Text: I am below; are you readied?
Pen is in her car, the heat blasting, the music also blasting although contained by a Force shield so as not to disturb the neighbors. The music which is blasting is not Christmas music.
N. Hyde
Pen's car is in front of the house that contain's Nick's apartment: a large Victorian with a wraparound porch, the paint and siding looking just this side of weathered. When she arrived, she couldn't make it into the driveway: there are cars piled up there, boxing in Nick's little 2003 Honda Civic in front of the garage. The flat below him appears to be crammed with people, from what she can see inside the windows. There is a tree in the window of that flat, shining red and gold and as resplendent as one day Pen will be herself.
Upstairs is Nick's apartment, and there's a flickering candle just visible through the window that is wicked out seconds after she sends her text, as though overpowered by the Nick-shaped shadow that appears momentarily through the frost that has crept over the glass.
There is a return text: Yes. Be down in a minute.
Nick has a good sense of timing, as only a little more than sixty seconds later he appears from around the back porch, dodging a small child who tears past him chasing another small child; both have shiny new Nerf guns.
He is not wearing a hat, and the observant might notice that this is because it would probably undo whatever he has tried to do to tame his hair somewhat: apparently added oil to lend weight and swept the tuft that usually hangs over his forehead somewhat out of the way. It makes him look older, though not by much. He hurries toward Pen's car and climbs inside before the cold can soak into him, and probably also before he has the chance to be hit by a wayward Nerf missile.
Horace Gladstone
Nicholas can feel the music reverberate in his breastbone the first moment after he gets into the car. The windshield wipers go squeak, squeak but nobody can hear their mousey cry over the more bombastic sound of a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack. Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood.
"What a handsome devil I am bringing to my teacher's get together," she says, affectionate rake of a glance, and of course she turns the stereo down a touch. Peels out of the drive-way like a bat out of Hell on a mission, careful of some of the ice. Pen's hair is loose and in 1940s waves, looks redder and bloodier than usual; it is Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Beatriz-style hair or some 1940s' starlet vamp's hair.
"What's Anna going to be doing?"
N. Hyde
He steps into the car and the guitars hit him: Pen is certainly gearing up to see Lysander, isn't she? This does nothing to soothe Nick's nerves, which have been a little frazzled since this morning when he realized he is about to walk into a party entirely made up of Hermetics, all of whom are older and more experienced than he is, and one of whom is Pen's teacher. He would probably feel more relaxed meeting her parents than her Hermetic mentor.
His look over at her as he settles into the seat and buckles his seatbelt takes in her hair, its vivid crimson, and smiles in a way that is more for himself than to her, one of those moments when his eyes betray him. "There wasn't anywhere to get it cut on Christmas. I'm glad it looks halfway presentable." His expressions of affection are more frequently nonverbal, evidenced as - he can't help but gently catch one of the curls between his fingers and brush it over her shoulder. "I like yours, by the way."
Pen mentions Anna. At this, his hand falls away and he slumps back against the seat, his eyes rolling skyward. "Well, Thane came over and they hit it off. By which I mean Anna basically jumped him and I excused myself to avoid being the third wheel." Pause. "It's just as well. I was worried she'd be bored while I was off with you."
Horace Gladstone
He likes hers, by the way. "Thank you," Pen says, with a smile that seems like a secret though it isn't not really. It's only private, and pleased, and thoughtful.
It's such a wealthy thing for somebody to say, there wasn't anywhere to get it cut on Christmas. Pen is still, and will forever and always be, a little finely tuned to notice such remarks. She can count the number of times she has had her hair cut professionally or by someone who wasn't a parent or sibling or herself on one finger of one hand.
She laughs when he tells her about Anna's reaction to Thane, and Thane's reaction to Anna. "I am most happy to hear that Thane will be having a pleasant Christmas night. You can still cry off, if you want to."
"Robby truly thinks you should."
N. Hyde
There are a lot of brothers who would be far more aggressive toward a likely one night stand than Nick appears to be toward Anna right now. His attitude is one of quiet resignation, and this because Anna has made a regular habit of this while the two of them were growing up, and since then. His sister is an impulsive creature, far more like their father than either Nick or Vivienne, and truth be told he is mainly relieved that Thane is not the sort with whom it is likely to cause additional drama.
That, at least, can be said to have improved over the years. "Me too. I guess it ended up working out."
That Pen has noted his comment, he does not appear to pick up on. Nick, after all, has been working consistently for a year and a half; regardless of his upbringing, though not impoverished like Pen's, it has given him time to pick up his own habits as regards finances.
His glance toward her when she says that Rob thinks he should call off is sidelong, difficult to read. "What do you think?"
Horace Gladstone
"Well I did pick you up, didn't I?" Pen says, flash of a smile and a quick glance away from the street. Where they're going she has to drive; there are Wards, secret words to say, all of that, or else you just don't get through. A fog, a cul de sac, an eternal cul de sac. And then, more seriously:
"But I don't know. I didn't really think about how it might be for you; I just want to be with you," Pen says, simply. "I can't believe how often I want to just be with you; it's getting to be a problem, Hyde."
"If you do want to listen to Robin, well, he does like it when people listen to him."
N. Hyde
It's getting to be a problem, she says, and Nick smiles and turns his eyes away from her, somewhere out the window, and where she's told him before that she wants him and he's turned playful, this - it embarrasses him. Cuts through him in a way, perhaps, evidenced by the way his fingertips touch and spring against each other just to have something to do with his hands. "I'm glad you invited me. I would've...I mean, I thought I was just going to be missing you all day, so I'm glad we..."
His hand has found his hair in the back, has wound into a fistful of curls, which he tugs on thoughtfully. A beat. "I do want to meet Lysander," he says. "I just haven't really been around that many members of the Order before. Especially not prominent ones."
Truth be told, Nick hasn't even been around that many prominent Chakravanti in one place, and while he will meet some of them individually, such a meeting of them together will not happen for years later. He will be in a distant country then, a place he could not imagine himself now. "Rob could stand to be proven wrong on occasion."
Horace Gladstone
Pen is sharp-eyed, but her eyes are also on the road. She is very aware of Nicholas in the passenger seat, the hallowed hush of him; the change in the air pressure of her car, just because he's there. But little signs, she misses. Fidgeting, looking out the window.
Rob could stand to be proven wrong on occasion.
"I could not have a better master," she says. Her voice is particularly kind; light-struck. She adjusts the heat in the car, then switches to another song. Santa Esmeralda, enough of you.
Goodnight Moon, Shivaree. Hello.
"I'm glad you said that." And she is. Also simply, and wholly. Because she wants to be with him, see?
--
The car ride is about a forty minute, hour minute ride without traffic. There isn't a lot of traffic on a snowy, ridiculous Christmas day, the ice gray and the snow mounding up and up. When it begins to snow, it looks like they're driving through stars.
--
Eventually, Pen pulls up to a house. Of course it is a house the way a Greek god is a man or woman. Obviously not a house at all, and yet the shape is somewhat similar. Tudor Revival Mansion right near a mansion belonging to the Vanderbilts, steepled eaves with Renaissance carvings and a vast field behind and a cliff and the sea and stunning vistas and it was unnoticeable until a word was spoken and then oh hey this driveway this long driveway through wrought iron gates with wreathes on Victorian lanterns and a flutter of red.
She parks in front of the house; there are three other visible cars.
N. Hyde
It snows during the drive, and the driving flakes form a tunnel around them, and his eyes are in continual motion throughout the trip: it brings to mind scifi movies, lightspeed, hurtling onward into the black. He comments and shares his observations and questions (always questions) throughout the drive, if only because his reservations about dancing or singing in the car (he can do neither, at least not with any particular talent) have not yet fallen away.
Nick lived in Northampton prior to moving to Connecticut just before the summer. He has been in the northeast for three and a half years, give or take a few months; long enough to have grown accustomed to the change of scenery. This house, though, is the sort of thing he imagined when he imagined moving to New England; this is evident in the way his jaw falls open, just slightly, as they pull into the drive. He has seen mansions before, outside Phoenix, vast and with carefully manicured lawns, but they didn't carry the scent of Old Money the way this place does.
"Does he...live here?"
N. Hyde
[Perception + Awareness!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
Horace Gladstone
The silence is impressive once the music is cut. Pen is steeling herself there in the driver's seat, gathering herself to face her mentor and his friends with her Euthanatos boyfriend as a surprise plus one. Hands on the wheel, and she looks up at Horace Lysander Notos Gladstone's house. Does Horace - Lysander - live here?
"Some of the time."
Deep breath, she puffs out her cheeks, takes her hands from the wheel and holds them in the air - then smiles one of her lake-witch smiles, something belonging to somebody who has pulled swords out of water and air and the radiance of morning on fog, a touch of mischief which elevates it from grim. "Grab the wine from the backseat, will you?"
Nicholas's sixth sense is very, very keen right now. Pen leads them right to the front door, then pulls on an old-fashioned bell-pull. And he can feel, in the air, strange resonances. Dauntless (Commanding [Radiant, and Radiant Again, Dawn-soaked Horizon-brimming Radiance]), and Elegant(Complex, Designing). Tenebrous, Inspiring, and Celestial. A pin-wheel of stars, an endless movement: a whiff of candle-smoke and the sense of late afternoon sunlight, slanting. Demanding, and Just. Forceful, Vigorous. Subtle. Almost lost in the rest, that one.
The door is opened by a young man without resonance. He has freckles and glasses and he smiles coldly at Pen and nervously at Nicholas and clearly resists pushing his glasses up his nose.
"Come in, come in. I'll take your coats. Master Gladstone and the others are in the solarium."
N. Hyde
Only sometimes - as though living in a house this huge, this grand, were an option. Which, for Pen's mentor, it sounds as though it is.
Nicholas grabs the wine from the back, and holds it one handed by the neck, his grip loose.
His sixth sense is perhaps keen today purely because he is wide awake, fresh to the new experience; he was not exaggerating when he told Pen that he had never really been around this many powerful magi at once. As a Disparate, Nick frequently avoided other magi in fact, favoring interaction mainly with wandering spirits and whatever he could find in the dead lands (the world encompassing or as below or just past, depending on who you ask.) The mixture of resonances hit him and he is aware of how they've all seeped into this place. There is also: Burnished (a deep glow, brass and gold [it can't stay]), Verdant alongside it, someone who is Incisive enough to remind him of his sister, Malleable, and the heavy-hanging of the Destined.
Nick stares at the young man as though, at first, expecting him to be Lysander. He clearly is not. Still, Nick is polite as he shrugs off and hands over his coat and the knitted green scarf beneath: "Thank you, Mr...?"
Horace Gladstone
"Green. Collin Green."
The freckled young man has bony wrists, which are quickly stifled by Nicholas's coat and green scarf. He does judge Nicholas on his wardrobe. Pen, too. Beneath her coat, Pen has some casually glamourous thing, silver and shining, water-light and gloaming.
"You are, I presume, Mister Hyde bani Chakravanti? Is there anything you need?"
"I know the way; come on, Nick. Seeya, Col."
She slips her arm through Nicholas's elbow and draws him deeper into the belly of the beast. Which is to say, a house that was constructed during the Gilded Age and which, while clearly still influenced by the Gothic Era, maintains shadows of this Gilded Age yet: the paneling, platinum gilt here and there, carved mythic creatures in the wood, marble floors and then hardwood and then stairs and then such doors and such carpets and sound just seems muted here.
There are a number of lit candles; their way, in fact, seems to be lit by a number of burning things. And evergreen boughs, candles (or other starry things) set within, bobbing and dancing.
N. Hyde
[DO NOT GAPE.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
As much as he dislikes giving in to stereotype, Nick feels awkward wearing color. His wardrobe consists of mainly whites and greys and sometimes darker purples or blues, but he has an eye for contrast, and makes use of it. Today: his shirt is the deep purple of the sky at late sunset, buttons light grey as the clouds that pipe across the horizon backlit by the fading light. It's well fitted, but subtle: you could lose him, easily, if you weren't looking for him.
Nick likes it that way.
His expression somehow remains perfectly even as Collin introduces himself. "Nice to meet you, Collin Green," he says, and this sounds genuine enough; when asked what he needs he shakes his head just before being led by Pen farther into the house.
As inwardly awed as he is by the gilding, the unapologetic opulence of the place, he manages to move through as though he belongs there. He was invited here; he does belong here. "If I get in over my head, I am going to give you long blink quick blink long blink. It's very important that you pay attention," and this, said with such gravity that one could believe he is serious.
N. Hyde
[how terrible will this be]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
[Perception + Alertness?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[more terribleness?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 6) ( success x 1 )
Horace Gladstone
Collin Green does not follow them. He disappears neatly into the mansion, folds up and away as if he never was. So do their coats, gone to a closet or to a room for coats, where the coats will have their own Christmas Party, gossip about their owners, complain about summer's inevitable tedium. Big houses like these Gilded Age houses like these are replete with hidden passageways for the servants. Unseen but ever present.
Useful, a fire could seem to just conjure itself out of pure air. Useful. One never questions how that pitcher of hot chocolate came to appear on the bedside table, or that note, or that rose, or those sheets, or anything needed or desired. One never needs to think about them as enchantments; they are conveniences, merely. This is an old house. There are old-fashioned furnaces in them: iron monsters, made decorative because they're so large they had to be made decorative or else be an eyesore.
The Solarium is in the back of the house, a relatively short walk from the front door. They have passed a grand staircase to follow that hall with the evergreens and the lights. They pass a number of open rooms, all of them decorated for a Festival of Lights, all of them with one candle burning, sometimes misleadingly looking like two or three or more: mirrors, mostly. Trickery, illusion. Broad fireplaces, marbled with gryphons and other wingéd creatures. Where the eaves are wood and carved and opulent and where there is exposed stone or brick where the mansion looks Tudor, like John Dee should be making an appearance, a young John dee, perhaps there are hidden enigmas in the wood: or perhaps the creator of the house merely thought the craftsmanship was lovely; that it was worth doing, thoroughly, this sort of beautification of a household.
Nicholas was invited here.
He does belong here.
The first time Penelope came to this house she'd already been Horace Lysander Notos Gladstone's student for three months. He had a lesson to teach her. The Minotaur Lesson, she described it to Robin, later. They'd only just met, Rob and Penelope. The Minotaur Lesson. It doesn't involve string, but cleverness!
--
Pen makes an amused noise, and when they meet with Lysander she is giving Nicholas 'The Eyes.' "Like this?" Long close of her eyes fake crash into a pedestal with a marble statue of a nymph on it. Quick blink. Long blink. Beguiling eyelash work, smoulder smoulder.
Horace Lysander opens a door into the hall the cabalmates are walking, and Pen is so wrapped up in being silly and flirtatious that she certainly has not won initiative this time 'round. The Adept Major leans over the threshold, hand on the knob and feet (comfortable loafers the kind with leather soft as butter) still inside the room.
"Pen!" As if he opened the door just then because he expected to find Pen and Nicholas there. Because he did. "Here!" Not there. Don't keep going. Stop. Pen's stop is abrupt because she was wrapped up in aforementioned silly flirtatiousness.
"I'm just grabbing a book for Apollonius. Come in; we'll all return to the party together." He looks to be in his mid-to-late thirties, possibly early forties. Burnished hair, short but it wants to be longer and wild. He has a long face, angular around the jaw without being pointed. A short beard, closer to a seven o' clock shadow than a five o' clock. Five o' clock came and went without a razor.
Pen looses Nicholas's arm after a squeeze. Nicholas can feel Horace Lysander's resonance, of course, but also the vague glint of someone else already in the room. Someone used to being passed over, going unnoticed. A woman with dark hair. Lysander waits until Pen and Nicholas enter; then he closes the door behind them.
The room is round, and also a small library. There are two stone gryphons in the center of it, and a desk with a comfortable chair. The stone gryphons might well come alive and disembowel someone not supposed to be there. The ceiling is painted to represent a celestial skyscape; the floor is parquetry, wood of many kinds. There is a sharp, coppery smell to it -- not quite blood, but ozone.
N. Hyde
This house is labyrinthine: Nick gets the impression as they walk through it that the two of them could turn a corner and things would've moved, that they might wander into one of the rooms of candles and trickery and somehow step through into a too-long hallway or a stair that goes down, down, down. This is a Hermetic manor; that is certainly not outside the realm of possibility. Or probability, even.
Nicholas almost does not notice Lysander when Pen's Hermetic mentor appears. He will ruefully examine, afterward, the first impression he probably makes: flustered, staring at her with some red tinging his cheeks, and his thoughts definitely far away from the room that they are walking through.
He doesn't collide with a statue as Pen pretends to do. This is all to the good.
Lysander appears, and Nick's stop is also abrupt as he takes in the man in front of him. The dark haired woman nearby, who he makes eye contact with, acknowledges the presence of, but doesn't have a chance to linger on because there's this Hermetic here who he desperately wants to make a good impression on.
He is not sure whether he should wait for Pen to introduce him, so instead he walks alongside her past Lysander and into the waiting round room.
Horace Gladstone
The dark haired woman Nicholas acknowledges raises an eyebrow when he acknowledges her; when he meets her eyes. Her own regard is steady, and she is dressed in black: neat black, red mouth, dark eyes.
Door closed, Lysander turns first to his apprentice. He is smiling, and it is a satyr's easy smile; a soldier's easy smile. Do soldiers have easy smiles? When they are brave and they are bold, when they are in a moment between hard moments. A soldier knows what life is for. A general does, too. What lives are for, and where to spend them. Lines around his mouth and lines around his eyes, a life well-lived (and how many lives spent? And where?).
He clasps her hand. "Merry Christmas." He is still clasping her hand when he turns to Nicholas, and he isn't hurrying or speaking quickly but there is something quick(silver) nonetheless about Horace Lysander Notos Gladstone. Deft. "You must be Nicholas Hyde, the Chakravanti lover."
Up go his eyebrows; his smile spreads after a beat, a slow seep. He offers Nicholas his hand. I'm Horace Lysander Notos Gladstone, Adept Major bani Flambeau ordo Hermes, welcome to my home. Glad you could come. This is my associate Diana Antimony Eleonora Lovelace-Donne, bani Fortunae ordo Hermes."
N. Hyde
He had been steeling himself for the inevitable moment that Lysander's attention would turn away from Pen to him. Last night, he secretly rehearsed his introduction, and it always involved the same sort of easy composure and warmth that he manages in the other half of his life, the one lived among Sleepers. See, there, Nick is the only one with the accumulated wisdom of recalled lives, the only one who is guided by something greater than himself, some half-glimpsed distant ideal of Ascension. There has been something healing for him in that.
Here, he is prey in the tall grass. He knows it, in the way clever prey knows that it's prey and knows that it will have to be quick on its feet.
He, too, smiles as he reaches out to take Lysander's hand. His eyes are steady in spite of how he's identified: the Chakravanti lover. "Nick is fine," he says. "It's good to meet you both. I've heard a lot about you from Pen." He doesn't direct this specifically at Lysander (he has heard nothing of Diana), mainly out of politeness, out of the usual desire he has to ensure that voices are not left out of the conversation.
Horace Gladstone
"A pleasure," Diana murmurs. "Sander, if you are distracted by social obligation you will never find the book and we will perish here."
"Right, right," Lysander says. "Forgive my momentary inattention; after I find this book, I'll give you a tour, Nick."
"Hello, Diana," Pen says, carefully. "How are you? How is Evelyn?"
"The boy is doing quite well; as am I, although," a brief pause. Red red mouth becomes a frown; it would probably be just as lovely if it were dipped in blood. But why should it be dipped in blood? "But I promised I would not be boring tonight on the subject of my calculations. Nick, what is your area of interest? Your speciality? Have you made much of a study of past lives?"
N. Hyde
Questions are dangerous. Questions are always dangerous.
Nick knows this; he is a man who asks a lot of questions. He understands their power to control a conversation, to expose vulnerabilities while betraying none.
When he thought of how this party would go last night when Pen first invited him, he imagined himself slipping by beneath everyone else's notice. He imagined lingering in the background while people far more important and powerful than himself talked among themselves, and picking up the occasional bit of useful or interesting information.
He is beginning to understand how very, very wrong he was.
"Not of past lives, specifically," he says. "I've directed the bulk of my work toward understanding spirit realms and the Umbra, and learning how to interact within them." Then, with an air of polite curiosity, "Are you Evelyn's master, then?"
Horace Gladstone
Pen is torn. Her urge is to help Horace find the book, but if she does that, she is leaving Nicholas metaphorically alone with Diana, who she finds rather terrifying; what to do, what to do. Nothing; that is what she does, at first, although she is inadvertently giving the room winsome wide eyes. It was only yesterday they found their cabal-mate hiding a widderslainte in her apartment; killed him; burned the body, purified the ground; it was only last night. Her poise is hard-won tonight, and she is never very good at hiding her feelings anyway. Usually she is just better at keeping them reserved, when she is properly prepared; alas. Alack.
"No," Diana says.
"He is her godson," Pen says, too: inserts it quick before Diana can change the subject, which is indeed what she is going to do. Diana glances from Nicholas to Pen.
And then, "Indeed; I found him before he Awoke. What sort of understanding of spirit realms and the Umbra does one of the Euthanatoi, forgive me, Chakravanti have? To what end, your spirit quests?"
Horace Lysander is listening, of course. He is keeping an ear open, an eye on his guests; but he is mostly looking up at the books. The walls are high; the books are many, and, as evidenced when he snaps his fingers and presses in on -- something -- causing the bookshelf to turn, revealing a different shelf, well. There are more shelves than there at first appear to be.
"Ha," quietly, to himself. He balances on the lowest shelf, reaching up for something high. There's a word scraped out in Enochian; the book drifts into his hand. Voilá.
N. Hyde
Here is something Diana can probably tell about him, because his expression doesn't change or alter when she says Euthanatoi forgive me Chakravanti: Nick is very new, at least to his Tradition. He is too new to understand the baggage the former name now carries, that his Tradition resents being understood only as the Death Tradition.
One day, he will understand this, because he will be in a bloody country and it will occur to him that even though he swore he would remember each person to whom he gave the Good Death, their stories and their faces have blurred together: he cannot recall who and when or even why. It will haunt him until some of that soul sickness bleeds into Quiet, as natural a flow as gangrene to the heart. Then he too will bristle, even if he will do it in silence.
Now, he only gives the woman in front of him a careful smile. "Understanding is its own end, isn't it? Appropriate at least for where I'm at."
Horace Gladstone
Diana's expression is the polite and courteous mask of someone waiting for the other person to elaborate. Her hands, she clasps behind her back. Diana was the Moon goddess, the Virgin of the Hunt; but Diana, like most Roman versions of Greek gods, was more multi-faceted, more protective of the homestead and the empire; more imperious. Starry. Diana became the goddess of witches. Follow the traces, read Robert Graves.
"What book is it? Will you let him take it away from here?"
Inquisitiveness will win out. Pen drifts closer to Lysander, although she reaches out to take Nicholas's hand before she does so; enlaces her fingers with his and squeezes. This is not because she needs the support or feels he needs the support, per se, as much as it is because she wants to touch him; wants to be tethered.
Horace smiles. There's hearth-fire warmth in the smile, weathered sickle edge glinting in gold-hay; that's the kind of smile it is, and he runs a hand over his face. Considering: "If Apollonius can figure out for himself how to ask the book to leave with him, he may take it from the house. I suspect he won't - "
Diana is still looking at Nicholas, patiently; spider-unblinking.
" - even try." He hands Pen the book. Its covers are a deep brick-baked red.
N. Hyde
A few beats pass in which it begins to occur to Nick that Diana is not going to save him, that she is not going to offer even another question he can seize on, even if it's not his preference. It is the sort of silence in which it is difficult to even turn the question around, because it is layered with expectation.
Pen's hand finds his. There is a delay before Nick returns the squeeze, even as Pen drifts back toward her mentor.
