{{wst>session-main}}

{{wst>shyriath|Evrith only slowly opened her eyes, hours later, her gaze drifting around.

She still wasn't sure where she was, or when she was. Strange sensations paraded across her perception. There was a ceiling, but sky was beyond it, and the stars wheeled frantically. Closing her eyes didn't make any of it go away.

She was vaguely aware that someone was holding her head, a muzzle resting on her neck. Was that now, or somewhen else? But this wasn't the larger presence of her brother or her parents, so...

"Anuwi?" she murmured. She could only hope that she spoke at a time when he was listening.}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|Having partly dozed off, An-uxhwi reacted only slowly to his mangled name. The soft cousin of a jolt rippled through him and an exhale ghosted along her scales as he stirred. "...Evrith," he remarked, very slightly but transparently astounded at her recovery, a cautious relief touching his tone.

Gently he began to unwrap himself from her neck, careful not to leave her without physical support too abruptly - even if she didn't strictly need it, her body had accommodated to it, and if he simply pulled his arms away, the result wouldn't be particularly graceful.

"Evrith," he repeated, gathering himself into a softly crinkled sitting posture, as if scolded. "I'm so sorry. Strength, wit and will all failed me in turn. I have done a truly miserable job of repaying my debt to you. Are you hurt? ...are you... all here?"}}

{{wst>shyriath|His was a voice among other voices, a shape among other shapes. Some of them were even his own. She had... she had a vague sense of which ones belonged to the //now//, which was more than she'd had before. But she couldn't separate them out.

"Hurt? I... I don't think so. There are wounds, but they aren't now. There are too many-" She broke off, eyes still roaming. "Too many," she repeated. "Elsewhens. Elsewheres. There's a now here, but it's hard to find."

On a sudden impulse, she tried to roll slowly into a more upright position, intending to brace herself against the wall. Alas, the wall turned out to be somewhere else. She went through it, and her slow roll continued until she was lying on her other side, and partly on top of An-uxhwi.

"Mm," Evrith mused quietly. "Difficult."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|An-uxhwi stifled a squeak as the oracle rolled partly onto him, quietly and as respectfully as he could muster trying to prise himself back out from under her. So much for whether all of Evrith was here - apparently her mind was still rather scattered across time and space. He gathered his wits enough to ask: "Is there anything I can do to help you find the now?"}}

{{wst>shyriath|"Sensations from now will bring me closer. Talk. Touch. Unless our attacker undoes... whatever he did." Evrith's vague expression became... only slightly less vague, but a flinty cast to the eyes and a suggestion of stiffness in the antennae might have given even a xtauh the impression that she was not //entirely// passive about her situation.

One sensation that she realized she could focus on was thirst. "Is there anything to drink?" she asked, evidently unable to see the bowls of water that had been placed within the cell. "And I... er... I may need help drinking."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|//Talk. Touch.// An-uxhwi pawed at Evrith, tapping against her scales here, running a hand along her neck there, without much of an over-arcing plan other than to gently anchor her attention. "I can help you drink," he promised; for a moment caught up in his petting motions, reluctant to stop out of concern she might slip into the future or past if he did.}}

{{wst>shyriath|The touching helped a bit; she began to get a sense of her actual surroundings. It was reassuring in that sense, but had she not been as distracted as she was, she would have tried to think of a diplomatic way to tell An-uxhwi that the petting was preferable to the tapping.

With a certain amount of concentration, she craned her head until she could make out - currently superimposed upon by visions of what appeared to be some kind of xtauh swapmeet - the bowls of water.}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|With mental effort and some anxiety, An-uxhwi peeled himself away from Evrith long enough to lift one of the bowls, carefully manoeuvring it over to her muzzle, keeping an eye on her motions to make sure she wouldn't submerge her nostrils in it or knock the bowl over

"Our captor made a rather puzzling if relentless impression on me," he said, more for want of something to say than because he considered it a prudent topic. "He initiated considerable force to capture us, but has yet to bother to kill us - despite an obvious, fervent fear which he revealed to me when we spoke earlier, believing that his enemies had sent us.

