abraxaslogs | [Open] Find Your Feet

Entry tags:

[Open] Find Your Feet

WHO: Sypha Belnades & Sundry

WHAT: December logs and CR starters

WHERE: Cadens - Catterborough Theater, Cadens - The Hall of Natural Relics

WHEN: Winter in the Desert

1) At the Cat

When she'd said 'thank you no thank you' to a position at the outpost, the welcoming committee who'd drawn her from the summoning pool had politely shown her to the gate. As if she'd asked to be here in the first place, thank you very much! Sypha'd huffed, grabbed what few things she'd earned during her recovery, and hopped the next supply wagon to Cadens.

Work wasn't exactly scarce, but her usual methods of sussing it out simply didn't apply in a new world, an alien culture. She'd resorted to marching up to shopkeepers and asking pointblank where she might find a decent day's pay. Only, it turned out the skills sought out in rural Wallachia (scribing, arithmetic, tutoring children) were, if not commonplace in Cadens, at least easily accomplished by any passing student. The market was glutted with such helpers!

At the end of her patience and her purse, Sypha'd snapped. Literally. When asked what she had to offer, she'd snapped her fingers and summoned a glowing ball of fire beneath the nose of a bored inn host. He'd been...not impressed, exactly, but at least mildly interested, and suggested she try her luck at the theaters. The Cat, he'd said, was looking for someone to provide effects.

Sypha'd been too stubborn to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean. So here she is, weeks in, spinning eerie fog across a stage while the Free City Theater Company put on their evening performance of An Aquilan Assignation.

A step down from defeating vampire lords with fire and ice? Maybe. But there's joy in using her magic to weave a story, to trap the audience in a bubble of suspended disbelief, to emphasize Marguerite and Sasha's tense performance of lovers searching for one another in a mausoleum. Depending on the scene, she might summon curtains of fire, buffet the actors with winds, or create a localized rainshower, all for three gold per week, a room of her own upstairs, access to whatever the Company had bubbling in the pot that night, and a troupe of entertainingly big personalities to distract her from her loneliness. Not a bad deal.

The fog rises, as Marguerite spins in panic. The minstrel positioned opposite Sypha, offstage across the way, calls up a jittering wail of strings that rises and rises, drawing the audience's anticipation higher until--

--She snaps her fingers open, palm up towards the ceiling, and a single lightning bolt cracks down from the rafters (and into a special grounding bolt set into the stage). Sypha grins as the seats explode in shrieks and gasps, exchanging thumbs-up with the minstrel while Marguerite wails over Sasha's body.

She'd like to see one of those fancy Free Cities machines pull that off.

2) At the Hall of Natural Relics

Cadens itself wasn't such a bad place to be marooned; all the answers she could ever ask for about this place, its people, its ways, were available behind the right doors! So many libraries, laboratories, academies and repositories of knowledge! For the price of admission, of course, a fee Sypha was in no position to pay just yet.

Ah, but here she found another similarity between The Free Cities and those she'd known in her own world; too few hands balancing too much work in those high institutions. Their tenured staff were desperate for assistance, and while there were always new academy students looking for a good opportunity, some work was below even them. Work like leading exhibit tours, folding pamphlets, overseeing schoolchildren on daytrips, and the like. That's where volunteers came in, driven by nothing but enthusiasm, paid in nothing but behind-the-scenes access to the inner workings of the establishment.

A fair trade for her day off, in Sypha's mind. So what if she wasn't from Abraxas originally, half the people in Cadens weren't from Cadens, and she could memorize a script as easily as anyone else. Better, with her eidetic recall, and genuine hunger to soak up the workings of this world. And on her breaks, or after her shift, she could page through the Hall of Natural Relics' archives, searching for references to the magic The Free Cities had seemingly grown beyond. By the end of her second shift, she had all the interpretive displays note-perfect. By the end of her fourth, the Outreach Supervisor signed her up to lead a few of the school groups.

Which is what she's doing now: guiding a class of fourteen -- no, fifteen, she'd better not lose one -- seven year olds through the Hall of Osteology (better known among the volunteers as the Bone Zone). Arranged throughout the echoing space were the fossilized remains of massive creatures once roamed Abraxas. Sypha's still getting her head around the very concept of extinction, but the arguments put forward in the books she's read so far are airtight. She shares them with the kids with a kind of macabre glee, waving her arms and shaping volumes in the air with her hands as she describes how Cadens was built on the floor of an ancient ocean, populated by the leviathans strung around them on bolts and wires. The children listen with open mouths until their actual teachers clap and summon them away for snacktime in the cafeteria, leaving Sypha to her break.

