Whiskey and Tea

[Sivan]

Zef listened, then waved his hand in dismissal at Sivan's request. The elf had been looking at Imogen in a new light knowing she was familiar with the covens. It had been some time since he had been a part of the communal mind in the Grove, so while some shadowy fragments of memory arose to offer context to her words, but they weren't enough to accomplish much. As soon as he retreated from the Grove, he had become merely Sivan once more, and Exael had become merely Exael.

But once Zef bade him stay, he considered whether he ought not to speak privately with Imogen while they were both in the city. He was touched his old friend felt comfortable sharing uncomfortable feelings from his past with him, but the secrets of the covens were not Sivan's to share openly.

"No, he wouldn't want to go to Zaichaer himself, I suppose," Zef said softly, strangely pained. He sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, then sighed again and took another sip of tea.

He looked up at Sivan first, then to Imogen.

"She was lovely when I met her," he said, voice still soft with ancient memory, then taking on more of a professorial tone as he offered more substantial context, "and so, so intelligent. I'm not a sembler, so her magic remained a bit of a mystery to me. She was what we of the Tower call a hedge witch—not for association with the Zaichaeri covens, but because she was largely self-taught. I was learning it as a science; for her, it was still... magical. I think that is part of what drew me to her... and caused most of our arguments. But that's not what you want to know.

"I do believe she came from Zaichaer originally, or within its sphere of influence. She liked to be mysterious, so it was difficult to pin her down for exact answers even with exact questions..."

"The Grymalka are the great healers and spiritists—that is, speakers of the dead," Sivan supplied. "The Kindred are more druidic in nature, and truck with wild spirits and elementals."

Zef considered.

"You might ask them about Modron," he finally told Imogen. "Didn't have a family name. Neither does Finn. Don't know if she had family back there. I would say to ask her son, Finn's father, but they have all moved to Solunarium now." He frowned.

"But I know she spoke to spirits and without a drop of Dratori blood to my knowledge." He nodded to Sivan. "Whether spirits of the dead or spirits of nature, I know not. So either coven might have some knowledge of her. I can say that she knew how to use pictographs to augment her work. Finn never told me whether she had left a grimoire or aught behind. But she was a private person, even with a paramour, even with her son and grandchildren. I wish you luck, but even they might not know all that much."

He frowned.

"Or how much effort you're willing to go to investigating on his behalf."

Sivan cleared his throat. "I have contacts in the Kindred if you need any doors opened."

[Imogen]

The witch sipped and watched Zef quietly as he spoke. The old wizard was nothing like as reluctant to speak of his old love as Finn had worried, and she wondered whether Finn had simply been too afraid to speak with him about it for other reasons.

Well, that was really none of her business. She finished her cup, closing her eyes as the dregs washed over her tongue.

"Thank you, Master Sivan- I may take you up on that offer. 'Modron' is not quite a name and not quite a title, but it is associated with a hundred tales of the forests." Imogen leaned over the table, "The great black woods of Zaichaer are a most peculiar sort of realm, you must understand. I have spent much time in forests across the face of Ransera- the largest and most imposing by far are the great jungles of western Ecith, where eons of fertilization by the Green Dragonflight and a peculiar elemental disruption have caused the trees to grow to gargantuan proportion. Meanwhile, the forests of southern Ecith are more on a mortal scale, but they are hostile to life, filled with a thousand thousand creatures twisted by the defunction of Agst’rasera."

Imogen's words were matter-of-fact, in spite of the World Tree's official status as mythical.

"The northern woods around Kalzasi are young, and the great western forests of Gel'Grandal are old, but tame, fallen to complacency after every terror which once marked them was wiped away. But the forests of Zaichaer are old, and they do not care for idle trespass. Thus, many of the legends associated with them are quite dark; brutal, even." The ork scratched idly at her cheek, pulling away a little opal scale and rubbing it off onto her dress.

"Or... so I've heard, anyway. But I couldn't possibly say whether the association, in this case, is merely coincidence. Thankfully, the Kindred can. And if they cannot... well, the Grymalka are generally my last resort, for the Necropolis is not a place I care to linger."

A shadow fell over the witch's face as she remembered her first visit there, recalled the ghosts and the ghost-lights, observed the secret streams below the catacombs, and the figures which waited for her, amassed upon the opposite shore.

"Well, Master Zef, you've already helped me a great deal more than I had any right to ask for, but I hope you will indulge me one last request. It would be much easier for me to complete this job if I could see Modron. So-."