Chakravanti training has its own demands and trials; quite a few of Nick's, however, centered around ethics and conviction and the celebration of life in a way that complemented his prior training in the Sleeper world. So when he caves, it's with honesty. "We probably have the same understanding, semantics aside, of areas past the Veil. I've visited the dead lands twice, and I've spent a lot of time learning how to contact and communicate with the types of spirits that are likely to linger in areas like this - elementals and animal spirits and the like."
A beat, because her question was two-pronged at best. "I'm a recent initiate and most of my studies of it so far have been with the goal of understanding how each piece interacts with the Wheel, so that it remains balanced. There are some schools of thought that suggest that what's past the Veilis the Wheel, and so understanding how it meshes with the material and how we move between is essential."
A beat. He has spoken of this with other Chakravanti, of course: there is still something absolutely petrifying about speaking of it to a Hermetic. "What do you specialize in?"
Horace Gladstone
"Hmmmm," says Diana, after Nicholas's 'and the like.' But after 'between is essential,' "Now that is interesting," she says, and he might get the impression that there is something approving beneath the still rather rigidly courteous mask. There can be no doubt it is a mask; but what lies beneath? Before Diana can ask him anything else, he turns the question around on her.
What are the Flambeau doing? The Flambeau are looking at the book together, burnished heads bent. Penelope's back is to Nicholas and Diana; a naked back, for the scoop of her silvery dress is low low low. But if Nicholas glances over, he might notice that there is something listening, something aware, about the still slope of Lysander's shoulders.
"You might understand it as Chaldean theology. Mathemancy, numerology; many other -mancies as it would happen. I study fortune and prophecy, the paths they have left and the paths they will forge. Now if what's past the Veil is the 'Wheel,' will you tell me,"
Here, Lysander clears his throat. "Diana, Pen, I want to borrow Nicholas for that tour I mentioned. Di accuses me of keeping us here until we perish, but she's the dangerous one." His eyes crinkle. "She'd keep you talking about your Tradition's opinions on this and that until you had no more breath in your body. Pen, you'll give Apollonius this book from me."
Horace Gladstone
Pen: Perception + Empathy on Nick. Are you, um, okay? Should I try and stay with you?
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Horace Gladstone
Horace Lysander: Manipulation + Subterfuge.
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Horace Gladstone
Diana: Manipulation + Subterfuge.
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
Manipulation + Subterfuge
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
Perception + Empathy
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
Perception + Empathy (Diana)
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
Horace Gladstone
[Horace. You are confident? Perc + Subt.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Horace Gladstone
[Diana: You are confident?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
Yes! Yes I am!
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Horace Gladstone
[Really?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
SUCH CONFIDENT.
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Horace Gladstone
[Mm?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
C'mon man I've held out this long
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
Horace Gladstone
[Yes?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
But for real though
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Horace Gladstone
[But truthfully...]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 5 )
Horace Gladstone
[Hey, wait, I can totally try to see through Horace and Diana too. Pen: Per + Emp activation for Horace!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
Horace Gladstone
[HAH MOTHERFUCKER.]
Horace Gladstone
[For Diana!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Horace Gladstone
[Oh, wait, this is depressing to me.]
Horace Gladstone
[But clearly everything is fine. I can totally hide things, man.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Horace Gladstone
Horace: Mm, student?
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 4, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Horace Gladstone
Diana: Eh?
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 9) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
[To Diana and Pen: there is an air of quiet self-assurance about Nick. It never verges on arrogance or bravado, but is rather a sort of stillness, the quietude of a calm heart. Pen knows he is frequently relaxed in social situations and likes other people: he seems to be so now, enjoying the act of sharing and exchanging words with Diana.
Lysander knows that the above is much of who Nick is. It takes a little while, but sooner or later Lysander sees past that: he has chosen to project an aspect of himself that is useful to him right now and utterly obscure the rest. He very much wants Diana and Lysander to like him, because he is stupidly in love with Pen (maybe he doesn't even realize this yet) and wants them to approve. He may also have partially resolved issues with authority and caregiving figures. This situation triggers many of his insecurities.]
Horace Gladstone
And Nicholas has some insight into Horace Lysander's motivations. He wants to seem thoughtless about his command: Pen, Diana, off you go. He even wants to seem affable. He is not really very affable, although Nicholas doesn't quite know what Lysander is beyond desirous of getting Nicholas alone (and perhaps a little warning, to Diana. Be nice). He is much more reserved and watchful than he seems.
Unfortunately for Nicholas, he has a lot of insight into Diana's thoughts. The woman's polite and courteous mask really is a mask: beneath it, she is somewhat disbelieving. Interested when she says she is interested, yes, but in a desperate way: will the Chakravanti say something of note now? Will it be able to discourse intelligently? There is doubt on that front, and some rather resigned (to failure) hope along those lines. Diana does not understand what Lysander's student sees in Nicholas or why she'd bring him tonight. Diana is not a woman who likes many people: she just tolerates Pen and seems to think she is being indulged and spoiled by Lysander.
Pen, meanwhile, first studies Nick carefully, right? He seems fine. He is fine. Okay, then. But Horace and Diana: Pen stifles a frown and a rather martial glint come to her gray-gleam eyes; sheaths stillness behind a straightening spine, the straightening spine behind a natural stretch, half-turn toward the door.
"Certainly. The Solarium, right?"
"Diana will show you the way."
N. Hyde
There are many times when Nick's insight is a sword that was forged lacking a hilt or pommel: a weapon, yes, cutting and sharp, but without a safe way to grasp it. This was driven home time and again as he was growing up, and so too now, where he glimpses a little more than he wants of particularly Diana.
That she doesn't see Pen positively either might have provided some reassurance, except all that springs forth is indignation on her behalf: this he suppresses, melting any chill that might have crept into his smile with compassion for this woman who probably doesn't relate well to...just about anyone.
Lysander, he is now even less sure he wants to be alone with, and the only way he has to politely duck out of the conversation without losing face (Your other guests will be missing you) will be rapidly circumvented. He knows this. "I would like a tour. You have a beautiful house."
Horace Gladstone
Diana breathes in deeply through her nose, red red mouth (bloody mouth; no, no blood) closed, and looks at Lysander for a hard second. And then she says to Nicholas, "I am interested in hearing more about the interaction of the Wheel, as expressed by the worlds beyond the Veil, and the material world. If you like, I would be happy to discuss fortune with you. I have had some edifying conversations with members of your Tradition on the subject before."
But she does not think that Nicholas, with his focus on the spirit world, is likely to add anything of interest on that point. Hope springs eternal, however. Doesn't it? Hmm.
"Perhaps keep the tour shortish; the days folded up in these walls have seemed many-numbered. I wouldn't want to lose you both for the greater part of the night," Pen suggests, parting words, eyes on Nicholas. She thinks he'll be fine, but she wants to be with him: that's why she invited him to come with her.
Horace smiles a reassuring at his student (it's that autumnal warmth again, that burnished something; hearth-fires, wood-fires, dying kings; crowned in gold, sharp and made into a black in white photograph; it will never fade; it is always on the verge of fading), eyes gone pellucid. He has straight eyelashes; they make his eyes look vulnerable. Witness now.
Works with people susceptible to his charms.
Diana and Pen leave.
Horace says, "Pen is correct when she says the days folded up in these walls are many; I will give you a shorter tour than I might otherwise. Are you interested in architecture, history, or living arrangements? Is there anything in a Hermetic's stronghold you would be interested in seeing?"
N. Hyde
"On that subject," Nick says to Diana, his tone amiable, "I am very sure that you know more than I do. But I would enjoy discussing it with you further." Here's another thing: he is aware that etiquette is a sort of social dance, and he is aware of the subtexts that pass between others. He is untrained because he avoids group dynamics as though the merest brush would blister his fingers, but he could be good at it.
If he wanted. Perhaps that's the crux, and perhaps Lysander can tell.
He locks eyes with Pen before she leaves and offers her a smile, warm and just tinged with enthusiasm: he is having fun! See? She brought him here to meet Lysander, and now he is having a conversation with Lysander. Like the Hanged Man, he knows when to surrender himself.
Lysander asks whether there is anything in particular he would like to see. "I..." His hesitation is not feigned, and nor is it because he is interested in none of these things (quite the opposite): he had simply not realized that he would be given options. His gaze is suddenly wandering around the entire place (moreso than earlier, since he had been focused on Pen's beguiling). There is a reason Nick is fascinated by the spirit world: there is a bit of the explorer in him. "I would like to see its architecture. And if you're inclined to share," a pause in which he acknowledges that Lysander might not be, "I'm interested in what sort of Working you've done inside the stronghold."
Their language, too, he adapts to and utilizes easily, once he has heard it once.
Horace Gladstone
"Hmm." There's a lick of brightness in the hmm; like a wire, drawn taut, how it will glint. He is surprised, but not very, at the request; seems made thoughtful by it. "What do you mean, precisely, when you ask what sort of Working?"
He gives Nicholas time to frame his response by beginning the tour, eyebrows lifted as if to say oh go ahead and interrupt me when you're ready, but: "This room we are in now I call the Little Annex. The shelves are Janus shelves; they have two faces."
Horace demonstrates how the turning-of-the-shelves works, and allows Nicholas to get in close to see how they fold up in space. This is not a trick with Correspondence, not exactly, but it is an architect's trick; the shelves are built into the walls this way.
N. Hyde
Nick had asked for architecture, and someone else might have started to tell him about original brick and wainscotting. And it's not that he wouldn't have been interested in those things: he can touch them, he can admire them for their workmanship. Lysander, though, shows him (almost as though he had been granted a flash of insight into the young Chakravanti there with him) exactly what he would have wanted to see.
He watches and admires as the shelves turn, and yes, does get up close to examine and to look for the mechanism that allows the shelves to turn in place. Because he is examining, there is a natural pause, a space before he answers Lysander's question.
"I mean," and another small pause in which he searches for the correct words, "that there are - I mean, I know things like this, these are mundane illusions, that there's a lot of smoke and mirrors in the house from what I saw so far. So there's more I can't see, that maybe that's meant to obscure. I'm sure wards and...you know, things like that would be expected. I'm just interested in how you've blended your Work with the natural structure of the house."
Horace Gladstone
Horace Lysander doesn't hurry Nick along, but gives him all the time he wants to investigate the mechanism. He even shows Nick where to press in order to make it work and allows him to try it.
"I see; that is a bold thing to ask after, but sure - I'll show you a Working or two which take advantage from the structure of the house. Do you know how to watch the weaving, or," a shade of irony; it seems good-natured, "is it just the weaver that catches your eye?"
N. Hyde
Nick does, indeed, press the mechanism to try it himself, and then sooner or later leaves off, ready to move on to the rest of the house. He is mindful, after all, that the tour was supposed to be short, and mindful of the temerity of his request. Some of this might impress; too much of it and he is likely to wear out whatever welcome he might have had.
Lysander's question, good natured though it is, draws a somewhat guilty look from Nick: he senses he has been found out. "I've been studying the Tellurian, but no, I don't know how to look for that yet," he admits. The rest of the comment he breezes past: this is for the better.
Horace Gladstone
"If you allow it, I will share my perceptions with you."
He'd use Mind on Nicholas to make this happen. Who knows what else he might do? Horace Lysander Notos Gladstone. He seems affable, but Nicholas knows he is so much more reserved (vigilant [watchful]) than appearances would seem to say. He opens the door to the Little Annex, and gestures Nicholas out into the evergreen hall. He follows and closes the door behind him, then it is onward and upward. Horace chooses a direction and it is not the direction that Pen was bringing Nick earlier.
He heads back toward the front: talks a little bit about the architecture in more mundane terms; how old this part of the house is, mentions fire damage done to the room with silver cutlery set out. He points out a wooden mouse carved to resemble Robin Hood and explains how rabbit's blood was used in the glue for some of the gilded parts of the house. That room there was imported from France in 1872 and put together according to careful specifications.
With a thoughtful chuckle, "It's a ridiculous house to live in, especially if one happens to be alone."
N. Hyde
Nick hesitates in giving permission, if only briefly: who knows, indeed, what else Lysander might do. Then again, he is Pen's mentor, and Pen trusts him; and so he nods. "I'd like to see," and maybe it will help him, too, in unraveling more of how this works so that he may begin to perceive it on his own. Nick has focused far more on being able to perceive altered reality than he has on trying to alter it himself, and within a few years this will not have changed much.
"No one lives in the house with you?" This does surprise him; Nick would have expected servants or consors at the very least, things he has heard the Order of Hermes makes heavy use of, at least in this part of the country.
Horace Gladstone
"Not with me. It is often closed. A seasonal house, or a house if there is need for a house of its kind. I prefer my apartment."
He'll no doubt warn Nick before he layers his own perception of matters over Nicholas's. He isn't doing that yet. They're going upstairs now. Graceful sweep of stair's balustrade, something which would be awful nice to slide down. Ari would slide down the stair rail in a heartbeat. She probably has.
"Sometimes there are students and servants around, but they're temporary fixtures. Pen stayed here for a little. How are you at the sphere of Forces?"
N. Hyde
Nick is quiet while he processes the idea of having enough wealth to not only own this house (alone), but to have the choice of whether or not to live in it. There is a nod to acknowledge the information that Lysander offers up as he follows the other man up the stairs, noticing the curve of the balustrade and imagining Ari there; it hooks one corner of his mouth.
"I don't know it," is his next admission. Though he is not Hermetic: perhaps he can be forgiven this. "Do you have many students?"
Horace Gladstone
[Oooh, another Manipulation + Subterfuge moment!]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
Eh?
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Horace Gladstone
He doesn't know it. Lysander doesn't say that's too bad. Doesn't express disappointment or rue. He doesn't know it: okay. He'll pick it up or he won't. The Euthanatos is not Lysander's responsibility.
Has Lysander had many students? "Yes." Something hawkish when his eyes hood like that. Something almost sleepy, those long straight eyelashes. Princely, even. Up the stairs, onto the second floor, Lysander stops by a window with a view of the grounds outside: all the way to the cliff's walk, the gray crash of the sea, fairy lands forlorn surely visible at some hours of the night out there from this window. "Both those I take for my own and those I teach brief lessons to, as a favor to their Masters."
Nicholas can read something of Lysander in the deliberate way he keeps his gaze out on the sea for a moment, before turning his eyes on the dark-haired younger man. He can read something of Lysander in the way he chooses to phrase things. He can intuit something of the man's character in the way he is choosing to conceal it.
Nick is insightful. And it's hard to be insightful.
"What do you think the appropriate relationship between a master and his student is? What is the appropriate level of intimacy, the appropriate time spent one on the other?"
"Do you look forward to having students one day?"
The last question is a feint. He is curious, Lysander, but does not expect Nicholas to say so without reservation. He is of the opinion that Euthanatoi don't 'look forward' to having students; they prepare themselves for responsibility, and rather grimly. But it's a feint. The other questions are leading questions, in their way, and Lysander is about to probably get more personal than Nick will be comfortable with, or he is at least beginning to lay traps.
N. Hyde
Manip + Subterfuge
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
Horace Gladstone
[Mm?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
There are many circumstances in which Nick uses leading questions himself: after all, counselors refrain from advice giving. No one wants to hear what you think they should do. Help them come up with the solution themselves, on the other hand -
Well. He notices the traps that are being laid. Whether he is quick-witted enough to escape them is another matter. Perhaps he will have this moment in which he sees that horizon line looming ahead before he tumbles over the waterfall, the headlights coming on too fast in the dark, and he will only experience frustration at his inability to spring out of the way. He's young yet.
There is a subtle shift in Nick's expression when Lysander begins asking questions: something furtive, something already deeply uncomfortable. He might wonder whether Nick has picked up on what he is doing (he has), but his level of discomfort seems to have escalated quickly. His efforts to disguise this are notable, but not enough.
He absorbs the information Lysander offers, and the last question, feint or not, is the easiest for him to answer. "I don't know if I would say 'look forward to,' but I'm sure I will," he says, and he sounds just a little resigned in a way that suggests that Lysander is absolutely right in this particular assessment of Chakravanti.
He gives weight to the other two questions with a slight tilt of his head. "Ethically, it's important to note the power differential between a teacher and a student, and that requires clear boundaries. You can have mutual warmth but it can't and shouldn't be a friendship. Or anything else. Which isn't to say," and there is a quick beat here in which he considers his words, "that things don't get complicated in small communities like ours. Sometimes there are pre-existing relationships that have to be worked through. Why do you ask?"
Horace Gladstone
"You strike me as an observant kid; why do you think I ask?"
N. Hyde
There is a sidelong glance toward the other man, a rueful expression that flickers across Nick's face. "I don't know you, so I obviously can't say with any certainty. I doubt it's because you plan to take my opinion into serious consideration for your own purposes, though."
Horace Gladstone
[Okay, Lysander. Can you HIDE YOUR TRUE REACTION this time from the INSIGHTFUL KID?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
Nope.
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
He seems amused.
He is amused, but the seeming of his amusement is mellower; is lighter. Is more air, more easily dispelled. His actual amusement is somewhat cynical, somewhat informed by punk ass kids think they're so clever and a rather brittle weariness. He doesn't dislike Nicholas. He is carefully forming his opinions as they go. His opinion has just grown a little more formed.
"When I ask for an opinion, I like to decide whether or not I'm going to give it serious consideration myself, after I've heard it."
He raises his eyebrows. Forehead creases. But he isn't Diana, to wait Nicholas out with expectance; with that kind of spider-patient courtesy. He leaves the window; continues the tour down the hallway. Impressive as the hallway on the bottom floor: of course there are suits of armor here. Some candles, burning; lots of candles, burning. Burning everywhere, to dispel the darkness.
"What do you think of Pen, as a Mage?"
N. Hyde
Nicholas wanders after Lysander down the hall, and he is trying to keep the general wanderiness of his demeanor to a minimum tonight. Not here; here he should focus, he shouldn't be noting the play of light off of the armor or immersing himself in either the material sensations or flow of energy in this place. He is more grounded tonight.
The weariness - this he notes with interest. Nick does not have an instinct for attack, for pressing the advantage; there is no bloodthirstiness in him. If there were, he'd be a far more dangerous man than he is; but he is a healer and a keeper of secrets, not a combatant in any sense. Even now, were he to try to identify his emotional response to the new information, the predominant one would be concern, at the isolation that people feel as they climb, at what else he hasn't seen, at the implications of that for himself and perhaps one day for Pen.
He is drawn out of that train of thought by the next question, because here, when he thinks back on the other questions - he glimpses the pressure point, the place where he is expected to step. "Brilliant, and driven, and in love with the purpose she's gotten from the Order," he says. And then, without much of a pause for Lysander to follow up, "You think I'm going to hold her back."
Horace Gladstone
[These are not the emotions you are looking for. Manip + Subt.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 7 )
N. Hyde
Maybe I am! You don't know!
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
[Hmm. And a Perception + Subt, how do you feel about the things you just said, Nick?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
[Nope.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[The thing that Lysander can tell with absolute certainty is that Nick is angry; defiant even. His temper, when it spikes, does not look like Pen's. It is something more difficult to suss out, something slow building and slow to die; he grows distant. There is perhaps some fear there, driving it from below, though it's not based in insecurity or feelings of unworthiness: Nick understands and accepts that his path to Ascension looks different from Pen's.]
Horace Gladstone
A Text Message interlude.
R: How is it going?
P: Fine. Merry Christmas!
R: Is Casper the Friendly Ghost charming them?
P: I don't know. He and L are off gallivanting together.
R: LOL.
P: :|
R: Sorry.
R: Why did you let them go off alone?
P: Nick was having a good time with Diana and he wanted to talk to L and L wanted to talk to him.
R: Oh come on. A good time with *Diana*?
P: You're cruel. Diana is only a little terrifying.
R: I bet you ten dollars that if you look away from your phone right now she will be looking at you like you are an insect.
P: No bet.
Horace Gladstone
He is quick. Nicholas may have noticed that down below, when they first met. He is quicksilver, when he wants to be. But Nicholas has been able to read Horace Lysander well tonight. Perhaps he doesn't want to be now.
There is a flicker in Lysander's eyes, a sea-change. There is a beat; it could've been deliberate, but does not seem so. Natural rhythms, we all fall into them. "No," he says. "I don't. How could you?"
"I want my student to be happy. Happy students with something they care about pay sharper attention in class. In some ways, I think it is better when we take lovers outside the Order - there is so much competition within it."
Horace Gladstone
R: What do you think they're talking about?
P: I dunno. The house?
R: Probably you and how much of a failure he's going to make you.
P: Shut up.
R: Lysander is a dick.
P: He is not.
P: Well he is.
P: But he's not cruel.
P: I mean not to guests.
P: I don't think he'd be cruel to Nick.
P: Shut up.
P: He wouldn't be.
R: Not saying anything.
N. Hyde
Lysander is quick: Nicholas noticed that before. Still, Nick generally has confidence in his ability to read people (perhaps even too much, at this point in his life) and he has been able to read Horace Gladstone well tonight. He notices that turning of the water there in the other man's eyes, and though he himself is hiding whatever anger he may have, Lysander is perceptive of Nick enough to notice some of it thaw and drain from him.
After the Hermetic is spoken, Nick merely looks abashed. He is realizing, see, that between Robin and Vivienne and Diana, perhaps he came in expecting to fight and he's found one where it isn't warranted. The Euthanatos is not Lysander's responsibility, and yet this will be something of a formative moment for him, one he will look back on and realize that had he surrendered and accepted that the interaction would be as it would be, he wouldn't have shamed himself in front of this Adept.
He will learn not to make assumptions. He will learn that even insight has its limits when a person is unknown to him. Perhaps the conclusion he comes to is wrong; he still makes it.
"I'm sorry," he says. "That was unfair of me." A beat. "It's only that your questions seemed to be leading someplace."
Horace Gladstone
"Don't worry about it." The noblesse oblige is rough; it seems disused, but it is not disused; that is just Lysander's manner. Burnished hair, burnished eyes too sometimes; those straight lashes, that sea-change, and light is contained within his iris' his dark pupils lends him a soulful air of attention even when he is dismissing an apology or an assessment or whatever it is he is actually dismissing.
"This way," and he is walking backwards, one arm held out to indicate a particular door. "You may like this upcoming room; it has been the cause of more trouble for wandering house guests than any other thing in this entire building."
And once Nicholas has fallen into step, he picks up the initial line of questioning. "So I asked you what you think an appropriate master-student relationship was, what you think of Pen as a Mage. Now I'm going to ask you what you think of yourself as a Mage?"
N. Hyde
[Awareness!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 5 )
N. Hyde
Nick, meeker perhaps than he was, pads after Lysander into the waiting room. A cause of trouble for wandering house guests, Lysander says, and Nick's interest piques (not that this is hard to do.) He keeps pace with the other man easily, matching his stride as though he were a shadow moving alongside him at high noon.
Then Lysander begins his questions again, and again Nick is wary. This time he waits it out though. It does not help that this is a difficult question for him to answer; this is not something he has thought about extensively, at least not in the terms that Lysander is framing them.
"I know enough to fulfill my responsibilities," he says, and then pauses because he knows this is not the answer Lysander wants, and he also knows it's not the full truth, either. "I know enough to be of use to the other people around me. I want to understand how reality fits together and go past...what's immediately apparent. I think I..." Nick hesitates. "I want to be sure I'm doing the right thing, by myself and by others. It's so easy to do those other things I want wrong."
N. Hyde
[Alertness?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Horace Gladstone
"Have you entertained the possibility that she will hold you back?"
Lysander expects a denial, but is ready to meet it; first a sluice of a glance, a faint smile and crinkled eyes.
