#juneau.lostlands

[alrikhart]

@vuldak-juneau location: Lostlands (we at the prismatic wall baby) notes: kiss kiss lets throw rocks

Alessia was back and she was safe, and she'd returned changed in some way. Stronger, but not just physically. Like whatever had been iron about her was beaten down into steel. She claimed to be more herself than before, but that did not change that Alrik did not know how to broach what she'd been through, nor did he know if he even should. The half-siblings were more like twins than not, ones who'd endured everything together, everything but this.

This wall was... Something. More magic that Alrik did not understand. For all that he did not know, the more that this world opened itself to him, the more clear things became. Clear as mud, so to speak. The root of it was there was a great deal of truth to the dangers of magic, and that if there were people to blame for breaking the world, then it had to be the people who could capture a nation in a bubble. The effects of the barrier were obvious enough, so Alrik didn't see the harm in chucking rocks at it. The prismatic field burned into the ground, going who-knew-how-deep, and the trees that it intercepted had been severed cleanly in two. Charred to nothing where the barrier landed.

"Can I be vulnerable with you for a moment?" this wasn't about her smell but that was another topic in itself. Alrik picked up a rock and heaved it toward the prismatic wall, watching it sizzle and combust upon impact as it disintegrated.

[alrikhart]

Alrik laughed, "Flatterer. I guess I could do worse than raking in the praise of an adoring crowd," conceding easily enough, her vitriol familiar, though the witch wouldn't feed into it any further. Alrik considered the wall with some finality, the air between them was born of circumstantial fate that would draw to some conclusion eventually. He was resolved to live, whatever that looked like, his nature allowed him to wade through the circumstances placed in front of him. A nation at war, or a pit of vipers. "Suppose we'll never know."

With a small measure of effort, Alrik managed to stand, he winced only a little - the pain hollow, familiar, but easing with each day. He braced himself with the makeshift crutch to see himself off. "Here I was thinking we were just chucking rocks together." From where they'd been sitting in front of the wall, it wasn't as if there was much else to do in the ways of entertainment. "I will see you back at camp," he tilted his head toward their makeshift prison - the field of arcana that had incinerated every rock that Alrik had thrown at it. "enjoy the view, friend."

“What’s the problem, then? It sounds like a perfect gig for you to have your own income once we get there. Especially give that bum leg of yours,” she continued to press for her own entertainment. “I’m sure you could come with a very compelling character background as well if the entire ordeal really is a charade.” Her eyes flashed a little, something resentful behind them all of a sudden, but it wasn’t lasting. “Putting their bodies on the line? Really? They should like a bunch of fucking losers. I doubt they’d survive a day of what we’ve been through getting to this stupid thing.” She had to remind herself not to kick the glowing perimeter around them lest she lose a foot to it. 

He wouldn’t tell her, and she should have expected as much. Most people in the group of refugees tended to their secrets as if they were their pets–she certainly felt protective over her own. “Wow. Tease,” she deadpanned back to him with a slight lilt of disappointment. Rather than answering him directly, she simply tilted her head slightly to implore him to speak on.

Juneau simply shrugged her shoulders in response, too busy trying to determine what Alrik might have ultimately wanted out of the interaction to think of some sharp remark to volley back to him again. “So what did you actually want?” He must have approached her with some sort of transaction at front of mind–she knew she’d be one of her own last choices for a conversation partner if she were in anyone else’s shoes. 

[alrikhart]

"I heard they're not even real fighters, just performers with choreography." It made sense considering how dangerous it would be to stage these fights, "But I suppose they are real athletes putting their bodies on the line." There was something to be said about being raised in a burning house, but Alrik had let his demeanor linger on severity earlier; the witch's disposition was more suited toward concealment.

At this, Alrik only laughed, "And incriminate myself? Absolutely not." He shook his head at the notion, retelling his own stories was gouache, but Alrik could easily spin together a fable. "There is one I heard though about the Butcher of Bjarnheim if you care to listen." Bits of realism from what he'd heard could muddle nicely with his imagination if Juneau truly wished for some entertainment.

"Why? Do you think I'd get smacked around a bit more if I did?" Juneau was right, just because Iskaldrik hated witches didn't mean that Lysara would be any kinder - after all, didn't the Queendom hate Iskarans? He smiled at that, round and round they all went. "I'm beginning to like this move more and more." He grinned and scratched his chin, however uncertain the future might be for him, the weight of iron coins would not change. He could miss Iskaldrik but still remember what she taught him.

