abraxaslogs | [ OPEN ] i have never come this far alone.

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[ OPEN ] i have never come this far alone.

WHO: Ronan Lynch & whoever
WHAT: An encounter with Ronan by the cozy fire.
WHERE: The Great Hall of Castle Thorne
WHEN: Early December evenings

Going into winter, the nights grow longer and colder, and that has historically signaled trouble for Ronan. Longer nights mean longer dreams, and longer dreams mean stronger nightmares. Thankfully, it's less of a concern these days, now that he sleeps under a watchful eye. He would have thought that alone would help his mood improve, but it turns out his melancholy in the weeks leading up to the equinox isn't so easily cured.

In the past, Ronan would take these moods early to bed with him. The thing he never realized about castles, though, is just how fucking cold they get in the winter. The Great Hall, with its many fireplaces and assembled courtiers, offers a much cozier temperature at the cost of privacy — a price that Ronan has become desperate enough to pay most nights.

After dinner, he takes his goblet of mulled wine and retires to an armchair as far from the crowd as he can manage. By the fire, it's warm enough that he can shrug off his fur-lined coat and slouch comfortably in his seat, drink in one hand and iPod in the other. Most of his things have been dreamt to blend with environment, but he hasn't bothered to camouflage his electronics, and his bulky headphones earn him more than a few stares. Not that he's a stranger to catching stares. The dubstep thumping in his ears does its job to drown out the rest of the world while he gazes into the fire, looking perfectly unapproachable.

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Sasarai drifts into the Great Hall after dinner, feeling warmed up from a glass of honeyed warm cider he'd been nursing most of the evening.

Many of the people here seem cozy, smiling around the fires as they escape the chill of this crisp winter evening. One face stands out, however: Ronan's.

He strides across the Hall and half sits, half lands in a seat nearly a foot away from the younger man.

"You'd be less conspicuous if you just tried to disappear into the crowd, you know."

As Sasarai addresses him, Ronan tugs his headphones down, letting them rest around his neck as music continues to thump just loud enough to be heard over the din of conversation around them. The unsolicited advice is answered with a flat stare.

Ronan has never been inconspicuous in his entire life. His birth was announced by rivers of blood and laughing ravens. He spent his childhood singing and dancing and commanding the attention of everyone he encountered. As a teenager, he was transcendently beautiful, and then he shaved his head and had himself tattooed, and he became dreadfully captivating instead. He stands at least half a foot taller than the average man, and if all of that doesn't intimidate, there's always the baleful set of his mouth or the inhuman iciness of his eyes. Nothing about him was engineered for modesty or discretion. He couldn't disappear into a crowd if he tried.

"What makes you think I'm trying to be inconspicuous?"

"Less likely to be approached then," Sasarai sighs. "Huddling in a distant corner of a room rarely does it."

He answers the flat stare with a breezy smile. Ronan doesn't intimidate him but not many things do. He's known fear, certainly, but growing up in the One Temple meant growing up in the Crystal Valley. For his entire life he's been surrounded by people of all sizes and backgrounds who had gathered at the world's seat of learning to study history and magic. Not all of those people had rights of course, and the beast folk were usually kept as slaves but he'd seen them and broken bread with them. He'd never been intimidated... who would threaten a Bishop, anyway? He's always been the most dangerous person in the room.

"What's that you're listening to?"

He can hear the music rumbling from the unfamiliar device resting against Ronan's neck.

His expression unchanging, Ronan takes the headphones from around his neck and offers them over to Sasarai so that he can sample the music for himself. Ronan doubts he'll enjoy it. No one ever does. But Ronan enjoys watching them suffer, and this is a particularly grating track.

"Helps me relax," he replies, straight-faced.

Sasarai listens for a bit. Somewhere in the back of his mind he feels the True Earth glitter. It seems to like the rhythm and vibration at least but it doesn't know art.

To Sasarai's ears this music becomes increasingly hostile.

It doesn't take long for him to pass the headphones back to Ronan, brow furrowed with distaste.

"This passes for music where you are from? It sounds like a Grassland circus band falling down a flight of stairs."

Ronan's face cracks into a grin as he loops the headphones back around his own neck, letting them rest against his collarbone. Grassland circus band falling down a flight of stairs is a new one. Most people just swat at him and yell something along the lines of What the hell, Ronan?

"Not everyone can appreciate high art," he sighs, fully aware that no one in any world would consider Skrillex high art. Nevertheless, Ronan doesn't stop the track, content to allow the dubstep to provide a low-volume soundtrack to the conversation.

"What did you really want to ask me?"

Surely not about his music selection.

Sasarai laughs gently and rests his elbow against the armrest, his chin in his hand.

"Would you be surprised if I said I was wondering if you could tell me about yourself? I've been trying to get to know people. After all, it looks like we might be living here in Thorne for quite a while."