Imogen snapped her fingers, and her Pact staff appeared, lying on the table between them. It had been a quarterstaff, once, a long ash pole capped on both ends with brass, but Imogen had since drawn out the essence of the wood and infused it with a new metal, something light and golden which even an alchemist couldn't quite recognize at a glance. It was no longer weighted evenly at the ends, but instead bore a decorative carving of a lemur at the top, its arms and tail wrapped around two sizable dragonshards of fire and sunlight.

"-if you are willing to show me, please grasp the staff."

[Sivan]

Sivan seemed quite interested in Imogen's descriptions of the various forest biomes of Ransera. While he had traveled through much of Ailizane in his short—for an elf—life, he hadn't seen it all, not even the forests of Zaichaer which weren't so very far away, nor any of Ecith. Hilana wanted to show him the Atraxian Expanse, but he wasn't sure that the Re'hyaean elves wouldn't imprison, torture, and execute him at the border.

He smiled a little smile, rueful, at the mention of fertilization. The lengths he had gone to in order to help Destyn secure a load of dragon shit, which then had to live in his garden to feed the seedling from Ecith, were not something he would do for just anyone. But Destyn was special.

"Imogen," he interrupted quietly when there was a lull. Hytori politesse could seem cold and aloof to some, but from Sivan, it tended to be respectful rather than obsequious, and whether from his mixed heritage or another reason, he didn't see himself as better than anyone else.

"If you ever make plans to go back to Southern Ecith, I would volunteer to go with you. I have some modest skill with blades and while I have focused on laboratory-based magics, I am not entirely without runic skills. I could be more help than burden, and I would be interested to semble such warped lands, the better to know how to help fix them if the opportunity were to arise."

Zef seemed conflicted about something, or perhaps he was just old and remembering old regrets. He sighed, nodded, and reached out to touch her staff with all do care, caution, and respect.

The woman he had known was young, perhaps too young to wear a name like hers with hits connotations of motherhood, age, and wisdom. He hadn't known if that was a name her parents saddled her with or one she chose for herself, but he knew that most people hadn't used her name at all after a while.

He remembered a woman, serious save for quicksilver flashes of inspiration and glee, passion for life in her blue eyes. Finn had inherited her complexion and they had similar hair, though hers was grown long, twisted into a cyclone of strands, chaotic but somehow intentionally so. Her smiles were mysterious, and while he wasn't a sembler, he knew how to order his symphony, so he didn't share any mysterious smiles whose mysteries had been sexual in nature.

The image Imogen was left with had the clarity of close examination, as well as three-dimensional detail from a man who had known her well at one point. Clearly, she had made an impression. If the bloom of youth on her cheeks was partially the rose tint of nostalgic spectacles, well, objectivity only went so far with the heart.

What, perhaps, Imogen had not expected was what came after that. There were decades of no real contact with her after the romance. He hadn't known he had a son until Finn appeared at the Tower with a sealed note for him from Modron after she had already passed, beloved by her small family, but wasted in a remote hamlet on Udori.

Zef Mirlind had initiated Finn in Mesmer, and while his erstwhile student had long ago surpassed him in skill and power—possibly due to Modron's blood in his veins—he had also taught the young minstrel how to listen to symphonies, including his own. If he had stolen enough music while asking Finn about Modron's life without him, it was a trespass he would angrily defend unto his death.

But Imogen would be able to see Modron as an older woman, from the golden blur of Finn's extreme youth to her final days when he had been her most attentive nurse. Twenty years of Finn's memories, as much as could be reconstructed from the songs of his symphony, and at least related to his close relationship with his extremely private grandmother, were hers to review.

There were other notes passed along, perhaps unintentionally: for example, bits of awkwardness in how Zef felt about Finn. While he had enjoyed being a mentor to countless students, only Finn had been a true surprise, a revelation of family. Trying to have grandfatherly feelings for him hadn't been easy, and he still wondered if he was doing it right, or whether he even ought to have more than a teacher's relationship with him.

But then Finn was a note that resonated through history from Modron, and he would be forever grateful that the young bard had been there so Modron wasn't alone when she passed into the care of the Grimlord.

Zef sipped his tea, found it empty. Without being asked, Sivan silently rose, took his cup, and went to make him more.

[Imogen]

Imogen's lips parted in silent surprise as scenes filled her mind. Generally speaking, pulling memories out of living people was much harder than pulling them from rock or metal- her first attempt with Deravaecia, a year gone past, had left her unconscious on the beach. Here, however, the old mage somehow knew how to steer her precisely to the images she'd sought. She wondered for a moment how he had managed it, for she had not even explained the mechanism of her spell.

