The Leaky Servo

Alaxel's gaze turned away from his mending arm, an expression of aghast horror suddenly suffusing his features and accompanied by a loud gasp.

"That is precisely part of the problem I'm looking to avoid little one," he said with deadpan severity in his tone. The Va'nyrian waved the still-reconstructing arm about in emphasis, causing turbulent eddies in the currents of fluids that floated around it.

"Becoming, and at my age? Oh no no, that won't do. I'm absolutely not looking to alter any of my values or outlook in life, what a terrifying prospect," Alaxel said the last with yet another wink at the not-quiet empty space slightly beyond Silah, before his tone turned somewhat rueful:

"Of course, I suppose you'd know better than my kind about that, what with existing in the realm of consequences and causality and all that," the warrior poet nearly mumbled as he turned his attention back to his arm, but he did not press the issue with the girl or the whatever-it-was. Many crimes and follies could be laid upon the Starbreath's feet, but if there was one thing that could be said of the ancient creature was that it wasn't in its nature to commit the same error twice.

One disastrous act of godly hypocrisy was quite enough for him, hence the literal journey of self discovery, woe be to any who expected maturity out of timelessness. He smiled quite suddenly; "Maybe becoming isn't as bad as it sounds?"
 
Ragenard's heavy footfalls as he left Wayfarer's HQ echoed upon the cavernous hallway leading deeper into one of the many nondescript structures on Wayfarer's Point. It wasn't that the building was average that rendered it nondescript—though its metaphysical quirkiness was average for Nexus City—no, it was the fact that its facade appeared to be stuck in a process of reversing from architecture and back into raw material.

This left the surface of both the exterior and interior walls pitted and raw as the Nexus' energies churned beneath the surface, eroding the structure's temporal anchors in a process that couldn't be said to be fast nor slow by definition due to—

"—Used to be a time," Manny chimed through Ragenard's comms. They were technically on a job, so his implanted bone-conduction communication system had automatically entered into attunement with his Waystone. For better or worse.

He can't read my mind anymore—

"—And I don't need to read your mind when your eyebrows do the thing, but yeah, used to be a time your deepest avoidance thoughts were what kind of oil your bike might take to better, but here you are carefully studying a metaphysically active bit of architecture and actually getting lost in the theorizing instead of meeting your fate, I'm almost proud of you, nerd."

"Fuck you," Ragenard sub-vocalized for his comms benefit—not that seeing capable figures seemingly talking to themselves was odd around Wayfarer's Point—and he took a right towards a staircase where you had to go down six flights to reach the buildings roof. It was better than risking the elevator, which sometimes emptied out into the wastelands outside of Nexus City, and that was always a pain in the ass.

It was just Ragenard's luck however, that the building was in a helpful mood, when he wanted to be taking the roundabout way. No sooner had he taken two steps downwards that he made the biggest mistake you could make while undergoing a 'liminal-bait' crossing in Nexus City. Whether it was stairs, doorways, elevators, ramps, or sliding poles didn't make a difference; It was extremely ill-advised to blink while undergoing any sort of crossing here.

He knew he'd fucked up the moment his feet felt the landing, and his nose suddenly scented a change in the air. The mixture of food, alcohol, exotic synthetics, and ozone let him know that he unfortunately had found his way to the corridor holding the entrance to the Leaky Servo. The fact was reinforced upon his sight-line joining in and confirming: The great white and gold doors flanked by the blue lady waited directly ahead.

"Good evening Ragenard," greeted the holographic representation of the Va'nyrian AI, Xilunexus. "Your entry fee today is waived on account of the official—"

"—My secret today is that I killed my brother once, and my only regret is that I didn't know who he was so I could properly condemn him, and now I'm going to meet him for drinks."

He endured a slow and long look under the blue glow of Xilunexus' gaze before she replied. "Nevermind Alaxel's antics, but I still maintain the offer open. You don't have to go through eternity alo—"

"Yes, yes, thank you. I can join your pack of misfits due to honorary fucked up-ness. Been there, done that, metal-woman. Please let me in and make my usual a triple so I don't make you have to get the robot bouncer on my ass when I try to kill him."