Ronan narrows his eyes a fraction, giving Sasarai a skeptical smirk as he evaluates that statement for irony or hidden meaning. A joke, yes? People don't ordinarily sit down next to Ronan and just try to get to know him, like he's human or something. He can count the number of times it's happened on one finger.

"Oookay," he replies when the punchline doesn't follow. "Where should I start? Anything in particular you're dying to know?"

"Well..."

Sasarai hums thoughtfully and his mind quickly snaps back to Eifstide and Ronan's blinding sword.

"I'll admit I am curious about that sword of yours."

With some surprise, Ronan replies, "Vexed to Nightmare?" A complete non sequitur, he seems to realize, because he clarifies a second later, "That's its name."

He's not displeased that the sword is the first thing to have caught Sasarai's attention. It's just unusual. Of course it would be — up to this point, most of the people who might have questions about it were too busy shooting at him to ask them — but now he has to think about what there is to say.

"It was a gift," he says, although as soon as the words are out of his mouth, he seems puzzled by them. Oh well. Swiftly moving on... "The blade is made of sun and it's pretty fucking badass. What else is there to know?"

He laughs.

"Well, I was wondering why it was so bright. Being made of sunlight would certainly be an explanation, but one that invites more questions of how someone would forge a blade of sun to begin with."

He sits back in the chair, listening to the rushed way Ronan speaks, moving on from the topic of it being a gift. Curious, but he decides not to push it directly.

"Vexed to Nightmare? That's quite a name. Did the person who gave it to you come up with it?"

"It's written on the crossguard," Ronan says, because that's honestly all he knows about it. It's difficult to assign credit to dreams that have a life of their own, and especially in this case, when discussing the dream of a dream of a dream of a dream. Just thinking about it makes Ronan's head hurt.

"And it wasn't forged. If I wanna make something out of sun, I just make it out of sun. Forging is for humans."

"And kobolds and dwarves and elves or any other being who desires weaponry or armor. But I understand your point."

He's heard that Ronan can dream things into existence. Nobody with that sort of power needs a forge.

"...You do not consider yourself human, then?"

"I used to."

Well... For the most part. He'd understood that he wasn't human the way everyone else was human, but he passed easily enough, and back then there hadn't been a name for what he really was. Even now, Ronan looks unsure of his conclusion, frowning pensively.

"People like me aren't allowed to exist in my world. Humans kill us when they find us. The word they use for us is 'Zed'. It's a shitty name. Zed. Zero human. Non-human. So I guess I'm not."

Does that mean he's letting the Moderators win? Maybe. But it also feels like throwing off a disguise. Coming out of a different closet.

"I like not having to pretend to be one. This is the first place I've lived without hiding."

"I am glad you don't have to feel like you are wearing a disguise all the time. That sounds exhausting."

He turns his gaze towards the fire and is quiet a moment before he gestures vaguely.

"Why were they hunting you? Were they afraid of your powers?"

Ronan's mouth tugs into a sneer as he thinks back to the night on the Potomac, the first time he'd been cornered by Moderators. Paralyzed. Helpless. What a bunch of heroes they were, ready to execute him while he couldn't lift a finger.

"They 'had it on good authority'," he says, quoting them in a disdainful singsong, "that a Zed would end the world. That we had too much power — which really just means we had more power than they did and they didn't like it. They couldn't control us so they wanted us dead."

Sasarai watches Ronan's sneer and responds with a slight wisp of a frown.

"You get people like that in many different worlds. In my own there are people who have great power, usually power they've been fated to obtain. Some of them are hunted, others command armies, and all of them are feared. A population of normal humans can't predict folks like that, which makes them nervous."

Ronan gives a sharp nod. Yes, exactly. Sasarai gets it.

"That's why I like it here. They brought us here because of what we can do. They actually want us to use our power. I don't think a lot of the Summoned get what a big deal that is. Not just being allowed, but being wanted."

He'd probably feel differently if they'd put him in the dungeon, if he hadn't been among the welcomed. But he suspects he was among the welcomed precisely because Ambrose knew he'd be grateful for the chance and wouldn't take it for granted.

"What about you?" he asks Sasarai. The guy doesn't really give off lifelong fugitive vibes, but Ronan knows he's no expert in picking up on that kind of thing. People often surprise him. "Anybody want you dead before you got here?"

He laughs, but the sound has some bitterness to it.

"Oh, yes, plenty of people did. I'm the sort that commands armies. When you are a politician and a war time general you always find ways of making enemies."

He extends a hand and gently pushes the power of his Rune out toward a stone a small distance away. It rolls forward until it stops beneath Ronan's feet.

"...Some people did want to kill me for my power. They were a minority, though."

