm, as if to confirm this time what he had barely felt before.
The embers are barely aglow. But there is a faint power left within. Stir the coals and perhaps something might just...
His hand releases her once again. He had gripped her arm tightly this time, almost too tightly.
"You had within you something powerful. An empty lantern, cold and discarded... Yes, this is for what he had wished it. My finest work, indeed."
Is this the sort of info she wanted?
The terrible old man's lips curl in an awful smile. "Ah, so you want to parlay now, girl? Have you enough of your fancies and mistruths?" The smile fades, flattening into contempt. "Hmph. Then tell me more of that boy. I believe I have spoken well enough already of mine own aims."
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
The joke was at Timotheus's expense, but it shows just how much presence the man has that Gwen *doesn't* build on that remark when she received that expected glare, not even the trace of a smirk.
Gwen doesn't doubt the man's abilities. She's seen enough to know she's playing with fire. Again.
When Timotheus mentions something 'of his' that rested in her, Gwen's face visibly reddens, too full of conflicting emotions to speak just yet. Anger, and curiosity. Shame at facing her own part in these events, but tempted at the chance at knowing more about what happened. "What did he take from you."
It's Gwen's time to command, but she doesn't make quite as compelling a commander as the man with the cane.
"You should know--" She stops, swallowing, leveling her gaze at the experienced symbologist. "He's not one t'come clean about anythin' he wants. He just leads me to where he wants me to go, and like a dumbass, I blindly stumble."
There is a note of bitterness, likely the readiest reason for why she's abandoned the strategy of playing dumb, or withholding information. At a certain level, they have a similar status, from what Gwen can assess.
"So no, to be blunt, he didn't say anything about you, that I can remember. I can't wave away the possibility that he did, and I just was too overwhelmed to catch the reference. I accepted his offer at a moment when I was caught between a rock and a hard place. All I had to do was..." Kneel. "Accept. It was mentally, one of his dream landscapes, so I don't know how that would allow whatever he took to be put in me. Physically, I was with my friends. They were in danger."
Hollow. Gwen remembers how cold she felt, huddling in the blanket on the Thames even though her body temperature was perfectly normal. Hollow was the perfect word to describe it; to be filled with a drop of sun, cracked, and rebuild to her previous state, but feeling that hollow state in a way she's never done before.
She almost doesn't seem to notice, or even resist, when Timotheus gripped her, almost painfully.
".... What did he want? And what did you make?"
She'll have to give him more. Grey eyes grimace, like he was still gripping her as tightly as he did, seconds ago. "He's trying to reach the world that was. He believes that people like me are left behind, and that we suffer, tied to this world instead of what was."
("And inside us are the sweet blades that will deliver the world to its rightful conclusion.")
(Her voice is sweet, motherly, her outline pleasant, backlit by the setting sun, even if the sun was and still is late afternoon, rather than sunset.)
(The beautiful, saturnine moth, peaking out from its wretched cocoon, holding out her hands.)
There is only Gwen here. There was always just a Gwen here. "You said boy, so I take it you're seeing that younger version, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Timotheus Lovelace has posed.
The wizard huffs out a breath. The parts of his face not covered by the eyepath crease deeply. "No. If that one were the type to come clean..." muses the wizard. "It matters not. I will make him talk."
He need only find him again, and reclaim his greatest work. With that in his hands, even if the entire world stands against him, it will not matter.
It may even be the last missing piece he needs, his key to eternity.
"Hmph. So he said nothing of it... and the work that I had finished for him."
The same that had once filled the space within her, now as empty as if its tenant had left in a hurry in the night.
An offer, was it. That one dark eye of his narrows.
"What did he want...?"
The wizard smiles, unkindly.
"It matters not if I tell you. You can no longer claim that power, wherever he has taken it. He wished to capture the gods that the world had forgotten. And for that, I crafted my finest arte. Once, it would have decorated the walls of your corpus," Timotheus tells her.
"But it is no use now. You are hollow. Only your fading connection to that boy makes you of any value. But I wonder... if he might even come."
His lips split nastily.
"An empty vessel has little value."
'He's trying to reach the world that was'.
"'Was'... so he, too, is chained to the past. A pathetic thing. What is lost can never be reclaimed."
It is the very reason why he must succeed in his quest.
Before time swallows him up, before he too becomes lost without a trace.
"'Younger version'... hmph. He looked to be no more than 18." Perhaps at Timotheus' age, even '18' counts as 'boy'. "Am I to take it that one molds his identity as he pleases? ...The situation grows ever more complex, I see."