“Then become a gladiator, Alrik, shit, I don’t know,” Juneau quipped back at him, though she knew they weren’t entrenched in an argument that held any depth. “I wholly intend to avoid both.” Flying under the radar in Lysara seemed like just as good of a plan as it had been in Iskaldrik. She was loathe to stay in one place and she doubted that would change just because of a change of scenery. It seemed like Alrik was somewhat afraid the new setting would change him, but she had no plans to yield to societal norms that didn’t suit her. “You’d be surprised how many people say something similar.” 

Juneau looked up at him as he joked, but she wasn’t necessarily sure everything he said was in jest. Even if it was, she was confident in his ability to drum up some dramatic tale about his assassinations. “I thought I knew your face from somewhere,” she mused, pretending to be thoughtful as she spoke. “It must have been all of those wanted signs.” She took a seat next to him and patted the earth, ignoring the slight cloud of dirt that it produced as she urged him to sit next to her. “You don’t get to talk about murder and not tell one of the stories.” For someone with such a weak stomach when it came time to spill blood herself, she certainly didn’t shy away from the tales of others.

She loosed a rough-sounding chuckle at his words and rolled her eyes. “Is that all it would take?” she questioned, “Because I wouldn’t go around camp volunteering that information to just anybody if that was the case.” She chewed her bottom lip for a moment and considered their situation for a moment. “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of chance to end up dead before you grow to hate Lysara too much or miss Iskaldrik more than you can stand to. I don’t think those Aetherian fucks are going to stop at the border.”

[alrikhart]

"And what? Moving to some soft, diplomatic state where they solve all their problems with words is better?" Alrik laughed, "I will take fists any day over this Game the Lysarans nobles like to play." The rules of a jarling were easy enough, be the strongest, or be at risk of losing your head. He sighed, wistfully as he kept his intonation light. "My home is gone, maybe it hated me, but I still loved it." Juneau had made a life out of seeing refugees to safety, now she stood on the other side of it, he couldn't expect her to understand why a witch might want to remain and perhaps there was no real meaning to it. Just that it was all he knew, that his father had been born there, his father before him, and so on and so forth.

"And little do you know I've killed countless." Alrik laughed, the air light and joking, "Widow-maker and orphan-killer," He waved his hand dramatically in front of him, "wanted across Iskaldrik." As in most things, the witch was playful as he spoke like everything he said was tethered to some fantastical tale of heroes and legends. Had he the mindset to further consider its origin, it'd be easy enough to distill why Alrik gravitated so heavily toward the inflation of events. Fiction was softer, you could make it as violent as you wanted and it still did not come close to the cruelty that lived in the hearts of others. Reality was painful, Alrik's tongue could twist whatever story he wanted but it would not make his hands wash clean.

"Don't hit me, I'll cum." Playfully, Alrik joked as he mused next to her. Maybe he needed to work on his demeanor because as somber as his words might have come across he wouldn't begrudge remaining here. The outlook that he garnered toward the road ahead was far darker, save for Alessia's abduction, the harrowing journey from Yggdrasildal to here had nearly taken his life and the lives of so many others. Yet, he didn't much care for the others. The mass graves didn't bother him, the blighted and ghoulish babies taken in the night didn't keep him up, as warm as he presented the truth of the Harts was just about every piece of them was cold.

“Don’t you think maybe you deserve… a little better than that?” Juneau suggested, her brows upturned slightly as she asked him. She felt a lot of the people she had met could do better than Iskaldrik. As a land mass–she understood what he meant. She too loved the perilous wilderness, the vast and uncharted expanses it offered, how rugged and unforgiving her favorite parts of it were–but how capable she felt among the thickest forest and towering peaks. The politics and hierarchy left much to be desired. She didn’t know how to express this verbally and felt so inept standing next to him knowing it caused him suffering. A voice from the back of her head hissed at her that she was rotten for her inability to truly relate to others, that she was too far gone, and she was only fooling herself by pretending to care about how he felt–that others only pretended when they tried to reach out to her. 

Juneau shrugged as he compared the differences. “You don’t strike me as the violent type,” she leveled with him. “And as someone who really hates conversation, I’ve chatted with dozens more unpleasant than you. I think you’ll figure it out.” 

“I can shove you into the wall if you want?” she offered with false sincerity, making as if she were going to move behind him to do so. She stayed stationary for the most part, though, angling toward him and asking with a marked discomfort and awkwardness, “Do you need a hug? You seem pretty fucked up about all of this.” She waited a moment for him to respond before adding, “I don’t think this is as far as any of us were meant to go. If it was, we’d be dead by now.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Personally, I can’t stand myself most of the time, but I know I deserve something a little bit better than dying in a swamp. And you’re a better person than me, so tough shit. You have to keep moving.”

