Orphan At The Edge Of The World
/ Orphan at the Edge of the World 100 Crystal Cage 38
Turning spirit sight inward, the young mage noted that the damage to his mind had been quite severe but overall he was very much still intact. The drain to his soul's core essence hadn't breached his aura layer and a good deal of the reason for that was because there had simply not been enough time for the offending grudge to do much more. With burning curiosity, Gingerly shifted himself to try and uncover the reasons for his miraculous if somewhat painful survival.
It didn't take long for him to realize that he was laying in the smashed remains of Rose. Were it not for his sub-mind, however, he would have pretty much been a vegetable as the back of his head had partially caved in. What confused him the most was how the elevator hadn't detached and fallen. The answer there ended up being the least miraculous thing about his survival.
Aside from a few popped rivets, the other, more difficult to see coupling had stayed in its track and had merely slid down some more before jamming in a previously less damaged and more stable portion. It wasn't exactly safe by any means but they hadn't been nearly as in danger of plummeting to their death as the sprite had made it seem. As angry as he wanted to get, there wasn't actually anything wrong or even particularly bad about Titania Prime's urging them to evacuate the elevator so he just let it go.
After having had the chance to reevaluate circumstances, Orison decided to have a drone collect as much of Rose as he could. Once her remains had been brought out of the construct, it would serve as a beacon for Osomo to respawn her. Even if it had been by chance, Rose had saved his life in a manner of speaking and his choice to end her was only a desperation choice in the moment.
By that point, Orison considered severe soul fading as punishment enough and he could always just give her a wide birth in the future if she couldn't forgive and forget what essentially had been her own fault to begin with. Its not as if he planned on being around for much longer anyway. In his mind, bringing Emily's psycho friend back for respawn was the lesser of two hard choices.
While the young mage was recuperating, his companions hadn't been idle. Once Titania Prime had confirmed that Orison was alive, Stag and Annie had been deconstructing the apartments they found themselves in for materials to create something sturdy enough to reach him with. Their answer had been a rope ladder created with children and men's clothes that the original owner had saved as mementos.
Construct One's secondary apartments had been turned into a storage facility of many such types of mementos. In particular, it was filled with many arts and crafts. That didn't mean there weren't things of value in the apartments, they just weren't of any interest to Orison. To his way of thinking, there wasn't much need to amass things that would only be dusted by a boundary crossing.
After surviving such a horrid ordeal, however, Orison wasn't willing to just walk away without trying to delve a little for something worth salvaging. "I know that the thing I smashed had already claimed the main legacy but is there no notes or journals that could have had some of that information in it?"
The sprite looked at Orison blankly for a moment and then said, "Between my mistress preserving her brain and the phylactery she made to be her inheritance, she never saw a reason for more. I don't want to upset you but it was a shame that you had to destroy the phylactery to get rid of the controller. Had it been a little smarter it would have hid it instead of carrying it around. Then again, if it had survived for another century or so it might have been able to become something other than what it was. It had already fused with the phylactery quite a bit.
"If you're willing to give my anchor a couple more charges like the ones you gave me before, I could go search through the main suite. I'm not promising anything but there could be something there. At the very least, your friends can take back more valuables. She didn't keep much in her personal rooms but there were the last few things she valued personally before she discarded her body."
Sighing, Orison shelled out the extortion. No sooner done with that, he cleaned the bed with presto and gingerly crawled into it. When he was jostled out of trance sometime later by two sudden additions, since no one was pushing boundaries and it was rather chilly for his less augmented companions, he brought out his blanket and let it be. He even convinced himself that the extra half hour he spent relaxing after he came out of trance was entirely due to letting his sprites finish healing him and had nothing to do with Annie's pleasant clinginess.
Once he felt confident enough to get out of bed without hobbling around like an old man, Orison gingerly removed himself from the elf girl's arms without shoulder or elbow checking Stag's back. While he was digging through the pile of randomness the sprite had tricked flesh golems into delivering, the young mage sensed Stag watching him. When the translucent sprite and even the sleeping Annie's Oberon joined in, he wondered if there was a reason outside of nothing better in the room to look at.
In low tones so as to not disrupt the elf girl's rest, Orison asked, "Do any of you have something you'd like to say or am I just that fascinating?"