3) Dealer's Choice

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[Alucard would not say that he is in the same good, steady(ish) place that he was in when he first arrived in the Free Cities. He is still finding it easier to be wolf shaped at night, and with the cactus dog house that Jaskier has put into the graveyard for him, Alucard still has his preferences.

But he is functioning. Gideon was the right person to talk to. Right person to drink with, letting the worst of his feelings out without fear of shame or rubbing against someone else's too raw memories. (He isn't sure what to do about that, so far as Geralt is concerned. Alucard's decided to leave that be for now, the man has his own issues to content with. He won't pile on and make it about himself.) That's left a blunted anger simmering under the surface, but one that lets him do more than work among ruins and howl when he feels the need.

It's why he's back at the museum. He can force himself to be in the vicinity of people without interacting with them, and it has forced him to not look like five pounds of garbage shoved into a one pound bag. He's had a bath, and he's gone so far as to pull his hair back and up in an elaborate braided bun. There's no overly gothic skeleton coat on him either today - only a plain black one, and he sits quietly near the Bone Zone (really now), admiring the mural that greets guests there. All of the creatures within, as they once looked, all on a monumental canvas.

Sypha's voice rings clearly across the hall as she approaches, along with a flock of younger voices. Alucard forces his shoulders to relax, and he angles his head away so that his face won't be seen. Just a blond sitting and looking at a mural.

And now a Speaker without her charges.

It was going to happen eventually.]

[Hector stares up at one of the hanging displays of bones, a look of concentration on his face as he assesses their reassembly.]

I'm pretty sure some of those vertebrae are backwards.

[It's something he looks for. You make that amateur mistake on one night creature, and it's a life lesson learned. Monsters get cranky if you put them back badly.]

Still, I'd love to get my hands on a live one. How is it that they know they're all gone?

"Ah. I thought I heard a familiar voice."

Ciri approaches as the children disperse, lead away this way and that in their little herds by schoolmasters of some sort and revealing a vaguely familiar form. It's been some time since their impromptu adventure in the desert, but Sypha is difficult to forget.

"The life of a haphazardly conscripted soldier at the Outpost not fulfilling enough for you?"

She knows by now the military hadn't actually insisted on any of the Summoned to stay, which honestly is just as suspicious to Ciri, that they'd simply summon people and let them wander off-- but right now, she's decided that's not really her concern. It's been a long handful of weeks. She's actually just here to observe the skeletons and learn about the ancient wildlife out of curiosity rather than necessity. It's a fascinating display, even if she's not a child.

[The blonde in the black longcoat doesn't immediately catch Sypha's eye - it's wintertime, after all, and people here in Cadens come in all sizes and shapes and colorations. She ushers the children out of the hall, exchanges cheerful-if-frazzled smiles with their teacher, and waves them off to their next stop.

--only to spin around and dash after them, waving a stuffed toy over her head. She'd noticed it earlier, hanging out of one child's satchel. At some point of the tour it must have jostled loose, or maybe the little girl had set it down beside a fossil display to keep the long-dead crustacean company. Who knew. Sypha runs past the mural, calling:] Waitwaitwait! Hold on, is anyone missing a friend?

[A few minutes later, she's trotting back to the Hall, minus one stuffed creature but richer a bracelet of colorful knotted string - a gift from a grateful seven year old. Sypha grins down at it, briefly buoyed, until she thinks of a seven year old's shoe. A single shoe on a plinth. A room full of cubbies, each with its own pristine shoe.

She stops, head bowed, the forefinger on her right hand looped through the bracelet around her left wrist. No, one small recompense can't make up for her past misjudgements. It would be wrong to forget that. And just as wrong to give up the effort.

When she lifts her face and shakes her hair back, Alucard's there, on the marble bench facing the deep sea mural. Of course, he'd been there the whole time, now that she thinks to look, but in that moment he may as well have been summoned from her own maudlin thoughts.]

Oh. Ah, um...

[Sypha tips her head back and squints up, up at the canopy of bones. Now that Hector mentions it, there are some slight changes of scale on a few of vertebrae, wider at one end when it ought to be the other way around. Huh.]

What would that do to an aquatic mammal, do you think?

[At that frankly excellent question, she grabs him by the wrist and tows him over to one of the brass signs with embossed interpretive text, edges worn smooth and pennybright by hundreds of curious little hands.] It has to do with trophic cascades! Essentially, studying the size and population of other creatures in the same habitat, to identify how many and how large other predatory animals in the same network ought to be. The natural scientists think there's no niche that an animal this size could currently fill, because all the resources are going towards other creatures. Like how wolves can't survive in a forest without a healthy population of deer, and the deer will overpopulate and strip the forest bare without the controlling influence of the wolves!