[alrikhart]

"It wouldn't be home if it did." Alrik mused, comfort hadn't been what he was looking for. Absolution or damnation maybe, but Juneau didn't give him either of those things and the witch felt oddly grateful as a result. He liked that he knew his fellow Iskarans so well, he liked that he could look upon a witcher and know with certainty that if he overstepped then there would be trouble. He knew who to talk to and where, he knew where to get the best bread in Bjarnheim and who waters down their mead in Yggdrasildal. He knew all their lore and their stories and he knew where he could go when things were difficult.

He'd have nothing in Lysara, nothing save perhaps for Alessia and the company of a few. The latter of those things was something Alrik was still adjusting to.

"I like Iskaldrik, it's predictable." The admission came easily, "Violence is not so hard to get used to, I think I got good at it. But in Lysara they do more fighting with words and spells and things-" he was good at twisting a tale, but he didn't know how much that accounted for when it came down to it. He kind of looked up a bit and smiled in a crooked fashion, "What if this is as far as I'm meant to go." His shifting gaze found the prismatic wall again, the things waiting for him on the other side were with more stories and dangers than the witch had ever known.

The admission he put out into the quiet, dead air between them shocked her. She did not feel the same. She nearly bit her tongue to the point of bleeding to refrain from stating that she would have watched the country burn again ten times over and didn’t expect it would cause her to shed even one more tear than she already had. Instead, all she managed to state was, “It probably won’t miss you.” Comfort was not her specialty. 

Juneau thought back to the part of the journey where she had ventured too far from the rest of the refugees in the mountainous wilderness and broken her leg. The pain had made her surly and unpredictable. Everything felt ten times worse than it really was. She stared at the spot where the barrier met the ground reflecting on how rotten she had treated Alder for the mere transgression of helping her. Her soul was like rot, why was she so awful to everyone? Why couldn’t she stop when she knew she was lucky anyone gave her the second, third, fourth chances that they did? What ugly, evil thing lived within her that made her lash out that other people didn’t seem to have within them, that Alrik might have that prohibited him from taking his pain out on others?

“There’s nothing waiting for you at home but an open-air crypt if you even make it that far,” she argued. For a moment, she did consider herself lucky that she hadn’t had anything to consider home–it made the idea of border crossing easier. “I haven’t spent much time in Lysara, only as long as it took to pass a few people off to sponsors waiting for them, but on the whole, it was always better than anything in Iskaldrik.” She glanced at him. “What is it about getting there that you’re so afraid of?” He wasn’t the first to stare down the border and verbalize second thoughts. Long ago she had been told the devil that you know is better than the devil that you don’t, but she wasn’t sure she believed that.

[alrikhart]

"I'm going to miss it." Alrik knew what to expect out of the Iskarans, he knew their customs, their ways of life. He knew how to navigate the hostile homeland and there were facets of it that he loved - facets that were so firmly ingrained upon him that it was hard to discern him at times from anything but a stalwart Iskaran nationalist.

He didn't know anything of Lysara besides the stories he'd heard. Some spoke of a prosperous place, others were definitive in their hostility that it regarded. They painted Olympians like devastating monsters and where was he meant to go - their Tower? It was a haunted thought. "We've come all this way but really I just want to go home. I'm tired." He grinned. "My leg hurts."

The prismatic wall was certainly an unwelcome presence looming over the refugee camp, yet Juneau often found herself at its perimeter. She scouted it, on occasion, as if a door might appear if she just looked at it long enough or from just the right angle. But she knew as well as anyone else that they were trapped, plain and simple. 

When this fact did not twist her every thought into hopeless desperation and insurmountable depression when thinking about the future–a deeply unpleasant side effect of the Dark One’s passengers at the back of her mind–she did find small pleasure in chucking things at the barrier to see how different items reacted. Most simply turned to ash. Her newest favorite activity was to attempt to skip stones across it as if it were a surface of water. In her arsenal of essentially useless skills, skipping stones was particularly high. This was harder, as there was a very different angle to master throwing the stones in–and also magic. 

Juneau glanced at her company, somewhat surprised Alrik–or anyone for that matter–would volunteer their company to her again. She tried her best not to chase everyone away, but it was so much harder since that night in the Iskaran fields. “If we’re being honest, I’d advise against it,” she told him, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes for just a moment. But her curiosity was piqued, and that was often more than enough to ensure her in just about anything. She turned to face him better, a posture she had once been told helped people understand that you were listening. But it was still hard for her to stand completely still. Juneau crossed her arms, running the smooth edge of the pebble she held up and down the length of her shoulder to elbow. “I’m listening.”