"I told him it cannot realistically be so, but it seems that on this - and perhaps on other topics not yet breached - he cannot be reasoned with."}}

{{wst>shyriath|Evrith carefully maneuvered her muzzle downward, gently bonking her nose against the rim of the bowl before adjusting her aim accordingly. (Luckily, the bowl, being stone, was too heavy to easily tip over.) She lapped up water as she listened to An-uxhwi's account, and stopped drinking long enough to speak.

"If he wants enemies, he may well have made one," she muttered darkly. "In this state, I can't tell who he's trying to hide from, but if I can get my mind straight-"

"You will kill me," their captor said loudly, from somewhere out of sight; it sounded like he was in an adjoining room. "And that, you see, is why you are in that state. But I owe you both a meal before any further proceedings, so if you will allow me but a few pauses, that will be corrected."

Evrith's lips curled to reveal her teeth. Whatever their captor's original reasons for capturing them, one might conclude that he was not being entirely irrational in keeping the oracle relatively incapacitated in the present.}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|The idea that someone convinced they were going to kill him was equally convinced he //owed them a meal// didn't quite want to mesh in An-uxhwi's head, but his concentration was fortunately taken up mostly by Evrith. "You're in no state to escalate this," he observed softly - not that he would want her to even if she were in such a state.}}

{{wst>shyriath|Intellectually, Evrith knew that An-uxhwi was right. She knew that, out of any witch she might come across, one who could interfere with minds was one who was among the most dangerous, aside from another oracle. She knew that witches had more reasons than many to be paranoid, and that their captor might have some reasons for his behavior.

She knew all these things, intellectually. Emotionally, she badly wanted to chop their captor into pieces. Anyone who had done what he had done was not someone she wanted to leave alive behind her.

She contented herself with draining the bowl and then waiting, not trusting herself to answer An-uxhwi's observation.

Their captor returned shortly thereafter, bearing some kind of tray - it too was stone; it looked like a sheet of slate, thin and flat - upon which was some kind of roast meat. The smell was vaguely not entirely familiar to An-uxhwi, but was undeniably appetizing.

Their captor paused a short distance from the bars, eyed Evrith warily, and then let go of the tray; it hovered in the air a moment, then continued on toward them. The space between the bars was not wide enough to admit the tray, but instead of being stopped, it slid through the portions of the bars it touched; when most of the tray, and its contents, were on the inside of the cell, the tray froze in place, seemingly welded to the bars.}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|An-uxhwi watched the manoeuvre with interest, not blessed with the good sense to be afraid of the power it represented.

Instead, he quite automatically wondered if this meant that the bars were perhaps a particularly convincing illusion - if true, an interesting piece of trivia if there ever was one, not that he figured it would make it any easier to break out of the bars. If his eyes were fooled and his touch had been fooled, his muscles, he reasoned, could be equally fooled.}}

{{wst>shyriath|Evrith tried to focus on the source of the smell... and, in truth, not to drool. Their last meals not to consist of dried travel rations had been in her cell in the mine, which had been quite some time ago now. And whatever nutritional merit those might have had, they hadn't been quite this appealing.

"Have some, by all means," their captor said vaguely. "Or don't, if you really insist upon that; but I should, if I were you."

Evrith wondered if, possibly, the roast might be poisoned. But even as the thought arose, their captor's antennae curled in a grim smile. "If my foremost aim was to achieve your death," he said, "I could have done it without dragging you up here and poisoning you. It could be doped with meekleaf, of course; you'll have to take my word for it that I don't have any. It doesn't grow well up here, you see."

She inhaled the scent again, and gave in. "We might as well."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|From An-uxhwi's perspective, 'we' predominantly meant Evrith. She was still worse off than he was, in part due to a more demanding physiology, in part due to her rationing tactics on their journey so far. He took the opportunity to simply observe the situation, no longer feeling directly threatened by it, but far from trusting their captor beyond some material basics.

Of course, he remembered what she had said about the here and now. The food gave him an excuse to put down the bowl of water, setting it aside. His forepaws rested against her arm and began to stroke along it, down from the shoulder to the elbow, detaching, rising back to the shoulder and then travelling back down, providing at least a fleeting anchor for her while she ate.}}

{{wst>shyriath|Casting suspicious glances at their captor, Evrith clawed off some strips of roast and snapped them up hungrily; the meat was unfamiliar to her, but the taste was not unpleasant, and it was hot and juicy.