Nicholas can feel that the floor they're on is more saturated in (soaked in [brimming with]) old Workings, strong Workings, Workings that have soaked into the wood and the marble and the metal that are as close kin to this hall to the rooms upcoming as the foundation is. Ancient. No; not ancient. This is America and this is an American house even though some of the rooms were imported direct from France (and perhaps, there, some truly Ancient old Workings, the archaelogical remnants of Order Magi before they were in their modern shape). But quite old. His intuition tells him that there are interesting things to be found if he were to actually poke around here. That he could, if he were able to focus his insight, if he were able to watch the weaving, follow any manner of hints suggestions whiffs toward their source: smoke to fire, and into the fire, all the little mothlings. He knows that there is Something Coming, not just because Horace Lysander told him trouble was afoot, but because he can feel it.
And here it is. He knows it is a powerful Mind compulsion even as it casts its net on him. There is a green door and he has heard somebody he most wants to hear from calling him, emphatically and with great excitement, to 'is that you? is that you? come here quickly you have to see this leave the door open come quick!' And Nicholas definitely wants to heed the call. The compulsion is strong, and once it has its net on him: it will tangle him up, dredge him toward. Tug.
He is fore-warned - he can fight the compulsion, can't he? (But it's true, Nicholas. You are wanted. You are being called.)
N. Hyde
This question: it takes him aback, and perhaps Lysander can see then that no, Nick has not ever entertained the possibility that Pen could hold him back. This may not be for reasons that are immediately apparent, and for Pen's mentor, it's likely that whatever Nick's reasons for not entertaining this question, they don't matter. "I...well, no. But I don't think she would do that." A beat, in which his tone becomes more thoughtful. "If I were becoming something which would be held back by her, I don't think I would want it anyway."
Perhaps this would sound foolishly romantic to anyone who didn't think about it, who didn't understand his frame of reference: Nick has seen, if only once as of right now, what happens to Chakravanti who isolate themselves. He will see it again, and again, before we continue our story in the present. But that's not yet.
He has only a few moments to cast his eyes around this new place, Workings so old that they defy memory (but no - Nick could trace the threads of Fate back, perhaps, if he wanted and had the skill with Matter). At first he thinks this is where wayward travelers lose themselves in Lysander's house, because he is fascinated. There's something of his own hallowed energy here, but different, and it draws him.
Ah yes - and here it is. The green door, and a powerful compulsion that he recognizes for what it is: Lysander can see the whites of his eyes, see the way his foot moves forward even as his upper body draws back, as his arm folds protectively across his chest (his heart). He is seeing his father; Lysander does not know this. He only sees the effort it takes to disregard: but he has seen this before.
For moments he is silent. Then, as he regains his composure, "How many people have gone through that door? Where do they go?"
Horace Gladstone
Lysander stops and waits Nicholas's struggle out. He is alert when he is stopped, watchful of the young man. Nicholas hasn't yet had so much as a sip of water or a crumb of bread, but he is still a guest. In the Solarium, room of glass and candle light and intense discussion, Penelope is texting with friends; they are telling her she shouldn't have let Nicholas and Lysander wander off together, and being generally amusing.
[Another Text Interlude.
A: listen to R. He's often right. Then smug about it.
R: The choreography for my I Told You So dance is already primed.
A: to amuse you, Pen, imagine it set to the modern major general. R always makes a stunning, if convincingly gay, pirate of however you spell it
A: OH I AM SORRY DID I REPLY ALL <3 to R
R: Penzance.
R: And, quite frankly, I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
R: Acceptable song for I Told You So. Thanks, Ari. <3
A: always in service ;)
]
And Pen is feeling both rebellious and guilty, heart-sore and impatient. And here is Zelda, and Alexandra, and she can't seem to leave the Solarium. What is it, some kind of enchanted glass otherworld, and only the right epiphany release you?
Upstairs, in the hall where enchantment is the marrow in the bones of the house, Nicholas regains his composure and asks a question. Two. Lysander crosses the hall and opens the green door. Of course it does nothing for him, and it is a dim-looking thing before he reaches in and flicks on the light. Nicholas might be reluctant to come near, just in case the compulsion snakes out again, but it does not. Fought-through valiantly, and it doesn't strike again; it is no snake at all. Has no fangs.
"A high number," Lysander says, and this is pure dismissal. He doesn't care to recount exact numbers of fools or victims. "But it isn't a Portal; or," and he grins, a satyr's grin, "not precisely. You answer the call, go in, and then what happens depends on where you step. The most common thing is they fall asleep until I come and collect them. The least common thing is they wake the dragon."
N. Hyde
The green door opens, and Nick is indeed hesitant in drawing near: it was only last night that he summoned terror-crows to peck out a man's eyes, and that they burned that same body in a hollow in the woods behind his friend's house. He might have found himself somewhat replenished last night, but he's still not at his best.
It's Christmas. He hasn't heard from his father, and though he knows his father and his father's patterns by now, he would like to.
Yet: we move on, and so does Nick. He casts an eye over the Workings on the door, of at least those that he can see (it's not much), and up to Lysander. This man - he's not what Nick expected from what Pen told Nick about him. "Wake the dragon?" He is interested, and wary of being interested, and snared in spite of all that.
Horace Gladstone
[Enochian!]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
[Let's share our perceptions, shall we? Coincidental Mind 2/Prime 1. Maybe some other 1s. Diff 5, -3, Enochian is cool. But it can't be that cool, so.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (9, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Horace Gladstone
He puts a hand on Nicholas's shoulder to draw him closer, once Nicholas is close enough to be drawn so. Careful, strong hand; heart's blood warmth in his fingers and palm He will keep Nicholas from stepping into the room if Nicholas gets the idea that he could do that now, or should.
"It will only be me," he says, in what might be meant as a comforting manner (automatic manipulations). Before he takes his hand from the Chakravanti, he speaks an invocation in a language Nicholas has heard Penelope use. But Lysander is a different sort of Mage from his student: when he speaks, even though his voice is soft and almost casual, the command is no shaping -- no imperious suggestion;
it is a demand, and a song struck from the heart;
it is the clarity of glass, dragged out of the stars and given to Mankind: Here. Have light. A lullaby; something old.
It'll only be Horace: the strength of his power settling into the young Chakravanti's mind with more surety than the compulsion. The room is a small green room: there is a fainting couch and a sideboard and a very interesting looking curio cabinet, partially hidden behind which is a door. There is a rug of interlaced vines and ivy leaves. There is a tin ceiling, designs which echo the rug in the tin; and this is where Nicholas's borrowed sight begins to reveal how the spell is woven into symbols hidden stamped scribed into the tin and then woven into the weft of the rug, how the mind compulsion is the lure and then: leave it up to chance. He can see how the curving arches of what aren't windows but might've been if this room were anywhere else are instead simply walls made to look as if they should go somewhere strengthen and fix the web. The web: step there,
and you feel dizzy, are suggestible: sit over there. Touch over there, and you sleep, and you do not wake up even if you are moved; not until the spell has run its course, or it is unlocked.
Step there, and you vomit. Take another step, and you are stricken with diarrhea.
Step there, and you hear somebody behind you and know that you have just enough time to get out of the room and head back the way you came and not be caught, if only you do that right now: and with alacrity.
Step there, and you wake the dragon.
The dragon is a bronze (?) statuette coiled on a small table: wake it and it will attack; its eyes are red; it is not alive, though there may be a spirit bound to its heart; it has its own resonance, Guarded, Trickster, Golden, Piercing.
N. Hyde
After having come across the Green Door, Nick is not in any hurry to enter the room ahead of Lysander. He is a careful man, and so he keeps pace and doesn't put even a toe ahead, and as it turns out his caution pays off here (of course it does.) Lysander places a hand on Nick's shoulder, drawing him closer. Nick allows it, and as Lysander offers his reassurance he perhaps even bows his head a little.
This isn't necessarily trusting, though Lysander might think it so. It's a commitment to a decision to allow Lysander to do what he will and therefore: no fear.
Lysander can hear the sharp intake of his breath as the Weaving in the room springs into relief, as clearly as one of Ari's etchings beneath his fingers. This is a room of traps, of potential missteps and almost certain humiliations, and in spite of himself, he is impressed. Perhaps even inspired. His eyes are mainly for the dragon though, to the spirit he suspects is shackled to it. (And here: Nick is not sure how he feels about that.) "I see," he says, because he does.
"Did you bind it?"
Horace Gladstone
"No, that was another in the cabal of my youth." Lysander allows Nicholas a close look; he will even take his hand away, and with Nicholas's perceptions sharpened (augmented [enhanced]), would allow the boy to step into the room and look at things more closely. But if Nicholas does, Lysander warns him before he takes the Sight away again; banishing the connection with a gesture. The world is more wondrous, certainly? "We did have fun with him. He's very good at misleading, deceiving, and keeping one on one's toes."
N. Hyde
Carefully, carefully, Nick steps into the room to stand closer to the web that clings to each corner of the room with its snares in the center. He is not so foolish as to step into the middle of it, even as curious as he is: his Sight just now is a borrowed thing, and even without Lysander's warning he'd be aware that it could be taken from him at any time.
A sudden onset of flulike symptoms would be, possibly, the cherry on the shit cake he assumes his first impression on the Hermetics has been so far.
"You speak in the past tense." Nick glances at Lysander out of the corner of his eye, back at the dragon. Then he steps back out of the room as his Sight fades away.
Horace Gladstone
"We don't play very often any more." He does sound regretful, though not in any deep way. He does not think about the fun he could be having, or once had. It is equivalent to somebody remembering how much they liked that super-soaker gun when they were little, a particularly fun summertime campaign. But of course Horace is Notos, end-of-summer autumn wind coming up from the South. "Not even with little Mysteries like that guy there."
Lysander shuts the door behind Nicholas and gestures him down the hall. "Where were we? ..." Musing cast to his tone, and Nicholas has (is given?) the opportunity to direct the conversation before Lysander comes back have-you-ever-entertained-the-idea, wouldn't-want-it-anyway.
N. Hyde
Something about this is vaguely sad to Nick: a sort of mystic Calvin and Hobbes, a child grown up with his pasttimes tucked away to moulder in the closet. It surprises him, even, because Nick was not especially childlike even when he was a child.
Nicholas walks with Lysander down the hall, suddenly mindful of all the time that has passed and that Pen is probably waiting for the two of them. He feels a stab of guilt because he has left her alone with Diana, the spider woman. Nick remembers perfectly well where they were, and he has talked about himself enough for one night. "So what made you take Pen on as a student?"
It's just on topic enough. Maybe -
Horace Gladstone
[Let's, in fact, see how Diana and Pen are doing. Diana, you are saying? Intelligence + Academics.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
Horace Gladstone
[Pen, your reply? Ack. Wits + Academics.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Horace Gladstone
[Diana, be pleasant. Manipulation and Empathy.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Horace Gladstone
[Pen, try to be charming. Char + Emp.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
"Mmm... Did Pen tell you what made her decide to eschew the aimless life?" Lysander asks, and it could be one of those questions asked in order for the asker to better answer the question the other guy asked.
N. Hyde
"She did."
Horace Gladstone
[OH HEY. Manip + Subt? Eh? EHH? We can use our (silver-tongued) specialty here.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[Gah. Hermetics.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
"She had already been drawn to the attention of our Order. We already wanted her, though I was not involved in any of that. I was busy with real work. When she came to me, I was - " He pauses, and he is taller than Nicholas. Not by much, a scant inch or two: but it lends some grace to this kind-of slantwise look down, straight lashes gracefully shadowing his cheekbones. "At last somewhat confident the last group of kids I'd been teaching could stand on their own, and I was not necessarily looking to take on someone new in the fashion that Pen was 'new.' But … well. She is a very, what is that word, it's on the tip of my - beguiling. A beguiling young lady. Very," his brow lowers, as if thoughtful, "well you must know. Somebody would have picked her up if I hadn't, but I like a challenge and an underdog. I like passion wedded to wit."
N. Hyde
I was busy with real work. An offhand comment, yet he notes it with interest: sometimes it's in these little throwaway phrases that people reveal the most about themselves. Then again, Nick has already noted that Lysander is far less affable than he seems. This is a house of masks and smoke and very carefully arranged mirrors.
"It sounds as though she made it an easy decision for you, then."
Horace Gladstone
"How long have you two been seeing one another?"
N. Hyde
It's unusual for Nick to be surprised in social interactions, and yet he has been so several times tonight. "We've known each other for six or seven months," he says, again with that caution, that feeling around with his toes for the jaws of the trap, "and we've been together for...two or three, I suppose."
Horace Gladstone
"Do you think I'm laying traps for you, Nicholas? That you're going to say the wrong thing, and find yourself on the floor of my home, shitting your pants?"
He sounds amused; poignantly so, how ridiculous, hah, hah. Easy to forget that he actually was; the look Lysander gives Nicholas is one calculated to be reassuring, or conspiratorial.
N. Hyde
There is this look that Lysander gives him, at once reassuring and conspiratorial; it would be easy for Nick to mirror this, as he so often does, because it's a look he gives other people on occasion. Perhaps that is one of the things he finds disconcerting about Lysander: magi as powerful as he is are possibility models, and even though Nick is not and will never be Hermetic, there is some essence here of could-have-been-one-day.
Instead, a corner of his mouth snicks upward. "Are you?"
Horace Gladstone
[Pokerface. Manip + Subt again!]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Really, are you?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
"What would I have to gain?" Lysander says, in such a way as to imply that of course he's not laying traps for Nicholas.
He is absolutely laying traps for Nicholas, as Nicholas can intuit. Lysander is adept at deceit, but Nicholas is just a touch more astute. However, those traps don't necessarily end in Nicholas shitting his pants on the floor of Lysander's home. He has some decorum, and he is not the boy he was.
N. Hyde
"That's what I'm trying to figure out." Nick smiles; it's a beatific thing, a can't-be-bothered sort of thing, and this as he gains confidence: he is learning a lot, and he expands along with the knowledge gained. "I at least got the impression that your pants-shitting days were done, though. So no, I'm not worried about that."
Horace Gladstone
"Are you worried about anything?" Here with this company and specifically. There's another conspiratorial, or comradely - yes, comradely - lift of his brow. Jay Gatsby lift of his brow, inviting in its way, just enough ripple of good humor beneath the question.
N. Hyde
"We just walked past rooms with the sort of lose-yourself-in-fairyland door you hear about in old stories, and a network of the most mortifying traps I can think of. I'd be a fool not to be worried about anything." The good humor, Lysander finds reflected back at him; still, Nick's eyes flick on occasion to the scenery of the rooms they pass through, perhaps as though wondering whether there is indeed some sort of trap. Or maybe he's just trying to take stock of where they are in the house and how long it's going to be until he can sneak back into the tall grass.
Horace Gladstone
Lysander chuckles, spark to hay, gold hay gone up in smoke; there's smoke in his voice, when he chuckles. "Well then. Try not to look as if you expect something when I ask you about your relationship with Pen. It's the only thing I know we have in common. Have you dated Magi from a different Tradition than yours before?"
Horace Gladstone
[Dude, not a leading question. Just curious. MANIP + SUBT.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
N. Hyde
[No such thing.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
[-_- By Grabthar's hammer, this will not be a tie.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
This is just about the leadingest question that Lysander has asked Nicholas.
N. Hyde
"We could find other things in common," Nick suggests, and this again is amiable. The side glance he gives up at Lysander at this very leading question is more of an eloquent thing than Nick perhaps intends it to be: Nick is calculating how loosely he should define "dating." But he, too, has decorum, and his history of warm but casual contact with other people is an uneasy subject for him, even if no longer the sharply painful subject it once was. "Pen is the only one since joining my Tradition," he says. "I was Disparate for a long time."
Horace Gladstone
"Ah." Lysander took on a Disparate-for-a-long-time student, but that does not mean he has no reaction to the idea of Disparates: he does have a reaction. Perhaps he can conceal it.
And perhaps it is because of that sidelong look that Lysander opens his mouth, as if to say something; but then he shuts it again. Flambeau, contrary to popular opinion, have self control. They must. So, instead, rather neutrally, "It will be very difficult, if you carry on. Do you expect to carry on through next Yule?"
[Oh, oh, what, no, you don't see through ME, lashes flutter, etc.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
[Maaaaybe I do.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
[Or you don't.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[And here's my subterfuge roll.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Horace Gladstone
Lysander has strong (disappointed) reaction to Disparates, and most of those opinions are negative -- but there's a directed negativity there, an experience-risen negativity.
He isn't so much trying to hide anything when he opens his mouth then shuts it. He really is deliberately not saying the first thing that popped into his mind, which was going to be rude, revelatory: and mean.
Lysander can be very mean, but -- there's a sense that he doesn't want to 'spoil' something. Things.
[And Horace: *squint* Per Subt.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )
Horace Gladstone
[Meanwhile, Pen is impatient! The house is huge! Wants to find Lysander and Nicholas! Why use a cell phone when one can Scry! Correspondence 2 + Prime 1 (where is that certain resonance). -1 focus, -1 using personal item from targets, darn it.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 2) ( botch x 1 )
Horace Gladstone
[Pen: Curse aloud ELOQUENTLY.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
Nick absorbs all of this, the subtle shift in the other man's voice, the layers in the conversation, body language, the meter of breath: it takes someone particularly astute to understand what is feigned here and what is not. There is an idea in the study of magic-as-parlour-tricks, in legerdemain, that to pass off something successfully the performer must live the illusion, must build it into their identity to some extent, and some understanding of this concept is helpful in peeling away falsehood (or, at least, the things that are further from the truth.)
He is not as practiced at the actual construction of the facade as Lysander, though. Maybe it's the way the flesh around his eyes tightens for only a moment. When he says, "I expect to carry on as long as she would like to carry on," this is a simple statement of truth. And also: Nick's life, both mundane and Awakened, has been a series of learning to let things go, to accept that the fundamental nature of creation is built upon transience and change. He expects nothing; expectations disappoint.
Horace Gladstone
[2 paradox points for Pen.
But try, try again. +1 diff.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Horace Gladstone
[Is someone scrying for - ? Lysander Awareness.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
[What?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Horace Gladstone
[Weaving-Watch!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
Horace Gladstone
"You should come over next Yule then, not as a plus one but invited in your own right," Lysander says, with a warm smile. "Now what might we have in common. Do you practice any martial arts; you don't fence, do you?"
There's some distance on the word 'you,' as he senses clearly the signature ardent daring of his student's magick. Senses it, and knows it for what she is trying to do, though he still (without bothering to reach for an instrument, no invocation necessary) Looks at the signs she is leaving behind, traces the construction of the window with his sight: this is how angels must look at the world; how God looked at Creation, d'you see?
Nicholas can feel the suggestion of Pen's magick, and then the stronger flare of Lysander's.
N. Hyde
"I will," Nick says, and perhaps the invitation and the warmth throws him a little. It occurs to him only as Lysander is moving on, here, that the way in which the statement is phrased -
But there is too much going on just then for him to follow that train of thought to its completion and ultimate state of unease. As Lysander finishes his question Nick, too, senses Pen's magick at work, Lysander watching as she Weaves. He almost forgets to reply. Then, after those scant few beats, "No, neither. I've done yoga for a long time, insofar as it counts," and technically it is a martial art, of a sort, "but nothing martial. Do you fence?"
Horace Gladstone
[Doo de doo. Manip + Subt.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
[Oh man, what did I say now?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
"Yeah." He doesn't say it meanly, like of course I fence, I asked you while searching for something we have in common, fool. He doesn't say it with an overabundance of enthusiasm, like he's about to try to press Nicholas into the sport. He says it warmly; there's something burnished, see, to his tone of voice; something silvery rather than golden. He reaches out and puts his hand on the scruff of Nick's neck, between his shoulders, and steers him this-a-way, then his hand is gone again: down another stairwell. "I've tried the what's it called the aerial yoga. I enjoyed it, but," and his eyes twinkle. "I turned it into a different kind of exercise, and got rid of the ribbon. Broke my arm."
Horace Gladstone
[Pen: Okay. I know where they are, ish. Now can I get there? WITS. This house is difficult. Specialty, sure why not.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
Nick is scruffed, with only mild surprise: Nick mainly grew up around women (his gun nut uncle in the middle of the desert aside), and he mainly works around women, and most of the authority figures in his life have all been women. He isn't used to this sort of paternal invasion of his personal space. It isn't necessarily that he minds; there is simply a way his muscles start and contract before they rapidly become relaxed again. "Aerial yoga without the ribbon? So some kind of Forces exercise?"
He tromps down the stairwell, unaware that they are likely to barrel into Pen at any moment. "I mainly just use it these days to clear my head before Working," and that W could be uppercase or lowercase, who knows. "A lot of times I'll have to go out pretty far to where the Veil is thin enough to work, and it's been helpful once I'm there."
Horace Gladstone
"What work do you do?"
The w could be capital or not. Context. Context doesn't necessarily mean much when someone is a martial conversationalist, jumping from one topic to a side topic. Still.
N. Hyde
It could be a capital or not; Nick is not sure. So he answers both. "I work as a counselor in a crisis center," he says. Doesn't bother to name it; most people don't know it, and there's only one serving this area anyway. "And I practice communicating with and summoning spirits - usually for different things. It's a very different type of interaction, though. I'm still learning how to...speak with them and figure out what they want, I guess."
Horace Gladstone
"What they want?" Lysander sounds intrigued. "Why?"
"Hey." Here she is; come unsheathed from the candle-lit fire-laced gilt and glory halls of Hermetic Ingenuity, all dressed in moonlight and fish-scales and fog; flushed, either because of Gladstone's Scotch or because of an embarrassing interlude during which - in full sight of her mentor's cabal, her rival, and her ex-cabal-mate - her own Will rubber-band snapped back at her and she spilled some wine on the floor and said a foul mouthed word or three. Both of those things are liable to put roses in her cheeks.
N. Hyde
"Because when I figure out how to step over, I'll need to know how to make some friends." Nick's voice is a little dry, a tone that says that perhaps he speaks from past experience.
Then Pen appears, and Nick straightens, a smile pulling at the corners of his eyes and mouth. She looks flushed; did she run to get here? No, not short of breath. Probably the scotch. "Hello. How's the rest of the party?" Nick offers one of his hands to Pen as she draws near to himself and Lysander. He appears none the worse for wear.
Horace Gladstone
[Hmmm. But I, your Teacher, would like to know how you're doing, Student. Per + Subt.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Horace Gladstone
[No! I can do this, man. ManipSub.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 7) ( success x 1 )
Horace Gladstone
[Ugh.]
Horace Gladstone
"Everyone is ebullient; they are three steps away from becoming intellectual Maenads, so I fled to find the two people I like most in this house before I was torn apart." A hand. Pen laces her fingers through Nicholas's and leans against his arm, just so.
"I was just bringing Nicholas back down to meet everybody," Lysander says, after a moment's quiet regard. Of Pen, of Nick. Of Pen and Nick together. "And questioning him about his martial prowess, work, etcetera."
"Oh, excellent! His martial prowess is his work ethic. Or his work ethic is his martial prowess; or do I just mean prowess? He is full of prowess; you'll both forgive the clumsy segue!"
"Is he," Lysander says, and he sounds amused. "I'm sure his prowess is sufficient for what he intends to do with his life, at present."
"Lysander, you sound -- " A frown. Directness, even when she might not want to be direct. "Cold. 'is sufficient.' What?"
"I'm sorry; do I sound cold, Nicholas? I hope I've been welcoming. What do you think of the house?"
Horace Gladstone
[AND another manip + subt from Lysander, because c'mon.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[DO you sound cold?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 6, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
Cold isn't the perfect word for what Lysander is or sounds like, but there is a bit of a something there in that remark, brought on by whatever impression it is Nicholas has left.
N. Hyde
Intellectual Maenads, Pen says, and the corners of Nick's eyes crinkle at the phrase. He is more relaxed than he was when Pen left him earlier to allow him to tour the house with Lysander; all told, the conversation with Lysander could have been much worse.
