Would you be young again?

Log Info

• Title: Would you be young again?
• Emitter: Cryosanthia
• Characters: Cryosanthia, Iuitl
• Place: W02: Mictlan
• Time: Wednesday, September 23, 2020, 12:57 PM
• Summary:

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Located within the Deep Woods, and hours past Wilderness Pointe, in the heart of its northern woods, bones frame this hollowed-out space. Massive and heavy, they reach towards the sky, meeting--almost--in the center like great and worn stalagmites. Or giant teeth. After a few seconds--it's quickly evident that this is a space carved from a dragon's bones. A very, very large...dragon's bones. The air smells of ash, brimstone, and earth. Underneath the apex of the bones lie the workings of a central Fire.

The grounds are run by shamans of the sith-makar, and the sacred space dedicated to the Death Singing Dragon, one of their names for the goddess, Vardama. There are always a number of them about, from a mixture of tribes. Formally, the sith use it to sing the souls of their dead back to the land of Wing and Flame, and celebrate the Memory of Blood. It was here that brave heroes stood, and vanquished the ashen warriors of old, thereby freeing the land from Thul's curse. Informally, it is a gathering place.

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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-  Appearing, in Order  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Cryosanthia  6'9"     291 Lb     Sith-Makar        Female    A dashingly tall, elegant white-scaled lizard woman.
Iuitl        5'2"     149 Lb     Sith-Makar        Female    Short sith, mottled black scales, tired green eyes
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It's a pleasant day. A cloudless sky of brilliant blue, a brisk wind. The leaves are turning, shades of yellow, orange and red mix in with the reluctant greens.

At Mictlan, the temperature and weather is always good. A whitescale woman wearing pale leather armour has sought out a specific hut. A carnation-scale youngling bounds about with her, chasing and retrieving a ball that the older lizard throws.

As she approaches, she announces herself. "Shaman Iuitl? It is Speaker Cryosanthia. This one wishes to share words."

The familiar rasp of Iuitl's voice replies. "In a moment! Hold on!" There's a rustling, a minute of her dealing with her utterly upturned living space in the small hut, and she soon emerges. She squints past the glare of the sunlight that she prefers to avoid, frowning up at the sky as if it had just insulted her. Then she directs a smile to Cryosanthia, and straightens up, the diminutive, mottled reptile waiting for those words to be shared. Her tail does a single thump in ritualistic greeting. Reflex.

Cryosanthia thumps tail in greeting.

As she does so, the youngling runs up beside her and mimics the action, thumping three times. The little lizard squeaks in a high pitched voice, "Peassse on your Nesstss." Her draconic is decent, then she darts into Iuitl's hut!

"Lily!" That's Cryo's composure destroyed. She takes a step, then halts, unwilling to enter a space uninvited, especially when it's clear the meeting should take place outside. She orders, "Lily. Little Fang. Come out. You weren't invited in."

There is no emergence. The whitescale grins awkardly.

There's only a glance from Iuitl, the mottled witch not seeming concerned with the intrusion... for a very good reason.

The shrieking voice of her Raven familiar can be heard inside the hut. "Get out of here! Out out out, or I'll eat your eyes! OOOOOUT!!!" Vigorous flapping noises can be heard as the bird tries to spook the child away.

Iuitl keeps smiling at Cryosanthia. "You had words to speak?" she prompts.

"She bites." Cryosanthia says, then louder, "Lily! She bites. Come out! Come out now."

There is a crash, then a pink streak that flees the hut, runs between the whitescale's legs, then up to her tail and back until a second pair of eyes looks Iuitl's way over the sith's shoulder.

Cryo exhales, "Lily, just... this is Lily. The Silver Empress sent an Emissary, about the Animus-Shards. This one needs help."

Iuitl's head dips to follow the child's path, then smiles to her in a placid way, gentle in her gaze. Then directs her eye contact back to Cryo. "Animus-Shards. Ah, yes. This one can help in any way you need," she answers, with a perking of her energy, personally interested in this. "But we need to know where to start first. Could you elaborate?"

"Well." Cryosanthia sits down on the ground, legs folded, tail straight out behind. She pulls things out of the small haversack between her shoulders, which is also serving as a perch for Lily. The youngling shifts, to peer at Iuitl from the other side of the Sith.