Maybe his brother hadn't wanted to kill him exactly... Sometimes he wonders if Luc had left him alone at Crystal Valley simply assuming he'd have the sense to die after learning the truth about what he was.

Ronan nudges the stone with the toe of his boot. If that was the only thing Sasarai could do, he'd be unimpressed, but he's seen the guy out on the battlefield and he doesn't doubt there's a whole lot more power lurking under there.

He does look pretty skeptical about Sasarai's other claims, though.

"No offense," Ronan says, "but you don't look like you could command a football team, nevermind an army. Did you enlist when you were five?"

"Ah, no."

He tosses his hands into the air and sinks back in his seat.

"I've been assigned armies since I was a teenager, though. Maybe back then I wasn't ready yet, but... How old do you think I am?"

This is definitely a trick question. Ronan's sure of it.

"I dunno. You look maybe fifteen? Sixteen?"

Sasarai shakes his head. It's the usual answer, but he still disagrees. Surely, people who look closely can see he's not a kid? He sees a full grown man in his own reflection.

"I'm in my thirties. But most people seem to make that mistake. It's another aspect of being a Rune Successor. The Runes slow our aging after a point and then stop it completely. I'll probably look like this forever."

"Well, shit."

Ronan squints, trying to imagine being physically trapped at age sixteen for... eternity? Nightmarish. He recalls being very twiggy and several inches shorter while somehow also managing to wear his limbs like they were too long for him. Sasarai has been denied the opportunity to blossom into a full-fledged hunk and Ronan finds that tragic.

"Do you like being an immortal twink, or..?"

"Twink?"

Sasarai blinks. That's not a term he's familiar with, but he can vaguely guess at its meaning...

He decides to let it go.

"Never mind. I guess I don't think about my immortality much. I was born as a Rune Successor so none of it was up to me. I've never known anything else... I make the best of it, that's all.

I'd just as well ask if you like having that mysterious dreaming power of yours."

"It makes my life a living hell," Ronan says, "and I wouldn't give it up for anything."

Not for love or family or freedom. Not for all the world. Of course, he doesn't have a choice in the matter when the alternative is a slow and ugly death — but if he did, the answer wouldn't change.

"What's that mean, anyway? Being a Rune Successor?"

"You know, it's easy to forget people in this world don't know about True Runes..."

He reaches up and taps his chin as he considers where to even start answering this question.

"Where I'm from everyone uses Runes for their magic. Or at least most people do. There are Runes for all sorts of things. The strongest Runes of all are the Twenty-Seven Runes of True Power or True Runes. Unlike the lesser Runes they are sentient and are credited as being the creators of the world. A Rune Successor is someone a True Rune has chosen as its host."

He lifts a hand and a pale, golden light rises from the back creating the shimmering image of crystals.

"I'm the host of the True Earth Rune. In many ways it makes my life hell but, like you, I wouldn't give it up for anything."

Edited 2021-12-12 05:08 (UTC)

Ronan frowns. Not in disapproval of Sasarai's claim or this lovely display but disappointment with himself. It seems like something he ought to have been able to sense in someone, that power. Much like he ought to — yet can't — sense a dormant ley line underground. Always fumbling in the dark. Maybe he needs his own damn host to steer him around.

"Does it talk to you?" he asks. Probably a stupid fucking question. A sentient creator of the world sounds a hell of a lot like a dreamer, though, and Ronan is always desperate to talk to other dreamers. "Does it have a name?"

At this Sasarai imagines his Rune walking the hallways of the One Temple, dressed in priest's robes and has to stifle a laugh. A small giggling snort escapes anyway.

"Nch-Hehe...It has no name. The True Runes can sense each other and I'm sure that's all that matters to them. It does speak but likely not in the manner you're imagining. It communicates with me through things like twinkling in my vision or a feeling in my mind or body, or through dreams. True Runes speaking our language is exceptionally rare."

In other words: Yeah, stupid question.

Ronan slouches back, but the pensive wrinkle between his eyebrows doesn't vanish. Maybe if they dreamt together, Ronan would be able to speak its language. But he doesn't like the idea of dreaming with something he hasn't met first, and it sounds like the Rune is independent of Sasarai enough that it's a stranger to Ronan. What if it's like Unmaker or the Lace and Sasarai has no idea? If he's the cell they're containing it in, Ronan doesn't want to make a door.

Like he did for Bryde.

"Do you get along?"

"For the most part, yeah."

He notices the thoughtful frown on Ronan's face and folds his hands in his lap.

"It chose me, after all. It would rather be with me than anyone else..."

As the words pass his lips his expression becomes slightly haunted. Is that really the reason he has a harmonious relationship with True Earth?

...He knows it isn't. He was created for it, built from the cloned parts of Hikusaak to be a perfect vessel so that the Temple could keep the Rune close.