He feels relaxed until he listens to the exchange between Lysander and Pen: then, gut sinking, he looks from Hermetic to Hermetic. "The house is amazing," he says, and this is both enthusiastic and earnest, if not Nick at his most eloquent. "You've been very welcoming. Thanks for the tour, and for humoring me."
He had thought that he had sailed past the traps; now it occurs to him as they move back out to join the rest of the party that maybe he didn't wait long enough to come to that assessment. "How many people are here, Pen?"
Gladstone, & co.
[Y'know. Pen, Perc + Empathy. Nick, how are you feeling/do you like this/is this terrible to you/Rob and Ari are totally wrong, right?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
[Totally wrong.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
"You're welcome," Lysander says. "I was happy to do it. Perhaps next year, I'll show you more of the old place, and you'll be able to see without help."
Meanwhile, Pen looks at Nicholas for a steady second. This is not an up-from-under-the-eyelashes look, but this clear-eyed rest of a thing, silence between one heart beat and the other; she has a way of study, shadow on her brow which clears after that second has gone. Unfair Songrobin and Aridracona, at least it will be a pleasure to tell them that they are wrong: it is sometimes too much of a pleasure to tell Robin and Arianna that they are wrong.
How many people are -
"Ten, not including you and me."
N. Hyde
"Perhaps," Nick says, to Lysander. This is more than idle supposition; it's reflective, even: thoughtful. Nick enjoys seeing the world in a different way, and he has geared much of his magickal study toward this pursuit.
Pen says - ten, and Nick just nods. To Pen, he appears perfectly put together, without any hint of how stressful the conversation with Lysander was or that he is waiting for the next shoe to drop now that they are sidling on into the main room. Perhaps she misses the way his jaw sets as he steels himself. "Anything I should know?"
This is touched with humor: perhaps he is hoping to jump between other magi to avoid Diana.
Gladstone, & co.
[Lysander. Are you steeling yourself? Does ten seem like a lot to you, poor little lovelorn Chakravanti in a Nest of Hermetics? Perc + Subt.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 6, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
[Psh, ten is nothing.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Ten seems like a lot to Nick. He is also maybe wondering whether he can blend into the background and just quietly listen and observe.]
Gladstone, & co.
[Wouldn't be a Lysander party without a Lysander Manip + Subt.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 3, 3, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[I see through you, sir.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen: *squint* Subtext? Undercurrents? C'mon guys.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
Nicholas was a surprise but Lysander has plans for Nicholas tonight and those plans don't involve allowing the Chakravanti to escape notice by being on the sidelines, this snowy glen graveyard churchyard sense of hallowed crow's wing whisper, something to comment on later, an observant outsider an outsider allowed to observe. Lysander plans on making Very, Very Certain that Nicholas is kept Entertained and Entertaining, which means one thing to Pen, who has not seen through Nicholas's assured and in control façade, and will mean another to Nicholas, who has steeled his jaw and dredged up his strength, and who has all this evening found himself often unfortunately in possession of a hint of insight into Lysander's character. The Prince with a Thousand Enemies is not by nature caring or warm. Untrue. He cares. He is warm. But his care and his warmth is not for people.
Anything I should know? "That you are clever," Pen says, with casual intimacy; as if Lysander were not there at all. "As clever as the moon, and the grain, and the wind. I think I should get you the ring around the moon and give it to you to wear. Doesn't that sound like a worthy quest? Oh! And be on guard around Gil. He is drunk."
Lysander is interested in the metaphors his Poet-Apprentice wants to bestow on her Chakravanti friend, and he doesn't bestow any mocking glances on the pair at this juncture in time. He says, "Traditionally, I give gifts tonight to all my guests. Most of them have already received their presents, but you'll find a box with your name on it by the bar. And yes, watch out for Gil. He is a cantankerous old bastard and a lecher of the worst order. I wouldn't allow a bad word about him to pass my lips but well here we are. He will tell you the same as soon as he meets you, and proudly, so," and there is a touch of wryness here.
Perhaps Nicholas notices that they're taking a different way back to the Solarium, the main room. Can feel the pressure of a mélange of resonance, a room filled up brimfull of Personality, the house soaking it up.
N. Hyde
"That's a very lofty quest," Nick says, and he is amused, and he is less willing to disregard Lysander's presence there. He is aware that there is some plan the Hermetic has for him tonight, and he is not sure what it is - but perhaps it has something to do with the gift. Nick is on guard, clever as the wind which can't be snared; or at least this is what he hopes. "But I have no idea what I'd get you in return."
Pen is not looking at him as she says to be on the lookout for Gil, and the gaze he casts over her before turning his eyes ahead is affectionate, something tinged with wonder, and he keeps his face angled away from Lysander (it's not for him.)
"Duly noted," he says, of what they tell him about Gil. "There's one at every party I suppose."
Gladstone, & co.
Pen grins at Nicholas. "But you got me the quest."
"He will try to be courteous," Lysander says, and it sounds rather like a threat against poor Gil's life, but poor Gil if he actually is a drunk and a lecher probably is used to such things. Here is a bit of hallway that Nicholas is familiar with; here is Lysander, lengthening his stride to open the door for his guests, and here is the Solarium.
"Before you come in, you should check out that corner." Dim clamor of noise from those within, and a clear view of them. 'That corner' is through a narrow door almost invisible set into the paneling of the hall leading to the Solarium, a fairy door. Lysander doesn't wait for Pen and Nick to follow him or take his suggestion, whichever they'd like; he just winks then heads in.
--
Clear View of Inside the Solarium.
The Solarium is octagonal in shape. And glass, of course. Tall, tall glass windows, all sides except the one where the door is set: that looks like it is stone on one end, but on the other end as if it is warm wood paneling, and against this is set the bar mentioned, a host of glasses and bottles set up for just this party. There are some candles, floating in the air, suspended there by some fantastical expenditure of Will which also takes care that the wax not drip on the guests below. The candle-flames are reflected and echoed in the glass like witch-light stars and beyond the glass is the darkness of a snowy evening, dim shapes and vastness sweeping toward cliffs and the sea and a mosaic balcony and the balcony has trellises where fauns disport and there are dead vines bare scant and burning torches on the lawn. There are some mundane twinkle-lights, too. The Flambeau does like his glowing things, rock salt lanterns and other metal lamps hanging. The Solarium is certainly large enough for the whole party -- large enough for a larger party, too, an evergreen coaxed to grow inside so the room smells of candles burning beeswax and of pine.
There are snacks laid out, obviously well-loved snacks judging by the fact that there isn't that much on the platters.
There is a square gathering area, carved out by the setting of five couches and two chairs, and most of the party seems to be located there.
Diana is sitting in a chair, votary, black hair bloody red mouth terrifying, eyes snapping with terrible life as she says something pointedly to somebody Nicholas doesn't know, an older man with more salt than pepper in his hair, deeply carved dimples and a very square jaw, half-moon eyes that could be genial or not. He looks hard. There are two young women around his and Pen's age, one who has thick straight brown hair, dressed in a sharp crimson with startlingly blue eyes, a certain vulnerability of expression that makes her likable before she says anything, the other with dark skin and a crown-halo of kinky-curled hair, a short dress of yellow and a necklace which echoes a Peter Pan collar but is of gold or some precious metal, something which looks wizardly and pretty, and they are looking at a book together, with the first young woman occasionally lifting her eyes to the door.
There are two men around Pen and Nick's age, too, perhaps one being just a year or two older, one with red ruddy hair curling, thick glasses and a sharp blue suit, rings on every finger, some nestled bit of silver at his throat, and this is often how one can tell a Mage isn't it? By their accessories, and the second man is best described as 'large,' Bear-Prince if anything, Orion the hunter, somebody you'd use the word 'hew' for, or 'thews,' some terribly cultured monster of a man. They are arguing, with the Bear-Prince of a man sitting on the couch and the ruddy haired bespectacled young wizard standing behind it. There is also a pale-blonde (Femme Fatale cut, waving) woman who looks like a contemporary of Lysander's, and is the first to notice them, although she is usually the last to be noticed, in spite of the dress she is wearing which is some fashionable and fashionably cut compromise between ritual robes and elegant party-wear, somebody who looks as if he must be her brother, so closely alike do they look though his eyebrows are thick and dark in contrast to the pale-blond hair and he will be noticed long before she is. He is smoking a cigar almost furtively, though via some chicanery the smell of the cigar smoke isn't filling up the whole the Solarium, and seated beside the man Diana is speaking to, an expression which teeters between amusement and tolerance on his face.
N. Hyde
Inside the Solarium: a den of Hermetics, arranged among the glow-lights and candle flames like a pantheon awaiting their entrance to some temple of the Will. In this meeting here of gods and men, Nicholas Hyde is still aware of all the resonances he'd sensed earlier, tangling and mingling together in this space. His own marks him as different, even if his Tradition did not.
His eyes flicked toward the corner, the fairy door, and he is wary enough that it would not be difficult for Pen to sense it. "I want to look," he confides in her, "but Lysander also showed me the Green Door."
Still: he suspects that very little will be as mortifying-in-the-future as walking into the Solarium. He has already locked eyes with a few people in the room - the dark haired woman in crimson, who looks approachable; the ruddy-haired man who the eyes can't help but be drawn to, the waving woman. He glances back to Pen, apparently entirely willing to defer to her on whether they go through the door or not. At least if he ends up asleep in a closet, he will not be alone.
Gladstone, & co.
Pen bends her head, the better to listen; then she laughs! This bright-ripple of surprise and amusement, and she pulls Nicholas toward the fairy door. Conspiratorial when she says, "If you stop looking because of other things Lysander has shown you or told you, you're usually trapped."
She opens the door, backs in; lets Nicholas decide whether he's going to follow himself. The fairy door leads to what might at best be called a closet, certainly. Tall, tall, tall, but no more than four feet by four feet, and the door slams closed behind Nick as soon as he's inside and no longer holding it. Slams closed with an air of finality, and then the show begins. Theatre. Performance. Mischief.
Lights go on above their heads and see descending there is a clockwork automaton mechanism which ticks into motion. The little room is illuminated; there are secret niches built into the walls, where things are displayed: they are surrounded by a curio cabinet.
Above, it is a mechanical precious-metal-made celestial heavens sort of -- clock, maybe. A city; a rainbow bridge, which ticks into being, stretches out, all old burnished colors but it is a wonder. Little people moving, too, dragging diamond-glinting stars out of hidey-holes in the wall, music box clockwork music playing chime ding and then:
Oh, see. A little man with wings on his helmet, trundling down the rainbow bridge, just over them: holding a sprig of real mistletoe over Nick and Pen! Closer look. All the little figures are Norse gods, or Magicians. There's even Death, death's head, dancing with a maiden.
Merry Christmas!
N. Hyde
They both have to duck in order to get through the fairy door; Nick does indeed follow her in, intent enough on what's ahead that he is less concerned that the door slams shut behind the two of them. Once it does, once he's heard it, a weight settles into the space somewhere around his bellybutton: is some Mind trick coming, or will they wake another Dragon?
But no: they are illuminated, they are painted with light, and Nick watches with all the fascination and wonder of a child looking through a kaleidescope for the first time. This, too, is what magic is for.
"I did not expect that," he says, his words particularly enunciated as they are emphatic. He almost doesn't notice the mistletoe, as he is studying each of the little figures, Death dancing with a maiden. As soon as he does, there is some simple amusement - maybe Lysander has some Calvin left in him after all - and he tilts Pen's chin up and leans down to kiss her, stealing whatever few moments that he has.
Because they are about to go back into the Solarium, where the vague sense of existential foreboding that has followed him around all night is likely to culminate.
Gladstone, & co.
"You wouldn't, if Lysander explained -- or failed to explain," something heated, there; molten, "what was behind the Green Door."
That makes her think of something; takes her, in fact, away from the mechanical cosmos spinning over their heads, the metal-work filigreed heaven, until something in the way Nick inhales or exhales sets her attention more finely on the present, and she smiles at him and his expression, before setting her own upward.
Her eyes are closed after the kiss; a pensive furrow between her brow. When she opens her eyes, they're gleaming gone mercurial capricious with grave mischief. "How about a lipstick ring until I find my way to the moon?"
And she'll do it, too: leave a ring of her lipstick under his collar like a secret. The lights go out eventually, a minute or two in: the show's over. Pen says, in the dark, "Tally ho!"
And he'll have to open the fairy door, and go back into the hall first, because Pen will not body check Nick out of the way.
The Solarium door is askew. Pen'll give Nick a questioning glance; and she looks - well. She probably manages to hide exactly what she is feeling at this juncture in time with the skill of the Patron Saint of Liars -
[pause in post, for a roll.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
[Oh Pen.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
- well, more or less. She puts up a good front, but weather can be misleading, and she is a touch apprehensive, worried about some One inside that room, some specific person.
Still! Swashbuckle time, right? She opens the door proper-like and ushers Nicholas inside. A house of doors.
N. Hyde
Tally ho, Pen says in the dark, and she can't see it, the way his face breaks into a smile in the blackness: teeth and all. By the time he has opened the door and stepped forward, blinking for a moment as his eyes readjust to the light, it is gone.
Nick has rearranged his collar to cover her ring, only a hint of that furtive smile present as he directs his gaze back toward the Solarium. He can be ushered inside, though his eyes catch on Pen in the seconds after he has stepped through the threshold. It isn't so unusual that anyone would be apprehensive in a party like this, but perhaps he is surprised to see her apprehensive.
"Is there someone here that you want me to distract for you?" Chivalry is not a thing that comes naturally to Nick, but, well, he can put himself on the front lines occasionally.
Gladstone, & co.
"No." And she lowers her voice to a whisper, leaning close. "You have two seconds to choose your destiny; who shall I introduce you to first?"
He does have two seconds to decide. They're already being noticed. Not by everybody, but the blonde woman who neither of them has probably noticed yet, by Horace Lysander, who is at the bar and has been joined there by a nondescript man in his mid-to-late forties with a distracted air and another man, Hispanic, handsome as the devil, mid-thirties, late-thirties.
N. Hyde
Nick's eyes dart from person to person: Lysander and Diana (no) he has already met, and the others...well, most of them are arguing or having some sort of intense discussion or another, which is exactly the thing Nick would have expected in a party of Hermetics. Intense discussions all around.
The Chakravanti jerks his chin toward the two young women reading a book. "They look friendly."
N. Hyde
Init!
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Pen: +7.
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Zelda: +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
N. Hyde
Nick - 11
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: +8
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: Oh no you don't! +8
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Diana: Oh, is it the Euthie again? +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
ORDER OF SOCIAL COMBATTERY.
Alexandra: 17
Lysander: 14
Diana: 13
Nick & Pen & Zelda 11. (Pen: Argh, this is terrible.)
Gladstone, & co.
[Alexandra, Perception + Empathy on Diana.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
[And now on Nicholas.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[And now on Pen.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen's a liar.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[So is Diana.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Damn it. Tie-break. Alexandra.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Diana.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
[Nick is definitely a liar.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[We break this tie, RIGHT NOW! Alexandra.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
[Tie break!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4) ( botch x 1 )
N. Hyde
[Empathy - Alexandra. Don't botch this, Nicholas.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[Empathy - Pen.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[Empathy - Diana.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 5, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
[Alexandra is a liar.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
[Nick is feeling fairly apprehensive at the moment. There are a lot of powerful people in this room, and he's a bit in awe of that, including the setting and surroundings. He is also not feeling especially confident about his ability to discourse intelligently with Hermetics about things that are mystically related.]
Gladstone, & co.
The young woman with thick, dark straight hair is alert; alert, and seeking - sweeping a look at Diana, whose movement she has noticed (uh oh), and then a closer look at Nick and Pen (do I think it would be kind to rescue you), for humanitarian reasons.
Nicholas sees that: Pen is resigned to his choice; of course that would be the one. Her principle reaction is resignation. And Alexandra sees the same, but with more context.
Diana, meanwhile. Diana has noticed Nicholas and decided that he will make the perfect illustration to a point she is making, and it is sure to be nasty for him; there is a sense of brisk dismissal, cold pleasure in the fact that - something. She also seems to be annoyed at the man she is speaking to, and really looking forward to rubbing his nose in the shit.
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra carefully straightens, a directed (frontal assault [natural leader, baby]) beam of a smile for Pen and Nicholas. "Hey Pen, Pen's friend, over here."
And she scoots to the side, so there is a gap between herself and the dark skinned young woman (Zelda, who looks startled, catching the book which Alexandra lets go before it touches the couch, and only turns her head afterward) on their couch.
[Char + Leader, just to keep Diana from interjecting right now.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
As they approach the dark haired young woman, the one with the open face and likeable demeanor, Nick smiles; in the brief seconds before they make contact he is fully prepared to be friendly and engaging, in spite of how apprehensive he happens to be feeling at this moment. Pen - one corner of his mouth wavers, because of all the choices he could have made in this room, he seems to have picked the One she was concerned about speaking with.
Good job, Nicholas.
And oh, Diana, he has seen her too. Perhaps she won't approach him if he seems to be otherwise engaged - perhaps he can move around the room between conversations until the end of the night and wait her out. He does not put great faith in this idea: and Alexandra saves them. Nick has picked up on Pen's attitude toward Alexandra at this point; it is only this sensitivity that keeps his relief from being a palpable thing. "Hello," he says, as they near Alexandra and Zelda. There is a glance to Pen, as at the moment he is "Pen's friend."
Gladstone, & co.
They have to go around the Bear-Prince and the Ruddy-haired Man, cut in to take the offered seat on the couch. Zelda has gathered the book into her lap, and gives Nicholas a long and level (contemplative) look, socially aware enough to be reserved so it isn't quite staring. Pen had already been socializing before she left to find her mentor and Nicholas; there are no new hellos for Pen. There's already a sense that she found her place in the group tonight (enchant them and you never need deal with them).
"This is Nicholas Hyde, bani Chakravanti. Nick, this is Zelda Marina Merlyn Kerissa, bani Bonisagus, and Alexandra Helen Antimony Bright, bani Flambeau."
Alexandra offers her hand; stands, if Nick hasn't seated himself yet. Zelda does not stand, either way, and Pen, well - Pen is letting Nick take point here.
N. Hyde
Nick has not yet seated himself; he does so eventually, but first takes the hand that Alexandra Bright offers. There's a warmth in his handshake and in the eye contact that follows that is so easy most people don't recognize that it's practiced, too, over long repetition and many many new introductions throughout the day.
"It's a pleasure to meet both of you," he says, and following that he does seat himself (it makes it much more difficult for Diana to sidle her way into the conversation, for one.) "Pen and Robin have mentioned your names."
Then, to Alexandra, with some gentle humor, "Thanks, by the way."
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra's grip is firm, her hands callused in an interesting way; weather-worn, weapon-worn, and her blue gaze direct.
"I've heard about you as well," Alexandra says. From who?
Zelda inclines her head, graceful as a bust of Nefertiti or some other delicate goddess-creature, when Nicholas expresses pleasure, and casts a hooded glance up at Pen. No; over at Pen; Pen has seated herself now, edge of the couch but still she is seated. The hooded glance becomes a graceful blink. The shadow of the movement ripples on her golden collar.
Alexandra's knees are turned toward Nick and Pen and Zelda, her hands clasped loosely around them. Knowing twinkle in her eye at the thank you. "De nada," Alexandra says. No wink, though she sneaks a quick look toward Diana, before settling her attention back on the magi assembled before her. "It's Christmas; a time for miracles. So how long have you been around the area, Nicholas? It seems strange we haven't met before now, given your closeness to Pen and Robin. I like, what's his name, Thane. He's flirtier than I thought a Verbena would be, even with the reputation!"
N. Hyde
Nick's eyebrows arch just a fraction as Alexandra says that she's heard about him too: he does not know who she would have heard about him from, recently initiated as he is. Robin, perhaps.
He is relaxed, and this is a truth: though beneath that, it is difficult for him not to notice the glance that passes between Zelda and Pen. He knows nothing about Alexandra, really, or what there is about her that could have upset Pen, and this layers some caution beneath the general apprehension that was already present. Still, he is seated comfortably, one leg stretched out in front of him, leaned forward (the better to listen.)
"I only moved down here this past summer. I was up in Boston before that." She mentions Thane, Thane's flirtiness; and Nick is more aware of Thane's flirtiness tonight than on other nights perhaps, given that it is the reason his sister is not here with them. His smile is a touch rueful. "The general reputation of Verbena doesn't quite prepare people, I agree. It's difficult not to like him."
N. Hyde
[Init! Nick +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen! +7]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Zelda +6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Alexandra +8]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Martin Alertness.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
[Martin +7]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Order this Round!
Zelda, Pen: 16
Nick: 11
Alexandra, Martin: 9
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: the big, Bear-Prince of a Hermetic, arguing by the couch they're sitting on -- he's heard something, and he's about to break into the conversation all demandingly.
Alexandra: definitely about to say something charming, maybe ask something of Pen or Zelda, totally unaware that Martin's about to speak over her/anybody.
N. Hyde
Nick: About to ask a couple of questions to bring Pen and Zelda into the conversation and start a discussion.
Gladstone, & co.
Pen: Wits + Expression, Wits Specialty ho!
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
Pen rests her elbow on the back of the couch, and says before Martin's done sucking in a breath, "Yes, Martin? If it's something about multi-Traditional cabals and how they aren't particularly well-thought out as a 'concept' and the theoretical models, blah, blah, save it. You haven't even been introduced yet."
Martin, mouth open, blinks. His jaw hinges snapped back shut click.
Zelda gives one quiet chuckle, something that is whispery; barely there as a sound, shoulders lifting UP then down, and then - "I don't like Thane very much. He talks too incessantly, but you seem fine. Do you like to read?"
Ignore them, her question seems to say.
N. Hyde
Pen, and Pen's equipoise, startles Nick for a moment; he had not realized the Bear Prince was about to leap into the conversation. Behind Martin, the red-haired man has given a sharp roll of his eyes behind his glasses, temper flicking outward, a solar flare that dissipates in the dark; which is to say that it likely goes unseen.
Nick might've had a word on multi-Traditional cabals, but instead Zelda asks him a question. "I didn't for a long time, but I do now," he says, and if he is honest it's because he's found he has a lot of catching up to do among people who grew up reading. "What were the two of you reading before we came by?"
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra does not jump in to interrupt Zelda and Nicholas's back and forth, although she does cast a glance back toward Martin, to see what he's going to do (if anything).
He is not going to do anything. "I'm right here," Martin says. "Why don't you introduce me?"
N. Hyde
[Init: Bran +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Edited Order:
Zelda, Pen: 16
Bran: 12
Nick: 11
Alexandra, Martin: 9
Martin: Bully an introduction, and then commence with the Thing He Was Gonna Say, albeit maybe a touch more nicely, because GOD Pen don't you KNOW -
Alexandra: Observant for now!
N. Hyde
Nick: Attentive look to the two new guys! I am so glad I am not in the center of this!
Bran: Politely break in and try to keep him from bullying the initiates. Jerk.
Gladstone, & co.
"Because you and Bran were having a conversation he seems to want to continue, for whatever reason," Pen says. Don't be rude, Martin. Though; she is aware it is rude not to introduce someone so blatantly angling; still, she digs her heels in. "You can't just hop from argument to argument as soon as you feel like you're losing one."
Zelda was on the verge of answering Nicholas when Martin began to exert his presence; she tilts her head back in order to study him, gravely. Then she reaches a hand across Pen's lap, and touches Nicholas's, very lightly, very softly, soft as a snow flake landing, see, to draw his attention back.
"It is my Christmas gift from Horace; do you know any other languages?"
