75 Spring, after the battle with the Suffering
The deck of the Beauty
Sav
It doesn’t take long for Sav to wrap up things of a more pressing nature, as there aren’t many left once Talith is healed away from the brink of death and Vanja pushed off-deck, away the former. Just long enough for her to burn the leathery remains of what was once a heart (or at least a facsimile thereof, judging from what little she’s heard of Talith and Vivian’s mother).
Because really, how many more pressing things can there be than figuring out exactly how someone attacks and kills a ghost?
(Well, there’s the question of what really happened to the Suffering. Is it actually gone? A possibility not to be completely ruled out, but that seems far too easy. Besides, if that were the case, that raises more questions - like why were the conditions right now to do it, instead of before when they essentially followed the same plan of attacking Talith until he was down?)
…. so there are a fair few more pressing things, but none more that she can actually tackle right now. And so, she tackles it.
Not literally, perhaps the better for her own health. Wherever he be, on deck or below, she marches over to Sylas and demands bluntly, “What under the Harvest ‘Turne was that?” She makes a stabbing motion to elucidate, which might or might not actually clarify.
Sylas
Sylas opted to remain on deck after the battle with the Suffering. The breeze was cool and would prove to be an immediately less scrutinizing source of intrigue or agitation than he imagined the rest of the group were. As interested as he was in everyone’s feelings on the odd matter of their former friend returning tonight, he thought best to let them be for now. Doubtful that few of them appreciated his nearly killing the boy not a short time ago.
So here he sat, not far from where he and Vivian had their conversation, discussing on how best to kill her. As he sat, pondering on the fight as he patched himself up, he realized something did not feel right about how the fight ended. Before he could form the idea wholly however, he could hear small footsteps rushing up towards him.
Sav quickly stepped up, immediately demanding information. Sylas let out an annoyed sigh, pushing himself onto the railing of the ship.
So much for a moment of peace after all that…
He crossed one leg over the other, placing an elbow on this knee and supporting his head with his open palm, a smirk greeting her. “Evening Sav! Excellent work earlier, quite impressive. I apologize, but several things occurred near simultaneously. I’ll need you to clarify what you’re referring to exactly. Did you have questions on the fight? Your friend, thought dead, reappearing and attacking? Or are you wondering why I nearly killed him?”
Sav
“Aye, not unless you actually have answers for that and if ye do I have more queries as to why d’ye have answers for that in the first place, and aye,” Sav says curtly, ticking her response to each question off in turn. “How did ye even manage to touch Vivian? I’ve seen her physically manifest before, but I thought that happened only when Talith calls for her, and ne’er seen it last for more than a breath - not for spans at a time and multiple blows landed on her. An’ if Sufferin’ Talith could ha untangibled her I bet he would ha’.
As for the third, I’m nae feezled as to why ye’d be after killin him if he hadnae answered to your satisfaction.” She hesitates here. With anyone else, she wouldn’t have been confused, but on the other hand - this spirit-man-amalgamation thing has proven to have unpredictable reasoning and reactions. “Unless your reasonin’ be aught besides the obvious, in which case, aye, I’d be interested in the whys of it.” She folds her arms over her chest, thick brows beetling down as she regards him. “Beyond that, I do have to wonder what ye thought your next options would be if ye’d slain him. Ye’ve no struck me as carryin a death wish on ye, thus far.”
Sylas
“After the brawl was concluded, and Talith was splayed across the deck, your friends began tending to him like complete and utter fools. You and Skau Vanja were more hesitant at least, though Vanja seemed to be affected by something other than the fight…
“None of you had any way of knowing, or were even attempting to discern, if the Suffering had actually evacuated from Talith. He could have turned on any of you in that moment, killing someone before the rest of us could respond. So I chose to examine him. Test him, see how much of the Suffering, if any, still remained. Yes, I nearly killed him. Only due to your friends being impatient and not allowing me to determine if the threat was neutralized!”