The expression on Ronan's face shifts subtly as well, although what exactly his features are meant to be conveying isn't immediately clear. He looks like he might be sad or wistful, but there's a darkness to the emotion. The edge of a knife.

Oh, to be chosen. Even if by a something rather than a someone.

"Must be nice."

"I suppose it is."

Sasarai's gaze drifts towards the fire.

"It makes me a powerful geomancer but what I can do isn't half as interesting as what you can do."

Ronan has a feeling Sasarai's trying to butter him up a little, which makes him immediately want to shake off the compliment. He can't be modest about his power without being insincere, though. It's true. Geomancy pales in comparison to dreaming. What's more incredible than creation itself?

"At least you don't have to be unconscious to use magic."

Sasarai blows out a snort of laughter in response.

"Yes, well, that's true. Some spells do make me very tired afterward, though, as I'm sure you've noticed."

Following both the attack in the courtyard and the events of Eifstide he'd had to retire to his bed chamber.

"Everyone gets tired after hard work."

Ronan is no exception, although he's not eager to share the details of the full cost of dreaming. Sasarai is technically an ally, but that doesn't mean Ronan trusts him not to exploit his weaknesses at some point in the future.

He would.

He wouldn't enjoy it but Sasarai is willing to exploit anyone's weakness if he feels like he has to.

At Ronan's response he arches a brow, sensing that the other man doesn't want to discuss his powers.

"When you put it that way I suppose my words do sound a bit silly."

Every Rune bearer feels tired after casting. Lately he's been feeling more tired than usual but he's also noticed the sensation of more magic flooding his body when he calls on the Rune. Somehow, his visit to the Horizon has deepened his bond with it. He's not weaker, he's more powerful than ever before. He's decided there's no need to mention any of this until he's adapted to this world a bit better.

He rises from his chair, reaches out to pat Ronan's shoulder, thinks better of it, and smooths out his pantleg instead.

"Well, Mister Lynch it has been..."

Nice? Not really...

"...Interesting talking to you."

Sasarai straightens up, walks to the other side of the fire then turns to face Ronan again.

"Ah, but before I go, could I ask you for a favor?"

Wise of Sasarai not to touch him. Ronan can tell he's about to do it, staring at him all he while in a way that's both a challenge and a warning, suggesting it would be simultaneously impressive and stupid to assume such familiarity. It would be rather like treating a lion as if it's a housecat.

He sinks back in his chair as Sasarai retreats, instead, content to let the conversation die there. But then Sasarai turns back to him, and Ronan's eyebrow arches in renewed interest.

"Name it."

Sasarai folds his arms over his chest.

"Ever since Eifstide I've had this uneasy feeling. The nations will probably mobilize now that they see what we summoned can do.

If you hear anything about that let me know, okay? I wasn't kidding when I said I was a wartime politician and general. I would like to stop any conflict before it can happen but if I fail then Thorne must be the victor."

He can't be sure of what the other nations have in mind for the Singularity but any misinformed action could doom everyone.

"If they mobilize, they won't strike here."

Ronan doesn't find politicians particularly endearing or effective, so he has very little interest in feeding information to Sasarai. This, however, is something every Summoned in Thorne ought to know.

"Ambrose says the Singularity will be their target, if they make any move at all. The Free Cities, especially. He thinks they'll hit the Singularity the second we seem distracted. Solvunn is weaker. We could crush them, easy. It's the Free Cities we should worry about."

"I see, you talked to him about this already, then."

Sasarai rubs his chin thoughtfully.

In the event of a war it would be useful to have Solvunn's resources but attacking them unprovoked would only further anger the Free Cities.

"It makes sense... I doubt anyone would risk moving against another territory right now. They'd be seen as hostile invaders... So if the Free Cities have their eyes on the Singularity it might be best if we secure it first."

He's heard that there are people who want to destroy the relic. It sounds like a terrible idea when nobody seems to know what it's actually capable of. It is far more powerful than even a True Rune and True Runes could theoretically level entire continents in their death throes.

"No shit."

Nothing puts Ronan in a worse mood than thinking about the Singularity. Not because he hates it, but because there's nothing more precious, and all he can focus on is how vulnerable it is right now. The magic of this world is so potent, free and wild in a way he never could have imagined. He can't bear the thought of it being extinguished the way it was on his Earth.

"If it was up to me, we'd be out there right now, guarding it day and night. Protecting the Singularity is the most important thing any of us could possibly be doing."

Sasarai remains quietly thoughtful, unperturbed by Ronan's words.

"...I will talk to the High Mage," he says finally. "There must be a way we can keep watch over the Singularity... Ideally something that won't involve deploying all of Thorne's Summoned to the Horizon for a constant twenty four hour vigil."

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[ OPEN ] i have never come this far alone.

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