Fuck, if she could do that every time, she'd be basically omniscient.

When Zef released the staff, the witch rubbed her eyes for just a moment, gathering her composure, then tapped the Pact weapon. The staff faded from view without a fuss, and she hardly even noticed the pain of it rippling through her soul. Some agonies were so familiar that they were no longer even troubling.

"Well!" she said, her tone clearly somewhat humbled, "Your thoughts are commendably precise. That was much more information than I expected. I suppose I am indebted to you, if there is anything you wish in turn."

Imogen remained quiet for a time after that, ruminating on what she had seen, letting it sink into her memory. It was enough to have seen Modron's face, but she had learned more than that. The woman had apparently died somewhere on Udori, for one thing. For another, Zef had tasted a part of her essence, like a silver thread which ran through her words and deeds. That should make it easier to ferret out the fragmented memories of her, when at last she found the right spot.

But there was other business to hand. When Sivan returned, she addressed his request:

"Travel to Ecith is almost trivial in these days, but travel to Southern Ecith... not so. Please, attend a moment."

The witch held out a hand and, with a flourish, produced a map from Slipspace, suddenly holding the weathered parchment at length. She unrolled it on the table where her staff had been a moment before, smoothing it with both hands to reveal a map of Ecith, purchased in Drathera, to which she had made many hand-written additions. They were... hard to read. Apparently she didn't mind black ink on dark backgrounds.



"See you here, there are only two good ways of travel. First, down and around the south of the continent, which takes fourteen days as the albatross flies. One can go up the eastern seaboard, but this is worse, for it takes only one misstep to end up in the Atraxian Desert. And whether they would detain you, I could not say, but I assure you the Sentinels would come for me. The last time I was in that forsaken desert, it took them only hours to catch on and give chase."

Imogen shook her head, clearing that memory out of her mind. Honestly, it hadn't gone so badly, and it would have gone much better if Norani had not pulled all the aether out of her with that particular stunt. She almost regretted missing the chance to test herself against a Solunarian patrol.

"So, a tricky journey to undertake, which is why I've only ever done so alone. Excepting when I went with the great hero Dromlach’darach." The name rolled easily off her tongue. "If I could promise you an easy journey I would happily offer to take you there, for I have long wanted to have a proper alchemist evaluate this-" Imogen tapped the little island on the map marked "Serendipity Isle (rock that hates)", "-the site where I buried the abmetal meteorite, a curious substance created by the Boundless Empire which is violently antithetical to every other metal in existence."

"But while I could confidently guarantee your safety, I have no good method of transportation, and it isn't as though one can simply stumble upon one such as Destynrael when they want to travel."

[Sivan]

"Just..." Zef paused, "whatever you find, let me know as well?"

Modron was dead and even if he had been a necromancer, he wouldn't have attempted to bring her back. All the same, she remained a mystery that tickled his brain when he thought of her, and so perhaps more context would set his old mind at ease. For now, he relied upon tea.

Both he and Sivan looked with interest at her map. Zef whistled.

"More detailed than I have seen before," Sivan said, then fell silent as she expounded upon it, only interjecting at need.

To wit, "I think they would try to capture and enslave me. I was born in Silfanore to a Hytori father and a Dratori mother. Hytori are anathema, and Dratori inferior, at least by their estimation." He paused, thoughtful. "I know a couple of people who might be able to arrange a... limited travel visa, but that would certainly involve a time limit and, most likely, overseers." He shrugged, just throwing that out there.

He laughed, pointed at the Duck. "Destyn took me there once, or nearby. I didn't see an actual ship. It must have been a pocket of relative safety, but while it was interesting, I didn't get the chance to truly study anything." He was curious what abmetal was, wondering if his Common was failing him. But a meteorite might be of interest to Torin's patron, Kala.

"I am, perhaps, tougher than I look." He laughed quietly. "If you organize an expedition, easy or not, and need an alchemist, you can always contact me and see if I am available. Perhaps Destyn will ferry us... We might want to bring a traveler, though, in case he forgets us. Keeping him on task can prove challenging."

