simulsimul | another thing; w/ fafnirs and skeletonenigma; cw for suicide talk

[It's a strange sensation, listening for answers that don't come verbally or visually. They come instead as ideas. And Skulduggery's used to ignoring ideas that aren't immediately relevant to the situation at hand, which makes pinpointing the foreign ideas even more of an interesting task.

A 'yes', he gathers, followed by vague irritation which isn't quite irritation, centred around -- ah. The thesaurus wasn't specific enough. Skulduggery can't help laughing. Kratos didn't know a single word of English a few hours ago, and now he's irritated because the childrens' thesaurus doesn't have enough detail in it.]

East. It rises in the east, and sets in the west. My house is west of Dublin. [Another gesture.] That way.

[Ah; that makes things clearer. Kratos sends over acknowledgement and tips his wings just enough to orient them properly, and they continue their descent. Unspoken, Kratos broadcasts his present sense of the planet; of the bloom of light-mana to the east, and the low electrical hum of the magnetic pole directed into the earth to the north.

[His next mental communication has an actual word on it, the first so far. Earth.

[The present-sense broadcast fades, to be replaced by one of a memory: that of the sun-bloom again to the east, but overlaid on a magnetic pole in a combination which feels like a fountain sending lightning and light washing across the whole of the horizon. Aselia.]

[Communication is so much more effective when you don't have to try to put feelings into words, especially since the feelings Kratos is trying to describe use senses Skulduggery doesn't have. Apart from his wings, Kratos looks completely human. Getting a firsthand glimpse into his mind is the first real indication Skulduggery has that he's dealing with someone utterly alien.

You know, just in case the brief foray into space wasn't enough to convince him.

Skulduggery doesn't answer, focusing instead on the scenery passing below them. Kratos is keeping away from the populated areas, he's happy to see. Something might still be picking them up, radar or even a Sensitive, but if anyone is capable of understanding what they've seen, Skulduggery can cross that bridge when it tries to kill him.

They reach his house without any encountering any murderous bridges, and the moment they've touched down Skulduggery goes inside to charge his mobile and find out what time it is. Not bad; they've been in space an hour or two longer than he thought, but it is still morning, and hopefully no one's panicking too badly about Skulduggery's unplanned disappearance.]

[When they landed in the backyard Kratos took the utensils from Skulduggery and took a few samples of the soil right there. He didn't follow Skulduggery in right away, but had a look at the ground, and then surveyed the meadows leading out behind the house, judging visibility.

[Hm. No. Inside would be best; surely Skulduggery, being a skeleton, didn't use all the rooms in his house. Kratos went inside, walking through the rooms to find one that was empty, and big enough to take a warp-pad.

[Yes; this empty bedroom would do. The window faced the meadows, and with the curtains pulled it should suffice. Kratos put down the utensils on the bureau outside and reached for the wingpack to bring out the parts of the warp, putting it together with a casual ease of familiarity. The final piece was crystal -- not an exsphere; just a regulator -- which he slotted into one of the seams. The warp-pad lit up with a glow; Kratos stepped through it back to Derris-Kharlan to hand off the utensils.

[Then Kratos returned to Skulduggery's house and left the room to find the skeleton to ask whether he minded having a couple of angelic guards in the house.]

Skulduggery.

[Valkyrie, predictably, is offended. From the way she reacts when he calls, Skulduggery suspects she was in trouble. More trouble than she meant to be in, from the sounds of it. She's alive, and she has enough energy to be offended, so chances are everything went well, but Skulduggery offers to go pick her up anyway. It's high time she told him what she's hiding.

He sends Ghastly a message that they'll meet him at his shop, and he's thumbing through a few other missed calls when Kratos comes looking for him.]

Kratos, good timing. I need to go talk to my student, and then reassure Ghastly I'm not dead. [Pause.] Deader. Do you want to come with me, or stay here?

[It takes a moment to sort through Skulduggery's words to what's actually important and comprehensible, but then Kratos nods.]

I'll come. Skulduggery. Angels come here to --

[He pauses, searching for the right words, and then beckons Skulduggery to follow. He takes him to the room where he's set up the warp.]

Angels to see the warp --

[It's in angelic, the 'warp'. He isn't sure 'see' is the correct word either, but it's the nearest he knows.]

When I -- we -- are not here. Please?

[It is a request for permission, as much to keep them on the same page; 'please' is the only word he knows for this sort of request.]

[Skulduggery's predisposed to trouble. 'Angels come here to --' has him mentally tensing, ready to hear bad news -- enemy angels invading, or some of the angels who are still developing morals deciding to go rogue and kidnap a few people. It would be on par with the sort of luck he's had lately.

