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 Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2025 8:03 pm
Joy's idea of privacy had always been - at least since powering up - to be in the open as much as possible. This was not, perhaps, the same idea that Lyndin had, and so she had after some consideration split the difference when proposing a place for them to speak together. At some point the little neighborhood spread out at the bottom of the hill had been a brand new one, full of promise and community projects, until surburban rot had set in. It now clung sadly to its more optimistic roots, sagging away from them as ivy sags away from the crumbling wall it has itself slowly torn to the ground, and even half the buildings below had long-worn For Sale signs in the front lawns, let alone here, on their little perch where the development had never quite reached its initial plans. One of those optimistic roots was an abandoned community garden, complete with its tiny and ramshackle shed, now long disused and bereft of tools. She sat on a stack of tires in the lee of one wall, that had at one time been used to mark out little beds of flowers and herbs: looking quite queenly and majestic despite her perch and the fact that she was eating cherries out of a plastic bag, kicking her spurred heels gently to and fro in the shadows that were especially deep between the shed and the nearby treeline. Open enough to see anyone approaching; hopefully secure enough to make her liaison feel comfortable. The mint had been a problem, she observed, blankly running her eyes over the rampant overgrowth, but surprisingly so had the rosemary, which had completely taken over a corner and turned it into a kind of fragrant thicket which further made the place hostile to trespassing or, indeed, to legitimate visitors. She had no idea what to expect. Lysanna especially had given her mixed ideas of the Commodore. But he had made the time for her, which had to be blunt somewhat surprised her. Perhaps Rhysi had given him an inaccurate idea of her claims to attention. She was a little annoyed by her own sudden nerves. Lysanna and Rhysi had taught her not to expect the tell-tale ping of an approaching energy signature, but she looked up at a little sound that, had she not been on alert, might have escaped her notice entirely.
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Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2025 9:05 am
Lyndin arrived with silent presence. For a man of his size, he moved with a practiced care, like he was aware of every blade of grass pressed low to the ground beneath his boot. He wore his full regalia, with no indication that he found any discomfort in it despite the summer warmth. His expression was something calm, though not without interest. He spent time on Earth, but rarely in places like this. Lyndin wasted no opportunity presented to him, but he was not here to contemplate the wasteful surplus Earth managed to squander. He smiled at Joy, as courtesy dictated. He was not unhappy to be here, but he arrived with curiosity. “Joyeuse Garde,” he greeted. “I hope I have not kept you waiting long.” He was early, but only by a moment.
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Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2025 11:26 am
The Space Cauldron sorry for how long all these tags are gonna be, I am trying to cram as much into them as possible to make fewer needs for replies so they're sort of like unrealistically verbose, please pretend she isn't being rude and railroading him and pretend she's letting him get a word in edgewise, thank you, gomen, lmao "Haven't kept me waiting at all," she answered cheerfully, hesitating before sticking out a hand to shake. Lysanna, after all, had been willing to shake her hand. Perhaps it was the politest option available to her. "Thank you so much for your time. I know you're very busy. Rhysi was very kind and helpful to me - in getting this message to you - and in, you know." She had to think for a second. "Being Rhysi," she decided. Another pause ensued. She had, of course, somewhat sorted out what she wanted to say beforehand. But all the same, it's easier to do such things in the uninterrupted and easy silence of your own head than in the flesh. “I would just like to say, first of all, that I have heard a lot recently about your goals here on Earth, and I respect and admire both you and your family here. I cannot imagine the pressure you are under, and how much resilience it must take to keep going in the face of everything. And I am, of course, grateful to you. We all must be.” She said this simply, without flattery or indulgent simpering, offering her gratitude up as the plain fact that it was. It was easier to say thank you to Lyndin, who seemed a little aloof from petty humanity in a way that Almadel hadn't, whether the idea was accurate or not. Besides, she had gone in with the assumption that Almadel was a conman. It was a little harder to know what Lyndin was. “I wish you every success. I hope you save your world, like you helped save ours. And I wanted to talk to you because I am trying to save a very, very tiny and insignificant world myself - the world for just one person, you know. It’s not as vital or anywhere near as demanding and it may be futile in the ways that I have faith your own endeavors can’t be. I believe that you will save your world, and I don’t mean to distract you from that - I only want to ask you for a little information that I think might help in saving mine. His. And I am here to offer what information I might give in return, although I believe that it isn't much - or maybe anything.” Well, now for it. "I do not know how much you know of a knight's Wonders - or the ghosts that some of them house. I imagine you must know a great deal. I imagine more than me, if I'm being honest," she added bluntly. "But I know that you must know a lot about the Hollow - about the energy that was involved in that entire mess. The way those things intersected at that time is - of interest to me."
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2025 11:41 pm
Lyndin returned the handshake with a practiced grace, neither too weak nor too strong, neither too eager nor unwilling. His handshake was as refined as he was. He didn’t hold it for too long nor was he too quick to drop it. Joy had his full attention from the second of his arrival. He listened to her gratitude and received it with no fanfare, because he had been a part in the battle as much as any of them. They had all fought to the best of their capabilities. He had fought the best of his. She was among the very few that saw fit to recognize his participation but he did not correct her. She had come with a topic in mind and he would not burden her with trivialities. Though a practical man, and one forced to make decisions that benefitted the many over the few, he was not immune to compassion, nor would he ever think that there was a reason for one life to suffer if something could be done. He listened to Joy contemplatively, nodding slightly as she spoke. “I know some of Wonders,” he confirmed, most certainly minimizing the wealth of knowledge he’d accumulated over the years. “And their ghosts.” Of the Hollow, he knew less. But, some. “That energy is of interest to me as well.” He had his own reasons to be interested in it, undoubtedly at least somewhat known to Joy if she had been spending time with Rhysi. He reiterated what she might have already known and explained, “Velencya’s core requires energy to sustain itself. We have been self-sufficient for centuries. But, things change. You are in an era of impermanence. I suspect in your life you will be witness to a great many anomalies within this universe.” Her interest in the Calamitous Hollow’s energy was unsurprising, but he knew too little of her goals with it so he asked, “What does saving your world–his–look like to you?” It didn’t seem to be a trap, but if it were, he would have been too clever to show his hand so early on. He watched her with a thoughtful look, not as if he were scrutinizing her, but simply as if he were giving every word the attention it deserved.
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Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2025 5:51 am
It was difficult to say aloud what she had been denying saying even to herself. Still. “Maybe it's too much effort to expend on one life that got thrown away the first time,” she said. “But have you ever - well. I guess not. But sometimes you get handed a single life to be responsible for that you didn't ask for - I hate to compare a grown man to a stray dog, but - and it's hard to just put it aside and pretend not to care. I don't know what…” She hesitated. “During the Hollow - after all those years of patient resignation to what sounds to me like a pretty shitty fate - something happened, and the ghost of my Wonder - Gouvernail, is his name - was able to touch the real world for a moment, during a storm. And I think in that moment it destroyed all of his peace. Because there's despair - resignation - you know? And then there's hope, and isn't hope just awful? Because you can't stop feeding it. You have a responsibility to it. And I think he thought maybe he would have a chance to - to do over some part of what he'd done wrong the first time, and live in a way he'd never let himself. But it was only a moment. Her voice was steady, but it was clearly a struggle. “He was very bent on his work. To the exclusion of his life. And he has regrets, not for the work, but for not finding a way to live alongside it. Because what do we even fight for - what's the point of any of it? Why not just walk away? - if not to celebrate the lives we save by enjoying ours? Why fight for the sake of making more fighting?” She was speaking very quickly now, run away with by feeling, and corrected herself. “Forgive me. I'm getting sidetracked and wasting your time. In brief, he has been tormented by hope he did not ask for into stirring up regrets he'd put to sleep centuries ago. I spoke briefly to Almadel and he said that there were stories, maybe true stories, that the Hollow can - can bring back the dead, I guess. But that's too high a cost. It could be a thousand men I loved,” she finished, the word tumbling out of her unbidden and without thinking, “and it would be too high a price to negotiate with something so awful, if you even can negotiate with it at all. I will not throw away anyone else's life just to give him a second chance at his. But I came to ask - about that energy - and whether it exists in some other way. The Cauldron or Something Else has seen fit to give him this awful immortality, and I feel like there must be some avenue to using it for good - to fix mistakes - rather than it being this prison of them, and if the door was opened once somehow, maybe there are other keys to open it again. I think even an hour - a day - “It's not in my power to help everyone, but I have to help who I can. No one else can help him if I can't. If you know anything I could look into - any avenue at all of investigation - if you can tell me what happened during that storm, even, so I can tell him whether he needs to kill that hope as a mercy to himself -” And then, finally, the weeks of sleep deprivation and her own unfed hope spilled over into a rare, uncharacteristic display of emotion. “Forgive me,” she repeated, her voice choked. “I'm not usually so maudlin and sentimental. I'm ashamed of myself. But if you knew him - he’s a good man,” she finished simply, with a final, brief gush of frustrated tears, almost instantly mastered.
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Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2025 3:22 pm
“It’s no waste of time,” Lyndin assured patiently. He had no need to give her false comfort or lip service; he said it and he meant it. “I know the value of a life.” Even if he was burdened with a different sort of obligation. One life, or many lives. There was a pragmatic answer. It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t have done anything for one life if there was an option. Lyndin was beholden to practicality, but he found it difficult to begrudge those still able to dream. “You need no forgiveness for carrying deep emotion. I find those that can admirable.” Lyndin did not move while she spoke; he was statuesque, watching with a patience that befitted his millennia of life. His expression was not entirely unreadable. There was a kindness to it, tempered by stoicism that clung to him effortlessly. It suited him. “I admire your conviction, and your passion. He is lucky to have you leading this battle for him. But, I think I may not be the best person to speak to when it comes to matters of starseeds. But,” he dipped his head thoughtfully. “...In matters of energy, I have some expertise.” And it just so happened that he too was investigating the effect of the Calamitous Hollow’s energy upon starseeds. “I’ve been going through the data I collected before the Calamitous Hollow arrived. I wasn’t able to get much useful data from the fight, but I’m still processing things. I can’t give you a concrete answer, maybe not in the way you want.” Which was to say, he couldn’t tell her how she might accomplish breathing life into a ghost. He had something to offer, at least. “But I can tell you that such energy most certainly exists, in at least some other way. I don’t yet understand the means to it, but I know it’s possible. The Calamitous Hollow was capable of generating a great deal of power. It could send storms to cover worlds–spread throughout the galaxy. So know that going into it, you are fighting an uphill battle. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t fight it.” He crossed his arms over his chest now, for no other reason than comfort. “I have a hypothesis, but little means to prove it. We haven’t been able to do much research on Knight Wonders, so I hope you will forgive the speculation. I wouldn’t share the thought if I didn’t think it had merit. I know that some Knights, upon passing, linger at their Wonder. Sometimes it is simply because the starseed is trapped, and sometimes because they simply refuse to return to the Cauldron. To my knowledge, the ability for a spiritual echo to manifest is limited specifically to those that once served a Wonder. So I think it is safe to assume that there is some correlation between them taking form, and the magic strong enough to give them form. Tell me of your Wonder, what is the status? Is it healthy or are you still rebuilding? How do you manage the Code? Does your magic malfunction? Forgive me for the questions. They are not meant to be intrusive. I suspect that those will be important things for you to consider. You’ll need a strong foundation to start with. I believe the Calamitous Hollow, the storms at least, had so much energy that it was able to charge–overcharge–the energy in an area. I haven’t been able to replicate it. “I don’t know if it’s possible to harness that much raw power to replicate the conditions of the storm exactly. But, there may be ways to supplement it. If the conditions are right. You can’t charge a battery beyond capacity, so you need to enhance the parameters. I know Knights can devote themselves to their Wonders. I know the bond between a Knight and their Wonder is mutually beneficial. What you put into it is what you get out of it, isn’t it?”
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