The sprite was about to speak when she caught herself and looked towards the Nunos man. Sucking in a deep breath, and mustering up some courage, Stag sat across from Orison on the floor helping him sift through the pile. With all the build up, the young mage was starting to get a bit nervous as to how serious it would be to require the man to need so much dithering before he was ready to say it.
Once a few minutes of silence had past, the sprite was about to break the ice when Stag said, "Annie's problems and especially my own are just beginning. When we leave here, she might be able to deal on her own but I'll be dead within the week if left to fend for myself... After all that you've done to help us, it's..."
Orison sighed and said, "I didn't intend on cutting you lose as soon as we left the construct. Since Annie wants to get the healer training, I was going to take her to Daub and get Mo to have some of his people escort her and run her around a bit. I wasn't exactly sure what you wanted so I was going to ask what your plans were."
Stag confessed, "I don't have any. When you pulled me out of confinement, I was drugged and thought I was hallucinating. If it hadn't been for Iliyani's goading, I would have ignored your invitation. I don't know if you realize how bad I'm alive is for my family yet.
"I was already supposed to be dead. They don't know that I knew but it was obvious. If it wasn't for the guild wanting to have a couple of secret assets, I would be. They don't breed males until its almost time to get rid of them and the Nunos girl that started visiting me since about a month ago, stopped coming last week."
Orison stopped sifting to think. "If you need time and safety to figure your life out, I suppose that sending you to Emris in Snow Cap might be the bet-"
Stag interrupted. "You're not from this world, are you?" Seeing Orison go silent he added, "Forget it..."
Seeing that Stag had used up whatever resolve he'd gathered, the young mage almost let the silence stand. Ultimately, he let curiosity and a small amount of compassion compel him to encourage Stag instead of letting the man shut himself down. Orison didn't quite admit to being an outsider but he didn't deny it either. Instead, he prompted the Nunos man to finish saying whatever the original request was.
Stag said, "I know my pitiful life probably isn't worth much but if you could help me become what you are, even if it's just a chance, even if it's dangerous, I'll do whatever you want. I'll swear whatever oath and serve however you wish... You have something that no one I've ever seen before has and whatever that is, it feels worth giving everything else up for."
Orison rolled the whole thing around in his head. Seeing the young mage wavering between acceptance and a kind but firm denial, Stag got on hands and knees and bent to kiss Orison's foot. The young mage could sense that something fragile but important would break inside the wild fey blooded man if the action was finished. Drawing his feet away, he saw Stag had no intentions of stopping and would just kiss the floor instead.
The young mage realized he was either going to have to accept Stag or the man was going to emotionally and spiritually cripple himself in front of Orison. It wasn't that Stag didn't have pride or that the Nunos man was suicidal. It was quite the opposite. He was just that desperate.
It wasn't that Orison didn't want to accept the determined guy. It was that he only knew of one way that he could without making further delaying sacrifices. That way was one that required trust and more than a comfortable amount of closeness. To offer that to a two day long companion was a lot to ask for but the guilt of realizing he would have actively offered it to Annie if she could have taken it was barely enough to tip things in Stag's favor.
Quickly reaching out to stop Stag, Orison explained, "First off, to get what you want, there are certain things you can't give away. Will almost represents potential directly in 'what I have' so submitting it in exchange for a 'key' wouldn't be a good trade. Let's just stick with a student/teacher kind of thing, alright? I'm not that knowledgeable myself but I can get you to the starting line at least.
Orison spent a few minutes explaining what 'keys' and 'climbing the tower' meant and the general knowledge that Lily had given to him at the start. "The thing is, I don't have any way to give you a key without hurting myself but I have a way for you to earn your own."
It was a fairly involved conversation but the gist was asking Stag to remove Ivan's mark after vaguely explaining how it got there and what it would involve to remove it. With compatibility of spiritual bloodline and the natural instinct that the Nunos family had of erasing a competitor's traces, Orison was confident that Stag could get the job done. Once claimed, Stag should be able to get some decent gains of concept from the mark as well.
If all went as planned, after Stag had removed Ivan's mark, he'd leave enough of his own soul mark behind in Orison's spiritual seat that the young mage could use it to yank Stag up after ascending out of Osomo. Since the mark wouldn't be imprinted on the young mage's soul, he could then return it to Stag after he had studied it some.
After taking a moment to discretely request Titania Prime to interrupt the process if Stag lost control and started doing things Orison didn't want to happen, he was ready. Since the young mage would be occupied repressing his space and intent from hurting Stag, taking whatever safe peeks he could at the concepts within Stag's spiritual bloodline, he'd be fully present on the inner side and have very little focus to spare on the physical side.