But no. Kratos leads him to a teleportation pad that somehow in the last few minutes got set up in one of Skulduggery's bedrooms, and he's not bringing bad news. He's asking permission.

Someone asking Skulduggery permission to invade his house. He can't decide if that's funny or sad.]

They don't leave the house, not for anything. The last thing I need is two curious angels wandering around at Christmas.

Not leave the house, no.

[Definitely a headache they don't need; Kratos has already determined to choose a pair who are still fairly lifeless, both so there's no risk of curiosity getting the best of them and in the hope that the experience may trigger some degree of lifefulness once they return to Derris-Kharlan.

[With permission had, Kratos steps into the warp and vanishes. A few minutes later, he returns with a pair of blank-faced guards, still speaking to them in liquid angelic as he gives them their orders. One in the room, one outside in the hall; avoid windows, avoid being seen. Prevent entrance, but try not to kill.]

Yes, Lord Kratos.

[Kratos watches them for a moment as they situate themselves, wings drawn in and hands on swords. His face shows nothing of the weary regret that they respond so literally, so emotionlessly. Then he turns to Skulduggery.]

I am with you now, yes? Where are we going?

Good. Glad we're agreed on that.

[By all rights, Skulduggery should be taking Kratos to the Sanctuary, and warning the Elders of his existence. But there are no Elders -- just one very reluctant Grand Mage, whose hands are very full recreating the Sanctuary almost from scratch. The last thing Corrival's going to want to hear about is that an asteroid full of psychopathic angels is hovering just on the other side of the moon.

It's much easier for Skulduggery to justify before he sees two of the feathered angels in his own house.]

Haggard. It's where my student, Valkyrie, lives. [Skulduggery leads the way back out to the Bentley, with a mobile that's only marginally charged and one last glance back at the angels.] After that, Ghastly's shop. I know I've made you think I have nothing but free time, but the truth is you've come down in the middle of quite a bit of chaos. If my luck holds out, that chaos won't turn into apocalyptic destruction.

[But he's not keeping his fingers crossed, given the world's been in danger of ending three separate times in the last four years.]

[The name Ghastly, Kratos knows. 'Valkyrie' is unfamiliar, but student he recognises well enough, after their conversation about Mithos. The rest of Skulduggery stream of words, he doesn't understand at all, except for 'time'; but it does serve to remind him to pick up the dictionary as they exist the house.]

You have no time?

[It's a legitimate, if slightly amused, query. He's assuming that's the gist of it; the words had the unthinking intonation of a complaint.]

What you do -- No. What do you do with your time?

[That is: what's his job, his purpose?]

That's a simplistic way of putting it, but -- yes. No time.

[With anyone else, Skulduggery would assume the next question was a deliberate attempt to tease him. In Kratos's case, that could still be true, but if he's asking a genuine question using only the vocabulary he knows...]

I'm a detective. [With a beep, the Bentley's doors unlock.] I solve mysteries. Hm... people come to me for help, when they have a problem or when something bad happens. Sometimes, I manage to help them.

[Simplistic seems to be the order of the day.

The drive to Haggard isn't a long one, and Skulduggery could have made it in his sleep -- if he needed to sleep, which he doesn't. When they reach Haggard's small pier, Valkyrie's waiting for them on the edge of the beach. She's in one piece, doesn't look too badly injured. Only when Skulduggery confirms that for himself does some hidden part of him finally unwind with relief.]

There she is. Would you mind staying here? I need to ask her something, and she'll be more likely to answer without strangers around.

[Not that Skulduggery can blame her, if something really is going on with Caelan. Kratos might be able to understand the words by now, but just in case he can't, Skulduggery points to him, then down at the floor of the car, then at himself, then at Valkyrie. Quite like how he told Kratos to stay in the bookstore, far back at the beginning of the night.]

[A 'detective'. That's the first thing Kratos looks up in the dictionary once they're in the car. It's an interesting concept; Aselia has concepts of law enforcement, of course, but the burden of evidence is somewhat alien.

[The drive is nevertheless long enough for Kratos to leaf through much of the dictionary, looking up words he's noted and then looking up words heard on the radio, or simply looking through it. 'Chaos', 'apocalypse' and 'destruction' are among them. The front has some grammatical explanations; the back has some international comparisons. The latter are interesting, but not useful right now. The former is more so.

[It's a nearly silent drive, and yet between dictionary and radio Kratos has a considerably enlarged vocabulary by the end of it, enough to understand nearly every word Skulduggery says. He doesn't answer at first, because he's examining the girl on the pier with a frown. Her mana is -- alarmingly large. Large like ...