Ciri is equally memorable, with that striking scar and swordswoman's swagger. Sypha can't help but smile at the sight of a familiar face, no matter how thin her criteria for 'familiar' are these days.

"I don't think anyone would call it the most intellectually stimulating career path, no," her smile goes a little wry around the edges. The way they'd just let her leave, after going through so much trouble to drag her there in the first place, after carrying on about how badly they needed the help, screams 'TRAP! TRAP!'. Some days the hairs on the back of her neck refuse to lie flat, other days she wishes for her old cloak and the security of its anonymous hood. Here, something like that would only stick out, so she slaps on a smile and carries on with her research despite the persistent creeping feeling down her spine.

"What brings you in? Wait, no! Let me guess! Looking for an edge on the native flora and fauna?"

You work here now?

[Alucard's not sure where to look or to turn. So he keeps his eyes ahead, observing the mural. It buys them both a little grace and freedom to collect their respective thoughts, as eye contact usually throws so much off.

The tone is mild. Not disinterested, but trying to be neutral for the sake of them both. It is selfish on Alucard's end - he doesn't want another spiral. Not when he's just barely started to pull out of his present one.]

Give it a hell of a backache, for one thing.

[He hasn't had a chance to work much with large aquatic creatures, so he can't say how it would impact its movements. Just that it would not be likely to enjoy the change.

Sypha won't have any trouble dragging him, since its in the pursuit of knowledge. Biology is fascinating. And the logic is sound. He nods.]

Yes, that would suggest there isn't a stable population of them. Still, I'd hope that deep down in the depths, one might still be lurking. The really weird wild things tend to find dark corners to hide in.

It is something they're all likely aware of, but the answers to any of their questions are always the same. Ciri has gained no more information from asking around the Outpost on several occasions than anyone else she knows who have tried other methods or tried to speak with someone higher on the proverbial food chain. There is little to be done about it but be wary and wait for the other shoe to drop.

For now, Sypha is here. A hopefully more stimulating career path for her, if that is what she wants.

Ciri grins and shrugs, waving a hand at the displays in a vague gesture to encompass the whole museum.

"Would you believe I just wanted to learn about the fossils? Seemed interesting."

She is also doing her best to... lie low and not cause any more trouble, after she realized the city has put a watch on her. There's usually a guard tailing her whenever she leaves her home lately, and she is determined not to give them anything too interesting to look at.

Volunteer, actually. [She replies on autopilot, the word-filtering part of her brain too taken aback by the casual acknowledgement to get involved.] They're real sticklers for formal schooling around here.

[Are they talking now? They're talking now. After yelling in her face and disappearing in a cloud of bats the last time! Sypha can't imagine he came looking for her on purpose; Alucard could have escaped her notice if this were a coincidence, yet here he sits. Then again, it's a public area, he shouldn't have to turn into a cloud of mist just because she's here.

An exchange of pleasantries, then?] Have you come here before?

I suppose there's no ruling it out entirely, though these remains were found encased in rock formations, so they're literally as old as the hills! [She taps at the plaque, beside an estimated number with far too many zeros. Surely nothing has been around quite that long?] I'm still trying to make sense of their methods for dating rock.

[How strange it must be, for someone like Hector to wander through displays like this. Do the bones call out to him the way the elements sing to Sypha, or do they rely on his magic to find a voice? She has so many questions, starting with the term 'Forgemaster'.] Could you reanimate something this long dead? No flesh, just bones old enough to be stone?

Are they? Even when the person knows everything? [Because he's made that joke one too many times with no one around, it slips out. Alucard can't actually find it in himself to care, all things considered.

The great news is that because they're in public? He won't turn into bats. Or yell. Or draw attention to himself. The power of the social contract is great.]

Several, yes. It was helpful to learn about the place, especially after escaping Thorne.

Edited 2021-12-10 12:41 (UTC)

Well, this is not our world. Maybe their rocks have been around far longer than ours.

[Rocks and dates are far less interesting to Hector than dead things, so he's willing to accept the museum's methods for dating so as not to distract from the specimens themselves.

He squints at the bones, feeling with his mage's sense for any sort of spark of life still within them.]

Not with my preferred process. There's no life left to rekindle and shape. I might be able to reanimate the bones and puppet them like a common necromancer, but it would fall apart as soon as I withdrew my will.

[He frowns over the shape of the skeleton.] If I knew what it looked like whole, I might be able to recreate one out of newer materials. I did that with some variants of Night Creatures that were dying out.