Sitting on and leaning back into a discard pile of clothes against a wall, Stag noticed Orison's hesitation. "Hey, you clung on to me to protect me from those ghosts and I clung on to you to help warm you back up. We knew what it was about then and we know what it's about now. I don't know what's worrying you but I'm scared about how you're going to look at me after seeing whatever it is you can see in there."
Shaking himself loose, earning a small chuckle from Stag, Orison stopped hesitating and took his position. Once they'd slipped to the spiritual side of things it became obvious that most of his worries had been over nothing. In his own way, Stag was even more nervous than Orison and any stray thoughts towards things that would have made Orison recall the unpleasant results of his experience with Ivan were simply not present. For Stag, it was a desperate gamble for survival and for the young mage, it was a mutually beneficial exchange. That was it.
Everything played out exactly how Orison wanted it to and there was zero overshare. All said and done, it was like a visit to a dentist from his perspective. There was lots of dread, a little unpleasantness but ultimately it left him with a sense of accomplishment.
An indeterminate amount of time later, Orison came too looking down at a silky white head of hair framed by ebony pointed ears. Annie was sitting between his legs and leaning into him the same way as he was to Stag.
After giving in to an impulse to kiss the top of Annie's head, Orison said, "Feeling left out?"
Sounding slightly disgruntled, she replied, "I'd have to know what you were doing to feel left out."
Orison sighed and said, "Stag was helping me remove a mark on my soul I didn't want. A stubborn person elsewhere was subconsciously fighting against it so I needed a little help."
Stag said, "It's not really that surprising. I could feel what he felt when he marked you. It was... hungry and there was a small desire to lay claim that always floats in the back of a buck's mind, I guess... I'm glad you didn't because I think it would have stung a little but I'm surprised you didn't jump up and put distance between us as soon as you came back to yourself."
Orison shrugged, "Half of it's because I wasn't in any hurry to make Annie jump up and put distance between us. The other half is because it kinda makes me think of a distant memory of when I was just a kid at summer camp, riding with some other kids and a few friends in the back of a flat bed on our way to the river. I feel weirdly mellow and peaceful right now. Come to think of it, I was a little like that when I woke up earlier to, though it wasn't as strong."
The sprite commented helpfully, "That would be the high concentration of negative energy in the construct slowly sapping away your body's vitality. Don't worry. It actually takes a lot to become dangerous. You've got a whole other day before you'd even start getting lazy, much less reach the point of laying down and giving up."
Orison said, "Now, hearing that makes me want to jump up and put some distance... between us and this place."
As they helped Orison sort through the pile, delighting in his lack of interest while they pocketed the 98% he didn't care about, Annie asked, "Why do you only want those odds and ends and none of this other stuff?"
Orison said, "Because 'all that stuff' is more useful to you. Speaking of which... Stag, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but other than what it can do for you in the here and now til we leave, carting all that is only going to be a waste of time. Boundary crossings will take it all away.
"The only things that will survive boundary crossings are boundary items and those were the first things I took. Don't worry about it, though. I'm not stingy and I'll make sure you get a couple of needful bits before then. I've got a crap ton of these tokens I'm sure can get me something serviceable for you."
Looking at Orison in confusion, Annie said, "What are you talking about?"
Orison replied, "Are you willing to give up everything in this world and follow me?"
Getting red faced and flustered, Annie said, "I... You could live with me and my family would be happy to have you. There's no need to run away."
Orison looked at her sadly. "I don't have much choice, Annie. I have friends who might need me and a family far away I'd desperately love to see again... If you wanted to come with me, I'd try to find a way but I'll understand if you can't."
A single tear slid down her face before she wiped it away and said in false cheer, "Well, then I better not get too attached. It was quite the adventure. I don't think I'll ever forget it."
Covering up a bit of his own melancholy, Orison said, "Don't be too quick to take off. There's still quite a bit of loot for you to pack away. Providing for that sprite is going to strain you purse if you're not careful."
In a huff, the sprite said, "So you have the heart to let her take something along of actual value after all. And for your information, I'm not that needy. You just put me to work doing things that require a lot of energy."
Orison rolled his eyes, "As if I had a choice. Besides, out of the three of us, she's probably the only one with the patience to deal with you in the long term. That aside, I do have one question for you."
Chapter end
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