The proprietor laughed a tinkling and altogether too alive laugh before pointing towards the doors, which promptly fuzzed into a dense white mist which was rapidly absorbed upwards, leaving the path into the Servo's dizzying shifting interior open.

From outside the threshold, the view within was a nonsensical kaleidoscopic tableau, but only if one let the first impression of whichever sensory organ they preferred lead the way. As an establishment regular, Ragenard had instinctively let his first impression—his sight this time—meet the peculiar Va'nyrian-modulated-Nexus-bubble that marked the threshold prior to crossing, and quested through with the clearer 'gaze' through the liminal fold of this place that a second look always brought.

Not that he actually looked, as he had no idea what the man he sought might look like here—a fact he was painfully aware of every time he crossed in front of a mirror expecting to see a scarred old face greeting him—but rather he let his preternaturally active sense of smell lead the way.

For over six decades, they'd been at cross purposes. From childhood unto adulthood, each one the cast off of their father's estimation in their own way, seeking to fill shoes that they didn't know they were doomed to keep trying on. They'd clashed at the playground's see-saw, at the sports fields, teenage haunts of angst, blood-soaked alleys of territory, and then was always the cold finality. Fratricide.

Ragenard Guiscard needed absolutely no help in immediately catching Rowan Alastar's scent amidst the multi-dimensional house of mirrors, and he crossed into the Leaky Servo's interior with his eyes closed and a confident step which brought him immediately to the bar where Rowan waited, bypassing the need for any awkward walking through crowds less versed with traversal of this space.

Ragenard took a deep breath, and smelled Xilunexus' ever flawless representation of The Den, James' and his old bar in Lutetia. The bar that Rowan had ordered burned down. Ragenard wasn't certain if the establishment was reading him or the old bastard for the recreation, but he supposed it didn't matter. They both had their own sins tying them to the place, after all.

"Rowan," Ragenard grunted in reply, reaching past the man's shoulder—and only just mastering his murderous intent—to grab his triple dark and stormy off the counter, his cocktail choice mirroring his mood. "Are you fresh off a dimensional hole or been around and I've been blessed to not have your fucking shadow darken my step until now?"
 
Silah moved a finger into the space-between, or into the space between them - it was a little hard to tell where the point went, when she pointed. Still, it seemed to highlight the motion of his arm, knitting itself back together, which she was watching with a curious interest and a complete lack of the usually expected horror. She didn't quite poke at it, but it did seem for a moment as if she might, and as if, if she did, the prodding would have come from some liminal space tangential to this one rather than from the expected direction.

She listened to his words with a little giggle, something more juvenile than her appearance, as if there was a part of her that hadn't become whatever the rest of her had, still trapped back in those days when she'd been a little girl and not a little god. "Is it your age, Alaxel? I thought it was someone else's." Or something else's, perhaps. Even Silah didn't want to try to assign individualities to whatever entities might be in possession.

She folded her arms on the table, leaning onto them as if she might put her head down, but watching him anyway, from a new angle, as if this might change the viewpoint or review the point of all this.

"I think you want to be a nuisance." She said this in the same conversational tone as if they might be discussing what he wanted to be when he grew up, if he ever did such a thing. His age, indeed. "Why?"
 
Alaxel had a rare moment of silence, as he actually considered the metaphysics behind Silah's questions. Behind his will, his personality mask thrummed, waiting to kick over to patch over the incongruity in his actions, lest he stray from the lines he'd allowed to be drawn for him. Lines that no one enforced with more grim determination than he himself did. Usually.

He flexed his arm, following the sensation of feeling flow first from his will, then rush alongside his vessel's dendrites and pseudo-nerves up to where the arm still ended at mid-forearm. A sort of spongy-substrate scaffolding had formed, giving it most of the shape, except for the hand.