After a few more mouthfuls, she peered unsteadily at the green male outside the bars, and asked, "To what do we owe this change in behavior?"

Their captor twisted his head in a shrug. "Your companion seems quite convinced that you are not here for the purpose I suspect you are. It occurred to me that, since you are now contained, it would cost me nothing to see if he is correct, and to give you the opportunity to truthfully answer my questions without  coercion."

Her nostrils flared. "A peace offering, then?"

"Of sorts. You have clearly been subjected to hard journeying. And, I admit, I would not want your health to fail you before I get the information I seek."

Evrith glared. "And I suppose you want me strong enough to take whatever interrogation you might resort to if I don't cooperate."

"I'm glad that the situation is understood," their captor replied mildly.}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|The phrase //"it would cost me nothing to see if he is correct"// came as something of a relief to An-uxhwi. He did not trust this Soaker even slightly, but perhaps he could be reasoned with after all - arduously, with great difficulty, at expense of emotional energy likely neither Evrith nor he had to spare, but at least the glimmer of a possibility was there.

He watched the scene in silence, letting his gaze occasionally wander past their captor and into the area beyond their prison, pondering how they might escape from here. Ideally the matter would involve less violence than their last escape plan, regardless what shape it took. Better yet, they would simply be let out.

"To be fair," An-uxhwi mused to Evrith, clearly unafraid to speak his mind frankly where their captor might hear, perhaps of the opinion that anyone endowed with reason would prefer such things said out loud, rather than concealed. "We need not befriend him to speak to him.

"His previous aggression was unreasonable and it remains distasteful that we are imprisoned, especially after only just having attained freedom recently, but he seems sincerely interested now - and an apology may be worth the hassle, depending on the form it takes."}}

{{wst>shyriath|Evrith glanced at An-uxhwi. If she had been imprisoned alone, she might have succumbed to the temptation to be uncooperative, stupid as that would have been; at least it would have given her the satisfaction of making their captor work for what he wanted.

But she was not alone, and at the moment she could not see ahead to what he would do with An-uxhwi. Was he the sort to resort to torture of a companion as an inducement to cooperate? She didn't get that impression, but it was not a thing she wanted to risk.

It wasn't as if, except for some extremely personal information, she actually had any secrets.

"Fine," she grumbled. "Will this politeness extend as far as putting my head back on straight?"

Their captor eyed her warily. "I know that your powers might allow you to attack me and escape," he said. "Be advised that if I detect any forming intention to do so, I will incapacitate you again."

Evrith nodded sullenly. The green male squinted at her head; for a moment there was nothing, and then, with a kind of internal lurch, past and future were shoved away into their proper places. Evrith jerked and wobbled in place for a moment with the suddenness of it, then sat upright.

First: future. Were they going to get out of this? Could their captor be trusted? It seemed that he could, if he was satisfied that he was not under threat; it was not hard to find futures in which he asked them some questions and then freed them. (Of course, he might have been more subtly interfering with what she saw, as he had before, but she suspected that he would find that a much harder task now that she knew he could do it.)

The tension flowed out of her. "I am... reassured. Mostly. I'll need time to get a better sense of your past to be entirely sure of you, but I see that mutual honesty will be a benefit."

Their captor looked a bit relieved, though far less certain of himself. "Some introductions, then? I am Shyriath, son of Shemrath."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|An-uxhwi reasoned their captor already had their names and all strictly necessary introductions had already been made, but it was probably intolerably impolite to simply point this out. Some social interactions were rote likely even amongst the users of magic and bypassing them might register as mockery.

"An-uxhwi, son of Je-thuro," he introduced himself, closing his eyes and dipping his head slightly in a token deferrence he certainly didn't feel - but paradoxically, the fact that their captor could easily tell it was superficial made it more important to him to go through with the highly formal charade. It revealed that he was both able and willing to act contrary to any rash emotions.}}

{{wst>shyriath|Evrith had long made a habit of not thinking about her parents; it surprised her how, even now, it was difficult to speak her name. "Evrith, daughter of Kazeth."

Shyriath nodded silent acknowledgement of An-uxhwi's thought process, and dipped his head to the both of them. "And... An-uxhwi-" He stumbled over the pronunciation, but did rather better than Evrith did. "-tells me, Evrith, that you came in this direction seeking water and shelter. That is correct?"