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen allows herself a dark little laugh. "He's consistent, at least. I'd be surprised if he even told you who I was." She folds her arms. "And what *was* your work? What did you give to him?"
What did Isiris want?
"He wanted someone to accept something from him. I guess it was just the part about giving in. As far as I knew, all he did was just lock away the parts of me that would hold back. Fear, self-reservation, that sort of thing. I don't know if he planted anything else inside me, except--"
... What if Isiris was the reason Gwen felt so compelled to take from Setanta? It wouldn't be that hard to push her that direction, with as 'hungry' as she was...
And Timotheus confirms it for her. ".... But... that'd be impossible." Gwen seems disturbed by the very notion, unfolding her arms to hang at her sides. "I only held the smallest spark of the Primarch, and even that was way too much for one person t'handle. There's no way I could've nabbed anything more than that without me noticing."
Not even with Timotheus's help, whatever that is.
Or could it be...?
"... Are you saying I was a prison for that Primarch? It'd be impossible, because they were free the entire time I was walkin' around."
Or was she simply developing a small part of the net?
She has to stop--
'An empty vessel has little value.' The courier doesn't even blink or flinch, despite the subtle venom in those words. "I wish you were right. But I'm 'fraid he's not gonna allow me to shrink into the background just yet."
It's Timotheus's next choice of words that produce a change in Gwen, a sort of obsessive cornflower blue tint to her eyes that matches the gentle calm that locks her in place.
".... And you want to be eternally locked to this life, to linger on once your job has been accomplished. You cannot reclaim the winding long length of rope that leads to your death, for that is the reward that awaits those who have done their duty."
She reaches out her hand, and if Timotheus doesn't move away, she will hold it gently against his cheek.
"Perhaps the fact that you are still alive means your duty is not done. But be assured, that when the time comes, you will be granted your prize."
One of the soldiers nearby gives the two a weird look, perhaps overhearing Gwen's odd, calm words.
<Pose Tracker> Timotheus Lovelace has posed.
There's no other word for the expression the wizard now wears but a sneer.
"I should have realized. Of course the understanding of such a working would elude one like you, girl. Ask another for the understanding you seek, but know this:
"I crafted for that boy a Symbol heretofore unseen in this world."
Is he telling the truth? Is he overstating the degree to which he has brought about something novel?
Gwen may well need to seek (another) Symbologist to understand what all this means though.
"The Primarch?"
He himself has been cut out of one half of this business, it seems.
"What do you mean by that, girl? What is the 'Primarch'?"
Will learning this information be dangerous for someone like the disgraced magus?
"Hmph... I wonder what value he sees in an empty shell. Perhaps he plans to use you again as a trap? But no, the arte is no longer present. It has already been sprung." And pulled free from her like the pearl from an oyster.
A bare whispering had brushed at the edges of his hearing prior. An afterimage had glazed itself across his single eye. But he is no stranger to such things anymore. Even all these months after that fateful visitation, he still experiences a distorted world.
He no longer thinks of it as distorted.
When Gwen speaks to him he does not seem distressed or confused in the slightest and instead embraces the madness openly.
"...Indeed, that is my dearest wish. It cannot end here. It cannot... I have much left of which to attend myself. I must outpace these naysayers and traitors. They will crumble and fade..."
He reaches out to take her hand, to clutch it tightly.
"I will remain."
That one eye of his seems nearly liquid for a moment, as if even in the depths of his blackened heart he has been overcome by some emotion.
"Please. I know my time is short. I must have eternity."
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"...." How would she even know how to check one way or another?
"N' how am I supposed to ask for proof over a symbol I can't even see? Like, are we talkin' it bein' on my soul or what?!"
Just how is any of this working? How would anyone even be able to point to one part as evidence of any of this?
Timoethus's next question sets the courier's thoughts immediately down another path, however. "...."
She had assumed Timotheus already knew the nature of the 'gods' he was grabbing ahold of. But what if Setanta isn't the god?
What if this is a different god altogether?
".... So you could be blowin' smoke up my butt for all I know."
..... which is an odd thing to say, when in the next moment, she's touching the man's cheek so tenderly.
Her eyes focus her hand, that terrible left hand, pressed against Timotheus's cheek, and she resists the temptation to pull it away in disgust.
This is her moment to choose differently, she tries to tell herself.
"He's.... not going to get you what you want," Gwen finally says, softly.