Where a hand should be, a very confused void existed instead. In its place, rapidly shifting phantasms of every configuration a hand could be all over the span of multiversal creation reigned instead, shifting at speed like a film reel gone mad. Alaxel laid his unharmed and very human seeming right hand—a palm, five fingers, and nails that couldn't even disembowel a
Drak'thar
Va'nyrian Elk analogue
—on the table, and drummed his fingers whilst he contemplated the illusory choices open to him, in more ways than one.

"Unfortunately, I can only pretend to lie to myself," Alaxel replied as the echo of Silah's giggles ran in the air. He discarded the notion of that form of bladed tentacle, and then did the same for the many variations the bit of
Abaddon
Officially, there is only one Va'nyrian AI. Abaddon is an unofficial sub-sapient expert system created by Alaxel. An amalgamation of his original godly corpse, many stolen parts from Xilunexus, and bad ideas, Abaddon is not "limited" by awareness like a true AI, for better or worse.
that ran in tandem with Xilunexus' personality mask suggested. Attuned to his normally grim work, the phantasmal options that flashed by were all enhanced by some manner of killing implement.

"I see yonder forms do more than just meddle, but a caution that they don't lead you to look me in the actual eyes," Alaxel cautioned, gesturing beyond Silah with the macabre still-knitting arm. Shards of bones and gore protruded still past the wrist, but already it appeared pristine beneath that boundary line. The blood that pooled and flowed around the air was flowing back beneath the entity's faux skin before Silah's eyes.

"I is my age, woe be unto me. I wasn't always so kindly and good looking, but I killed that bastard some one hundred-thousand stars ago, give or take some eons," he explained casually, as if his answer would make perfect sense to the waif before him.

Alaxel narrowed his eyes towards the cloak of infinity beyond Silah as she turned her head quizzically. In a way, it would make sense, but it wouldn't be entirely hers. He could still discern the patterns of disruption for now—how nice of Nilin to let him borrow her eyes despite his antics, he truly didn't deserve his spouse—and once again pondered as to the nature of responsibility and the weight of duty that came with being what his "godly"—fie on the term as far as he was concerned, and with all of the whimsical hypocrisy it brought coming from him—wife termed "transcendentally equipped".

It was of course, an easy target for him to puerilely mock the term, but it was apt in the extremely reductionist sense, for what else was divinity when you struck away all the rest of the airy bullshit?

Some responsibilities shouldn't be offloaded, was the instinctual response he wanted to summon, for autonomy even unto recklessness was the Elo'ran way, but again, he couldn't lie to himself. So what if he was forced to stand witness to one wayward co-opted soul's altered fate, swept by the chains of circumstance that bound mortals and divines both? Hadn't he done the same himself to civilizations once?

The entity he'd become would defiantly shout from the loftiest tower in the city that there was a difference, but the very real weight of the corpse he used to be whispered otherwise and labelled him an irredeemable hypocrite.

Alaxel smiled at the familiar incongruity of the twin pressures generated by adjacent-yet-counter-weighted truths upon his nature, and delighted in the absurdity possible in the space where they clashed. There were only two polestars possible in such a maelstrom of feeling, and he certainly wasn't feeling the call to violence right now, so that left him only whimsical mischief if he wanted to avoid being morose.

Well, the only other option he would entertain, he reminded himself as his smile widened further. He certainly wasn't going to slip into wise sagacity of the clear kind.

"I think," Alaxel answered with a playfully conspiratorial tone as he lowered his head until his right cheek was on the table, placing his viewpoint comically beneath Silah's again. "That your sister's life may be easier if you learn how to keep a secret. I'll share one to practice with: people are secretly fond of a nuisance that turns out to be a boon, and I am a boon that is fond of being thought of as a nuisance. Soothes me easier than ruining the lives of little girls," he added the last with an honest to goodness raspberry—puffed out cheeks giving air to a deceptively sinuous pale tongue—blown with gusto unto the not-quite-wind beyond them.