"Yes."

"You had no other motivations for coming to my sanctuary?"

"Except that it was in the general direction of our travel, no."

Shyriath kept a very close eye on her as she spoke. Evrith could not feel anything in her head, but it was apparent - both to her and to An-uxhwi - that he was using his abilities to gauge the truth or falsity of her statements.

"And how did you know this?"

"Its location was written in the future."

"But my presence was not?"

"No - not until we were close." Evrith sighed. "The scope of the sight is not predictable. Some things are revealed easily, others are not. Sometimes there are good reasons for that, but sometimes there aren't."

Shyriath struggled with the urge to detour onto this topic. It wasn't often that one got to learn from a living oracle about her powers. But, he thought, there would be time for that later, perhaps.

"I have been told that you were enslaved in conditions that made you ill. Was that something you did not foresee?"

"No."

"Yet you failed to avoid it?"

"Yes. It was preferable to the alternative."

"Which was?"

"Death - either in the desert or on the orders of the owner of the estate on which I found myself. I had been keeping to the higher foothills, where it was cooler and wetter, but I found myself facing futures in which I would be found by villagers. I went down into the desert to avoid them, but could not find a safe way back.

"So I traveled parallel to the river as far as I could manage, and came to the estate of a noblewoman whose greed was stronger than her prejudice. I was able to offer her my service in her silver mine: not a comfortable future, but one in which I was slightly less likely to die."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|At least the Soaker put effort into speaking his name correctly - while not required, it was certainly a measure of respect.

He listened to the conversation with some interest - it was unearthing some details he was unaware of, but ultimately they registered to him only as details. That the work at the mines must have been preferable to some other fate, while not previously stated in such strong terms, seemed at least obvious in hindsight.

Gradually convinced that the conversation wasn't going to take a turn for anything more horrible, An-uxhwi busied himself with water, drinking a few sips. He might not //need// food as badly as Evrith, but having something in his mouth still helped soothe the urge to devour the next edible thing. His body didn't care that it made more sense for Evrith to feed first.}}

{{wst>shyriath|Shyriath considered for a little while what Evrith had said, while the latter paused to tear off another strip of meat and devour it. It occurred to her that An-uxhwi hadn't had any yet, and, mouth still full, motioned for him to have some.

"So An-uxhwi was enslaved in this mine as well, and you escaped with him?" Shyriath said, when it looked like Evrith would be free to speak again.

"The overseer wanted to make sure I didn't die on her watch, so she assigned him to nurse me back to health - which he did as well as he could, under the circumstances."

Shyriath eyed them for a moment, and then changed tack. "So now you are going south? To what destination?"

"South of the mountains - into the foothills on the other side."

"Do you know of the Citadel?"

"Yes."

"And you have no plans to go there?"

"No," Evrith replied emphatically, and tore off another piece of roast. It appeared to An-uxhwi that Shyriath had not received the answer he'd expected. From his previous comments, it seemed that this Citadel was the source of whatever threat he feared, but while both witches seemed to know what it was, An-uxhwi had no such advantage. He knew the literal meaning of the word, but something more specific was obviously meant here.}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|Given that Evrith had eaten a good deal by now, An-uxhwi allowed himself - if some hesitance - to cautiously nibble at their meal, while he listened to the conversation unfold.

That this //Citadel// was a place relevant to them both, likely because they were both proficient magic-users, in itself spurned no curiosity, much as if they had instead simply discussed Soaker cleaning habits. Given that Evrith intended to avoid it and there seemed to be no way for her to stumble across it on accident, it seemed unlikely to be relevant.

For now, An-uxhwi simply listened.}}

{{wst>shyriath|Shyriath felt increasingly foolish. He had, he'd felt, good reason to be paranoid, but given that Evrith appeared to believe everything she'd just said, it was evident that the only way to include her as a participant in the Citadel's dealings was to assume that she'd had some command or compulsion telepathically buried in her head without her knowledge.

Aside from the fact that he couldn't detect any, that wasn't their style. They preferred to have their agents willingly aligned with them. That was, indeed, the source of his problems.

He very gently slumped in place. "I see." He cast around for any other questions that he needed to ask. "What do you intend to seek south of the mountains?"