N. Hyde
The man who was speaking with Martin has moved forward now, and there's a sort of warrior's grace in his limbs and his bearing; he is Charged, as though he'd soaked up the sun's light and holds it within his core still now that it's sunk behind the horizon; he is Valiant, even in this situation where Pen has Martin in hand. "Excuse us," he says to the collective. "Martin apparently can't hold his whiskey. Martin, my suggestion is to quit while you're ahead." This, amiable, if only the slightest bit smug.
Nick's eyes are moving from stranger to stranger, here interested, here concerned: he has noted tempers flaring, and he has heard, if only in passing, a few of the names being mentioned here.
Zelda's touch on his thigh brings him back to his conversation, and his eyes settle back on her once more. "I knew some Spanish growing up," he says, and his voice is tinged with regret, "but I've lost most of it at this point. I take it you do?"
Gladstone, & co.
"I'm sure Nicholas will be delighted to meet you later," Alexandra says, smiling and watchful; she meets Pen's eyes, to share a look, then says, "We all know more than one language," in this kind way. "It's part of the curriculum, although many of the languages are 'dead' languages. Zelda's something of a savant."
Meanwhile, "I am holding my whiskey right now," Martin rumbles, his voice gone to a very low register, and he holds up his glass to prove it. He frowns at Pen, frowns at Bran, frowns doubly so at Nicholas. Some of the antagonism has drained due to deferment; it's like a dream, in that poem - what happens to it? "Fine!" He says, deciding to fix his eyes on Bran. "First I win this argument, then she introduces the penny mystic."
R: What do you think they're talking about?
P: I dunno. The house?
R: Probably you and how much of a failure he's going to make you.
P: Shut up.
R: Lysander is a dick.
P: He is not.
P: Well he is.
P: But he's not cruel.
P: I mean not to guests.
P: I don't think he'd be cruel to Nick.
P: Shut up.
P: He wouldn't be.
R: Not saying anything.
N. Hyde
Lysander is quick: Nicholas noticed that before. Still, Nick generally has confidence in his ability to read people (perhaps even too much, at this point in his life) and he has been able to read Horace Gladstone well tonight. He notices that turning of the water there in the other man's eyes, and though he himself is hiding whatever anger he may have, Lysander is perceptive of Nick enough to notice some of it thaw and drain from him.
After the Hermetic is spoken, Nick merely looks abashed. He is realizing, see, that between Robin and Vivienne and Diana, perhaps he came in expecting to fight and he's found one where it isn't warranted. The Euthanatos is not Lysander's responsibility, and yet this will be something of a formative moment for him, one he will look back on and realize that had he surrendered and accepted that the interaction would be as it would be, he wouldn't have shamed himself in front of this Adept.
He will learn not to make assumptions. He will learn that even insight has its limits when a person is unknown to him. Perhaps the conclusion he comes to is wrong; he still makes it.
"I'm sorry," he says. "That was unfair of me." A beat. "It's only that your questions seemed to be leading someplace."
Horace Gladstone
"Don't worry about it." The noblesse oblige is rough; it seems disused, but it is not disused; that is just Lysander's manner. Burnished hair, burnished eyes too sometimes; those straight lashes, that sea-change, and light is contained within his iris' his dark pupils lends him a soulful air of attention even when he is dismissing an apology or an assessment or whatever it is he is actually dismissing.
"This way," and he is walking backwards, one arm held out to indicate a particular door. "You may like this upcoming room; it has been the cause of more trouble for wandering house guests than any other thing in this entire building."
And once Nicholas has fallen into step, he picks up the initial line of questioning. "So I asked you what you think an appropriate master-student relationship was, what you think of Pen as a Mage. Now I'm going to ask you what you think of yourself as a Mage?"
N. Hyde
[Awareness!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 5 )
N. Hyde
Nick, meeker perhaps than he was, pads after Lysander into the waiting room. A cause of trouble for wandering house guests, Lysander says, and Nick's interest piques (not that this is hard to do.) He keeps pace with the other man easily, matching his stride as though he were a shadow moving alongside him at high noon.
Then Lysander begins his questions again, and again Nick is wary. This time he waits it out though. It does not help that this is a difficult question for him to answer; this is not something he has thought about extensively, at least not in the terms that Lysander is framing them.
"I know enough to fulfill my responsibilities," he says, and then pauses because he knows this is not the answer Lysander wants, and he also knows it's not the full truth, either. "I know enough to be of use to the other people around me. I want to understand how reality fits together and go past...what's immediately apparent. I think I..." Nick hesitates. "I want to be sure I'm doing the right thing, by myself and by others. It's so easy to do those other things I want wrong."
N. Hyde
[Alertness?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Horace Gladstone
"Have you entertained the possibility that she will hold you back?"
Lysander expects a denial, but is ready to meet it; first a sluice of a glance, a faint smile and crinkled eyes.
Nicholas can feel that the floor they're on is more saturated in (soaked in [brimming with]) old Workings, strong Workings, Workings that have soaked into the wood and the marble and the metal that are as close kin to this hall to the rooms upcoming as the foundation is. Ancient. No; not ancient. This is America and this is an American house even though some of the rooms were imported direct from France (and perhaps, there, some truly Ancient old Workings, the archaelogical remnants of Order Magi before they were in their modern shape). But quite old. His intuition tells him that there are interesting things to be found if he were to actually poke around here. That he could, if he were able to focus his insight, if he were able to watch the weaving, follow any manner of hints suggestions whiffs toward their source: smoke to fire, and into the fire, all the little mothlings. He knows that there is Something Coming, not just because Horace Lysander told him trouble was afoot, but because he can feel it.
And here it is. He knows it is a powerful Mind compulsion even as it casts its net on him. There is a green door and he has heard somebody he most wants to hear from calling him, emphatically and with great excitement, to 'is that you? is that you? come here quickly you have to see this leave the door open come quick!' And Nicholas definitely wants to heed the call. The compulsion is strong, and once it has its net on him: it will tangle him up, dredge him toward. Tug.
He is fore-warned - he can fight the compulsion, can't he? (But it's true, Nicholas. You are wanted. You are being called.)
N. Hyde
This question: it takes him aback, and perhaps Lysander can see then that no, Nick has not ever entertained the possibility that Pen could hold him back. This may not be for reasons that are immediately apparent, and for Pen's mentor, it's likely that whatever Nick's reasons for not entertaining this question, they don't matter. "I...well, no. But I don't think she would do that." A beat, in which his tone becomes more thoughtful. "If I were becoming something which would be held back by her, I don't think I would want it anyway."
Perhaps this would sound foolishly romantic to anyone who didn't think about it, who didn't understand his frame of reference: Nick has seen, if only once as of right now, what happens to Chakravanti who isolate themselves. He will see it again, and again, before we continue our story in the present. But that's not yet.
He has only a few moments to cast his eyes around this new place, Workings so old that they defy memory (but no - Nick could trace the threads of Fate back, perhaps, if he wanted and had the skill with Matter). At first he thinks this is where wayward travelers lose themselves in Lysander's house, because he is fascinated. There's something of his own hallowed energy here, but different, and it draws him.
Ah yes - and here it is. The green door, and a powerful compulsion that he recognizes for what it is: Lysander can see the whites of his eyes, see the way his foot moves forward even as his upper body draws back, as his arm folds protectively across his chest (his heart). He is seeing his father; Lysander does not know this. He only sees the effort it takes to disregard: but he has seen this before.
For moments he is silent. Then, as he regains his composure, "How many people have gone through that door? Where do they go?"
Horace Gladstone
Lysander stops and waits Nicholas's struggle out. He is alert when he is stopped, watchful of the young man. Nicholas hasn't yet had so much as a sip of water or a crumb of bread, but he is still a guest. In the Solarium, room of glass and candle light and intense discussion, Penelope is texting with friends; they are telling her she shouldn't have let Nicholas and Lysander wander off together, and being generally amusing.
[Another Text Interlude.
A: listen to R. He's often right. Then smug about it.
R: The choreography for my I Told You So dance is already primed.
A: to amuse you, Pen, imagine it set to the modern major general. R always makes a stunning, if convincingly gay, pirate of however you spell it
A: OH I AM SORRY DID I REPLY ALL <3 to R
R: Penzance.
R: And, quite frankly, I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
R: Acceptable song for I Told You So. Thanks, Ari. <3
A: always in service ;)
]
And Pen is feeling both rebellious and guilty, heart-sore and impatient. And here is Zelda, and Alexandra, and she can't seem to leave the Solarium. What is it, some kind of enchanted glass otherworld, and only the right epiphany release you?
Upstairs, in the hall where enchantment is the marrow in the bones of the house, Nicholas regains his composure and asks a question. Two. Lysander crosses the hall and opens the green door. Of course it does nothing for him, and it is a dim-looking thing before he reaches in and flicks on the light. Nicholas might be reluctant to come near, just in case the compulsion snakes out again, but it does not. Fought-through valiantly, and it doesn't strike again; it is no snake at all. Has no fangs.
"A high number," Lysander says, and this is pure dismissal. He doesn't care to recount exact numbers of fools or victims. "But it isn't a Portal; or," and he grins, a satyr's grin, "not precisely. You answer the call, go in, and then what happens depends on where you step. The most common thing is they fall asleep until I come and collect them. The least common thing is they wake the dragon."
N. Hyde
The green door opens, and Nick is indeed hesitant in drawing near: it was only last night that he summoned terror-crows to peck out a man's eyes, and that they burned that same body in a hollow in the woods behind his friend's house. He might have found himself somewhat replenished last night, but he's still not at his best.
It's Christmas. He hasn't heard from his father, and though he knows his father and his father's patterns by now, he would like to.
Yet: we move on, and so does Nick. He casts an eye over the Workings on the door, of at least those that he can see (it's not much), and up to Lysander. This man - he's not what Nick expected from what Pen told Nick about him. "Wake the dragon?" He is interested, and wary of being interested, and snared in spite of all that.
Horace Gladstone
[Enochian!]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
[Let's share our perceptions, shall we? Coincidental Mind 2/Prime 1. Maybe some other 1s. Diff 5, -3, Enochian is cool. But it can't be that cool, so.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (9, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Horace Gladstone
He puts a hand on Nicholas's shoulder to draw him closer, once Nicholas is close enough to be drawn so. Careful, strong hand; heart's blood warmth in his fingers and palm He will keep Nicholas from stepping into the room if Nicholas gets the idea that he could do that now, or should.
"It will only be me," he says, in what might be meant as a comforting manner (automatic manipulations). Before he takes his hand from the Chakravanti, he speaks an invocation in a language Nicholas has heard Penelope use. But Lysander is a different sort of Mage from his student: when he speaks, even though his voice is soft and almost casual, the command is no shaping -- no imperious suggestion;
it is a demand, and a song struck from the heart;
it is the clarity of glass, dragged out of the stars and given to Mankind: Here. Have light. A lullaby; something old.
It'll only be Horace: the strength of his power settling into the young Chakravanti's mind with more surety than the compulsion. The room is a small green room: there is a fainting couch and a sideboard and a very interesting looking curio cabinet, partially hidden behind which is a door. There is a rug of interlaced vines and ivy leaves. There is a tin ceiling, designs which echo the rug in the tin; and this is where Nicholas's borrowed sight begins to reveal how the spell is woven into symbols hidden stamped scribed into the tin and then woven into the weft of the rug, how the mind compulsion is the lure and then: leave it up to chance. He can see how the curving arches of what aren't windows but might've been if this room were anywhere else are instead simply walls made to look as if they should go somewhere strengthen and fix the web. The web: step there,
and you feel dizzy, are suggestible: sit over there. Touch over there, and you sleep, and you do not wake up even if you are moved; not until the spell has run its course, or it is unlocked.
Step there, and you vomit. Take another step, and you are stricken with diarrhea.
Step there, and you hear somebody behind you and know that you have just enough time to get out of the room and head back the way you came and not be caught, if only you do that right now: and with alacrity.
Step there, and you wake the dragon.
The dragon is a bronze (?) statuette coiled on a small table: wake it and it will attack; its eyes are red; it is not alive, though there may be a spirit bound to its heart; it has its own resonance, Guarded, Trickster, Golden, Piercing.
N. Hyde
After having come across the Green Door, Nick is not in any hurry to enter the room ahead of Lysander. He is a careful man, and so he keeps pace and doesn't put even a toe ahead, and as it turns out his caution pays off here (of course it does.) Lysander places a hand on Nick's shoulder, drawing him closer. Nick allows it, and as Lysander offers his reassurance he perhaps even bows his head a little.
This isn't necessarily trusting, though Lysander might think it so. It's a commitment to a decision to allow Lysander to do what he will and therefore: no fear.
Lysander can hear the sharp intake of his breath as the Weaving in the room springs into relief, as clearly as one of Ari's etchings beneath his fingers. This is a room of traps, of potential missteps and almost certain humiliations, and in spite of himself, he is impressed. Perhaps even inspired. His eyes are mainly for the dragon though, to the spirit he suspects is shackled to it. (And here: Nick is not sure how he feels about that.) "I see," he says, because he does.
"Did you bind it?"
Horace Gladstone
"No, that was another in the cabal of my youth." Lysander allows Nicholas a close look; he will even take his hand away, and with Nicholas's perceptions sharpened (augmented [enhanced]), would allow the boy to step into the room and look at things more closely. But if Nicholas does, Lysander warns him before he takes the Sight away again; banishing the connection with a gesture. The world is more wondrous, certainly? "We did have fun with him. He's very good at misleading, deceiving, and keeping one on one's toes."
N. Hyde
Carefully, carefully, Nick steps into the room to stand closer to the web that clings to each corner of the room with its snares in the center. He is not so foolish as to step into the middle of it, even as curious as he is: his Sight just now is a borrowed thing, and even without Lysander's warning he'd be aware that it could be taken from him at any time.
A sudden onset of flulike symptoms would be, possibly, the cherry on the shit cake he assumes his first impression on the Hermetics has been so far.
"You speak in the past tense." Nick glances at Lysander out of the corner of his eye, back at the dragon. Then he steps back out of the room as his Sight fades away.
Horace Gladstone
"We don't play very often any more." He does sound regretful, though not in any deep way. He does not think about the fun he could be having, or once had. It is equivalent to somebody remembering how much they liked that super-soaker gun when they were little, a particularly fun summertime campaign. But of course Horace is Notos, end-of-summer autumn wind coming up from the South. "Not even with little Mysteries like that guy there."
Lysander shuts the door behind Nicholas and gestures him down the hall. "Where were we? ..." Musing cast to his tone, and Nicholas has (is given?) the opportunity to direct the conversation before Lysander comes back have-you-ever-entertained-the-idea, wouldn't-want-it-anyway.
N. Hyde
Something about this is vaguely sad to Nick: a sort of mystic Calvin and Hobbes, a child grown up with his pasttimes tucked away to moulder in the closet. It surprises him, even, because Nick was not especially childlike even when he was a child.
Nicholas walks with Lysander down the hall, suddenly mindful of all the time that has passed and that Pen is probably waiting for the two of them. He feels a stab of guilt because he has left her alone with Diana, the spider woman. Nick remembers perfectly well where they were, and he has talked about himself enough for one night. "So what made you take Pen on as a student?"
It's just on topic enough. Maybe -
Horace Gladstone
[Let's, in fact, see how Diana and Pen are doing. Diana, you are saying? Intelligence + Academics.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
Horace Gladstone
[Pen, your reply? Ack. Wits + Academics.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Horace Gladstone
[Diana, be pleasant. Manipulation and Empathy.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Horace Gladstone
[Pen, try to be charming. Char + Emp.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
"Mmm... Did Pen tell you what made her decide to eschew the aimless life?" Lysander asks, and it could be one of those questions asked in order for the asker to better answer the question the other guy asked.
N. Hyde
"She did."
Horace Gladstone
[OH HEY. Manip + Subt? Eh? EHH? We can use our (silver-tongued) specialty here.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[Gah. Hermetics.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
"She had already been drawn to the attention of our Order. We already wanted her, though I was not involved in any of that. I was busy with real work. When she came to me, I was - " He pauses, and he is taller than Nicholas. Not by much, a scant inch or two: but it lends some grace to this kind-of slantwise look down, straight lashes gracefully shadowing his cheekbones. "At last somewhat confident the last group of kids I'd been teaching could stand on their own, and I was not necessarily looking to take on someone new in the fashion that Pen was 'new.' But … well. She is a very, what is that word, it's on the tip of my - beguiling. A beguiling young lady. Very," his brow lowers, as if thoughtful, "well you must know. Somebody would have picked her up if I hadn't, but I like a challenge and an underdog. I like passion wedded to wit."
N. Hyde
I was busy with real work. An offhand comment, yet he notes it with interest: sometimes it's in these little throwaway phrases that people reveal the most about themselves. Then again, Nick has already noted that Lysander is far less affable than he seems. This is a house of masks and smoke and very carefully arranged mirrors.
"It sounds as though she made it an easy decision for you, then."
Horace Gladstone
"How long have you two been seeing one another?"
N. Hyde
It's unusual for Nick to be surprised in social interactions, and yet he has been so several times tonight. "We've known each other for six or seven months," he says, again with that caution, that feeling around with his toes for the jaws of the trap, "and we've been together for...two or three, I suppose."
Horace Gladstone
"Do you think I'm laying traps for you, Nicholas? That you're going to say the wrong thing, and find yourself on the floor of my home, shitting your pants?"
He sounds amused; poignantly so, how ridiculous, hah, hah. Easy to forget that he actually was; the look Lysander gives Nicholas is one calculated to be reassuring, or conspiratorial.
N. Hyde
There is this look that Lysander gives him, at once reassuring and conspiratorial; it would be easy for Nick to mirror this, as he so often does, because it's a look he gives other people on occasion. Perhaps that is one of the things he finds disconcerting about Lysander: magi as powerful as he is are possibility models, and even though Nick is not and will never be Hermetic, there is some essence here of could-have-been-one-day.
Instead, a corner of his mouth snicks upward. "Are you?"
Horace Gladstone
[Pokerface. Manip + Subt again!]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Really, are you?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
"What would I have to gain?" Lysander says, in such a way as to imply that of course he's not laying traps for Nicholas.
He is absolutely laying traps for Nicholas, as Nicholas can intuit. Lysander is adept at deceit, but Nicholas is just a touch more astute. However, those traps don't necessarily end in Nicholas shitting his pants on the floor of Lysander's home. He has some decorum, and he is not the boy he was.
N. Hyde
"That's what I'm trying to figure out." Nick smiles; it's a beatific thing, a can't-be-bothered sort of thing, and this as he gains confidence: he is learning a lot, and he expands along with the knowledge gained. "I at least got the impression that your pants-shitting days were done, though. So no, I'm not worried about that."
Horace Gladstone
"Are you worried about anything?" Here with this company and specifically. There's another conspiratorial, or comradely - yes, comradely - lift of his brow. Jay Gatsby lift of his brow, inviting in its way, just enough ripple of good humor beneath the question.
N. Hyde
"We just walked past rooms with the sort of lose-yourself-in-fairyland door you hear about in old stories, and a network of the most mortifying traps I can think of. I'd be a fool not to be worried about anything." The good humor, Lysander finds reflected back at him; still, Nick's eyes flick on occasion to the scenery of the rooms they pass through, perhaps as though wondering whether there is indeed some sort of trap. Or maybe he's just trying to take stock of where they are in the house and how long it's going to be until he can sneak back into the tall grass.
Horace Gladstone
Lysander chuckles, spark to hay, gold hay gone up in smoke; there's smoke in his voice, when he chuckles. "Well then. Try not to look as if you expect something when I ask you about your relationship with Pen. It's the only thing I know we have in common. Have you dated Magi from a different Tradition than yours before?"
Horace Gladstone
[Dude, not a leading question. Just curious. MANIP + SUBT.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
N. Hyde
[No such thing.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
[-_- By Grabthar's hammer, this will not be a tie.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
This is just about the leadingest question that Lysander has asked Nicholas.
N. Hyde
"We could find other things in common," Nick suggests, and this again is amiable. The side glance he gives up at Lysander at this very leading question is more of an eloquent thing than Nick perhaps intends it to be: Nick is calculating how loosely he should define "dating." But he, too, has decorum, and his history of warm but casual contact with other people is an uneasy subject for him, even if no longer the sharply painful subject it once was. "Pen is the only one since joining my Tradition," he says. "I was Disparate for a long time."
Horace Gladstone
"Ah." Lysander took on a Disparate-for-a-long-time student, but that does not mean he has no reaction to the idea of Disparates: he does have a reaction. Perhaps he can conceal it.
And perhaps it is because of that sidelong look that Lysander opens his mouth, as if to say something; but then he shuts it again. Flambeau, contrary to popular opinion, have self control. They must. So, instead, rather neutrally, "It will be very difficult, if you carry on. Do you expect to carry on through next Yule?"
[Oh, oh, what, no, you don't see through ME, lashes flutter, etc.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
[Maaaaybe I do.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
[Or you don't.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[And here's my subterfuge roll.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Horace Gladstone
Lysander has strong (disappointed) reaction to Disparates, and most of those opinions are negative -- but there's a directed negativity there, an experience-risen negativity.
He isn't so much trying to hide anything when he opens his mouth then shuts it. He really is deliberately not saying the first thing that popped into his mind, which was going to be rude, revelatory: and mean.
Lysander can be very mean, but -- there's a sense that he doesn't want to 'spoil' something. Things.
[And Horace: *squint* Per Subt.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )
Horace Gladstone
[Meanwhile, Pen is impatient! The house is huge! Wants to find Lysander and Nicholas! Why use a cell phone when one can Scry! Correspondence 2 + Prime 1 (where is that certain resonance). -1 focus, -1 using personal item from targets, darn it.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 2) ( botch x 1 )
Horace Gladstone
[Pen: Curse aloud ELOQUENTLY.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
Nick absorbs all of this, the subtle shift in the other man's voice, the layers in the conversation, body language, the meter of breath: it takes someone particularly astute to understand what is feigned here and what is not. There is an idea in the study of magic-as-parlour-tricks, in legerdemain, that to pass off something successfully the performer must live the illusion, must build it into their identity to some extent, and some understanding of this concept is helpful in peeling away falsehood (or, at least, the things that are further from the truth.)
He is not as practiced at the actual construction of the facade as Lysander, though. Maybe it's the way the flesh around his eyes tightens for only a moment. When he says, "I expect to carry on as long as she would like to carry on," this is a simple statement of truth. And also: Nick's life, both mundane and Awakened, has been a series of learning to let things go, to accept that the fundamental nature of creation is built upon transience and change. He expects nothing; expectations disappoint.
Horace Gladstone
[2 paradox points for Pen.
But try, try again. +1 diff.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Horace Gladstone
[Is someone scrying for - ? Lysander Awareness.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
[What?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Horace Gladstone
[Weaving-Watch!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
Horace Gladstone
"You should come over next Yule then, not as a plus one but invited in your own right," Lysander says, with a warm smile. "Now what might we have in common. Do you practice any martial arts; you don't fence, do you?"
There's some distance on the word 'you,' as he senses clearly the signature ardent daring of his student's magick. Senses it, and knows it for what she is trying to do, though he still (without bothering to reach for an instrument, no invocation necessary) Looks at the signs she is leaving behind, traces the construction of the window with his sight: this is how angels must look at the world; how God looked at Creation, d'you see?
Nicholas can feel the suggestion of Pen's magick, and then the stronger flare of Lysander's.
N. Hyde
"I will," Nick says, and perhaps the invitation and the warmth throws him a little. It occurs to him only as Lysander is moving on, here, that the way in which the statement is phrased -
But there is too much going on just then for him to follow that train of thought to its completion and ultimate state of unease. As Lysander finishes his question Nick, too, senses Pen's magick at work, Lysander watching as she Weaves. He almost forgets to reply. Then, after those scant few beats, "No, neither. I've done yoga for a long time, insofar as it counts," and technically it is a martial art, of a sort, "but nothing martial. Do you fence?"