"There's a group, calling themselves the Resurrectionists Society. Here's the pamphlet that announced their street meeting. I was at that one. Here's another one, annoucing an upcoming one. Here's a copy of the letter I sent to the Silver Empress. It doesn't say much beyond 'a thing is happening'. I sent one of the first pamphlets with it." Sheets of paper are held out for Iuitl.

Cryo continues, "In brief, they believe fragments of Animus fell to Ea, that collecting enough of them will allow him to be brought back, and they are looking for Adventurers to join their society to do so."

Iuitl settles down, using her tail to brace a bit so she doesn't slam roughly into the ground. She reaches out to accept the papers as they're explained to her, examining them one at a time. Then she gathers them all up and hands them back to Cryo. "This brings to mind some questions. They believe these Shards are Animus' pieces, but hope can blind one to the truth. They will need to answer some of these questions I have... Because if they can do so with satisfaction, they will have an ally that won't waver until her death."

"Bringing Animus back may also allow Navos to rejoin his friends. There is good in this mission, if it's true."

Cryo takes the papers and they go back into her haversack. A chuff of a breath leaves her nostrils flaring, she nods. "It might. I raised that concern. Balance of Light, Darkness and In-between was more important that compassion and friendship. And maintaining that balance means that if Animus ascends, another god must fall to make space."

"The popular sentiment seems to be that Taara deserves to die. Agents of hers are already present in Alexandria and causing issues. Whether these Animus-shards even exist at this point seems irrelevant, for these groups the belief in them has been enough to stir action. The Resurrectionists had a lot of ready answers, but this one did not have very good questions."

"This one hopes you will ask some." Cryo maintains her gaze at Iuitl.

The notion of balance draws a dip of Iuitl's head, and a closing of her eyes. "The questions will be asked." Her head lifts after that.

"I'm sorry to ask, but you are... Cryosanthia, yes?" she asks, the uncertainty strong in her voice and face. There are enough differing details, and the age is wrong, so...

"Yes! Ah? Oh. Right. Yes." The white sith blinks and stammers. She waves a hand at herself, "This is Cryosanthia. I forget sometimes, it was a long and natural process for me and a shock for everyone else."

She's a little bigger than she was at the casting ceremony at the beginning of the year, taller, more muscular, and she's got horns that must have taken decades to grow to their current size.

"I was... involved in a negotiation that failed. It took me out of time and I was a prisoner in a tower for all of it. In the end the Fae Queen was neutralized, but it made me wary of rushing in to things."

"The time magic. That makes sense..." Iuitl doesn't look sad. It doesn't seem to have harmed Cryosanthia, not so much that it destroyed the person from before. "Now, I must look like a child to you," she says, with good humor in her face. She is, physically, about a quarter of the other's age. It shows: Her scales are still soft by comparison, and her draconic features are muted in comparison.

"I do not rush unless a fire has been stoked in me. The questions will be asked. The Forgetful Dragon would council caution in this, and my Raven would..." she hesitates. "Likely call me a fool if the Shards turned out to be something else."

Cryosanthia bobs her head, she has older features, thicker scale ridges, extra plate scales at some joints, a more mature build. There are still traces of who she was, a whimsical humour and frivolity that breaks through the harness of age here and there. Small gestures, ways of moving, remain the same. She laughs with a grin and shakes her head, "No, you are as you were, frozen in my memory from the last time I saw you. I imagined you older. I imagined losing a lot of my shorter lived friends, during that time. It was a wonderful surprise to step back into my old life, everything unchanged except me."

She seems more relaxed now. Lily drapes over her shoulder, lying limp but still staring at Iuitl, blinking her bright eyes. Cryo continues, "I have no idea what the shards might look like, how to find them, what they might do, singally or in a bunch. I wonder at the motivations of this group, and worry about a God, restored, beholden to the mortal people who brought it about. Surely some of them would find their importance improved."

"Some friends of mine, Mikilos, Merek, intend to join the society and seek them. The Silver Empress, through her Emissary, asked that I find out more. The emissary is at the Gate to Am'shere, in case we have an urgent warning. Umm..."

Now she clearly looks like the memory of her, a little confused and thinking on her feet. Or seat, as the case may be. "There as an orc who thought this was a great excuse for crusades. Someone else suggested selling them to the highest bidder. Or setting traps with them."