As soon as he finished, he suddenly smacked the table with his maimed arm, causing a small cascade of sparks in the air accompanied by popping sounds and the smell of ozone. The arm now ended at a boring copy of the other normal human-esque hand he bore, but it was trailed by a subtle—and rapidly vanishing—chain of afterimages upon which a careful eye might note many variations of the limb's apparent look, as if at any moment the arm might explode into possibilities again.

The self-unacknowledged deity smacked his lips exaggeratedly and reached across for Silah's tea cup with his new hand, draining the liquid within at a gulp. It tasted of a world winding down upon which uncertainty and heavy duties reigned, and he thought it well that it should taste so much like his idea of home.
 
Was Corin right? Did people who ended up here all go through something similar to her? Or maybe not the same type of situation, but something terrible? That made her sad and Gabby flicked her eyes towards the others in the bar before returning them toward Corin. Did that mean Renee would show up sooner than later since her life had been shit too? That thought made her hopeful, but it wasn’t like she could just sit here and wait. That would be bad for her wallet and liver. Plus, it wasn’t like she could sleep in this place, for many reasons beyond being a bar.

The brief silence wasn’t uncomfortable, at least not yet and Gabby sipped on her whisky while debating on whether she wanted to switch to soda or something else less alcoholic. More than likely, she’d switch to either soda or water with lemon. Save herself from doing something stupid by getting plastered. That would be awkward. Putting down the glass while Corin seemed to be thinking about what to say, the brunette let her process and muse. When she finally started to speak, the model gave her full attention and without realizing it, had even leaned forward just a little.

Her head cocked to the side and she mused on the idea of having more than one god. It wasn’t all that surprising though, was it? No, there wasn’t much that caught her off guard anymore and the idea of multiple gods was more intriguing to her than anything else. Part of her wanted to ask more about the parasite-plague, but didn’t want to seem extremely nosy, so instead she kept quiet and let Corin finish. It was the rest of the information though that really piqued her interest and she wrinkled up her nose and gathered her own thoughts before actually speaking. That tended to keep her from saying something stupid. Usually.

“What do you mean, when whatever has been done is done you talk her back to humanity? I don’t get it. What happens when she goes into god mode?” Gabby spoke softly, glancing around to ensure that people weren’t infringing on their conversation. While she didn’t mind, she wasn’t sure how Corin would feel.

“I’m sorry if I am being too snoopy, but I find the idea of having multiple gods and one going missing to be very interesting. Are you a god too? How did she become a god if she’s your sister?” AND there it was, her mouth getting ahead of her brain as she fired off multiple questions before she managed to clamp her mouth shut.

“Sorry, sorry… I’m not trying to be rude.”
 
Oh, those were a lot of questions that Corin didn't want to answer. And, unfortunately, she'd been the one to bring it up, so she didn't feel like she could just say sorry, but no - how about the weather? It didn't really work like that, and... well, curiosity was natural, wasn't it?

"...She kills people. A lot of people. Whatever the gods think is their enemy, and whatever stands between them and whatever that is." Hopefully that was enough information. Corin didn't want to get descriptive. "It's... it's okay." It was. Right? "Curiosity is normal."

Sure. They could both believe that, for a while. Corin looked at Gabby's whiskey glass, and wondered if she dared. She didn't. No, she couldn't. "Silah's not a god. She just... has them. It's like wearing a hat. Except she's the hat." The gods were on the inside, and sometimes they put her on and she was just a thing that they used, for whatever they needed to be done. She tore her gaze from the temptation of the whiskey glance, casting it back to the table where Silah was entertaining the nuisance, or perhaps the other way around.


====

"Are you a little girl, then?" Perhaps he was, on the inside. Perhaps not. Silah didn't try to define things. She had the gods, for that. Her attention wavered, much like his limb, as if wondering what he might pull out next and whether she might pull it out of him. It was definitely that sort of look, for a moment.