Horace Gladstone
[Doo de doo. Manip + Subt.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
[Oh man, what did I say now?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
"Yeah." He doesn't say it meanly, like of course I fence, I asked you while searching for something we have in common, fool. He doesn't say it with an overabundance of enthusiasm, like he's about to try to press Nicholas into the sport. He says it warmly; there's something burnished, see, to his tone of voice; something silvery rather than golden. He reaches out and puts his hand on the scruff of Nick's neck, between his shoulders, and steers him this-a-way, then his hand is gone again: down another stairwell. "I've tried the what's it called the aerial yoga. I enjoyed it, but," and his eyes twinkle. "I turned it into a different kind of exercise, and got rid of the ribbon. Broke my arm."
Horace Gladstone
[Pen: Okay. I know where they are, ish. Now can I get there? WITS. This house is difficult. Specialty, sure why not.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
Nick is scruffed, with only mild surprise: Nick mainly grew up around women (his gun nut uncle in the middle of the desert aside), and he mainly works around women, and most of the authority figures in his life have all been women. He isn't used to this sort of paternal invasion of his personal space. It isn't necessarily that he minds; there is simply a way his muscles start and contract before they rapidly become relaxed again. "Aerial yoga without the ribbon? So some kind of Forces exercise?"
He tromps down the stairwell, unaware that they are likely to barrel into Pen at any moment. "I mainly just use it these days to clear my head before Working," and that W could be uppercase or lowercase, who knows. "A lot of times I'll have to go out pretty far to where the Veil is thin enough to work, and it's been helpful once I'm there."
Horace Gladstone
"What work do you do?"
The w could be capital or not. Context. Context doesn't necessarily mean much when someone is a martial conversationalist, jumping from one topic to a side topic. Still.
N. Hyde
It could be a capital or not; Nick is not sure. So he answers both. "I work as a counselor in a crisis center," he says. Doesn't bother to name it; most people don't know it, and there's only one serving this area anyway. "And I practice communicating with and summoning spirits - usually for different things. It's a very different type of interaction, though. I'm still learning how to...speak with them and figure out what they want, I guess."
Horace Gladstone
"What they want?" Lysander sounds intrigued. "Why?"
"Hey." Here she is; come unsheathed from the candle-lit fire-laced gilt and glory halls of Hermetic Ingenuity, all dressed in moonlight and fish-scales and fog; flushed, either because of Gladstone's Scotch or because of an embarrassing interlude during which - in full sight of her mentor's cabal, her rival, and her ex-cabal-mate - her own Will rubber-band snapped back at her and she spilled some wine on the floor and said a foul mouthed word or three. Both of those things are liable to put roses in her cheeks.
N. Hyde
"Because when I figure out how to step over, I'll need to know how to make some friends." Nick's voice is a little dry, a tone that says that perhaps he speaks from past experience.
Then Pen appears, and Nick straightens, a smile pulling at the corners of his eyes and mouth. She looks flushed; did she run to get here? No, not short of breath. Probably the scotch. "Hello. How's the rest of the party?" Nick offers one of his hands to Pen as she draws near to himself and Lysander. He appears none the worse for wear.
Horace Gladstone
[Hmmm. But I, your Teacher, would like to know how you're doing, Student. Per + Subt.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Horace Gladstone
[No! I can do this, man. ManipSub.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 7) ( success x 1 )
Horace Gladstone
[Ugh.]
Horace Gladstone
"Everyone is ebullient; they are three steps away from becoming intellectual Maenads, so I fled to find the two people I like most in this house before I was torn apart." A hand. Pen laces her fingers through Nicholas's and leans against his arm, just so.
"I was just bringing Nicholas back down to meet everybody," Lysander says, after a moment's quiet regard. Of Pen, of Nick. Of Pen and Nick together. "And questioning him about his martial prowess, work, etcetera."
"Oh, excellent! His martial prowess is his work ethic. Or his work ethic is his martial prowess; or do I just mean prowess? He is full of prowess; you'll both forgive the clumsy segue!"
"Is he," Lysander says, and he sounds amused. "I'm sure his prowess is sufficient for what he intends to do with his life, at present."
"Lysander, you sound -- " A frown. Directness, even when she might not want to be direct. "Cold. 'is sufficient.' What?"
"I'm sorry; do I sound cold, Nicholas? I hope I've been welcoming. What do you think of the house?"
Horace Gladstone
[AND another manip + subt from Lysander, because c'mon.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[DO you sound cold?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 6, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Horace Gladstone
Cold isn't the perfect word for what Lysander is or sounds like, but there is a bit of a something there in that remark, brought on by whatever impression it is Nicholas has left.
N. Hyde
Intellectual Maenads, Pen says, and the corners of Nick's eyes crinkle at the phrase. He is more relaxed than he was when Pen left him earlier to allow him to tour the house with Lysander; all told, the conversation with Lysander could have been much worse.
He feels relaxed until he listens to the exchange between Lysander and Pen: then, gut sinking, he looks from Hermetic to Hermetic. "The house is amazing," he says, and this is both enthusiastic and earnest, if not Nick at his most eloquent. "You've been very welcoming. Thanks for the tour, and for humoring me."
He had thought that he had sailed past the traps; now it occurs to him as they move back out to join the rest of the party that maybe he didn't wait long enough to come to that assessment. "How many people are here, Pen?"
Gladstone, & co.
[Y'know. Pen, Perc + Empathy. Nick, how are you feeling/do you like this/is this terrible to you/Rob and Ari are totally wrong, right?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
[Totally wrong.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
"You're welcome," Lysander says. "I was happy to do it. Perhaps next year, I'll show you more of the old place, and you'll be able to see without help."
Meanwhile, Pen looks at Nicholas for a steady second. This is not an up-from-under-the-eyelashes look, but this clear-eyed rest of a thing, silence between one heart beat and the other; she has a way of study, shadow on her brow which clears after that second has gone. Unfair Songrobin and Aridracona, at least it will be a pleasure to tell them that they are wrong: it is sometimes too much of a pleasure to tell Robin and Arianna that they are wrong.
How many people are -
"Ten, not including you and me."
N. Hyde
"Perhaps," Nick says, to Lysander. This is more than idle supposition; it's reflective, even: thoughtful. Nick enjoys seeing the world in a different way, and he has geared much of his magickal study toward this pursuit.
Pen says - ten, and Nick just nods. To Pen, he appears perfectly put together, without any hint of how stressful the conversation with Lysander was or that he is waiting for the next shoe to drop now that they are sidling on into the main room. Perhaps she misses the way his jaw sets as he steels himself. "Anything I should know?"
This is touched with humor: perhaps he is hoping to jump between other magi to avoid Diana.
Gladstone, & co.
[Lysander. Are you steeling yourself? Does ten seem like a lot to you, poor little lovelorn Chakravanti in a Nest of Hermetics? Perc + Subt.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 6, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
[Psh, ten is nothing.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Ten seems like a lot to Nick. He is also maybe wondering whether he can blend into the background and just quietly listen and observe.]
Gladstone, & co.
[Wouldn't be a Lysander party without a Lysander Manip + Subt.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 3, 3, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[I see through you, sir.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen: *squint* Subtext? Undercurrents? C'mon guys.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
Nicholas was a surprise but Lysander has plans for Nicholas tonight and those plans don't involve allowing the Chakravanti to escape notice by being on the sidelines, this snowy glen graveyard churchyard sense of hallowed crow's wing whisper, something to comment on later, an observant outsider an outsider allowed to observe. Lysander plans on making Very, Very Certain that Nicholas is kept Entertained and Entertaining, which means one thing to Pen, who has not seen through Nicholas's assured and in control façade, and will mean another to Nicholas, who has steeled his jaw and dredged up his strength, and who has all this evening found himself often unfortunately in possession of a hint of insight into Lysander's character. The Prince with a Thousand Enemies is not by nature caring or warm. Untrue. He cares. He is warm. But his care and his warmth is not for people.
Anything I should know? "That you are clever," Pen says, with casual intimacy; as if Lysander were not there at all. "As clever as the moon, and the grain, and the wind. I think I should get you the ring around the moon and give it to you to wear. Doesn't that sound like a worthy quest? Oh! And be on guard around Gil. He is drunk."
Lysander is interested in the metaphors his Poet-Apprentice wants to bestow on her Chakravanti friend, and he doesn't bestow any mocking glances on the pair at this juncture in time. He says, "Traditionally, I give gifts tonight to all my guests. Most of them have already received their presents, but you'll find a box with your name on it by the bar. And yes, watch out for Gil. He is a cantankerous old bastard and a lecher of the worst order. I wouldn't allow a bad word about him to pass my lips but well here we are. He will tell you the same as soon as he meets you, and proudly, so," and there is a touch of wryness here.
Perhaps Nicholas notices that they're taking a different way back to the Solarium, the main room. Can feel the pressure of a mélange of resonance, a room filled up brimfull of Personality, the house soaking it up.
N. Hyde
"That's a very lofty quest," Nick says, and he is amused, and he is less willing to disregard Lysander's presence there. He is aware that there is some plan the Hermetic has for him tonight, and he is not sure what it is - but perhaps it has something to do with the gift. Nick is on guard, clever as the wind which can't be snared; or at least this is what he hopes. "But I have no idea what I'd get you in return."
Pen is not looking at him as she says to be on the lookout for Gil, and the gaze he casts over her before turning his eyes ahead is affectionate, something tinged with wonder, and he keeps his face angled away from Lysander (it's not for him.)
"Duly noted," he says, of what they tell him about Gil. "There's one at every party I suppose."
Gladstone, & co.
Pen grins at Nicholas. "But you got me the quest."
"He will try to be courteous," Lysander says, and it sounds rather like a threat against poor Gil's life, but poor Gil if he actually is a drunk and a lecher probably is used to such things. Here is a bit of hallway that Nicholas is familiar with; here is Lysander, lengthening his stride to open the door for his guests, and here is the Solarium.
"Before you come in, you should check out that corner." Dim clamor of noise from those within, and a clear view of them. 'That corner' is through a narrow door almost invisible set into the paneling of the hall leading to the Solarium, a fairy door. Lysander doesn't wait for Pen and Nick to follow him or take his suggestion, whichever they'd like; he just winks then heads in.
--
Clear View of Inside the Solarium.
The Solarium is octagonal in shape. And glass, of course. Tall, tall glass windows, all sides except the one where the door is set: that looks like it is stone on one end, but on the other end as if it is warm wood paneling, and against this is set the bar mentioned, a host of glasses and bottles set up for just this party. There are some candles, floating in the air, suspended there by some fantastical expenditure of Will which also takes care that the wax not drip on the guests below. The candle-flames are reflected and echoed in the glass like witch-light stars and beyond the glass is the darkness of a snowy evening, dim shapes and vastness sweeping toward cliffs and the sea and a mosaic balcony and the balcony has trellises where fauns disport and there are dead vines bare scant and burning torches on the lawn. There are some mundane twinkle-lights, too. The Flambeau does like his glowing things, rock salt lanterns and other metal lamps hanging. The Solarium is certainly large enough for the whole party -- large enough for a larger party, too, an evergreen coaxed to grow inside so the room smells of candles burning beeswax and of pine.
There are snacks laid out, obviously well-loved snacks judging by the fact that there isn't that much on the platters.
There is a square gathering area, carved out by the setting of five couches and two chairs, and most of the party seems to be located there.
Diana is sitting in a chair, votary, black hair bloody red mouth terrifying, eyes snapping with terrible life as she says something pointedly to somebody Nicholas doesn't know, an older man with more salt than pepper in his hair, deeply carved dimples and a very square jaw, half-moon eyes that could be genial or not. He looks hard. There are two young women around his and Pen's age, one who has thick straight brown hair, dressed in a sharp crimson with startlingly blue eyes, a certain vulnerability of expression that makes her likable before she says anything, the other with dark skin and a crown-halo of kinky-curled hair, a short dress of yellow and a necklace which echoes a Peter Pan collar but is of gold or some precious metal, something which looks wizardly and pretty, and they are looking at a book together, with the first young woman occasionally lifting her eyes to the door.
There are two men around Pen and Nick's age, too, perhaps one being just a year or two older, one with red ruddy hair curling, thick glasses and a sharp blue suit, rings on every finger, some nestled bit of silver at his throat, and this is often how one can tell a Mage isn't it? By their accessories, and the second man is best described as 'large,' Bear-Prince if anything, Orion the hunter, somebody you'd use the word 'hew' for, or 'thews,' some terribly cultured monster of a man. They are arguing, with the Bear-Prince of a man sitting on the couch and the ruddy haired bespectacled young wizard standing behind it. There is also a pale-blonde (Femme Fatale cut, waving) woman who looks like a contemporary of Lysander's, and is the first to notice them, although she is usually the last to be noticed, in spite of the dress she is wearing which is some fashionable and fashionably cut compromise between ritual robes and elegant party-wear, somebody who looks as if he must be her brother, so closely alike do they look though his eyebrows are thick and dark in contrast to the pale-blond hair and he will be noticed long before she is. He is smoking a cigar almost furtively, though via some chicanery the smell of the cigar smoke isn't filling up the whole the Solarium, and seated beside the man Diana is speaking to, an expression which teeters between amusement and tolerance on his face.
N. Hyde
Inside the Solarium: a den of Hermetics, arranged among the glow-lights and candle flames like a pantheon awaiting their entrance to some temple of the Will. In this meeting here of gods and men, Nicholas Hyde is still aware of all the resonances he'd sensed earlier, tangling and mingling together in this space. His own marks him as different, even if his Tradition did not.
His eyes flicked toward the corner, the fairy door, and he is wary enough that it would not be difficult for Pen to sense it. "I want to look," he confides in her, "but Lysander also showed me the Green Door."
Still: he suspects that very little will be as mortifying-in-the-future as walking into the Solarium. He has already locked eyes with a few people in the room - the dark haired woman in crimson, who looks approachable; the ruddy-haired man who the eyes can't help but be drawn to, the waving woman. He glances back to Pen, apparently entirely willing to defer to her on whether they go through the door or not. At least if he ends up asleep in a closet, he will not be alone.
Gladstone, & co.
Pen bends her head, the better to listen; then she laughs! This bright-ripple of surprise and amusement, and she pulls Nicholas toward the fairy door. Conspiratorial when she says, "If you stop looking because of other things Lysander has shown you or told you, you're usually trapped."
She opens the door, backs in; lets Nicholas decide whether he's going to follow himself. The fairy door leads to what might at best be called a closet, certainly. Tall, tall, tall, but no more than four feet by four feet, and the door slams closed behind Nick as soon as he's inside and no longer holding it. Slams closed with an air of finality, and then the show begins. Theatre. Performance. Mischief.
Lights go on above their heads and see descending there is a clockwork automaton mechanism which ticks into motion. The little room is illuminated; there are secret niches built into the walls, where things are displayed: they are surrounded by a curio cabinet.
Above, it is a mechanical precious-metal-made celestial heavens sort of -- clock, maybe. A city; a rainbow bridge, which ticks into being, stretches out, all old burnished colors but it is a wonder. Little people moving, too, dragging diamond-glinting stars out of hidey-holes in the wall, music box clockwork music playing chime ding and then:
Oh, see. A little man with wings on his helmet, trundling down the rainbow bridge, just over them: holding a sprig of real mistletoe over Nick and Pen! Closer look. All the little figures are Norse gods, or Magicians. There's even Death, death's head, dancing with a maiden.
Merry Christmas!
N. Hyde
They both have to duck in order to get through the fairy door; Nick does indeed follow her in, intent enough on what's ahead that he is less concerned that the door slams shut behind the two of them. Once it does, once he's heard it, a weight settles into the space somewhere around his bellybutton: is some Mind trick coming, or will they wake another Dragon?
But no: they are illuminated, they are painted with light, and Nick watches with all the fascination and wonder of a child looking through a kaleidescope for the first time. This, too, is what magic is for.
"I did not expect that," he says, his words particularly enunciated as they are emphatic. He almost doesn't notice the mistletoe, as he is studying each of the little figures, Death dancing with a maiden. As soon as he does, there is some simple amusement - maybe Lysander has some Calvin left in him after all - and he tilts Pen's chin up and leans down to kiss her, stealing whatever few moments that he has.
Because they are about to go back into the Solarium, where the vague sense of existential foreboding that has followed him around all night is likely to culminate.
Gladstone, & co.
"You wouldn't, if Lysander explained -- or failed to explain," something heated, there; molten, "what was behind the Green Door."
That makes her think of something; takes her, in fact, away from the mechanical cosmos spinning over their heads, the metal-work filigreed heaven, until something in the way Nick inhales or exhales sets her attention more finely on the present, and she smiles at him and his expression, before setting her own upward.
Her eyes are closed after the kiss; a pensive furrow between her brow. When she opens her eyes, they're gleaming gone mercurial capricious with grave mischief. "How about a lipstick ring until I find my way to the moon?"
And she'll do it, too: leave a ring of her lipstick under his collar like a secret. The lights go out eventually, a minute or two in: the show's over. Pen says, in the dark, "Tally ho!"
And he'll have to open the fairy door, and go back into the hall first, because Pen will not body check Nick out of the way.
The Solarium door is askew. Pen'll give Nick a questioning glance; and she looks - well. She probably manages to hide exactly what she is feeling at this juncture in time with the skill of the Patron Saint of Liars -
[pause in post, for a roll.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
[Oh Pen.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
- well, more or less. She puts up a good front, but weather can be misleading, and she is a touch apprehensive, worried about some One inside that room, some specific person.
Still! Swashbuckle time, right? She opens the door proper-like and ushers Nicholas inside. A house of doors.
N. Hyde
Tally ho, Pen says in the dark, and she can't see it, the way his face breaks into a smile in the blackness: teeth and all. By the time he has opened the door and stepped forward, blinking for a moment as his eyes readjust to the light, it is gone.
Nick has rearranged his collar to cover her ring, only a hint of that furtive smile present as he directs his gaze back toward the Solarium. He can be ushered inside, though his eyes catch on Pen in the seconds after he has stepped through the threshold. It isn't so unusual that anyone would be apprehensive in a party like this, but perhaps he is surprised to see her apprehensive.
"Is there someone here that you want me to distract for you?" Chivalry is not a thing that comes naturally to Nick, but, well, he can put himself on the front lines occasionally.
Gladstone, & co.
"No." And she lowers her voice to a whisper, leaning close. "You have two seconds to choose your destiny; who shall I introduce you to first?"
He does have two seconds to decide. They're already being noticed. Not by everybody, but the blonde woman who neither of them has probably noticed yet, by Horace Lysander, who is at the bar and has been joined there by a nondescript man in his mid-to-late forties with a distracted air and another man, Hispanic, handsome as the devil, mid-thirties, late-thirties.
N. Hyde
Nick's eyes dart from person to person: Lysander and Diana (no) he has already met, and the others...well, most of them are arguing or having some sort of intense discussion or another, which is exactly the thing Nick would have expected in a party of Hermetics. Intense discussions all around.
The Chakravanti jerks his chin toward the two young women reading a book. "They look friendly."
N. Hyde
Init!
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Pen: +7.
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Zelda: +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
N. Hyde
Nick - 11
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: +8
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: Oh no you don't! +8
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Diana: Oh, is it the Euthie again? +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
ORDER OF SOCIAL COMBATTERY.
Alexandra: 17
Lysander: 14
Diana: 13
Nick & Pen & Zelda 11. (Pen: Argh, this is terrible.)
Gladstone, & co.
[Alexandra, Perception + Empathy on Diana.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
[And now on Nicholas.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[And now on Pen.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen's a liar.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[So is Diana.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Damn it. Tie-break. Alexandra.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Diana.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
[Nick is definitely a liar.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[We break this tie, RIGHT NOW! Alexandra.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
[Tie break!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4) ( botch x 1 )
N. Hyde
[Empathy - Alexandra. Don't botch this, Nicholas.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[Empathy - Pen.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[Empathy - Diana.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 5, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
[Alexandra is a liar.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
[Nick is feeling fairly apprehensive at the moment. There are a lot of powerful people in this room, and he's a bit in awe of that, including the setting and surroundings. He is also not feeling especially confident about his ability to discourse intelligently with Hermetics about things that are mystically related.]
Gladstone, & co.
The young woman with thick, dark straight hair is alert; alert, and seeking - sweeping a look at Diana, whose movement she has noticed (uh oh), and then a closer look at Nick and Pen (do I think it would be kind to rescue you), for humanitarian reasons.
Nicholas sees that: Pen is resigned to his choice; of course that would be the one. Her principle reaction is resignation. And Alexandra sees the same, but with more context.
Diana, meanwhile. Diana has noticed Nicholas and decided that he will make the perfect illustration to a point she is making, and it is sure to be nasty for him; there is a sense of brisk dismissal, cold pleasure in the fact that - something. She also seems to be annoyed at the man she is speaking to, and really looking forward to rubbing his nose in the shit.
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra carefully straightens, a directed (frontal assault [natural leader, baby]) beam of a smile for Pen and Nicholas. "Hey Pen, Pen's friend, over here."
And she scoots to the side, so there is a gap between herself and the dark skinned young woman (Zelda, who looks startled, catching the book which Alexandra lets go before it touches the couch, and only turns her head afterward) on their couch.
[Char + Leader, just to keep Diana from interjecting right now.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
As they approach the dark haired young woman, the one with the open face and likeable demeanor, Nick smiles; in the brief seconds before they make contact he is fully prepared to be friendly and engaging, in spite of how apprehensive he happens to be feeling at this moment. Pen - one corner of his mouth wavers, because of all the choices he could have made in this room, he seems to have picked the One she was concerned about speaking with.
Good job, Nicholas.
And oh, Diana, he has seen her too. Perhaps she won't approach him if he seems to be otherwise engaged - perhaps he can move around the room between conversations until the end of the night and wait her out. He does not put great faith in this idea: and Alexandra saves them. Nick has picked up on Pen's attitude toward Alexandra at this point; it is only this sensitivity that keeps his relief from being a palpable thing. "Hello," he says, as they near Alexandra and Zelda. There is a glance to Pen, as at the moment he is "Pen's friend."
Gladstone, & co.
They have to go around the Bear-Prince and the Ruddy-haired Man, cut in to take the offered seat on the couch. Zelda has gathered the book into her lap, and gives Nicholas a long and level (contemplative) look, socially aware enough to be reserved so it isn't quite staring. Pen had already been socializing before she left to find her mentor and Nicholas; there are no new hellos for Pen. There's already a sense that she found her place in the group tonight (enchant them and you never need deal with them).
"This is Nicholas Hyde, bani Chakravanti. Nick, this is Zelda Marina Merlyn Kerissa, bani Bonisagus, and Alexandra Helen Antimony Bright, bani Flambeau."
Alexandra offers her hand; stands, if Nick hasn't seated himself yet. Zelda does not stand, either way, and Pen, well - Pen is letting Nick take point here.
N. Hyde
Nick has not yet seated himself; he does so eventually, but first takes the hand that Alexandra Bright offers. There's a warmth in his handshake and in the eye contact that follows that is so easy most people don't recognize that it's practiced, too, over long repetition and many many new introductions throughout the day.
"It's a pleasure to meet both of you," he says, and following that he does seat himself (it makes it much more difficult for Diana to sidle her way into the conversation, for one.) "Pen and Robin have mentioned your names."
Then, to Alexandra, with some gentle humor, "Thanks, by the way."
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra's grip is firm, her hands callused in an interesting way; weather-worn, weapon-worn, and her blue gaze direct.
"I've heard about you as well," Alexandra says. From who?
Zelda inclines her head, graceful as a bust of Nefertiti or some other delicate goddess-creature, when Nicholas expresses pleasure, and casts a hooded glance up at Pen. No; over at Pen; Pen has seated herself now, edge of the couch but still she is seated. The hooded glance becomes a graceful blink. The shadow of the movement ripples on her golden collar.
