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Post by Linyü on Mar 14, 2020 19:06:33 GMT -6
"Gods," said the sailor. Seveth couldn't see what kind of face the man was making, since he was currently a little preoccupied with the act of heaving up a lung, but he could more or less imagine it.
"Thank you," he said breathlessly, between one convulsive fit of retching and the next. "Alas, I find it--- hrugh--- doesn't do me much good now."
"Well, at least you had the sense to do it over the edge of the ship," said the sailor. "I'll get a cloth and some water. You wait here."
"Aye-aye," said Seveth weakly. As if he could go anywhere in the state he was in. When he was done--- or rather, when the fit of puking was done with him--- he collapsed onto the deck, panting for breath. The sailor was nowhere in sight, but maybe it had only been a few minutes, though it felt like it had been longer to him.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 14, 2020 19:24:59 GMT -6
"I see you're making a proper mess of yourself."
For a moment, Seveth struggled to place the voice. For a moment he thought it might have been Ichaival. It was ridiculous, of course; as soon as he caught himself, he wondered that he could even think such a thing. Ichaival's words had never been spoken aloud.
It was only the tone that was familiar.
"Ahhh," said Seveth. "My dear old friend. Abandoned me in my time of need, only to return to have your fun while I'm down, hmm?"
"It really is incredible to see you like this," said the cat. "If I didn't know better, I might have said your acting skills had improved beyond all expectation."
"Mmm." Seveth was pretty sure that wasn't a compliment, but the ability to make a clever comeback was fast slipping away from him. His whole body felt heavy, weighed down even more by the exertion of throwing up.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 14, 2020 19:33:23 GMT -6
A bare floor wasn't usually his idea of comfortable, but it was unfathomably difficult to get up right this minute. "I think," he said, "I'll just take... a little nap... right here." The last thing he remembered was seeing the cat standing over him, green eyes peering into his own. ----- "You're awake," said Roku. He didn't answer, sitting up silently and taking stock of his surroundings. They were what he remembered: a small cabin on a ship, a cot, a tiny table and an even smaller wash basin. As far as he knew, nothing had been moved, though there wasn't much to move to begin with. Easing his aching body out of bed, he made his way to it, pouring water out of a pitcher and washing his face. The cold woke him up a little, and he took a mouthful to rinse the taste out of his mouth before spitting into the chamber pot.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 14, 2020 19:38:37 GMT -6
Out of the tiny mirror hanging on the wall, he could see the cat still watching him. Wordlessly, he arched a brow.
The cat's tail twitched. "How much of yesterday do you remember?" said Roku, in a strangely guarded tone.
"What is there to remember?" he said. "I woke. You said I should eat. I didn't feel like eating. Then you told me to rest and so I went back to sleep." He didn't know whether his waking moments were even fit to be called 'days' anymore, though the cat must have been living the full measure of them. As far as he could tell, the only one who had been struck with this strange weakness was himself.
"I see," said Roku. Something in the cat's tone gave him pause, and he stilled, waiting. After a moment, the cat raised his head once more. "Well, in that case, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you."
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Post by Linyü on Apr 3, 2020 12:39:15 GMT -6
Here the cat paused, as though trying to find the right words. A paw came up to fuss at his collar, and when he next spoke, the words were in Xin. "When I last spoke with you, you were... not yourself. I'm afraid the node you swallowed may have been carrying a hitchhiker of sorts."
San turned, staring at Roku. After a moment, his eyes narrowed. "You mean," he said, "possession."
"Yes, I'm afraid so." The cat's gaze was steady. Roku teased sometimes, or spoke in the sly and indirect way of felines, but there was no hint of that in his manner now.
Cold dread coalesced in the pit of San's gut. Possession. The idea loomed before him, a bogeyman from childhood, the constant warnings of the dangers of magic and nodes. 'The souls of the damned permeate these items of power, and too close an association might make one susceptible to their whispers.'
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Post by Linyü on Apr 3, 2020 12:39:31 GMT -6
But the nodes of the Watchful Ones were supposedly safe; and their training, their loyalty, the strength and sanctity of their souls purified by the rigors of their training, all that was meant to hold them against the dangers of being consumed.
It hadn't been enough after all.
The cat had asked after his recollections. The dread seized him anew as he thought back to all the gaps in his memories, minutes and hours that he had been losing for months now. "What," he said, but the word caught in his throat. "What did I do?"
The cat's tail twitched. "You may rest easy," he said. "You did little more than act a fool. I monitored you, but for the moment I believe there is no cause for extreme alarm. The... occupant introduced himself as 'Seveth'. Based on his words, he is--- or was--- a foreigner. His accent was not one I recognized, and he spoke of Xinzhou as a distant nation, barely known to him."
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Post by Linyü on Apr 3, 2020 12:40:29 GMT -6
He could be lying, San thought, but didn't say. Roku ought to know that just as well as he did, and if the cat seemed convinced, that was something, at least.
Licking a paw, Roku went on. "I am no great expert on such cases, but I think the fact that you have regained control is promising. This Seveth hasn't wholly overridden your consciousness."
San said nothing. There was something unreal about the news. He recognized the signs of shock from experience, and knew that there would be little sense on trying to sort out his thoughts until the idea had a chance to sink in.
For now, he turned his thoughts to more practical considerations.
"Tell Rei to be careful," he said. There was no need to ask the cat to monitor him; Roku knew what had to be done to ensure their interests. As for what they would do when they reached their destination... There was little they could do to plan for that without knowing where they were going first.
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Post by Linyü on Apr 3, 2020 12:42:37 GMT -6
And if all else failed and they had to cut their losses... Roku had been with the Watchful Ones longer than San himself. It was a cold comfort, but San had known little enough else, these past dozen years.