He tapped the table, and at least one of them was trying to be approximately human, once more. The swipe of the teacup left her hands empty, readying them for - ah, she would have to pull it out, wouldn't she? The bit that made him-

The body that was Silah shivered, chilled. No, no, no. Not here, not now. These weren't her enemies. They had to remember that. If they killed everyone, how would they find the lost one? They would be alone and-

-so cold, dark-

-what if we just pull it out, and see what he's like on the inside? Little girl, little girl, do you scream like-


===


"I think you had better give that back to her."

It was Corin's voice, no longer in the soft companionable tone she'd been using with Gabrielle. She'd stood up from her seat, not really aware of the motion, just aware that she was standing now, watching the scene with her sister and hoping that scene wasn't about to be the operative word, and also that operative wasn't about to be relevant.

"Silah." Her tone was soft again, not quiet, but gentle, infinitely so, infinitely patient. "Silah. I'm right here."

She didn't get any closer, though. Corin knew better than that.
 
"Touchy touchy, and so many against little old me," said Alaxel in a sing-song voice before he crushed the tea mug to dust within his palm. The thick ceramic actually pulverized with the force of the war god's barely restrained fury. A Cheshire grin plastered upon his face before his neck snapped his head to the right with a jerk and twist.

Six slits appeared in the air above and behind his head, two sets of three, horizontally aligned. An infinitesimal sliver of burnished orange the hue of a sunspot was visible within each one, giving them a hint of depth perception and betraying them as lightly closed eyelids.

"To come unto my house under the rules of hospitality and threaten me, little wayward gods, incapable of even holding onto your own..."

The sounds and light of the greater Servo flickered and vanished once again, plunging Silah, Alaxel, Corin, Gabby unto the only islands of light in a sea of darkness once again. Alaxel's sleeping eyes lurched in scope without apparent motion, suddenly going from occupying a few feet of space above his head, to occupying some unfathomable vastness in the new null scape.

Alaxel's mouth moved as if to speak again, when a piece of the darkness doubled out of itself.

Impressions of breadth and size would be difficult to quantize for mortal eyes brought fore to this sort of space, but their brains would interpret her similarly vast. For the briefest of moments, Alaxel's six great lidded eyes were dwarfed by millions of smaller ones in the forms of faces, all attached to a sinuous yet bulbous something that didn't so much move as manifest. The uncountable screaming faces of every dead and unborn Elo'Ran clamored for attention as they sought to burst through out of Nilin's body and into the world.

For the briefest of moments, the two monstrous shapes collided and a keening cry reverberated through all of their bones before the lights flickered back on. Upon their return, a chagrined Alaxel sat at the table rubbing the back of his head, whilst a serenely statuesque woman with eyes the color of deeply coagulated blood stood behind him.

The whole display felt timeless, but had lasted for perhaps less than the span of a minute.

An unnatural hush still permeated their space, the silence somehow more isolating for the way it rendered the quality of a TV tuned but muted to give a semblance of normality to the distant views of other patrons.

Not all of the gods of Cael'Rielle, or indeed, every god in the Multiverse, nay none save perhaps the Nexus itself in its inscrutable nature, could bring forth a change the All Mother didn't desire, not within her demesne. Which was precisely why she was so upset at her husband, for they had agreed for the betterment of all that the Leaky Servo wasn't to be another arena where their natures were to be exposed, lest the habits ingrained in their true forms reassert themselves.

"You toy with the patience of multiple deities, husband, myself included," Nilin chided before turning towards Silah and Corin in turn. "Please forgive the oaf his evident eavesdropping," she said, her face serenely composed despite her words. "And the juvenile displays, for he knows well more than anyone the folly of killing a
Nin'katu
Worshipped-Concept
, that is to say, another god".

Alaxel for his part continued to smile at Silah and the air around her, preternaturally aware eyes drinking in her reaction while he rubbed at the back of his head. The impression of his six closed eyes had vanished, leaving only the brightly burning orange of his vessel's humanoid configuration. The dust of Silah's cup swirled in the air around him, and he opened his mouth to speak.

Without preamble, his wife raised a delicate hand and rapped him upon the top of the head again.

"No oblique aspirations at wisdom, husband. Look at her and their plight, and remember the strings you had to cut on your own, hmm?," the Va'nyrian goddess scolded.