He pauses briefly, rubbing his eyes in aggravation before continuing. “No, I don’t have a ‘death wish’, as you put it. Which is why I attempted to study Talith before letting you all walk off with him. If I had died then, killing Talith, then at least I would have died knowing that I wouldn’t be stabbed in my sleep by the same man you were all willing to kill me over.”
Sav
Her eyes narrow slightly at the pause, and remain slitted as his response. “What did he say to ye? And what gave ye the thought to attack her? She wasnae doing aught, and for the duration of the battle presented no danger, in comparison to the mannie attacking with a bloody sword.”
A vague flicker of disappointment crosses her face at his explanation for nearly killing Talith. Ah. So it was the obvious after all, not something unexpected she hadn’t thought of. Well, one never knew. “Then why did ye need his name for this ‘test’ of yours? Ye can see souls, as ye’ve stated; have ye need of a name to tell the truth of it? … nay, that cannae be the whole of it, else why would ye have let him drop after he gave no resistance but no name? Or were ye simply fixin tae suck his soul from his body and steal his name like you stole the Inquisitor’s? Or hopin’ tae gain the power of the Sufferin’ by takin’ his name instead?” Hmm. She steeples her fingers before her lips in thought, gaze intent on Sylas to watch for any flicker of reaction at her blunt questions.
At his last statement, she blinks and observes dryly, “Deid’s deid. Deid by sword at night a few days later or deid by swords in the front immediately, seems the former’d be more appealin. Besides, seems as though someone as smart as ye’d consider that the Sufferin would likely choose to kill other targets first, which might give ye a bout of warnin.” She thinks back to a conversation from a few days ago. “I suppose I’m no one tae talk about the appeal of choosin the manner of your death, though.”
Sylas
Despite doing his best to maintain his composure during Sav’s interrogation, he could feel his eye twitch slightly. Her questions and phrasing seemed to be an attempt to provoke or agitate him. Sylas wouldn’t let her continue her provocation without a rebuttal, so he responded.
“Whatever Talith was, or possibly still is, isn’t naturally him. He is possessed. Killing the body wouldn’t necessarily stop the Suffering, so I made a calculated decision and chose to attack the woman instead of him. I hypothesized that if we could eliminate her first, we might be able to stop the battle altogether. My hypothesis felt vindicated when he attempted to disappear her, so when she reappeared I continued my assault. I’m surprised you didn’t come to a similar conclusion…”
Sylas lets the air hang on that last sentence for a moment. He would hope that she would feel a tinge of annoyance at him before he continued. “Regarding my ‘talk’ with Talith, I believe there may be some misinterpretation. I wasn’t trying to gain ultimate power!” His hands are thrown up in an exaggerated motion before returning to his lap.
“As I said, I was attempting to confirm if he truly was back to himself or secretly the Suffering waiting to strike. Yes, I can ‘see’ souls, but I hadn’t had a chance to look at either Vivian’s or the Suffering’s ‘souls’ during the battle. Without a viewing a sample to base Talith’s own soul against, I couldn’t reliably determine whether or not he was still afflicted as I don’t know if the Suffering looks different. Most likely, but I can’t be completely certain.
“So I asked for his name as a means of testing him. Looked into his eyes and asked if he was still the Suffering. He replied pathetically, and I decided that was enough to let him go for now.”
Sav
“‘Tis so.” Rather than seeming aggravated, Sav merely looks thoughtful. “And yet how he acted remained somewhat different from before. Something changed. Hmm. How much do ye remember from your body’s previous encounters with the Sufferin? For I’ll tell ye that merely because he wishes to protect something doesnae mean it holds importance to the secret of his possession. He was quite worked up an’ protective over a dried heart before, which seemed to carry no real power to it no matter how I examined it - but this time showed no care for it.”
Ultimate power gets him a dry look. “Well, pardon us for bein’ afeart for the soul of a friend when someone who’s been known to steal a man’s name with his life shouts in their face, ‘Give me your name!’” She does a passable imitation of his own voice, though her own accent burrs through.