[Like Mithos's had been large, after Origin and the cruxis crystal.

[Skulduggery's question draws his attention back. Kratos nods and speaks, a bit slow to get the shape of the words, but clear; and still with the Irish accent.]

Would you like me to ensure nothing comes near? I'll need to get out of the car, but I can wait on the other side of it.

[And dim his hearing, for privacy; his mana-sense should suffice as a warning system.]

Edited (add a thot) 2017-02-11 04:04 (UTC)

[It's not often Skulduggery gets struck speechless. Kratos is managing it an alarming amount.]

It's been twelve hours.

[There's no real point to saying it out loud, other than to give himself some sort of solid outlet for the surprise. Twelve hours. Kratos mastered a language in twelve hours. Even with magic presumably speeding the learning process up, Skulduggery wouldn't have believed this was possible, and he's suddenly very much looking forward to telling Ghastly that the man he wanted a translation artefact for has learned to speak English in one night.

Skulduggery huffs with open amusement and shakes his head.] You'll have to explain to me how you did that. Not now, but soon. Alright, you can get out of the car. I'll just have to hope Valkyrie doesn't get distracted by someone she doesn't know stealing her seat from her.

[Kratos tips his head in the way he has which seems somewhere between an 'isn't it obvious?' and an 'I told you so', and could be amused. Or not.]

Yes, it has, according to my understanding of your time.

[The dictionary had proven very useful, after the beginning the thesaurus had left. It contained sentences the other two books hadn't, so he could put some patterns together with the verbal ones he'd been noting during conversations. The cruxis crystal encoded quickly.

[His mouth quirked.]

Then you'd better move quickly to distract her.

[So saying, he moved to step out of the car, remaining on the far side from the ocean and keeping an eye out for mana or headlights from other vehicles. His hearing, he turned down, so he could hear their voices but not the words. Just in case.]

[Kratos is going to become very infuriating, very quickly.

When Skulduggery gets out of the car, Valkyrie's already staring at them. At Kratos, specifically. Skulduggery prepares himself for an earful -- or an ear-hole-ful, technically -- and walks over to meet her.

She's demanding, at first. There are some pointed gestures back at the car and she speaks in an irritated tone of voice. Skulduggery, partly by necessity and partly by character, doesn't seem affected. He stands there with his hands in his pockets, his scarf pulled up over his face and his hat pulled low, and doesn't move. Valkyrie deflates. After that, she's nervous, pacing up and down a few times before she turns and says something that carries the weight of a confession.

A short silence follows.

Skulduggery speaks first, his voice as level as before, questioning. Valkyrie answers. The back and forth grows slightly more heated, then cuts off again. After that, when Skulduggery speaks, his tone is angry. Not quite chastising, not quite directed, but definitely angry. It's not long before he checks himself and turns slightly away, head bowed, leaving Valkyrie to give him an uncertain look.

They talk for another minute, this time in more conversational tones. The uncertain look on Valkyrie's face morphs into puzzlement, then cautious hope. She's about to say something else when Skulduggery hugs her without warning. Whatever he says next makes her laugh, and she hits him on the arm.

When they walk back to the car together, she's smiling in relief.]

Okay, but I'm sitting in the front. Because it's my spot. [She looks Kratos up and down, like she's challenging him to have a problem with it.] So who're you?

[It sounds like quite the conversation, just going by tone and body language. Kratos keeps an eye out, but they remain undisturbed. The only time he looks directly toward the pair behind him is when Skulduggery's mana shifts, the balance tilting for only a split-second toward darkness.

[The unravelling he'd felt in orbit was different -- yet there's something about both instance which is alike, after a fashion. The first had been an unravelling; this, coiling tighter. Given the emotions clear in the conversation -- hm. He may need to keep an eye on this skeleton.

[Whatever the conversation is about, clearly it ends well. Kratos turns to face them as they approach, amused by the girl's aggression; so this is the skeleton's student. A student with great mana, like Mithos. He has some suspicions about what that conversation is about; but for the moment, he only bows toward her.]

My name is Kratos Aurion. Skulduggery has been showing me Dublin.

[He straightens up, and -- mostly to Skulduggery, but without excluding Valkyrie -- tells him:]

I made sure I wouldn't hear the words of your conversation.

[That, Valkyrie decides, is definitely a sorcerer's name. Not that she's very surprised. Skulduggery doesn't drive just anyone around without his full disguise on.] Nice to meet you. I'm Valkyrie Cain. Where are you from?

[Skulduggery, meanwhile, is looking at Kratos with his skull tilted in surprise, for the umpteenth time in so many hours.]

You can do that?