"Fiiiiine," Alaxel replied in an faux-annoyed falsetto. "But you can't tell me the parable I was gonna say wouldn't totally have returned and been salient in our third act," he countered, earning a single upraised eyebrow in response. The Va'nyrian man held out his hand, and the dust gathered itself back into the shape of a tea cup, then re-affirmed itself as a cup with a bit of Alaxel's prompting with a hint of a flash and a soft pop as a bit of air was displaced.

He gestured in the air with his right hand while holding the cup in his left, and summoned Xilunexus, paying her due out-loud:

"I like to rile up deities; I hate their existence and would happily render every single one who demands worship back into pure monadrixial ooze but I am forced to recognize their place in some societies, a fact I acknowledge only with great reluctance and—"

Stretching the bounds of a secret there Al, but I'll take it. Our next session will be so productive, came the AI's reply before her mysterious interfacing with the Nexus to work their dual magic was performed in a flash.

Steam and the scent of genuine Cael'Riellian tea rose from the re-forged tea cup.

"I think you will find me far more useful if you don't presume for me and give her a bit more room to decide for ill or not," Alaxel replied to Corin with uncharacteristic seriousness and a pleasant tone while he watched Silah squirm. "Believe me, even monsters can be coddled further unto bad habits instead of the desired inverse, with too tight a hand."

His wife cleared her throat, not blind to his sarcasm, and Alaxel looked upwards and back until his neck was bent comically and threw her a wink before turning back to the girls.

He passed the tea cup to Silah, smiling sweetly. He addressed her with the same pleasant tone but with his prior playfulness in his words. The only sign he still wished to vaporize the unholy taint around her was the smallest tightening around his animated eyes, and her shape reflected in them the same reason he didn't try it. No, that method wouldn't leave an intact little girl with a possibility of a future, even if said future was as a keystone for deific whims. He had to try things not his way, but William's, Alaxel reminded himself.

"I haven't been a little girl for years, but I still love a tea party!"
 
Holy shit. She kills people just because the gods inside think they’re the enemy?! That was huge and very scary. Sipping on her whisky while attempting to keep her face very blank from any emotions that were running around inside of her, Gabrielle felt her head nodding in understanding. So, the gods could think they were enemies and kill them? Everyone in the bar? That was very disturbing and the teen made a mental note not to piss off Silah or rather, those within the female. Did she still want to join up with them? Maybe not now that she knows who is beneath the surface.

“Well, yeah… curiosity is normal, but sometimes it gets you into trouble. I am sorry that you have to go through that with her.” She smiled as she twirled the glass between her fingers while Corin disappeared back over to her sister. Musing on the idea of having gods within and how scary that might be, Gabby was about to join the others when shit broke again. Figuring it was Alaxel’s doing, she tried to keep from freaking out as slits appeared out of nowhere. It was freakish, but not as much as the joint being plunged back into darkness.

“The fuck?!” Crying out, unable to help herself, the brunette realized she wasn’t the target and it was instead Silah or rather, the gods within. Remaining in one place even though there was light on the small group of them, she listened to the conversation while attempting to be as quiet and small as possible. No need to pull attention toward herself after all. This was all above her knowledge and she dumped the rest of the whisky into her mouth and slowly inched towards Corin.

“What the fuck is happening…?” She asked as softly as possible as if her mind wasn’t comprehending just what was happening in front of them all, which it definitely wasn’t. Was this a mistake, staying here? Maybe she should have left once Alaxel showed up. He seemed to be nothing but trouble and from what the unknown woman said… a husband? She did giggle, it slipping out when he was hit on his head by the female. Falling silent again, Gabby rubbed her head and just sighed when it seemed to be all over.

“That was interesting.”
 
That was interesting.

Gabby's words somehow drew Corin out from the shock of it all. She wasn't sure why she was so surprised - she was used to weirdness, with Silah, but this was an entirely different level of weirdness. She was used to the gods acting through their agents. Acting on their own was something else entirely. She'd frozen, and the world hand changed around them, if it had ever been a world before.