Alexandra's knees are turned toward Nick and Pen and Zelda, her hands clasped loosely around them. Knowing twinkle in her eye at the thank you. "De nada," Alexandra says. No wink, though she sneaks a quick look toward Diana, before settling her attention back on the magi assembled before her. "It's Christmas; a time for miracles. So how long have you been around the area, Nicholas? It seems strange we haven't met before now, given your closeness to Pen and Robin. I like, what's his name, Thane. He's flirtier than I thought a Verbena would be, even with the reputation!"
N. Hyde
Nick's eyebrows arch just a fraction as Alexandra says that she's heard about him too: he does not know who she would have heard about him from, recently initiated as he is. Robin, perhaps.
He is relaxed, and this is a truth: though beneath that, it is difficult for him not to notice the glance that passes between Zelda and Pen. He knows nothing about Alexandra, really, or what there is about her that could have upset Pen, and this layers some caution beneath the general apprehension that was already present. Still, he is seated comfortably, one leg stretched out in front of him, leaned forward (the better to listen.)
"I only moved down here this past summer. I was up in Boston before that." She mentions Thane, Thane's flirtiness; and Nick is more aware of Thane's flirtiness tonight than on other nights perhaps, given that it is the reason his sister is not here with them. His smile is a touch rueful. "The general reputation of Verbena doesn't quite prepare people, I agree. It's difficult not to like him."
N. Hyde
[Init! Nick +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen! +7]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Zelda +6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Alexandra +8]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Martin Alertness.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
[Martin +7]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Order this Round!
Zelda, Pen: 16
Nick: 11
Alexandra, Martin: 9
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: the big, Bear-Prince of a Hermetic, arguing by the couch they're sitting on -- he's heard something, and he's about to break into the conversation all demandingly.
Alexandra: definitely about to say something charming, maybe ask something of Pen or Zelda, totally unaware that Martin's about to speak over her/anybody.
N. Hyde
Nick: About to ask a couple of questions to bring Pen and Zelda into the conversation and start a discussion.
Gladstone, & co.
Pen: Wits + Expression, Wits Specialty ho!
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
Pen rests her elbow on the back of the couch, and says before Martin's done sucking in a breath, "Yes, Martin? If it's something about multi-Traditional cabals and how they aren't particularly well-thought out as a 'concept' and the theoretical models, blah, blah, save it. You haven't even been introduced yet."
Martin, mouth open, blinks. His jaw hinges snapped back shut click.
Zelda gives one quiet chuckle, something that is whispery; barely there as a sound, shoulders lifting UP then down, and then - "I don't like Thane very much. He talks too incessantly, but you seem fine. Do you like to read?"
Ignore them, her question seems to say.
N. Hyde
Pen, and Pen's equipoise, startles Nick for a moment; he had not realized the Bear Prince was about to leap into the conversation. Behind Martin, the red-haired man has given a sharp roll of his eyes behind his glasses, temper flicking outward, a solar flare that dissipates in the dark; which is to say that it likely goes unseen.
Nick might've had a word on multi-Traditional cabals, but instead Zelda asks him a question. "I didn't for a long time, but I do now," he says, and if he is honest it's because he's found he has a lot of catching up to do among people who grew up reading. "What were the two of you reading before we came by?"
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra does not jump in to interrupt Zelda and Nicholas's back and forth, although she does cast a glance back toward Martin, to see what he's going to do (if anything).
He is not going to do anything. "I'm right here," Martin says. "Why don't you introduce me?"
N. Hyde
[Init: Bran +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Edited Order:
Zelda, Pen: 16
Bran: 12
Nick: 11
Alexandra, Martin: 9
Martin: Bully an introduction, and then commence with the Thing He Was Gonna Say, albeit maybe a touch more nicely, because GOD Pen don't you KNOW -
Alexandra: Observant for now!
N. Hyde
Nick: Attentive look to the two new guys! I am so glad I am not in the center of this!
Bran: Politely break in and try to keep him from bullying the initiates. Jerk.
Gladstone, & co.
"Because you and Bran were having a conversation he seems to want to continue, for whatever reason," Pen says. Don't be rude, Martin. Though; she is aware it is rude not to introduce someone so blatantly angling; still, she digs her heels in. "You can't just hop from argument to argument as soon as you feel like you're losing one."
Zelda was on the verge of answering Nicholas when Martin began to exert his presence; she tilts her head back in order to study him, gravely. Then she reaches a hand across Pen's lap, and touches Nicholas's, very lightly, very softly, soft as a snow flake landing, see, to draw his attention back.
"It is my Christmas gift from Horace; do you know any other languages?"
N. Hyde
The man who was speaking with Martin has moved forward now, and there's a sort of warrior's grace in his limbs and his bearing; he is Charged, as though he'd soaked up the sun's light and holds it within his core still now that it's sunk behind the horizon; he is Valiant, even in this situation where Pen has Martin in hand. "Excuse us," he says to the collective. "Martin apparently can't hold his whiskey. Martin, my suggestion is to quit while you're ahead." This, amiable, if only the slightest bit smug.
Nick's eyes are moving from stranger to stranger, here interested, here concerned: he has noted tempers flaring, and he has heard, if only in passing, a few of the names being mentioned here.
Zelda's touch on his thigh brings him back to his conversation, and his eyes settle back on her once more. "I knew some Spanish growing up," he says, and his voice is tinged with regret, "but I've lost most of it at this point. I take it you do?"
Gladstone, & co.
"I'm sure Nicholas will be delighted to meet you later," Alexandra says, smiling and watchful; she meets Pen's eyes, to share a look, then says, "We all know more than one language," in this kind way. "It's part of the curriculum, although many of the languages are 'dead' languages. Zelda's something of a savant."
Meanwhile, "I am holding my whiskey right now," Martin rumbles, his voice gone to a very low register, and he holds up his glass to prove it. He frowns at Pen, frowns at Bran, frowns doubly so at Nicholas. Some of the antagonism has drained due to deferment; it's like a dream, in that poem - what happens to it? "Fine!" He says, deciding to fix his eyes on Bran. "First I win this argument, then she introduces the penny mystic."
N. Hyde
[Nick init! +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
N. Hyde
[Bran init! +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Pen: +7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Zelda +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: +8
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: +7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[okay, tie-break for Pen and Martin. Pen first.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Martin.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Order for Next Time
Pen
Martin
Bran
Zelda
Alexandra
Nick
[Nick init! +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
N. Hyde
[Bran init! +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Pen: +7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Zelda +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: +8
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: +7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[okay, tie-break for Pen and Martin. Pen first.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Martin.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Order for Next Time
Pen
Martin
Bran
Zelda
Alexandra
Nick
N. Hyde
Nick: I'm unfamiliar with that term. Please tell me what it means?
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: Wait this out; check to see what Adults Are Paying Attention.
Zelda: A manipulation subterfuge, no, it's okay Nick, that's nothing. >.>
N. Hyde
Bran: Quiet disapproval. You are really going to regret this when you sober up, Martin.
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: OH IT MEANS -- well maybe when we're INTRODUCED -- blather, blather.
Pen: IT IS ON BITCH. Aka, oh, a WP roll to see how intense this is, and then a challenge. Hopefully while Zelda is distracting Nick. Sure.
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen's Willpower. I am so, totally, not losing my temper, my temper is being loosed with great purpose.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (4, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
Pen: whips around. No; she doesn't whip around. Her elbow was still on the back of the couch, but instead of turning back to Nicholas and Zelda and Alexandra, there's a beat. There's barely a beat; Pen turns her head sharply, leans further over the couch like some starlet leaning out of a convertible and says, with gravity, "An alternate proposition: you, me, outside, quick and now."
[Charisma and... intimidation, let us say. Specialty certainly applies. Don't botch, girl.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
[Martin... Wits and, let's say, Empathy.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Then: WP.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
Martin is belligerent, or at least shading into belligerence: he doesn't like the look of the four-eyed Ruddy-Haired scrap of valor, charged, giving him all but a head-shake, and it sounds like the penny mystic is about to, and anyway, it also looks like they're all - so he's turning back again one finger up like don't say a damned thing, Bran, his shadow falls far see, and Pen gets in first and: he looks down at her, and blinks, and then: lip-curl, somewhat nervous condescension.
"Really."Quick flick-of-a-glance that-a-way. "If you ... well, you're not going to, for what? If you insist but for what? You could just be well-mannered, but fine," and Bear-Prince steps back, and that-a-way was toward the door. See. Simple. Okay, okay.
N. Hyde
[Are you kidding me?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 6, 10) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
Here's a great irony about Bran Summers: he is the sort of leader who likes harmony to the extent that his temper flares when it can't be achieved. He believes they should be united together for some common purpose (and perhaps that is what he is here tonight to do - to drum up support for God knows what), and his temper is a sunburst, difficult to control and contain once loosed, and he'd spit some Dictum which would silence them all. The irony is that it would achieve precisely the opposite of what he wants.
He manages to silence himself, but as he looks at Martin there is fury and there is disapproval in that glance, something that says that if Bran were not so aware that he is a guest in a man's house he'd have found his jaws clamped together in seconds flat. "The well-mannered thing would be to apologize and go get yourself a glass of water." Then, magnanimous, his grey eyes flick toward the group of initiates. "I apologize."
Gladstone, & co.
[Alexandra: Doo-dee-doo, anybody noticing this kerfluffle? Perc + Alert.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Nick: Manip + Subtlety.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Bran: Are you stupid?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
[Yes. You are.]
Gladstone, & co.
Zelda: Hmm?
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4, 4, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: ???
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: +1 diff, distracted by challenge.
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Contest.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
[Well then.]
Gladstone, & co.
[Meanwhile, who notices this? Lysander is over by the bar, talking. +1 diff for conversation. Perc + Alert.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Diana. Right at the other couch, so...]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
N. Hyde
There is a way in which Nick's eyes flicker between the three Hermetics who are speaking. He assesses, and the internal calculations he makes are rapid as they have to be in these situations. Pen: there's a sort of tender bemusement that perches there on his eyebrows for a few seconds, but he doesn't want to undercut her.
So if it's going to be a duel, he settles on unsettling Martin (whatever benefit Pen can get, after all). The bemusement that had colored his expression seconds before becomes more evident, as he fixes a pair of very earnest eyes on Martin. "I'm getting the sense that people are upset," he says, "but I don't think that's a term I've heard before. Can you explain it to me, in case I don't get a chance to hear from you later?"
Gladstone, & co.
[Zelda, Manip + Subt. Willpower.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
N. Hyde
[Nick: Eh?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[Bran: what is even happening right now. I'm so mad.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
Zelda bites the inside of her cheek, generous mouth twisting slightly. Her gaze is fixed on Nicholas, and if there is some setting of her shoulders, some pulse-leap at her throat, some - reactive, flicker-sidelong glance desire to stare - well who is to say?
Zelda might be an enigma.
Isn't, but might be.
Zelda quietly reaches out to touch his thigh again and draw his attention back and away, even going so far as to interrupting him at: I'm getting the sense that people are upset, but I don't think that's a term I've heard before. Can you explain it to me, in ca -
There. There's the interrupt: "Oh no. Everybody is fine. Nick, there is a lot of meaningless slang in our Order, and that one is particularly meaningless; like saying 'man' if you are from California or 'eh' if you are from certain regions of Canada."
But Nicholas is insightful: curse, sometimes. Not now, necessarily: he can see that Zelda finds Martin's term a shocking thing to throw around now, and that she is trying to distract him from whatever it is Martin-and-Pen(-and-Bran-and-possibly-Alexandra) are going to say because she wants him to not feel alienated.
Gladstone, & co.
He will also get a sense that:
Zelda knows what he is doing, or what he was doing, and wants to forestall that kind of prickly weaponized innocence too.
N. Hyde
Nick: Hm. That's interesting. Is Pen going to lose this fight for real? I can back off and be good.
N. Hyde
[Bran: Contest.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Quick tie-break! Hear that, chat? Quick. Tiebreak.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Fufjfldfdlsfdlfd. NO. QUICK.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
[Plz chat]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
Bran, from Zelda, reads: everything Nicholas did, and more. That she (believes) knows Nicholas is playing at innocence, has some shrewd idea of what he's about, but still, and even so, and thus. That she wishes to distract him, because she does not want him to feel alienated; she finds 'penny mystic' a shocking term to, in this context, in front of Pen, throw around; she finds Martin shocking, distasteful, and so. But she also wants to give Pen and Martin a chance to leave without getting anybody else in trouble.
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: Uh oh, Diana incoming. Ask Zelda to show Nick something way over there, then stay with Pen to help. Yeah.
Zelda: Um, show Nick something over because wh - oh! OH! Oh. Yeah. Over there. Sure?
N. Hyde
Bran: Gonna keep smoothing things over. C'mon guys.
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: Detach from couch-group. Gonna go fight yo.
Pen: Detach from couch-group. Gonna go fight yo.
Gladstone, & co.
"You did nothing to apologize for, Bran, you're a perfect gentleman," Pen says, and she stands as she says it, dress all silver-light running down a mirror, stream-tumbled; "And I will be well-mannered, Martin." Oh, man: she makes Martin sound like a rude word for shit-hole. And also, somehow, that sentence: a threat. "Water first."
Martin: "I don't need water," and his voice has gone even lower, even more shadowy; there's a growl to it, almost: his gaze drops to Nick, again. Nick, who - well. Whatever, penny mystics are dumb. "And I don't need to apologize, just look at - "
Pen: "If you - "
Martin: "Bah."
To the door, then.
N. Hyde
The knowledge that the delicate balance he's been striking all evening might have been upset for the sake of one of his house-mates defending the honor of a simpleton might have set Bran off again. Still: he notices Zelda, and he notices that perhaps he missed something, and there is this keen glint of interest for both of them in eyes windowed behind steel-rimmed glass, there and gone.
The initial moment in which his temper had threatened to engulf Martin and perhaps Pen as well has passed, and Bran offers Pen a somewhat terse smile as the two of them go to leave. The corner of his jaw is tight. Perhaps his flicker of insight has him feeling generous to Zelda and Nick though, because as the two duelists turn to leave, Bran turns around and notices - ah.
"Diana," he says, and his smile is warm as grass in summer. He starts toward her, to head her off before she can reach the group still on the couch. "Every party, I swear. Earlier I meant to ask you how your research has been going, by the way."
Gladstone, & co.
"Have you ever seen a book bound in actual unicorn hide?" Zelda says, after she intercepts Alexandra's look. There's a little startle and quickness which Zelda is clearly not used to in her voice; she smooths her hands over her lap. "I'll show you, if you'll follow me. Perhaps you can tell me how Robin is doing. I do not find Robin easy to think about."
Alexandra - well! Bran is on top of the Diana Problem, which leaves only: oh. Responsibility. "I'll come with you two," she says, to Martin and Pen, pausing to smile at Nicholas. Sincerity, rue: "Talk to you soon."
N. Hyde
There is a lot happening just now. Nick, who might not have allowed himself to be redirected had most of this situation not been so foreign to him, sends an anxious glance flickering after Pen and Martin. This, he does not bother to conceal, or perhaps cannot. "I haven't," he says to Zelda, "but I should go with them."
Alexandra is, but that does not seem to be a deterrent. He is half-rising, prepared to follow unless Zelda should stop him.
N. Hyde
[Nick init +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
N. Hyde
[Bran init +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
[Alexandra +8]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen +7]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Zelda: +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: +7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Diana: +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Frederick: +5
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: +8
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
ORDER OF RUMBLING. or not.
Martin: 17
Alexandra: 16
Lysander, Diana: 12
Bran, Nick, Pen: 10
Zelda: 8
Frederick: 7.
Gladstone, & co.
Frederick: is Diana's conversational companion, relieved by a distraction, but also ready to be amused; hey, what's going on beyond the redhead?
Zelda: She's not going to try to stop Nick, per se. Just detain him a little longer with some questions. He won't be able to catch up anyway, right?
Pen: Avoid, avoid being stopped by anybody/mentor. Stick by Martin all companionable, yo! Well, no, not a liar. But
N. Hyde
Nick: Okay. I will stop and ask how bad it is going to be if I follow.
Bran: No drama here tonight, please. Please?
Gladstone, & co.
Diana: Oh, Bran. *claws sink in* Did you mean to do that and why was that is it because you foresaw you would be covering something up what is going on over there anything I should know tell me now mean lady shenanigans mean mean mean.
Lysander: Ehhh........ we'll do an empathy read of people, then decide.
Alexandra: Yep! Out we go! And I'm going to talk quietly to Martin and Pen about how to do this, while trying to talk them out of it.
Martin: What the fuck is everybody's problem! Starting to feel actually wroth instead of just bemused annoyed privileged, but also super super covert and away we go.
Gladstone, & co.
[Martin! Wits + Stealth. Yeah. +1 diff.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Alexandra! Charisma + Leadership.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander. By empathy, we mean subterfuge. Perception + Subterfuge ooooon let's see warming up with the easy one, Pen.
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
[No, pft.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: now what about Nicholas.
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )
N. Hyde
[I am a mountain.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: Alexandra, what's up.
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: Nothing, I am perfect, everything is fine.
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[L: ?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[A: >.>]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: And Bran, you seem to be involved...
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Bran: Pfft. Me, involved? This is beneath me.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Lysander: Really.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Really, it is.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Come again?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
N. Hyde
[I was with a Tytalan for six years, man. I have had my fill of party drama.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
N. Hyde
[This is, perhaps, the most transparent Nicholas has been all night. He is feeling unsure of himself: he wants to do whatever he can to help Pen, but cues from Zelda have made him cautious about following them. Much of his caution has to do with not wanting to offend Lysander, who has been a good host, and not wanting to make the situation any worse than it is. He is not feeling as emasculated as might be expected from a man his age, but he is embarrassed that his presence has caused this.]
Gladstone, & co.
He is huge. Martin. He can't leave like a shadow, he can't leave unnoticed; he is a mountain. Still, his leave-taking doesn't have to look suspicious, and it doesn't. There's nothing about him that draws any particular attention. He holds the door open, pointedly, for Alexandra and Pen, and Alexandra:
well, Alexandra is saying something quietly to the both of them. Both of them look very much like friends leaving, just to chat.
Almost. Unless one is perceptive. Lysander is perceptive. He can see Alexandra, working on taking charge, and he can see Pen, furious, and Martin, confused but furious, and -
Eh. He lets them go. He has the opportunity to try and stop them, but he doesn't insert himself into that narrative. His pale eyes have swept the room, resting (studying [searching]) those who seem to be involved in the untethering of a little group of his guests, and Nicholas: well. He excuses himself from the bar, and heads over to Nicholas and Zelda. And Diana, Frederick, Bran: tangential celestials.
Diana blinks at Bran. Warm, charming Bran. If she were fond of him, it would be difficult to tell: she isn't fond of anything, except destiny, her numbers, her studies: learning, knowledge, crossed destinies, curses. Cold calculations: Bran? well. Diana blinks at him and says: "Really, Bran. And why is that, I did not realize you were interested in my particular school of focus. Are you certain you are not interested at this juncture in time because you are trying to cover for somebody? Where is Martin off to?"
N. Hyde
Nick is on his way after Pen and Martin and Alexandra, prepared to do whatever he can to intervene even though it looks like Alexandra is doing a good job all on her own. Nick doesn't know what he'll do; he just wants to provide support. He is trying to conceal the worried tilt of his brow, but it shows to anyone who is looking.
He has the sense, though, that Zelda will try to detain him again, and he can see Lysander coming. His gaze follows Martin and Pen, still stuck and tearing away, then he stops. He is only partially facing Zelda still.
Bran, for his part, laughs. "So suspicious," he comments, in that offhand amused sort of way. "Martin didn't especially care for my thoughts on the evolution of runecraft. I don't know where he's off to." A beat. "I realized I didn't know much about you, actually, and half the purpose of a party is to get to know people better, isn't it?"
Gladstone, & co.
Nick said: he should follow them, go with them, leave; Zelda is still committed to not stopping him, per se, but: detain. Deter, hold back: stay. Are they standing now? Did everybody rise?
"Why should you go too?" Beat. "Does she still fight with Robin all the time?"
Frederick rests his elbow on the back of his couch, amusement deepening at the corners: just so. "What thoughts on the evolution of runecraft were those?"
--
Exeunt, Alexandra, Martin, Pen.
Gladstone, & co.
[Zelda. +6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Diana: +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
[Nick +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
[Fred +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
[Bran +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Lysander +8]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: 16
Diana: 15
Frederick, Bran: 13
Zelda: 11
Nick: 7
N. Hyde
Nick: React, if necessary. Ask some veiled questions.
Gladstone, & co.
[Zelda: Converse, harming nobody. Oh, hello Lysander.]
[Fred: Curious waiting.]
N. Hyde
Bran: Well, let me tell you about that! Smile smile.
Gladstone, & co.
Diana: Hmmmmmmmmmmmm........................ empathy read on Bran, then maybe intimidate him into stuttering, just for the pleasure of being a bitch.
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: Oh, oh. Will delay, join conversation after whatever they're saying now is done. Then hello.
Gladstone, & co.
[Diana: I am empathic.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Only in an evil sort of way.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Mm. I am intimidating. Stutter, Caspian's apprentice.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[Please. I trained under Hannibal.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
[Charisma + Expression. I do know lots about runecraft actually.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
Why should you go too? Nick has drawn in a breath; there is another thoughtful glance that flickers after Pen and Martin, and he does not answer this question, recognizing it as rhetorical. And really, what could he do?
"She does still fight with Robin," Nick says, because he is courteous enough. "Never bad enough to have called for certamen, though. I'm not even really sure what the procedure is, for the Order."
Gladstone, & co.
Zelda recognizes that the jig is up, so to speak. "They aren't going to fight certamen," she says solemnly, meaning to reassure Nicholas. "They're probably going to Gladstone's gym, after visiting the armory."
--
Meanwhile, Diana is chilly. And chilling, and she perhaps paints her mouth with the blood of infant children, and has winter in her heart; and she raises one chilly eyebrow at Bran, giving him this sluice of an up and down glance, like: oh, yes, sure, 'dazzle' us with your thoughts.
Frederick: just interested, see. Hopeful, even, though he glances back at the room before Bran really begins spinning his web.
N. Hyde
Gym is not a scary word; armory is. As Zelda speaks, Nick seems only partially reassured; his body is still halfway turned from her, toward the direction that Pen and Martin took. "How bad do these things get?" Zelda does not seem alarmed, and to some extent he is trying to take cues from her.
He is perhaps among the least martial of his own Tradition, though, and he knows fights with other magi can get ugly among those more skilled with weaponry than himself.
---
Meanwhile, Bran's warmth is only somewhat diminished in Diana's presence, and not for long: Hannibal's student does stutter somewhat at first, but he plays this off as a perfectly natural reaction to being put on the spot by Frederick. There is this way his eyes move toward the other man, a third party suddenly added, and he hesitates.
Then smiles, and launches into a description of recent adaptations to the old Arts, how they are moving forward with the times and changing shape and how those meanings must inevitably alter too, and how some of this, well, maybe it's a good thing. It's innovative. He articulates himself well and clearly, point and counterpoint, meeting both Diana's cold cold eyes and Frederick's as he speaks.
Gladstone, & co.
"How bad do what things get?"
Enter, Lysander. Notos: the wind is swift, when it comes, at the end of summer, ushering in autumn's golden dying; the wind is swift, and sharp. The question is asked with a remarkable lack of demand: Lysander is just choosing that particular phrase as his entrance.
"Nick, Zelda. I noticed you two need a drink. Anything I can get you?"
[Lalala, manip subt.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
N. Hyde
[Can I see through you this time?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander suspects nothing, and just wants to make sure that Nick and Zelda are well-watered. No traps at all.