"The highest bidders will invariably hide them in impenetrable boxes or abuse their power, unless there are exceptions to that. They are not to be sold like trinkets..." Iuitl looks modestly offended by the very idea of it. She seems to be a fairly devout creature! "As for the blessing a god would bring to its saviors... well, that is motivation enough for most mortal beings. But he would still be a God. And the divine are not easily controlled. Their role is clearly defined and to think otherwise invites the disdain of all other deities, both good and evil, for it threatens their status quo. Every faith has stories about the hubris of an apostate."

"I know of both Mikilos and Merek. They should be invaluable for the search."

She adjusts her seating, and mentions, "It feels strange, that you've been imprisoned for so long, and yet barely a blink has happened for me. If you could find a way, would you prefer to go back to your younger state?"

Cryosanthia listens intently as Iuitl speaks, her head bobbing in agreement. "Hoard them to abuse their power, is my first suspicion."

She sits back with a slight laugh, brushing her hands along her knees. "Would you be five years old again, for more than an afternoon?" A question that gets Lily looking at her with strange curiosity.

Cryo continues, exhaling. She holds out her arm, the tattoos she had before are gone, replaced with strange patterns across her scales. "These, she improved. My magic flows in ways it did not then. I grew into this, it was natural. I remember all the days. It's those memories which hurt more than the aging. If I was a younger state, but still with the experiences I would feel crushed. They have been hard enough with mature instincts. And if I became my younger self, fully, wouldn't it be death? I still struggle with all that happened. Getting old was not the worst of it."

It was rare to run into such a philosophical quandry with such a large example of who might benefit or be harmed by it. Iuitl gave a strained look, agonizing over the concept, with a hand going to her chin in a way that exaggerated her pondering. "Not death, but something like it. We lose memories all the time, a small fragment of doom that lingers on all of us. Even we that live longer than most deal with this decay. But in short, your answer is no, you would not like to be young again, if it meant losing who you are now."

"I would want to be able to be born again, from the time of my hatching, to know all I know now and gain the power to change the world for the better with it. There are many events I could alter, to prevent deaths, disease, despair... But such a magic would be disruptive. And there are other complexities that might occur."

"I will accompany these Resurrectionists, whether or not they are correct, because I want to protect those that have such a lofty goal, while keeping an eye on their footsteps to see that they are not straying. And I do agree... Taara's punishment is overdue."

Cryosanthia nods, with a grin, "I will add though, I wouldn't mind living out an extra amount of years to balance the ones in the tower, and have the creaking of joints staved off an equal amount."

She winks, then adds enigmatically with a glance towards Lily, "I think there would be a lot of complexities to that. Thank you, for taking this on. The emissary was quite harsh regarding what I didn't know, and this one is not the best for investigating or adventuring now. I can't let Lily down."

"Ssassa!" Lily peeps.

Cryo says, "The balance concerns me. If Taara is destroyed, will that not force Animus, Eluna or Navos into her spot, depending on who has the strongest ties? Would it be like magnets? If Animus is restored to his place, and Navos rejoins his friends, then a Light must turn Dark. Serriel is newest, does that make her weakest, and thus her, or would the magic affinity Eluna has pull her into darkness to unite her hold over it."

"And won't all this magic changing hands... upset everything?"

"I will seek the advice of those that know more of the gods. And I will do my own research, to seek my answer to these questions," Iuitl says, shaking her head slowly. "Hypotheticals are like walking in place." Then she reaches out to tap Lily on the nose. Beep.

"Is Lily yours?" she wonders.

Lily rises up, hissing happily and beeps Iuitl's nose with her tiny claw-hands. She chirrps, "Yesss!"

"She is," Cryo confirms, "This one is clutch-mother to her, now. Her family nest was destroyed and this one is still seeking the fate of her relatives. Lily saw them fall and taken."

The whitescale's words seem to have more of an effect on her than the youngling. Perhaps losing parents isn't as much of a lasting shock to one inexperienced with the world, just a thing that happens.

And Lily, or Little Fang, is clearly a Kobold by scent and body structure to any sith'makar that observes her. Smaller than a sith youngling, and while weaker, having a lot more energy and a bit more intelligence which can make for a dangerous combination. Largely, for the kobold child.

There's also a firmness to the whitescale's words, and a determined scent. One akin to Iuitl's regarding the shards.

"I see," Iuitl says, "Gotta go! Chores and such."

She vanishes into her hut.

"Ah. Okay!" Cryo answers, blinking. A breath passes, she stands. "This one has chores too! Peace!"

She vanishes into Mictlan.