It had settled, though, and Gabby's words prompted her to move, stepping between Alaxel - whatever he was - and her sister, taking the teacup from him with the firmness of someone who was not interested in this bullshit, because the gods of Cael-Rielle were terrifying enough, and while he could probably make things interesting, he likely couldn't make them surprising.

Her other arm was out, a protective barrier between the unholy nuisance and her sister - not that a single human hand was likely to stop anything in this realm of otherly things, but perhaps that made it all the more important. Corin took a little sip of the tea, her eyes plainly expressing that she didn't trust those others here not to have done something to it. Silah had had enough things done to her already, and Corin wasn't particularly interested in her becoming the instrument of yet another set of unfathomable beings.

The tea seemed to be just tea. Corin knew that meant nothing, but at least it tasted as it should. Her eyes remained on Alaxel, shifting between where the other eyes had been and where the image of his were now, not fooled in the slightest into thinking this thing was him, but deciding that it mattered very little at all, as far as she was concerned.

"Silah." Ever quiet, ever patient. "You need to drink something."

How many times had she said those words, over time? How many times had there been no response, as there was now? Corin stepped back, sliding her arm around her sister warily, because she was only mortal and therefore entirely dispensable in this argument of gods. She raised the cup, gently, unsurprised when it was ignored. The gods weren't likely to be tempted by mediocre tea, which was exactly why Corin had ordered it for her sister. It wasn't the best of anything - it wasn't an offering, only an offer.

"Silah." Just as softly, raising the cup a little more. "You need to drink something."

Her eyes on the nuisance before her turned somewhat accusing, in the mien of now look what you've done. Silah's fingertips brushed Corin's arm through her sleeve, feeling the outline of the bone beneath, no doubt contemplating how easy it would be to break it in half and pull the pieces through her flesh and use them to stab someone. Corin shivered, but didn't flinch.

"Silah..." softly, almost pleading, but there wasn't much interest in tea right now, not after that display. Corin drew a breath, as if she could hold it within herself and use it to fortify them both against all this, and pulled her eyes away from Alaxel at last, half-turning to Gabby, one of the few people out there who still had reasonable reactions to all of this.

"We should figure out what we're doing next and get started," she stated. "This isn't helping anything."
 
Rowan didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Not even when he felt the seething intent radiating off his so-called companion like heat from a forge. He let the familiar voice linger in the air a moment too long—just long enough to see if Ragenard would twitch. Just to test the waters of old habits. But when he finally did turn, it was with the slow grace of a man who’d had too many lives to bother rushing through any one of them.

“Would it make you feel better,” he said evenly, “if I said I clawed my way out of a dimensional oubliette just to see your charming face again?”

He turned fully on the stool now, the glass in his hand still untouched, the amber liquid within catching the Servo’s light. His eyes—those same tired blues that had once burned so bright—met Ragenard’s. There was no amusement in them, no warmth. Just the dull weight of a man shouldering too many versions of himself. He snorted slightly after a moment.

“Truth is, I’ve been here a while. Long enough to watch this… place reconfigure itself three times and still pour a better drink than either of us ever managed back in Lutetia.”

He gestured vaguely around them, the illusion of The Den having been the place the three brothers had confronted each other one final time. “Place decided it was time, I guess. Brought the past to the surface like a bad scar.”

Rowan finally took a sip of his drink, eyes never leaving Ragenard’s face. “You still look like shit, by the way. Still built like a tank. Face only a mother could love..”

Then, more quietly, less like a jab and more like an old man making peace with the weather: “I didn’t come here to fight. Not unless you start it.”

A pause. A shift in the weight of his voice.

“I ended up here looking for something. Still don’t know what it is, exactly. But if you’re here…” A flicker of something–-uncertainty, perhaps even hope–ghosted across his expression.

“... then I must be getting close.”

He gestured to the stool beside him. “Drink your storm, oh brother of mine. Let’s see if our wreckage still speaks.”
 
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