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A hill, Valhalla suggested. Chris, rather - he forgot nothing behind the circumstances of their meeting - and the strange creature still remained after all this time. How long had it been since their foray into the Negaverse's domain now? Scholomance guessed a year, roughly, and his anger burned all the more for it. A year, and and the manipulative leech of a king still loitered on their soil. Scholomance needed to curb his terrible fury, however, as Valhalla stood a better chance of recovering needful information from Caedus if Scholomance wasn't trying to cave his face in. The urge for it never relented.

Chris's call came earlier in the evening, and Isaiah agreed on time and location. Evening set in and the sun sank below the horizon line, yet night had not yet claimed dominion over the sky. A liminal twilight settled as a harbinger, casting cold highlights over all it touched. If nothing else, it lent the proper tint to the receding winter weather. Scholomance sighed, and he could still see his breath fog out on the still air. The line of trees marked the entrance to the hill where Caedus was said to dwell, and Scholomance dared not cross that threshold without Valhalla's accompaniment. Doing so may cause an unseemly altercation long before Valhalla found the time to arrive.

So Scholomance lingered, considered a smoke, and considered his friend. It had been some months since they met now, and Chris confessed to him the sordid state of his starseed. Or Scholomance could only assume - he never outright spoke of it as his own, and the Saturn knight could well be wrong about his suppositions here. Regardless of the owner, the busted starseed clung to life for this long. Scholomance himself found it easy to think that, since it survived to this point, it could stick around for a while longer. The longer the threat of death lingered, the easier he found it to adopt such a laissez-faire attitude toward its presence. Maybe Chris felt the same. Or maybe he didn't - maybe he simply couldn't justify the venture, or never found time outside of a busy schedule to attend to it. But prioritizing work, social obligation, other favors over an altered starseed… Such a tactic spoke of poor organization.

Closing his eyes, Scholomance relegated his attention to sussing out errant auric energies. From his vantage point, no chaos sprang up and order presences seldom strayed into his purview. If Chris chose to arrive as Valhalla, the Saturn knight would feel it.

Too far away to hear what was being said, Caedus lingered. He was not so accustomed to dealing with groups and they always seemed to put him on edge. His nerves were constantly aflame—a valid fear, considering some of the situations he’d gotten himself into. He wasn’t particularly out of sight; he had been wandering through the maze of trees not so far away from the clearing on the hill.

He thought he might recognize one of the men but it was hard to tell in such shadow, and sometimes faces just seemed to blend together.

He did not approach the Knights, perhaps out of some desire not to appear too forward or make an attack to easy. Neither, though, did he stray away from them. His bones were weary but he had pride enough not to take a seat in front of them—at least, until he knew their purpose.

While he might not have had an energy signature, he was not silent. Leaves rustled beneath him, and branches snapped as he slowly weaved between the trees until he was clearly visible.

His hood was drawn up and though his movements were slow and deliberate, it was hard to miss the soft jangling of crystals and rock from the bags he kept on him.

His eyes lifted, gold and glowing. He offered no greeting, but he watched inquisitively. In a strange way, it was inviting; he said with a hidden expression better than what he probably could have said with words.

Valhalla listened to Scholomance make half-teasing comments, and depreciative remarks about himself, trying not to show too much distress at the thought of something worse happening to the other knight. From what he was told it had been close. That his starseed had been taken, that there were youma and negaverse officers fighting, and how many people were hurt.

The fact that Scholomance was there now was something of a relief, but it also made Valhalla’s heart ache, wishing there was something more he could do, something more he could have done, but he knew there was only moving forward from there.

He wanted to say more to the other knight, perhaps to try and offer him comfort or explain how he’d learned about what happened, since he knew it was probably strange that he knew about things when he hadn’t even been there, but he could hear the rustling of branches and jingle of crystals and knew they were not alone.

"Good evening. It’s been a while as well," Valhalla greeted, glancing from Scholomance as if to make sure he was still doing okay, before looking up to where Caedus stood before them. "Sorry to bother you, but are you at all familiar with starseeds?"

A little over a year ago he had every intention of broaching the subject with Caedus, but their conversation ended up being solely on the Negaverse and everything that was happening. A plea for peace before going to fight them. There was another pause, and then he drew in a breath to settle himself, knowing it would be best if he was candid about everything.

