Baekoth: Revolution of the Heretical [IC]

Kurokiku wrote:

Dorelith

Dorchaidhe - The Red Spindle Inn

Evening

Ephraim of Theren and The Seer

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Rise and fall, that is what kingdoms and men do, and it is what the chest of the seer did as he stood in his dark corner of the inn’s bar. His hood hides his gnarled and deformed face, one where eyes do not exist and his lips are black as old clotted blood. Completely still, he stood, waiting or watching for something, as all seers do. When the moment was right, his staff shot out to stop a beanstalk of a man from walking past him. He regarded him with his nose, stepping forward to smell the air around him, he nodded, confirming something he thought. "You reek of it." his gravelled voice rasped. "Long have I lived and you reek of it more than any."

Dorchaidhe was a small city in the far southwest of Dorelith, notable for not being the kind of place where someone called the Messiah-Queen would ever want to live, nor indeed for being the kind of place that someone technically a daemon had to worry too much about being rounded up and forced to fight in an arena for the pleasure of others. It was, therefore, about as perfect as a population center this large could get. It smelled of unwashed skin and salty sweat, mixed with saltier ocean and dubiously-fresh fish, and the people were about what he’d expected from such a place, but they mostly ignored him, which was nice. Unless, of course, they were aggressively trying to sell him something, in which case his usual recourse was to duck his head politely and wave his hands in a noncomittal sort of way until they took him for a mute or an idiot, perhaps both, and let him go on his way, taking his awkward, twitchy half-smiles with him.

He doubted anyone looked twice, and that was the way he liked it. He was only here for some arrowheads and raw leather anyhow, and the less fuss, the better. Cities were better than smaller settlements for anonymity, because they were not inherently wary of strangers. They also, unfortunately, had more people, and that meant there was still more chance of running into something disastrous. Certainly, those chances were small, but bad luck had a way of finding Ephraim, and he didn’t ever trust his chances.

Which was perhaps why, when he ducked into an inn for something to eat and nearly tripped over the staff leveled at his legs, he wasn’t exactly surprised to note that the object belonged to an older person whose face was shadowed. At least it wasn’t a crone with half her teeth missing this time—something about those ones just gave him the shudders. They weren’t always so dramatic about stopping him though, and he winced when the staff cracked into his left knee. Or rather, his knee cracked into the staff. The man spoke in a voice weathered by… well, some combination of age and experience, probably; that was usually the case. Unless he’d been smoking a pipe his whole life—that tended to do it, too.

The words immediately set him to looking around the room, which was crowded and loud, hopefully enough so that nobody had heard the man speak. Why was it that no matter where he went, he drew these people out of the woodwork? It was like anyone who figured themselves half a seer was pulled to him like a moth to some kind of flame, and they always felt the need to tell him about it. “Er… I’m sorry? That I reek, I mean. And for hitting the, um—the staff. I just came through the fish markets; I was going to change shirts later?” Maybe it was some heroic force of dauntless optimism that made him try to play this off as something entirely different, but mostly he was pretty sure it was just vain, vain hope.

"Go about reeking like that and everyone will know what you are." The seer mumbled to himself more than to Ephraim, ignoring what he said and pulling him by the shirt to a table close to them. "Sit fool boy." His tone did not suggest he was asking or suggesting. Seated, the seer began to have his say, "I do not know why I see what I see, nor did I ask for this, same as you. Yet here we are, each with our own afflictions." His hood pulled back slightly when he leaned in to speak, showing his marred face in full to Ephraim. "You have been allowed to wander as you please without purpose for longer than you ought to have, but you won't be allowed to do so forever." His voice lowered, "The gifted are not born into this world by accident, each time they come they are born for great or terrible purpose. Sometimes both Ephraim. When they come it means war and justice and miracles and blood." Oh yes the seer knew his name and what he was, there was much the seer was forced to bare witness to. Too much in his opinion.