There's a growing commotion outside the museum, and by the time the little children are being readied to leave after their day of educational fun, it presents an issue, and it suddenly becomes an all hands on deck issue for the staff, Sypha included. Some sort of impromptu rally has sprung up.

The museum made sense as a spot to do a bit of rabble-rousing. It's a well-trafficked area, highly populated, and its status as a Cadens institution allows Goro to sprinkle in some nationalist rhetoric into his proclamations. So far, it's proven to be an effective recipe for getting people mad as hell at Solvunn. So Goro just did what he always does; he shows up, positions himself where he'll be visible (as if the giant made of fists who's biceps have biceps isn't noticeable all on his own), and began talking. A crowd is quick to form, and word spreads quickly, causing more citizens to rush to see Cadens' newest, most outspoken "defender" speak.

But the crowd of people at the museum's entrance have effectively blocked access or egress from the building, and the teachers are clearly uncomfortable at the idea of having to take their wards anywhere near Goro, who so far has either not noticed them or is simply choosing to ignore them (though some of the young men are clearly of the idea the Goro is just the coolest thing ever, come on look at him he has four arms nobody tells him to go to bed at eight MOM.)

"This museum holds within it the history of Abraxas!" A fist swings towards the building behind him. "A depository of knowledge by which the myths and legends of an ignorant and superstitious past were washed away! One day, Solvunn itself will have an exhibit here! They are a nation out of time, and they know it! The Free Cities have left them behind, militarily, culturally, artistically, every way that matters! Knowing this, they staged the Eifstide attack, in a vain attempt to turn back the clock, to wipe away progress and knowledge, to a world more suited for them to rule! A world of mysticism and barbarism! Will we stand for that?!" The crowd jeers, and Goro raises his fist. "WILL. WE. STAND. FOR. IT?!"

The crowd roars with barely-contained anger, and Goro's not done yet. Even his young admirers in the crowd are looking nervous now. Even the other museum staff seems a bit at a loss to do (or worse, might actually seem to agree with what Goro is selling). This is the situation that greets Sypha upon her arrival at the scene.

"Well then you've come to the right place!" Sypha throws her arms out, supremely confident for someone literally alien to all this natural history. What can she say, she's a fast reader.

"Would you believe that, in this world, it's possible for entire species to simply stop existing?" she shakes her head, incredulous, as she walks backward into the Hall.

[Was that a joke, or a snide jibe? Why does he have to be so frustratingly even-toned all the time! Sypha ventures a small smile, just in case.] The curators prefer written proof, and you know how my people feel about that.

[She turns to face the mural. The way they're positioned now, she's standing slightly behind and to Alucard's left, just inside his periphery. She can't put herself any further into his eyeline without joining him on the bench, which he's given no indication of wanting. So. Sypha clasps her hands behind her back and hums thoughtfully. A mental map unscrolls before her mind's eye.] The northwest kingdom? Things seem tense on that front. Is that where you--

[Ah ah, pushy pushy. She can practically feel the ghost of Trevor's palm over her mouth, damn him.]

Edited 2021-12-11 09:17 (UTC)

[Sypha's memory is perfect. Through natural inclination and careful training, a term once learned can never be pried from her mind. But there was always a chance that 'Forgemaster' was one of those labels that seemed to span worlds - like 'mage', or 'witch'. She'd hoped so. She'd wanted that to be the case.

But when Hector says 'Night Creatures', her breath catches in her throat. There's an outside chance this, too, is cross-communication, but...]

Night Creatures?

If your people found out about the university system here, I think they'd almost consider violence.

[Almost. Alucard knows of the Speakers and their reputation well enough. They'd have strong, sharp opinions about it. About paying for schooling and keeping knowledge behind that wall otherwise. At least in a place like this, with the money going to fund care for collections and ensuring the people that work there have bread on their plates, there might be a little less resistance. (But there would be opinions.

The nod is brief.]

They imprisoned about half of us when they did so.

[His tone is still even. He's stating nothing more than a sad fact.]

[Hector sighs. He's had to explain the terms 'Forgemaster' and 'Night Creatures' a number of times since he arrived here, but he'd have thought Sypha would know that one, at least. But maybe her people had a different word for it?]

That's what I've always called them. They're occasionally born from wild magic in nature, but more readily from a Forgemaster, if one is active. You know, dead remains transmuted into a living body that a damned spirit can inhabit. They can take all sorts of shapes. It's actually quite fascinating, the amount of variations there are.

[Because that is what you want in your nightmare creatures, right? Biological diversity.]

Ciri blinks, faintly quizzical in the tilt of her chin.

"Yes. Why wouldn't I believe something like that?"