[Imogen]

"...well, I may need to get back there sooner or later." Imogen admitted, "I suspect I am going to need to return to complete the repairs my clients expect. Perhaps Mr. Kavafis can arrange for an appropriate junction, if I provide him the feel of the slipspace there. But I can show you what I'm curious about now; I brought a sample back with me. Do pardon me-"

The witch cleared the table at which they were sitting, moving cups and plates and crumbs away from the center, then produced a small satchet of Sorcerer's Sand. She opened it and carefully spread it across the table in a passable imitation of a circle, then dropped a few more dollops of the crystal on the outside, in the four cardinal directions. She scrawled a handful of basic glyphics into those with her pinky finger.

Then Imogen pulled back from the circle, and clapped twice. A hole in space opened up just above the circle's center; then it traveled upwards, the air warping as the magic transposed two positions upon one another.



It truly looked like just a rock, perhaps just a bit smaller than Sivan's fist, though the witch had chosen to suspend it in water for some reason. The tank--a modified fishtank, it appeared--was closed at the top, but not otherwise warded or protected in any way. On closer observation, though, it became clear that the little sample was, in fact, very gently glowing.

"I took this off the original deposit," the witch explained, "Which is much larger. It had fallen into the middle of the forest, and by the time I found it, had dissolved every tree in a ten-mile radius. It was in the process of melting its way through the rock when I pulled it up and took it out to sea."

Imogen tapped on the glass, which didn't appear to bother the rock at all.

"Whatever this stuff is, it eats away at metal nearby, which sounds bad enough, but it turns out that most things in the world rely upon trace amounts of metal to exist. This thing will slowly destroy iron, but it will quickly turn wood into useless pulp, or cause rocks to turn to powder. That's why I started calling it abmetal, because it abnegates metal. Thankfully, it doesn't do a blessed thing to water, and being submerged seems to severely reduce the range of its effects."

"Now, what I'd like to know is where this stuff came from. It was a meteorite, for certain, but prior to that, the rock tells me that it was inside a Hytori city, and then was trapped in Slipspace before it was accidentally released during the Eclipse. I'm curious to know if they created this stuff through some alchemy or if they found it and brought it here."

[Sivan]

Zef fell silent, ruminating on the ghosts Imogen had raised to haunt him once more. He did look at the map and listen to what the younger folk said, but he was too old for adventures and had never been the adventuring type. His idea of adventure was slipping spirits into his tea before the noontide bell.

Sivan didn't consider himself an adventurer, and yet he had followed his master out of Sol'Valen's safety to wander Ailizane, and had just admitted to a jaunt to the far end of another continent based entirely upon a friend's whim.

"Metallic in appearance, but perhaps that is a byproduct of its actions rather than its own inherent structure," Sivan murmured to himself, taking mental notes until he could write them down. His eyes were fixed, but he was sembling as best he was able from this vantage.

"Some are surprised to know that there is a fair amount of iron in our blood," he said to Imogen, "regardless of race. And various amounts of other metals dissolved into our flesh. That effect could kill a person as easily as a tree."

Back to the studying, "Wise to submerge it in water. There are alchemical compounds that must be stored in other media, especially to prevent them to reacting to the water in the air... sometimes explosively." He paused, listening, then shook his head and returned to his scans. It would have been just like Jacun to punctuate a conversation several rooms away with a controlled explosion, but apparently today was not one of those days.

"And in the days of the Boundless Empire, there were Hytori living on other worlds orbiting distant stars so if one of those ancients caught a falling star and put it in their pocket to play with later... Determining the 'where' of it might be nonsensical to us in this more bounded time." He frowned. "Oh."

[Imogen]

Imogen hadn't expected Sivan to be able to simply glance at the rock and give her any new information, of course; still, she did find herself somewhat disappointed. There were a thousand little mysteries she'd uncovered over the course of her travels since the fall of Zaichaer, but the provenance and properties of the mysterious substance nagged at her more than most. She'd gotten quite a lot of use out of the stuff, from completing the primal-slaying spell she'd used on Kegumu, to protecting Destyn and herself during the assault on the void creature imprisoning the series, to keeping herself free of parasites while sneaking through the abandoned streets of Kythera. Arguably, she would be dead now without the stuff.

But she worried, still. The spirits had been very clear that the stuff was not born of Aedrin, and the last thing the witch wanted was to discover that she'd been unknowingly poisoning the world while using it, or something.

"I can confirm that it is metal." she said, "Though if it could be worked and by what processes, I could not say- I have only ever manipulated it by dint of magic. Likewise I could not tell you how hard it is, for it softens anything I try to test it with, making the results unreliable. You can keep this bit, if you like. It's just taking up room in my study."