Evrith picked at a remaining strip of meat, looking uncomfortable. She looked away from him, then mumbled, "I am trying to prevent a range of futures."

"What sort?"

"They don't have anything to do with you."

She looked up, and saw suspicion creeping back into his face. She sighed. "There are two things I am looking to prevent. One is my own death-"

Shyriath blinked. "Death? From what?"

"Me," Evrith replied shortly. It was clear that she didn't really want to discuss it, and pressed on. "The other is the end of the world."

The mentalist goggled at her, momentarily speechless. After a moment, he managed, "When you say 'the end of the world'..."

Evrith could not meet his gaze. "More of a range of events," she murmured very quietly. "All of them result in some amount of mass death. But in the very worst ones - the ''very'' worst ones - it is the end of nearly all life upon the face of Avishraa. All that does not dwell in cracks and crevices and the very bottom of the sea. All takmar and all xtauh. The end."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|The //end of the world//, however, definitely interested An-uxhwi. Which didn't mean that he was likely to pry - at the moment, Shyriath was asking plenty of questions by himself, and An-uxhwi was not going to put himself on the interrogating side of the conversation.

He politely filed the question away as something he might ask when it seemed Evrith felt more comfortable revealing what she knew about the topic - at the moment it was clear to him that she wasn't. It took effort not to at least cast a surprised gaze at her, but he had thankfully caught the urge soon enough to suppress it.

...the food, however, was distracting. As is often true, the first bites are what really whets the appetite, and he found himself reminded that he was nearly running on fumes. //That// urge was more difficult to resist - the urge to simply claim the rest of the dish and wolf it down.}}

{{wst>shyriath|There was an awkward silence, filled only with the faint sound of An-uxhwi dealing with his portion of the roast.

Shyriath stared at Evrith. Evrith stared at the floor.

Shyriath found it hard to compose a suitable response. Had Evrith been hysterical about it, desperate, begging for help, he might almost have been inclined to dismiss it as a delusion, but it had been... matter-of-fact. Almost reluctant. And it wasn't a joke, either. She didn't seem the lighthearted type, and she clearly meant what she said.

//The end. That's it. Do with it what you like.//

Despite his rest, Shyriath suddenly found himself without the emotional fortitude to ask all the questions that he wanted the answers to. "I..." he began, then shook his head. "That's a bit much for now. A bit much for later, come to that, but regardless I will have questions. At some point."

He glanced around helplessly, sighed, and grasped the outside edge of the tray. "Regardless-" The stone bars began to change shape, seeming to melt away toward the ceiling and floor. "-I suppose, under the circumstances, I have no reason to detain you further." As the bars flowed away, his forepaw took up the weight of the tray and lowered it gently to the floor. "And no justification for having detained you in the first place."

Evrith gave him a brief, bitter look, but her anger had drained out of her, replaced by the numbness that she found most useful in dealing with the bleakness of the future. She contented herself with, "Yes."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|And there it was - the freedom that should never have been taken from them. It did nothing to mediate An-uxhwi's distant resentment of Shyriath, but it felt right in the way a logical conclusion of events often did. If Shyriath offered something in the manner of reparations, he might start to adjust his attitude, but for the time being, it was simply a return to the status quo.

The whole thing showed, at the very least, the limits of a mentalist - not that An-uxhwi knew to call that class of magic-users that. Shyriath had been able to read their minds to some degree, but evidently done a poor job of determining whether they were even a threat to him. If something so fundamental could be missed, it cast much of the ability into question.

And yet that was familiar, too - Evrith had shown him that her own grasp of past and future was imperfect, after all. An-uxhwi found it all difficult to imagine (except for Evrith's particular visions, which he had, after all, recently shared), but he could update his expectations.

"Might there be any more of this roast?" he asked, gesturing to the meal, although without any expectation. It was rather heavily decimated at this point, mostly by Evrith's initial hunger, but certainly also by An-uxhwi's appetite, and it was clear that they would both still be hungry once it was done.}}

{{wst>shyriath|"There's another haunch on the spit," Shyriath murmured, looking defeated. He eyed them both, making some mental revisions to his estimated of how much food would need to be available for the foreseeable future. "And then - assuming you still intend to stay - I suppose I'll need to find you a better place to sleep."}}