The cat flicked one of his ears. "I'll keep you updated on the situation. For now, you should preserve your strength." By which he meant that San should eat and rest, preferably in that order.
San sighed, and reached for the door. He knew Roku had the right of it, but eating felt like a futile effort at this point, when he was certain that he was only going to throw it back up again.
He greeted the woman in the galley with a wordless nod, and she handed him a bowl of thin gruel with a huff. It tasted like ash on his tongue, but he ate it spoonful by steady spoonful.
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Post by Linyü on Apr 3, 2020 12:49:06 GMT -6
By some miracle, it stayed down, and for a moment he stood on deck, his hands on the railing, watching the clouds roll by over the endless expanse of waves. He thought, without meaning to, about the sensation of being himself in his own body: the steady awareness of each sensation, each ache; the buzz of consciousness within. He thought of Robin, of Pan, of his sister. Elementals all of them, their nodes resting in their chest, in true center, a little right of the heart. The place he knew to gut a corpse to retrieve them when he brought down a rogue mage for the state. How certain had they been that they were still themselves? They had known the risk, all of them, just as surely as he had. His thoughts drifted, most of them unpleasant, but eventually, weariness overtook him. Eventually, San went back into the hold, to his cot, to let oblivion take him where it would. -----
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Post by Linyü on Jun 30, 2020 23:47:58 GMT -6
The days passed in a fugue. He couldn't have said where one ended and another began, or how much time passed between when he had last been 'awake'. The cat spoke to him, and he supposed he must have asked questions, but he couldn't remember the answers he'd been given, or his own thoughts on the matter. In this state it was impossible to plan, to evaluate, to do anything but stare at the ceiling of the small, cramped cabin.
And then, before he quite knew what was happening, they arrived.
There was a flurry of activity as they disembarked, though most of it was the crew working around him. San had come out of the hold to stand on the deck as they approached the docks. His body was weak from having spent so long convalescing, but he had almost nothing in the form of baggage, and what little there was had already been organized for him.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 30, 2020 23:52:38 GMT -6
When he had been presented with the neatly packed rucksack, Roku had merely swiped a paw over one ear. "We had time," he said. "Rei did the folding, of course."
"Of course," San said. When had he last seen Rei...? He couldn't remember. She was likely keeping hidden somewhere else on the ship, keeping an ear out for information. He knew that this was what she did best, and yet it troubled him to have gone so long without seeing her.
If he was being entirely honest, he had hoped to glimpse her somewhere after coming up onto the deck. But try as he might to find her, she was nowhere to be found, and he didn't want to appear too much as though he were searching for her, lest he alert the crew that there was something afoot. Rei was good--- very good--- at what she did, but that was no excuse to make her task harder than it had to be.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 30, 2020 23:57:26 GMT -6
Roku, at least, kept him company this time around. The cat sat atop a barrel, black tail curled neatly over his feet. He seemed calm, almost indifferent, to the hubbub and the fast-approaching sprawl of the docks.
"Where are we?" said San.
The cat eyed him for a moment, as though he were considering something, but now San could neither protest nor guess at what Roku was thinking. San remembered little from his time aboard the ship, but the shock of Roku's news--- that he was carrying an unwanted passenger--- had stayed with him. For a moment he was tempted to ask if he had done anything strange, but if he wanted a debrief, it wouldn't be here, where they might be overheard, and his attention was split between too many other things. It was habit to stay aware of his surroundings, even though he could hardly do anything even if he noticed incoming danger now, with his body the way it was.
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Post by Linyü on Jul 1, 2020 0:09:15 GMT -6
... That was something he would need to rectify as soon as possible. He didn't look forward to it; it would be bitter, painful work. But it had to be done.
Eventually, the cat deigned to speak, having apparently come to a conclusion at last about whatever he had been considering before. "I believe the continent is called Pethia, but as to where we are specifically..." The cat's ears twitched. "Colbrook, though from here we'll be pressing onto New Tarsia. It is known colloquially as the Labs, since that has been the defining feature, these last few decades. You may know it as -the City of Beasts-."
The name was familiar, but only slightly so, in the way of something that had been encountered before, but not particularly often. The lack of recognition must have shown on his face. The cat's tail uncurled and curled itself again, and he said, "It is my birthplace. If I am not mistaken, Rei came from this city as well."
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Post by Linyü on Jul 1, 2020 13:39:35 GMT -6
Rei.
The beginnings of several emotions threatened to build somewhere in his chest, but San suppressed them all, with some effort. "Is that why we came here?" he asked, his voice carefully neutral.
The cat huffed at his words, a soft derisive breath of laughter. "We didn't know where we were going until yesterday," said Roku. "Perhaps you've forgotten, but our passage on this ship was arranged through other parties. Though in the grand scheme of things, this isn't so bad an outcome. If you want to put some distance between yourself and your old employers, an entire ocean is not a bad place to start."
"And you have some familiarity with the territory," San finished for him.
The cat glanced at him, whiskers twitching once. "I'm glad to see your mind hasn't entirely atrophied," he said. The cat's tone was pleased. San wondered if it pleased him to return to this place.
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Post by Linyü on Jul 1, 2020 13:47:36 GMT -6
None of them talked about their histories if they could help it, and Roku in particular liked to maintain a certain aloofness about himself. San might have brought himself to ask if it had been Rei, but there was no need to even consider the idea with Roku. If the cat had his own agendas, so be it. There was, he thought, little enough reason for them to remain together for the long term now.
But there were more pressing matters at hand to do with their immediate futures. "Immigration policies?" said San, not looking at Roku now but out at the docks. The work of the crew around them was quickly reaching a crescendo as they pulled into the port, and the bustle went some ways towards masking their conversation.
"I doubt you'll have any issues there. People come and go as they please. Mind you, it has been some time since I last set foot here..."
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