It hasn’t escaped her attention that he didn’t answer her first question, though, so her gaze sharpens again. “I continue to wonder what it first said to ye. Anythin’ might be important to give a clue as to the Sufferin’s state of mind an’ motive for appearin’, now, and how it knew to do so.” She shakes her head slightly. “I dinnae disagree on bein’ skeptical. I feel it went too easy to be complete secure that it’s actually gone. But I think the cost of bein’ wrong about it being gone is less than the cost of bein’ wrong about it still lurking.”
Sylas
“Priorities can shift,” he shrugged. “Difficult to determine what the goal of a seemingly eldritch being suddenly appearing on the ship was without an interrogation of the perpetrator. I fully anticipate a proper sit down with the boy to determine what all he remembers of his time as The Suffering.”
Sylas gestures at being offended, his eyebrows furrowing as he acts as though he has been shot with an arrow. “Sav your words wound me,” he claims, holding a single hand over his chest. “Is it possible that I could’ve taken Talith’s soul? Possibly. But I honestly don’t know if I even could. I’m not sure how my ‘emergence’ would have affected this body’s ability to absorb souls. Plus, give me some credit. If I did kill Talith, you and I both know that I’m not strong enough to take on the entire group and escape beyond the river unscathed and alone. Once I felt he no longer proved to be an immediate threat, I no longer felt the immediate need to end the threat.”
With Sav’s last question, Sylas could suddenly feel the late night and the exhaustion of the battle hitting him at once. He rubbed the temples on the side of his head, feeling another headache surfacing, and it was difficult to recall the very beginning of the battle. “Something inane. First, the girl appeared. I jumped, slashing at her throat. Almost immediately, Talith appeared. He said something, that I wasn’t Bax. That I was messing with something I didn’t understand. That was probably in relation to slashing at the woman. Then I quipped back, and you were all there for the rest.”
Sav
Thinking back, Sav does seem to recall that she saw no sign of spirits leaving the bodies of the other doomed Swans in the Inquisitor’s unit, even though they were slain right next to Sylas (perhaps one or two by him, even, she couldn’t recall). Still - with the whole name-and-life-stealing shtick being entirely new, and its parameters entirely unknown, she mentally excuses herself for being jumpy about the possibility of it being employed at any moment.
Outwardly, she only nods. A few seconds tick by in awkward silence. “Hmmm,” she says in response to his relation of the prologue to the battle. “So jumpy as that, then, to cut at a girl appearing out of nowhere?” Of course, Vivian does tend to appear a little translucent. Interesting that the Suffering appeared after she was attacked, as well. Was that the key, then? But she was gone now, or so it seemed. Then again, she’d been gone the first time, when Talith had been taken after the battle…
The answer to her spoken question doesn’t seem exceptionally important to her, though, as she continues, “Well. I’ve no more queries, thanks to ye for answerin them.” Suddenly recalling that he, too, had been notably wounded in the battle - though he at least no longer appears to be actively bleeding - she rummages in her clothes and pulls out one of her folded paper packets of inert alchemical mixtures. Flicking open the tab with her thumb, she casts the powder in an arc over him, breathing out a long, low note that sends coruscating light rushing through the grains. If he remains still long enough for the powder to settle on his skin, once the dust reaches him it flares up and disappears, leaving his skin glimmering faintly for a second as his wounds and bruises close up - likely not fully healed, but at least a step further.
Sylas
Sylas smirks as the sprinkled dust glides over and affixes to some of his wounds. He watches as some of his cuts pull themselves together slowly, or the dust packs into the wider lacerations to fill in for his missing bits.
As the healing spreads over, he breathes in and releases a sigh of relief as the pain he was in previously is mitigated. He looks to Sav and nods, “Much appreciated.
“Perhaps we’ll have more questions answered after we have a chance to talk with Talith once he’s awake. In the meantime, I’d recommend sleeping with one eye open. I doubt this is the last we’ve seen of the Suffering and it’s difficult to imagine how it may manifest itself next time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to return to my solitary enjoyment of the breeze and crashing water.”
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