"Almost two years ago, there was an attempt to corrupt me. It was stopped, but it left my starseed with a crack that’s now leaking energy. I’m looking for a way to fix it, or at least stall or replenish the energy coming out."

The truth came, and while Scholomance retained a margin of hope that the story concerning Valhalla's 'friend' proved the truth, he discovered no great surprise in learning that Valhalla stood the victim. He broached the subject with no great panic, which Scholomance approved of in his own internal observations, and Scholomance fell quiet through Valhalla's short explanation. Hearing it once more helped to cement timeframes for how such an ill affair befell his fellow knight. How Valhalla managed to survive this long was beyond him, but he considered it a boon nonetheless; Valhalla maintained a lot of compassion for others that most knights lacked. And on a personal level, he wasn't such a bad conversation partner.

Caedus, however, continued to cement Scholomance's poor opinion of him. His anger frothed as it often did, and this time, Scholomance felt no great need to swallow it whole in the presence of another knight. "Then take him to space and fix it," Scholomance snapped in short order. "You're sitting on a veritable ******** goldmine of energy, are you not? All these knights and senshi went out expressly to get you the energy to get back to space, did they not? You couldn't possibly have wasted it all on that one-way ticket to total destruction of all that is Order, right?" Scholomance locked his hand to his hip in hopes of dissuading himself of simply cracking his whip over Caedus' face for his moronity.

"I don't trust you. You sent us into that hell knowing precisely what we would face, knowing that we could do nothing in there, and left us all to die until Cosmos swooped in like a ******** godsend and delivered us from the jaws of death. You laid the pretty little trap that could've killed us all. And you think you have the right to stand around with your thumbs up your a** and pry about Valhalla's starseed? No.

"You already said you knew nothing of how to cure it here on Earth. So unless you're taking him out into space, you're useless to him. Prying into his affairs isn't going to get him any closer to an answer."

Scholomance had acquired Caedus’ attention, though initially it came in the form of a contemplative, almost stoic expression.

“You misunderstand my abilities, I believe,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “If I could travel into space, I would have left long ago. My power is currently dependent on what supply of energy I have available.”

He did not argue about the portal; he did not argue that no Senshi, no Knight, was forced to enter. He did not argue that he had warned them of the portals limitations. He did not argue that he had offered them a portal to their mutual enemy in exchange for assistance returning to his own world.

Caedus was by no means blameless for the events of that evening, nor did he claim such, but the blatant hostility of the Saturn Knight made him question the intent of the Knight’s meeting.

Scholomance’s words were fueled by anger and there was little Caedus thought he could reply to without further instigating the male. His eyes drifted to the forest, for only a second, as if he was calculating how long it might take him to disappear into it. He didn’t try to run; instead, he looked back to Valhalla.

“I did not mean for my question to offend you. I had thought if I better understood the situation, I may have some information I could impart. To stop the leaking energy, to heal the injury…” He seemed to think for a moment before musing, “There are crystals, in the universe, full of light and life. They were said to be brimming with energy, capable of healing all injuries. Capable, even, of restoring youth. They grew in clusters. The only ones I ever saw were in the core of a planet, and they were lost when it was destroyed. I do not know what still exists in this universe, but I know that if you have searched every facet of Earth and can find nothing, you should be looking up there.”

He nodded to the starlit sky before continuing, “While I may not be able to take you into space, you have the opportunity to go. There are those who have offered take me to visit their worlds. Perhaps you could find your answer through one of them? I have heard that much of your planets—your Wonders—have been lost to time. I apologize if I am useless to you, but the best information I can give you is to keep looking. I do not believe there is any evil that cannot be done. Metallia is not infallible. Her General-Queen did not corrupt you. You are still functioning. As long as you have the willpower to fight it off, you have time to search. In the meantime,” he seemed to hesitate, though it did not take him too long to work through whatever barrier he’d hit. He removed a crystal, the same as the ones he had previously distributed when the Senshi and Knights were gathering energy to fuel the portal into Negaspace.

“The purpose of this crystal is to store energy, which can then be manipulated. If you are losing energy, perhaps it can be replaced. If you have allies who would donate energy to you, I should think it possible to siphon the energy back into you. I do not think it is enough to allow your starseed to heal itself, but it may be enough to buy you some time to find a true fix.”