The concept of a race of creatures dwindling away into nothing is one that exists in Ciri's world, and she seems surprised that Sypha brings it up like some sort of fun fact. If she means they go extinct, anyway. The way she says they stop existing, maybe it's something else. Ciri waits for further explanation, staring at Sypha without much subtlety.

[Sypha's snort speaks volumes. Libraries? All well and good, not everyone can be trained to retain information like Speaker historians. But libraries locked away from the public eye? Jealously guarded private collections? That's about as close a concept to heresy as they have.

It's one of the reasons they'd held a (mutual) distrust of Dracula.]

Wait, but, then- [She takes a sharp step forward, even with the edge of the bench, so she can look directly at Alucard's profile.] Did everyone escape? Are there others still jailed there?!

[Well, as the boys would say, fuck. Beneath her secondhand clothes, more than one fresh scar throbs at the memory of Night Creature fangs and claws. Sypha shuts her eyes against the sensation and breathes out long and slow.]

Look, I know this Summoning business is erratic, and we could be from different corners of the same world, or even different points in time, so I'll just ask plainly: do you know anything about Night Creatures overrunning the country of Wallachia recently?

Edited (I know how closing tags work) 2021-12-14 08:05 (UTC)

"Oh, it would be a frankly blasphemous thing to even suggest, where I'm from!" Sypha beams, as if delighted by the thought. "The most widely accepted doctrine attribute the creations of life to an infallible god, and how can anything shaped by the hands of God simply cease to be? Or, worse, be imperfect in some way?" She claps her hands together, as if snuffing a hypothetical lifeform between her palms. Hands she then opens and spread wide to encompass the looming skeletons.

"Some people, my people, still preserve stories of animals that no longer walk the earth, but the world is so vast and travel so slow, it's easy to say 'oh, they must still exist somewhere'. But here there's actual proof, etched into the ground, that life rises and falls and changes!"

Sypha's eyes shine as she speaks, the energy of her academic fervor so intense it's nearly palpable. She grins and shrugs, unapologetic. "This is the sort of thing that gets you burned at the stake back home. I could hardly believe this place has whole buildings devoted to the study of it."

[It stands to reason that Jaskier would be terribly eager to attend the theatre: born from the desire to be outside their busy little home; to be alone, but surrounded; to find inspiration. The last is particularly important. This bard would regularly claim to have never suffered a bout of writer's block in his life -- such a term doesn't even exist.

And yet, after Geralt was gone, and even after his return... his art is not coming to him. His lyrics are poor, his notes disjointed, almost irate in their sound. Even his lute seems to fight him, snapping a string in the middle of a simple practice of scales.

Though the need to feel something is so desperate, he does not expect to feel so much. The romance of it, strained and desperate; the gothic horror running underneath. The threat of the dead. (Too soon for that one, considering Eifstide. If you ask him.) And the effects! Storms and thunder that following the lifting anticipation of the music, or perhaps the musicians follow it instead --

By the end of it he is standing, clapping louder than others, hollering, and yes, crying. The release of it! The art! Gods, it makes a man feel alive again! (Even if it only lasts a minute, an hour, it's enough. It has to be.

He jostles his way through the crowd (read: shoving people out of his way) to grab the arm of someone who looks to be in charge of things. Richly dressed as himself, with glittering rings and coifed cravat, he could be mistaken for a true Cadens noble.] Sir. Sir! I must know your secrets. The storms -- those must be magic? Who here could be ever so talented? All I've met are bloody charlatans! I must meet them. It was absolutely spectacular.

[The volume of his voice may indicate he dipped into the Witcher homestead's stores of ale prior to his jaunt to the theatre, but he is no less serious about it.]

As Sypha looks more and more delighted, Ciri simply looks... confused. A little amused, perhaps, but mostly baffled. This in part a reaction to Sypha's words, and in part to how excited she is by the concept of entire species' extinction.

"Your god is seen to be so infallible as to prevent the concept of... creatures dying? Hm. I suppose it depends on how far this belief extends. Creatures of all sorts could exist somewhere, even if they are gone from your sphere."

She cocks her head, considering. The world is so vast. In fairness, that is very true.

"Your people preserve stories of the past? Are you historians?" That would explain the enthusiasm.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 4

[Open] Find Your Feet

2

2

the bone! zone!

no subject

Sypha 'I'm so glad you asked!' Belnades at your service

Everyone loves the Bone Zone!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Natural Relics Rally

no subject

no subject

THERE IT IS

no subject

womp womp

no subject

no subject

no subject

I am having too much fun with the fact that 'extinction' as a concept didn't exist in 1476!

1

oh wow, this is a fun fact!! ciri, from wacky Conjuction world like ... uh ok then