Of course not. It was never simple with this, was it? It was probably ironic, that the one whoreson—technically whorenephew—that was absolutely fine with never amounting to anything more than a vagrant with a modest trade and a lot of miles under his boots was the one who was apparently not allowed to retain his very modest status. He’d never wanted anything more in his life than he wanted the magic gone, but it seemed that no matter how low he ducked his head or how persistently he ignored what it whispered to him, he could not escape its hold. He tried very hard not to let his eyes dart about too suspiciously, but he was still afraid that they were going to be overheard, and that in his experience never ended well when this sort of thing was the subject.

So instead, he braced his hands on his knees, picking at a loose thread on his breeches with what appeared to be the utmost concentration, the nervousness of a jimmying leg suppressed into the bruising worry of teeth on his lower lip, patternless, nervous, consummately uncomfortable. His eyes occasionally flickered up to the old man’s marred face—black lips, scarred eye sockets, looking like something horror had dragged out of a bog and set on land. Well, it wasn’t like he was one to judge—he looked like a scarecrow animated out of a field, made to think it was a man. He shuddered at the sound of the word blood, just a fine little tremor, drawn from his spine by the cadence of the words in that raspy voice.

“But I don’t want any of that,” he said quietly, and even to him, it sounded weak. Pathetic. Spindly fingers danced over a knobby knee, and he sighed, casting his eyes once more to the floor, tapping that silent, frenetic rhythm still on his leg. The birds in the sky wish to be as free, as free as me, when I dream… A relic of his childhood, that. “I don’t want to be terrible. I don’t want to bring war and blood to anybody.” His lips twisted into a wry sort of grimace, and he met the place where the seer’s eyes would have been, had he any. “I’d be fine not being great, either, if it’s all the same. Great people usually die, in the end.” Even despite his protestations, he could feel the weight of the pronouncement, in a way that he usually did, but could also usually pay no mind to, at least once he was back out on the road. He could only hope that the same would prove true, this time. He did not like the way this felt as a call to arms would. The way it stirred something in his blood and marrow and skin.

The seer took hold of an half empty old cup that was not his from the table, studied the contents with sightless eyes for a bit and drained it in one go. He smacked his black lips indifferently, it was unclear if he retained any of what Ephraim said, "All that and more happens when just one of you is born, and now.." The seer tipped his cup, letting three drops fall to the table. "...there are three." The way he said the words was like condemning the world to its fate. "If I could feel pity for any other than myself I would feel pity for you. The other two are not as you are, war and blood is what they desire, and if you do nothing, it will be too late when your hand is finally forced." He slammed the cup on the table, as if to make his point. "Make your choices wisely, align yourself with the good in this world, act." The seer stood up, not without difficulty, he had said his piece, the gods could demand nothing more from him, he was too damn old for this horseshit. Before he turned away he added, "Griffons are not unwise to follow." A hint of amusement in his voice.

The seer departed, and Ephraim pushed a little groan of air out his lungs, hunching over and scrubbing his hands down his face. The magic was whispering in his mind again; something about this particular old man had agitated it. Or maybe it only went looking for excuses to be agitated. There were two other people like him? But what was he in the first place? As far as he knew, he was just a man with too much magic and an itch to travel. He could only assume the relevant part of that was the magic thing, but lots of people had magic. Well, maybe not lots, but it wasn’t exactly rare, either. He really didn’t like where this was going.

The city suddenly seemed like far too congested a place, closed in by those walls and those cliffs, but his other choices were the forest or the sea, and while he’d come in through the former, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to tangle with the Kraken at this point in his life. It occurred to him that he was doing it again, seeking an escape route. Why, he couldn’t really even say—it wasn't like any amount of distance had ever stopped these portents and half-mad longsighted types from finding him before. And now he was getting specifically directed. “’Make your choices wisely,’” he echoed, a touch of melancholy coloring his tone rather blue indeed. “As long as they’re the ones we want you to make.” Not that he had any idea who the we was… but there was definitely a we.

He had the sinking feeling he’d be finding out eventually.