Plus, she knew where to get more. A lot more. Though the idea of actually moving the meteorite triggered an instinctive revulsion in her, for doing it the first time had nearly proven fatal.

"Well, I will try to contact you, when next I must return. Though getting to Southern Ecith is onerous, the return is trivial; I am a Traverser myself, and for reasons too complex to mention although the jump from Drathera to the south is beyond me, I can very easily send someone safely back."

Actually she had no earthly idea why she could do that. It had been one of the strange payments the spirit courts had made to her, that her Traversion to--but not from--the isle of Ailos was subsidized by the land itself, which had readily answered her call without regard to distance. Very useful, of course, especially now that it was so easy to get back to Karnor from there.

"As for you-" Imogen turned her eyes back to Zef, "Finn did not ask me to keep any secrets, and I see no reason to do so. If I find anything substantial in my investigation, I will naturally send it to you."

[Sivan]

"Oh," Sivan reiterated with a bit less emphasis. "Oh, thank you. I will do more testing and let you know what I find."

Sensing it was safe enough, he reached out and took the container with his bare hands. Jacun would have something he could put it in for safer transportation to his workshop and soon-to-be laboratory. He might even ask Torin when the next time his patron was due to visit because Sivan knew she had a particular interest in the stars and things from the firmament.

The abmetal retrieved, there was no need to keep the portal open. While Sivan wasn't initiated in Traveling, he was able to follow the scrivening that had refined her work, and it was always interesting to see another mage at work, especially when combining their disciplines. They all made baby-steps toward archmagic, though he supposed that was beyond their reach for good reason now.

"I travel a fair amount these days, too, but you can always send word via Kilvin's Forge," though he didn't mention that Sunrunner was now on the sign as well, "or via Jacun if that is easier. He will complain; just ignore him."

"Wish you wouldn't go back to Silfanore," Zef grunted. "They didn't appreciate you when you were young; they only appreciate you now because you're accomplished in your field and they want to take credit..." But he nodded his thanks to Imogen. "If you see Finn, tell him to drop by sometime. If he waits too long, I'll be dead."

For never having experienced fatherhood, Zef had quickly learned how to level a guilt trip.

Sivan rose.

"I'm going to see about something to carry this in and whether Jacun needs help with your purchase."

Jacun rarely needed help, but Sivan could expedite the process so Imogen wouldn't have to spend her entire afternoon with the curmudgeon.

[Imogen]

"Of course. Well, thank you for the talk, Master Sivan, and for looking at my rock." It wasn't exactly a high-priority matter, but Imogen would feel better if a professional could tell her that the rock wasn't likely to poison the seawater, or that by mimicking the rock's power she wasn't somehow tainting the earth with some weird, alien aether, "And I will carry your message to Finn when next I contact him. Or... Kitty will, anyway. By letter, I mean, Kitty can't talk."

Realizing that she'd begun to babble just a bit, the witch sat back down and turned her attention to the table, which--she now realized--was still covered with the sandy debris of her impromptu circle. With a little tsk of embarrassment, the Ork woman produced a small brush and dustpan, seemingly from nowhere, and set to sweeping it all up. Instincts well-honed from years of janitorial work guiding her, Imogen quickly and efficiently gathered all of the depleted sorcerer's sand, which she surreptitiously tipped into slipspace.

If only Carina had taught her that trick before the Pfenning had shut down, all those years ago. Then again, she could hardly imagine the sheer volume of trash she'd have left floating in the space between space. Well... it was dirty enough in there anyway. Doubtless nobody would even notice.

"Oh, yes, someone mentioned Master Sivan had been to Silfanore. It's a right shame, but that's one of the few places I've never managed to go." Imogen scratched at her neck, "Come to think of it, not sure any of the Covens have ever had dealings there. Too far east, I reckon. More's the pity- I was telling Mister Finn when I spoke to him that most of the swordsmen of Karnor practice styles either descended from the raiders or corruptions of Raxen's teachings. I've always wanted to see how the Hytori styles look; I reckon they're insular enough that they wouldn't have borrowed too much from the Arbiters."

She sighed. "I had really hoped to see some of that in the Solunarians while I was in Drathera, but I think they take too much from the... desert tribesmen, whatchacall'em."

Not that Imogen had time to jaunt off to Sol'Valen on a lark like that. Even if she did, the elves were famously cagey and particular about that kind of thing. Well, maybe someday she'd run into one in a foreign land and get a chance to press them to spar.