[Valkyrie looks between them, puzzled.] Do what? Be polite? That's pretty standard.

Aselia.

[Kratos isn't sure yet how much the girl knows; and there's no point in explaining too much without knowing that. The answer will bring more questions, but with Skulduggery on hand, Kratos will at least have some guidance as to how much he should say.

[He does tip his head at Skulduggery.]

Well, yes.

[Skulduggery has been fairly observant so far. After being in space, surely it was obvious that angels had to be able to regulate all their physical functions?]

How much should I be saying in front of Valkyrie?

Aselia?

[That's... nowhere Valkyrie has heard of. Which she'd normally be fine with, except Kratos has an Irish accent. So if he's never seen Dublin, shouldn't the province he comes from at least sound familiar?]

In that case, thank you. [Skulduggery still sounds surprised, but now it's tempered by distraction. He's thinking.]

Skulduggery?

Hm?

[Valkyrie's got her brow raised.] How much should he be saying in front of me?

Ah. He can turn his hearing off.

Okay. That's... interesting, but it doesn't really answer my question.

Doesn't it? [There's a brief pause, but Skulduggery goes on before Valkyrie can reply.] We're going to Ghastly's shop. Kratos can explain everything there. I trust both Valkyrie and Ghastly with my life, Kratos, as far as I have one. They'll be able to help.

Help ... with your life? Hmh. That bodes well.

[If it's a joke, it's hard to tell; Kratos delivers it rather deadpan. He is thinking of the turn of Skulduggery's mana while emotional. Perhaps his words are actually true. It also doesn't tell Kratos whether he can trust them with his, but needs must, and there isn't all that much which could truly threaten Kratos these days.

[He's getting the impression the help is for far more than just wanting to investigate a new planet, but nevertheless turns to open the passenger's door for Valkyrie, motioning for her to get in while glancing Skulduggery's way measuringly.]

You said that I -- arrived at a time of 'chaos and apocalyptic destruction'. Is the help for me, or for you?

Edited (icon) 2017-02-18 04:24 (UTC)

[Oh, good. Valkyrie won't have to fight for the rights to her seat. She smiles at Kratos before taking advantage of his invitation, then rolls her eyes once she's settled.]

You really don't know how to break things to people gently, do you?

[Skulduggery doesn't answer. He looks at Kratos, his lack of a face inscrutable, then gets into the driver's seat. He doesn't answer until everyone's in the car, buckled up, and he's turned on the engine.]

Both, I hope. Should I expect you to have written your own thesaurus by the end of the day?

[So it's certainly, at least in part, Skulduggery having a tendency to want to shock people. Kratos gets into the seat behind Valkyrie, banking on it having slightly more leg room; even then, he has to turn himself to fit.]

You're exceedingly verbose for a skeleton. I should think I wouldn't need my own thesaurus.

There you go again. 'Verbose'. Would you believe he couldn't speak a word of English last night?

[Valkyrie turns to look at Kratos. She's not surprised, exactly, but there's still a measure of suspicion on her face.] Is your magic to do with languages? We met someone like that once.

Did we?

Miss Nuncio, remember? In the Hotel?

Oh, yes, we did. She was useless in a fight.

[Valkyrie sighs.] Okay, what's up?

What?

You don't act like this unless something's wrong. So what's up? [She hesitates.] Unless it's the obvious thing, in which case we really don't have to talk about it.

[It's as good an explanation as any, so Skulduggery lets Valkyrie assume what she'd like and changes the subject.] So, Kratos. Now that we can hold a halfway decent conversation, are skeletons usually verbose in Aselia?

[Kratos looks back evenly and without a flicker in his expression.]

Something like that.

[Their magic seems more constrained than mana-use on Aselia. Language is only on part of it, really; a side-effect of exspheres having significant data encoding abilities.]

No. They're usually unthinkingly violent with a weapon. Only one ever spoke words, and he was fairly monosyllabic. Also, a demonic skeleton, not a human one.

Ah. You see, over here, they tend not to move. I'm an exception.

[Valkyrie looks back and forth between them, twisted so that her elbow leans against the side of her seat, the better to see them both.] I'm confused. Where's Aselia?

We'll explain everything in Ghastly's shop, remember?

Fine, but if you're going to keep not making sense, I'm going to get really annoyed. [Valkyrie looks back at Kratos consideringly. If he learned the language in one night through magic, that explains the Irish accent. It doesn't explain anything else. What kind of Adept discipline lets you turn off your hearing, and also pick up languages on the fly?] Can I at least ask questions until we get there?

I suppose so.

Awesome. Where's Aselia?

another thing; w/ fafnirs and skeletonenigma; cw for suicide talk

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject