[ORP] Dream-mire Chalet: Teide's Home

[Silence]

Alder's attention was caught by the notice on the door to the kids' room. K thirty three P out... was K an abbreviation for something? Kelron thirty three Phoenix's out... oh, right... if you turned the threes around, it... ah... apparently not everything about Teide was unnecessarily complicated.

He was torn out of his thoughts by the mention of a drink.

"What? Oh, no, it's fine thanks... I ah, don't drink stuff... water kills things like me, see?"

There was an awkward silence until Munay helpfully clued him in on what was just said.

"So ah... when yeh gave Guld here teh me... did you feel weird after it? I mean, I know that she's supposed teh help us and all, but I got so used teh havin her help me with keepin a form up all the time and controllin all my beetle things that I forgot how difficult it was teh do it myself... I mean, yeh had teh like remember what form yeh have up all the damn time... I'd forgotten about that. I'd kinda gotten used teh not havin teh fiddle with a coin all the damn time just teh remind myself I don't have claws."

He subconsciously took a coin from his pocket and started fiddling with it as he talked.

"So I guess I just wanna know whether it's normal teh start becoming dependant on the necklace like when yeh get her... not that I'm not happy teh have her, just wonderin whether this is supposed teh happen or not."

"That's probably the least important thing, but I don't know how teh ask the other stuff, so I ah... let's just start there, ok?"

"Are yeh sure yeh don't wanna question me first? I mean, it feels like we only ever meet each other cause I got questions for yeh... which is probably true, but still... I owe yeh a good few answers by now if yeh want em... plus, my other questions are about the void, so yeh might not even know... it's a bit outside the realms of just magic that place... somethin else all together far's I know."

[Teide]

Teide was rather surprised at first by his refusal. It was just polite to offer but what really surprised her was she did not know that about changelings. She'd have to remember that and make a note of it in the various ways to kill other races....yes she had such a book for personal use. One never knew what their enemy may be...best be prepared for all scenarios. As for Alder personally, she had no intention of harming him. Ther was an awkward silence that followed. He closed it with the first of his questions. She said nothing as she quietly listened, taking a seat.

She wanted until he said his full speech. Mentally answering in her head first before choosing how to word the answers aloud, "Munay is an artifact or a key....in a way...once you're bonded to her...a part of you will always...she becomes like another part of you....I touched her....so by looking at others I know they have....what you are experiencing is what happens...it's expected...one either bonds to her or rejects her...and rejections results in death for the untainted."

She lets a drink appear in her hand as she takes a sip.

"Now on the void....yes I know it. One thing you have to remember is Secfenia is created by the Mages and maintained by Zachrin. Any other forces or gods are either under the Mages or foreigners from another world. None of these deities had anything to do with creating the fabric of this world. Rather pockets since the rifts began is it the plane of this world in certain areas and another world are overlapping into a singular plane of mixed energy. These areas are altered from their state of creation. The void is such a place. The native secfenian void is nothing....everything ceased to exist there. But recently since someone has been trying to unlock th fallen....it is now an open door way to multiple realities...and the voids of other worlds...with no defined border or guardian...you could cross the other voids interchanging with the secfenian void...really you could end up anywhere...in anyone's control if you cross a void walker...or you could cross into non existence. It's a gamble. The established rules of the secfenian void were nothingness and the prison of the fallen. Now it's a maze of rifts into countless voids and madness. So the void you experience might differ from the next depending where you cross into. It's an open door."

[Silence]

Alder noticed how she utterly ignored his question about what she wanted to know... but he wasn't sure if he wanted to ask the rest. He didn't want to make an enemy of Teide... and in this case, he had other places to turn to... no, maybe it was best to deal with this one himself... Eli was her nephew after all, and although he liked her, she wasn't somebody he was going to trust unless he was forced to... there weren't many people he trusted. The witcher had been one, although Alder hadn't seen him in months, despite keeping his home in some seblance of order for if he felt he wanted to ever return. Roger had been another, but he too had disappeared.

All in all, Alder was finding himself more and more backed into a corner... people he had trusted from the moment he had gotten involved were falling away from him while people who were determined to make his life hell for no reason other than they could were becoming more and more frequent, what's more, he kept seeing more and more examples of the whole damn realm falling apart, and he wasn't quite ready for it yet... he was closer than he'd ever thought he'd be, but he was still far from ready for any of this.

At some point, he'd have to make a leap of faith, but that wouldn't be today, that decision would not be to trust Teide with something that could turn one of his few assets against him. Therefore, Alder just shrugged.

"That's actually about all I needed teh know as it happens... so, yeh wanted me teh be here for somethin?"

That was far from all he needed to know. But there were so many things he didn't know where to begin. What's more, those problems were his, not Teide's... and he was damned if he was going to drag somebody else into them. So he just leaned forward expectantly with a helpful expression.

"After all, it's about time I paid yeh back a bit for all yeh've done, right?"

[Teide]

Teide stared at him a long moment. He didn't know it but there was a very small sadness in her eyes. A longing to be seen, beyond all her walls...perhaps that was why Teide invited him into her home. She'd hoped he would look around and see what people perceived about her was not always right...one thing Teide hated was assumptions. Yet as she looked at Alder, studying his body language she still saw it in his eyes. He was not ready. He was still assuming when Teide felt like she hardly knew herself so how could anyone know her? There it was again that feeling of loneliness. She looked from side to side and it seemed like the whole world was mad, power mad. Everyone grasping for power and if she was honest her knowledge had been recently abused. Teide didn't feel like sharing much, she didn't feel curious. She felt hollow and tired....

When she sighed, it showed.

"I don't offer answers often without a price. I don't take lightly the abuse of things I have given in good faith."

Her voice started to darken, "I know about Eli and Munay...and I don't know about the other details just that he had her...I saw her energies on him and he told me you were in trouble with Saela Di Carpietra."

Teide decided to just get to her point, "Saela is dangerous...avoid getting too involved with that family." Teide looked at a few scars on her arms, "She will kill anyone if she is mad enough. She'll kill even her own family...her own children if she goes black." the last bit caused her voice to choke, "I was going to donate my entire collection to the Kiene library but for now...the world is not ready." she said quickly to change the subject. She got up and looked to a window as if remembering a piece of the past was physically painful. Teide couldn't protect anyone in the end...she still wasn't strong enough.

"I just wanted to warn you she may be searching to hurt you." Teide wondered if anyone would see her beyond the taint of affiliation. It was unlikely. Teide had to resign herself to it, "And to ask if you have uncovered anything else on the Fallen since you've had Munay?"

[Silence]

There was something else. Teide was bloody good at hiding things, but he was a changeling, and what's more, he had spent most of his life detecting lies and learning to hide them. Teide had a great edge in magic, probably a slight edge in unarmed combat, but the only thing Alder could beat anybody at when he had gotten to know them a little was lying. Munay had only increased his ability to do that. The first time he had been at a disadvantage because frankly, he had just been terrified and he'd known next to nothing about the person he was talking to. She hadn't helped by acting like she could kill him at any moment.

The reason he hadn't been surprised by the inside of the building was because... well, he hadn't expected anything. He knew she cared about these kids and would do pretty much anything to give them a stable life style. He frankly didn't know much about her other than the world had kicked her down a good few times as well. What he didn't know was her mind. He wasn't a mind reader, and she did so many contradictory things. He wasn't sure if she was resentful towards the world, holding everything in like a time bomb, letting it all go, or what? The fact that she'd gone and lost her memory and changed so many damn times hadn't helped.

What he had seen had only lead him to expect something like this.

She probably knew that he had noticed her going about killing things to keep herself alive, and that she had been practically torn apart by it, having to absorb their thoughts as she did so. The reason she found killing painful was the same reason he refused to kill at all. Which of them was right, he didn't know, and it wasn't his place to say.

He'd also seen her with the dark elf. She seemed to have a great admiration for him, and a deep connection, which scared him a little when the dark elf could quite possibly kill him in the future for not being able to remember his family's names. If she associated with somebody who would kill for something like that, then... no, you couldn't judge a person by the company they kept. He didn't know the history there, he was not in a place to judge.

What he had seen between the two was that Rieron had, for some reason, been willing to risk his life to save her from something she'd turned into. She was also bound by a contract to him, so she couldn't die. She'd wanted to die for some reason... probably because experience told her that so long as she got up, something would kick her back down, so why keep getting up?

There was a lot of things that happened that time that he hadn't understood, but he'd seen Teide become... something, and the elf had still tried to help her. That had been the last he'd seen before something had killed his beetle within a heartbeat and he had woken up with a splitting headache.

"The fallen... the dark mages like..."

He sighed. Technically, this was his problem. He was the one involved in this mess, and Teide would be safe if all went wrong... he didn't need to get her involved.

"You asked... and I kinda owe yeh for what yeh've done so far."

He placed his cloak down on the floor, then reached through it and started to grope for something.

"Well, firstly, the void god and such are startin teh make plans on this world. Don't know if that interests yeh, but they're fairly sure that if they kill a whole bunch of people, they'll be able teh turn the whole of this plane inteh the void. The god Archythingy's power is a whole lot less on this plane, but it's still pretty damn scary. Eli's one of his followers and had been tryin teh kill me for some time. I warned him three times in three minutes that if he didn't stop, I'd fight back, he didn't, I hit him over the head with a table leg and got rid of his pets. Then I think he goes and lies teh the lightnin woman about what happened, and I'm stuck with this problem... but that's my problem. Somewhere along the line, he tried teh get revenge by stealin Munay, and I get it back. I also mighta been hit by a sword as big as three or four houses in that time and spent a week in hell, but that don't really matter."

"Now, the fallen, it ain't easy... see, while I was in hell, I spent some time lookin for ways of bringin back a fallen mage, or whether there were any people aimin teh do so. Apparently one of the main groups right now on that plane is one called the Golgotha alliance. They're aimin teh bring back Damonica, and they're infilitratin this plane teh do so. A whole bunch of imps, ice thingies, and a whole bunch of other stuff, and a group of changelins are after this."

Finally he found what he'd been groping in his pocket dimension for and drew out a rather large pile of papers.

"No, that's university paperwork, and ah... ah, there we go." He threw half of them back into the cloak, where they disappeared through the floor. The rest, he placed on a table in front of Teide.

"Now here's the problem... see, this is my problem, not yours. Feel free teh read this, we were gonna send yeh a copy anyway, but if yeh wanna get involved, it ain't my fault."

He then removed his hand from the top of the papers.

"It ain't finished yet, me and Shin are still tryin teh pick up the information we need teh figure out exactly what happened, but that's about the biggest thing I've been doin with the necklace. I also went and talked teh Novajen, but she disappeared pretty soon afterwards."

"Look up somethin called the birth chant. It's just about comin about now, well, they think it is, so they're actin on it. I also know most of how changelins fit inteh this, well some of it. That's also there."

((The pages contain a recounting of the events within the changeling's curse rp along with the inserts that are in act II. Also, they contain the information I sent to you on changelings and their history))

"Teide... why did yeh really want me here? I mean, yer better than most at hidin it, but yer face is all wrong... there's still somethin yeh really want teh do, but for some reason, yer also... I dunno, I ain't seen enough of yeh to know what some of the stuff means, but yer hidin somethin... or at least, not sayin somethin that yeh wanna... I think... fairly sure."

Alder took a fairly rotten orange from his pocket and started to chew on it.