"... I guess I owe you a bit of thanks, though. For something you may not've realized." The obsessive tint in her eyes is gone, back to its normal hue. "I was able to talk to one of them. There's nothin' I could say that would give you any answers, but the memories of those meetings are something I will treasure."
Her hand slowly drops. "You probably figured his, but to call 'em gods is... misleading. They're beautiful, powerful, potent, but the ways they're similar to us is like a beautiful dagger. They won't give you eternal life, and neither will the Stranger. At least, it's probably not the kind of life you're thinking of."
Where that one dark eye watered, Gwen's own tremble with the tears of youth.
<Pose Tracker> Timotheus Lovelace has posed.
"Bah," Timotheus utters, waving a hand in her face. "I do not have the time to fill in for your woeful undereducation, girl. Ask another," he informs her, scowling. "It matters not to me whether you believe what I am saying. I know. That is all that matters."
He really is determined to be unhelpful on this front, it seems...
He wrinkles her nose when she uses that turn of phrase, though. As if it weren't already clear how well he thought of her.
"Of all the children he could have chosen, he uses a..." mutters the magus.
There is no difference in the distortion of his senses that follows that stands out as untoward or unexpected to him. It's no different than those times he has spent talking to his shadow, or found himself standing beneath a rain of black feathers. Under circumstances such as the ones he endured, even the extraordinary becomes mundane.
It is normal, then, when Gwen speaks to him in such tongues, when she promises him so much.
It's only when Gwen rouses from her own trance, her hand on his cheek, that he stirs himself from his reverie.
"What's that you say, girl...?"
And that dark eye of his narrows. "Talk to one of those what? These 'Primarchs'?"
Is that what the Stranger was attempting to trap?
"I do not care about the power of gods," he tells her. "Even gods, it is said, may die. Is it not so in some of the tales? I seek something deeper than any god."
Something no god can give him.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Maybe it's to Gwen's benefit that Timotheus's vague slander bounces off her like moonlight off a crow's wings, with how thoroughly she has slipped into that alternate self Isiris had nurtured in her.
But, to come to with her hand on his cheek, and be unable to explain that break in the cohesion of her perception without trying to establish some reaffirming elements of herself to cover it up.
It's just a matter of spackling up that dark hole in the wall and not think about the space on the other side.
And it's equally as lacking in logic.
"...."
Gwen really needs to learn when to bite her tongue, instead of surge forward with her assumptions, or her vague notions of 'fairness' and 'appealing to another's humanity'. This is Timotheus, and he has very thoroughly established that he beyond such things.
This is a fact she needs to remember, when she falls into that trap of sympathy for.... wait, what was it? Why was she sympathetic at all? What was he seeking from his exchange with the Stranger?
She can only be truthful, and then immediately build on that.
Gwen sighs, and shakes her head. "I dunno, really. I only thought about it when you were talking about what the Stranger had you workin' on. I don't think he'd be really that interested in any of these guys."
There's a good reason to at least explain and emphasize these beings' powers, now that she's obliviously revealed their existence to Timotheus. At least, Gwen assures herself, Timotheus can't possibly know about what happened in Luca. "Good luck," she says, as distantly as she can manage. "I prefer tea leaves to playin' with abominations, myself. At least, after all the hullabaloo, I get some tea. What do you have to show for all your efforts, when all is said n' done?"
She pushed too hard, she knows. The man is dangerous, and very able to slam her with the full fury of his 'efforts'.
Perhaps, that's why she's backing away, instead of turning her back to him. "Your answers are probably only gonna be from him. I can't help you any further on this, even if I wanted to."
<Pose Tracker> Timotheus Lovelace has posed.
"You are testing my patience, girl. If you will be no use to me, then..."
He doesn't immediately finish off that particular birthing threat of his. Instead, he regards her intently as she begins to go on. As she says--
What does he have to show for his efforts?
A ruined reputation. A wake filled with atrocities. The loss of his remaining family. The all-but-certain obliteration of his name and achievements. No lack of enemies and a dearth of allies. Madness, utter madness.
He has still failed to come even close to eternity.
"Girl... you will be silent," he whispers to her, something glinting in his sole remaining eye.
A realization, perhaps.
But it's a realization come far, far too late.
His gaze hardens.
No. It is far too late to turn back. Push on, and he may still achieve his goals. He has done too much to simply abandon them.
"Then have your 'tea'," he tells her, lurching forward,
past her.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
"If you see that boy, then tell him. Tell him he must return what is mine."
Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.
She is not even worth striking down where she stands for such insolence.
No. He will have eternity. He must.