N. Hyde
Lysander again: and Nicholas does not quite dread his appearance, but there is again this uncertainty. He is unsure of the correctness, so to speak, of what Pen has done, and does not wish to get her in trouble with her mentor; part of him fears he may have already done this. Still - from Lysander, there is no sign of the web of traps laid earlier.
As to drinks, Nick glances first at Zelda; the glance is somewhat unreadable. Then, "Whiskey. Thank you." His discomfort with having someone else, particularly the host, get a drink for him is palpable, though he is also aware of decorum.
Gladstone, & co.
"You're finicky, for one of the Chakravanti," Lysander says. "Be at ease; we want you here." His eyebrows are up, as if he takes this statement as something apt to be challenged: the look he gives Nicholas, like he might slip the knife under his skin and peel him upward.
Zelda says, quietly, "A club soda please, Horace."
N. Hyde
Lysander says he is finicky, Zelda orders a club soda, and he is prepared to die of embarrassment regardless of whatever reassurance Lysander offers him. "I appreciate that," he says, to Lysander. Perhaps he does.
Gladstone, & co.
[BUT DO YOU. Perc + Subt for Lysander.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[I can't even, as the kids say.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
N. Hyde
Nick totally appreciates it. He is appreciative of the fact that Lysander is going out of his way to be a good host.
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander waits a beat.
He asked them, after all, how bad do what things get. If Nicholas doesn't seem ready to answer him in the space of a moment (Zelda is, as is usual, a quiet presence; she says nothing, dreamily, and Lysander lets this pass), then Lysander simply says, "You should open your present soon. When Pen gets back; where did she go?"
[inits again! +8 Lysander.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
[+6 Zelda.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )
N. Hyde
[Nick +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: 11
Zelda, Nick: 7
N. Hyde
Nick does not seem ready to answer in the space of a moment; he seems a touch distracted at the moment, though Nick frequently seems a touch distracted. It is not uncommon for him to go about his life using his Sight (even for as much trouble as it has gotten him into in the past.) He is not doing that now, but his daydreaming qualities remain.
He brings his full attention back to Lysander, at the question. "She went somewhere with Martin and Alexandra. I'm not sure exactly where to." Not an untruth.
Gladstone, & co.
"Hmm," Lysander says. "One whiskey and club soda coming up."
He leaves Nicholas and Zelda to it, getting caught eddy-swirl in this conversation and then that on his way back to the bar, the handsome hispanic man being the only one still manning it.
Zelda looks at Nicholas, like she is debating with herself about what to say to him next. Zelda is not necessarily easy with other people. "There are a number of people proficient in the art of healing, should anything go amiss. The people of House Flambeau will often fight, being of natures given to hot tempers."
N. Hyde
Nicholas looks back at Zelda, and while he is often at ease with other people, it is difficult for him to be so just now. "I suppose that's kind of reassuring," he says to Zelda.
There is a moment's silence in which he struggles to find a question to ask that doesn't involve asking whether he is handling this situation terribly or how likely Pen is to end up skewered. The stormclouds rolling in now don't hang over him very often in his adult life, and he is doing his best to summon the wind to blow them away and break them apart. "So you used to be in a cabal with Pen, right?"
Gladstone, & co.
"Yes." That's all; surely such a question is the prelude to another, follow-up question. Zelda fingers the golden collar, bright yellow sharpest color in the room, and she is facing Nicholas directly (is he still half-turned toward the door?), so her look cannot be sidelong.
N. Hyde
Ah: Zelda does not like to talk about herself. What do two introverts do at a party together? Ideally they would not have been abandoned in such a place; Fate, fickle as it is, had other plans. There is a beat that suggests that Nick did not necessarily have a follow up question planned, because so many people would have continued on blithely.
He has, by now, turned away from the door. He is watchful, waiting for Lysander's return and to make sure that the bespectacled man is adequately distracting Diana (and yes: he is still quite passionately articulating his opinions.) "Where did the two of you meet, originally?"
Gladstone, & co.
"My library," Zelda says. Is she supposed to give context to a fantastical story? There is a pause, and she is considering it. Says, after a brief moment, "But do you mean to ask how we became to cabal up or how we were friendly for a time? I do wish to know how you and your cabal get on, if you are comfortable discussing your cabal here."
N. Hyde
Nick does not like to talk about himself, either. Then again: as comfortable as he frequently is with silence, this is a situation that is far outside of his comfort zone. "That is what I meant to ask, yes," he says.
And then there is a pause; finally he dips his head in silent assent. "The cabal is still very new to me," he says, "and I think we're still figuring out how we're working together. I think I benefit more from it, to be honest, than I would have in a cabal with only other Chakravanti. I constantly hear new ideas, and it challenges me to look at new perspectives. I think all of us will be better for it, once we know each other better."
Gladstone, & co.
"What are the others like?" Zelda asks, curiously. Her curiosity is a curious thing in and of itself, for it feels mild, compared to the intensity most of her brethren are able to bring to bear upon any given situation (including Penelope, and of course Lysander). Perhaps that makes her curiosity more friendly. "I do not believe anybody truly likes being challenged with new ideas, or only the rare person will actually feel happiness at having their own opinion overturned, but ... " Zelda trails away. "It must be nice not to have others of your Tradition around to demand you follow a certain path. Were you in a cabal with other Chakravanti beforehand?"
Gladstone, & co.
[Meanwhile, Alexandra... Manipulation + Leadership.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen. WP.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Martin, pfah, WP.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
+7 Pen.
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
+7 Martin
Gladstone, & co.
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Doo-de-doo, Meleelite.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Doodeedoo. Avoid, avoid.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Doo-de-doo. Split, baby.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[And.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Urk.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Uuuurk.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[OW.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
"Well, you said you've met Thane, so you know him and Robin," Nick says, and there is - something in his expression here, some shadow. It was only last night. "And I don't know whether you've met Elizabeth Courtright or not. Liz is a Chorister that joined us a little after I did. She's a very sweet person. Calls us to be better, I think."
Or did. Now honestly Nick is not sure, and perhaps he was premature in thinking that this was what Liz's role would be. Perhaps she has another he can't guess at yet; he is still learning much about his new friends. Zelda suggests that it is a rare person who truly likes being challenged with new ideas, and at this Nicholas shrugs. "I wasn't. I was Disparate before that and I didn't have a cabal. I still meet with the other Chakravanti in the area pretty regularly, but I think cabals are based as much on trust and mutual regard as anything else. I trust the people I'm with now."
Gladstone, & co.
[Z: ? Rlly?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[Yep. Or did until last night!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
"That is a very idealistic view of social politics," Zelda observes. "But Pen and Robin were always very idealistic." Zelda considers, for a moment, what she is to say next. She doesn't quite want to introduce Nicholas to some new person, and throw him to the wolves. But she is not very good with people, and finds herself feeling awkward when responsible for someone new. Like Nicholas. She touches Nicholas's elbow to get him to move with her toward the side of the room.
Lysander returns, bearing drinks.
N. Hyde
"You sound as though you don't approve," Nick says, and he could say more on the nature of idealism, and whether or not it necessarily excludes pragmatism (or any other -ism, for that matter). But he waits. Zelda touches his elbow, and he allows himself to be directed toward the other side of the room.
And as Lysander returns, Nick makes eye contact, and he smiles: perhaps in the vain hope that it is not too late to start having fun at this party.
Gladstone, & co.
"I do? Oh, thank you Horace," Zelda says, taking her club soda. The glass is a tall one, bubbles streaming upward. They catch candlelight; they look enchanted. She stirs the ice around with the wooden stirrer Lysander has thoughtfully plunked into her drink.
Lysander smiles at Nicholas, too. And certainly, the smile seems to touch his eyes; seems to recall that whatever metal is there, now, it was once forged in warmth, in heat; it was once molten, malleable, a changeable thing: it had no hard shape, not yet. Lines around the eyes, around the mouth. He seems to like Nicholas, doesn't he?
Doesn't he.
Zelda says, "I don't know. What do you think the worth is of idealism?"
N. Hyde
Doesn't he. Nick is not sure. And: it is entirely possible Lysander could like Nicholas, while disapproving of his involvement with Pen. Nick hasn't ruled that one out.
Still, he takes the drink. "Thank you, again." He looks at Zelda. "Well, it's pretty difficult to move anything forward without a sense of how things ought to be, isn't it?"
Gladstone, & co.
"One does not need to be an idealist to have a sense of how things ought to be," Zelda says. "One can be a pragmatist and achieve the same effect, with more hope of success."
Lysander: well. He doesn't immediately vanish, having brought the (kids) Chakravanti and Bonisagus their drinks. He listens, with an air of curious complicity; he isn't interrupting because he doesn't have anything to say, and his purpose is still:
to make certain Nicholas is not feeling adrift.
N. Hyde
"Do you think they're exclusive?" Nick asks, and: he certainly has his own opinion on that, though he is genuinely curious about Zelda's. He has shifted his stance to accommodate Lysander, though the potential of having the Adept weigh in tugs at the ends of his nerves in a way that unravels them just a little further.
He has had a drink: very brief, and very cautious. He needs to have all his wits about him here.
Gladstone, & co.
"Yes," Zelda says. And silence. She is not a conversationalist, not the way Robin and Pen are, or even Evelyn. She was the quietest member of their cabal; is still, often, the quietest in a room of quiet people.
N. Hyde
Zelda is not a conversationalist, and so Nick does not try to force her into conversation. He says, "You said you were going to show me a book?" Because he is not prepared to mingle without a buffer. Might've been, had things gone differently tonight and had he not been called a penny mystic by one person already.
Gladstone, & co.
"Do you want to see it?" Zelda sounds shy, and she glances from Nicholas to Lysander. It is not a permission-seeking glance, but it is a curious one, or even:
ah, here it is. An expectant one, because Lysander, while not someone who must always be in command (what a lie; in his way, he is always in command, even if it is only of himself} of the situation at hand, is also not one to let a possible answer to a question go by without trying to reach for it.
"Far be it from me to keep anyone from their books, but do you think they're exclusive, Nicholas? Do you consider yourself an idealist?"
N. Hyde
Zelda asks whether he would want to see it, and he is surprised that she should be shy: she offered. Perhaps it is also that Nicholas is secretly surprised to find a Hermetic who is shy about anything. "Of course," he says, but this is before Lysander -
Nick is still cautious. He stands with one of his arms folded across his chest, his glass lightly resting against his shoulder, his other hand gripping that elbow. It's as casual as it is slightly closed off. He is not using his counselor body language, tonight. "I think other people would call me one." A beat. "I think we can expect the best of others and situations without losing discernment for things as they are. Which, admittedly, might be an idealistic answer."
Gladstone, & co.
"Mm." Lysander. "Is that the reason you would say others might call you an idealist? You expect the best of others and believe you do so without losing 'discernment' for things as they are?"
N. Hyde
Nicholas: still cautious, still careful of his words. He would be regardless; perhaps less reserved with them were it, for example, Pen asking the questions, but still, in a sense, refining as he speaks. And aware, still, of the setting. "Possibly. I've generally heard it more in the context of my belief that balance in the Wheel is possible, and that it would right itself without our help. I don't think that's to the exclusion of the understanding that it is out of balance as it is and that we can help the process."
Gladstone, & co.
"You were an Orphan for some time before you were initiated into the Chakravanti, is that correct, Nicholas?"
N. Hyde
Nick's hesitation is nothing, the space of an inhale: perhaps Lysander doesn't notice. "I was. Almost two and a half years."
Gladstone, & co.
[Lysander: *peer*]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
[Erk, no doubling tens. 5 suxx.]
N. Hyde
[Subtlety?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
[Nicholas's hesitation is because he picked up earlier on something from Lysander, some sense of disapproval toward Disparates, some sense that there might be something personal behind it. He is wary; he suspects a trap here.]
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander has been fairly good at reading Nicholas Hyde tonight. Not all the time. Not every moment. The Chakravanti whose magickal signature feels like a reverence, a sacrosanct space, a church-yard at gloaming, well, that guy: he remains somewhat mysterious. But Lysander even knows something Nicholas might not be aware of himself, remember, and sometimes his perception cuts in like a knife. And he reads Nicholas right now, well enough, though his eyebrows crawl upward at such a great length of time. He thought Penelope was bad.
"What about your time without guidance made the choice to devote yourself to 'the Wheel' and its balancing a likelihood? What made you believe in that stewardship?"
N. Hyde
Time without guidance, Lysander says, and this time it's Nick's eyebrows that raise just a fraction. However, this he chooses to let move past, because Nick did have guidance; however, whatever guidance he has had is a personal thing (and perhaps something he hasn't even discussed at length with Pen yet.)
"I received guidance at the time when I was personally unbalanced," he says, simply. "I'm not sure that would have happened on its own, or if it had, what unnecessary suffering I might have caused. I came to understand that I had a responsibility." And this is a personal answer, perhaps moreso than he is comfortable with, and yet intrinsic to who he is, both before and after Awakening.
Nick: I'm unfamiliar with that term. Please tell me what it means?
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: Wait this out; check to see what Adults Are Paying Attention.
Zelda: A manipulation subterfuge, no, it's okay Nick, that's nothing. >.>
N. Hyde
Bran: Quiet disapproval. You are really going to regret this when you sober up, Martin.
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: OH IT MEANS -- well maybe when we're INTRODUCED -- blather, blather.
Pen: IT IS ON BITCH. Aka, oh, a WP roll to see how intense this is, and then a challenge. Hopefully while Zelda is distracting Nick. Sure.
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen's Willpower. I am so, totally, not losing my temper, my temper is being loosed with great purpose.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (4, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
Pen: whips around. No; she doesn't whip around. Her elbow was still on the back of the couch, but instead of turning back to Nicholas and Zelda and Alexandra, there's a beat. There's barely a beat; Pen turns her head sharply, leans further over the couch like some starlet leaning out of a convertible and says, with gravity, "An alternate proposition: you, me, outside, quick and now."
[Charisma and... intimidation, let us say. Specialty certainly applies. Don't botch, girl.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
[Martin... Wits and, let's say, Empathy.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Then: WP.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
Martin is belligerent, or at least shading into belligerence: he doesn't like the look of the four-eyed Ruddy-Haired scrap of valor, charged, giving him all but a head-shake, and it sounds like the penny mystic is about to, and anyway, it also looks like they're all - so he's turning back again one finger up like don't say a damned thing, Bran, his shadow falls far see, and Pen gets in first and: he looks down at her, and blinks, and then: lip-curl, somewhat nervous condescension.
"Really."Quick flick-of-a-glance that-a-way. "If you ... well, you're not going to, for what? If you insist but for what? You could just be well-mannered, but fine," and Bear-Prince steps back, and that-a-way was toward the door. See. Simple. Okay, okay.
N. Hyde
[Are you kidding me?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 6, 10) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
Here's a great irony about Bran Summers: he is the sort of leader who likes harmony to the extent that his temper flares when it can't be achieved. He believes they should be united together for some common purpose (and perhaps that is what he is here tonight to do - to drum up support for God knows what), and his temper is a sunburst, difficult to control and contain once loosed, and he'd spit some Dictum which would silence them all. The irony is that it would achieve precisely the opposite of what he wants.
He manages to silence himself, but as he looks at Martin there is fury and there is disapproval in that glance, something that says that if Bran were not so aware that he is a guest in a man's house he'd have found his jaws clamped together in seconds flat. "The well-mannered thing would be to apologize and go get yourself a glass of water." Then, magnanimous, his grey eyes flick toward the group of initiates. "I apologize."
Gladstone, & co.
[Alexandra: Doo-dee-doo, anybody noticing this kerfluffle? Perc + Alert.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Nick: Manip + Subtlety.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Bran: Are you stupid?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
[Yes. You are.]
Gladstone, & co.
Zelda: Hmm?
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4, 4, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: ???
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: +1 diff, distracted by challenge.
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Contest.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
[Well then.]
Gladstone, & co.
[Meanwhile, who notices this? Lysander is over by the bar, talking. +1 diff for conversation. Perc + Alert.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Diana. Right at the other couch, so...]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
N. Hyde
There is a way in which Nick's eyes flicker between the three Hermetics who are speaking. He assesses, and the internal calculations he makes are rapid as they have to be in these situations. Pen: there's a sort of tender bemusement that perches there on his eyebrows for a few seconds, but he doesn't want to undercut her.
So if it's going to be a duel, he settles on unsettling Martin (whatever benefit Pen can get, after all). The bemusement that had colored his expression seconds before becomes more evident, as he fixes a pair of very earnest eyes on Martin. "I'm getting the sense that people are upset," he says, "but I don't think that's a term I've heard before. Can you explain it to me, in case I don't get a chance to hear from you later?"
Gladstone, & co.
[Zelda, Manip + Subt. Willpower.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
N. Hyde
[Nick: Eh?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[Bran: what is even happening right now. I'm so mad.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
Zelda bites the inside of her cheek, generous mouth twisting slightly. Her gaze is fixed on Nicholas, and if there is some setting of her shoulders, some pulse-leap at her throat, some - reactive, flicker-sidelong glance desire to stare - well who is to say?
Zelda might be an enigma.
Isn't, but might be.
Zelda quietly reaches out to touch his thigh again and draw his attention back and away, even going so far as to interrupting him at: I'm getting the sense that people are upset, but I don't think that's a term I've heard before. Can you explain it to me, in ca -
There. There's the interrupt: "Oh no. Everybody is fine. Nick, there is a lot of meaningless slang in our Order, and that one is particularly meaningless; like saying 'man' if you are from California or 'eh' if you are from certain regions of Canada."
But Nicholas is insightful: curse, sometimes. Not now, necessarily: he can see that Zelda finds Martin's term a shocking thing to throw around now, and that she is trying to distract him from whatever it is Martin-and-Pen(-and-Bran-and-possibly-Alexandra) are going to say because she wants him to not feel alienated.
Gladstone, & co.
He will also get a sense that:
Zelda knows what he is doing, or what he was doing, and wants to forestall that kind of prickly weaponized innocence too.
N. Hyde
Nick: Hm. That's interesting. Is Pen going to lose this fight for real? I can back off and be good.
N. Hyde
[Bran: Contest.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Quick tie-break! Hear that, chat? Quick. Tiebreak.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Fufjfldfdlsfdlfd. NO. QUICK.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
[Plz chat]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
Bran, from Zelda, reads: everything Nicholas did, and more. That she (believes) knows Nicholas is playing at innocence, has some shrewd idea of what he's about, but still, and even so, and thus. That she wishes to distract him, because she does not want him to feel alienated; she finds 'penny mystic' a shocking term to, in this context, in front of Pen, throw around; she finds Martin shocking, distasteful, and so. But she also wants to give Pen and Martin a chance to leave without getting anybody else in trouble.
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: Uh oh, Diana incoming. Ask Zelda to show Nick something way over there, then stay with Pen to help. Yeah.
Zelda: Um, show Nick something over because wh - oh! OH! Oh. Yeah. Over there. Sure?
N. Hyde
Bran: Gonna keep smoothing things over. C'mon guys.
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: Detach from couch-group. Gonna go fight yo.
Pen: Detach from couch-group. Gonna go fight yo.
Gladstone, & co.
"You did nothing to apologize for, Bran, you're a perfect gentleman," Pen says, and she stands as she says it, dress all silver-light running down a mirror, stream-tumbled; "And I will be well-mannered, Martin." Oh, man: she makes Martin sound like a rude word for shit-hole. And also, somehow, that sentence: a threat. "Water first."
Martin: "I don't need water," and his voice has gone even lower, even more shadowy; there's a growl to it, almost: his gaze drops to Nick, again. Nick, who - well. Whatever, penny mystics are dumb. "And I don't need to apologize, just look at - "
Pen: "If you - "
Martin: "Bah."
To the door, then.
N. Hyde
The knowledge that the delicate balance he's been striking all evening might have been upset for the sake of one of his house-mates defending the honor of a simpleton might have set Bran off again. Still: he notices Zelda, and he notices that perhaps he missed something, and there is this keen glint of interest for both of them in eyes windowed behind steel-rimmed glass, there and gone.
The initial moment in which his temper had threatened to engulf Martin and perhaps Pen as well has passed, and Bran offers Pen a somewhat terse smile as the two of them go to leave. The corner of his jaw is tight. Perhaps his flicker of insight has him feeling generous to Zelda and Nick though, because as the two duelists turn to leave, Bran turns around and notices - ah.
"Diana," he says, and his smile is warm as grass in summer. He starts toward her, to head her off before she can reach the group still on the couch. "Every party, I swear. Earlier I meant to ask you how your research has been going, by the way."
Gladstone, & co.
"Have you ever seen a book bound in actual unicorn hide?" Zelda says, after she intercepts Alexandra's look. There's a little startle and quickness which Zelda is clearly not used to in her voice; she smooths her hands over her lap. "I'll show you, if you'll follow me. Perhaps you can tell me how Robin is doing. I do not find Robin easy to think about."
Alexandra - well! Bran is on top of the Diana Problem, which leaves only: oh. Responsibility. "I'll come with you two," she says, to Martin and Pen, pausing to smile at Nicholas. Sincerity, rue: "Talk to you soon."
N. Hyde
There is a lot happening just now. Nick, who might not have allowed himself to be redirected had most of this situation not been so foreign to him, sends an anxious glance flickering after Pen and Martin. This, he does not bother to conceal, or perhaps cannot. "I haven't," he says to Zelda, "but I should go with them."
Alexandra is, but that does not seem to be a deterrent. He is half-rising, prepared to follow unless Zelda should stop him.
N. Hyde
[Nick init +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
N. Hyde
[Bran init +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
[Alexandra +8]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen +7]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Zelda: +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: +7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Diana: +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Frederick: +5
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: +8
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
ORDER OF RUMBLING. or not.
Martin: 17
Alexandra: 16
Lysander, Diana: 12
Bran, Nick, Pen: 10
Zelda: 8
Frederick: 7.
Gladstone, & co.
Frederick: is Diana's conversational companion, relieved by a distraction, but also ready to be amused; hey, what's going on beyond the redhead?
Zelda: She's not going to try to stop Nick, per se. Just detain him a little longer with some questions. He won't be able to catch up anyway, right?
Pen: Avoid, avoid being stopped by anybody/mentor. Stick by Martin all companionable, yo! Well, no, not a liar. But
N. Hyde
Nick: Okay. I will stop and ask how bad it is going to be if I follow.
Bran: No drama here tonight, please. Please?
Gladstone, & co.
Diana: Oh, Bran. *claws sink in* Did you mean to do that and why was that is it because you foresaw you would be covering something up what is going on over there anything I should know tell me now mean lady shenanigans mean mean mean.
Lysander: Ehhh........ we'll do an empathy read of people, then decide.
Alexandra: Yep! Out we go! And I'm going to talk quietly to Martin and Pen about how to do this, while trying to talk them out of it.
Martin: What the fuck is everybody's problem! Starting to feel actually wroth instead of just bemused annoyed privileged, but also super super covert and away we go.
Gladstone, & co.
[Martin! Wits + Stealth. Yeah. +1 diff.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Alexandra! Charisma + Leadership.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander. By empathy, we mean subterfuge. Perception + Subterfuge ooooon let's see warming up with the easy one, Pen.
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
[No, pft.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: now what about Nicholas.
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )
N. Hyde
[I am a mountain.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: Alexandra, what's up.
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: Nothing, I am perfect, everything is fine.
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[L: ?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[A: >.>]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: And Bran, you seem to be involved...
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Bran: Pfft. Me, involved? This is beneath me.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Lysander: Really.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Really, it is.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Come again?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
N. Hyde
[I was with a Tytalan for six years, man. I have had my fill of party drama.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
N. Hyde
[This is, perhaps, the most transparent Nicholas has been all night. He is feeling unsure of himself: he wants to do whatever he can to help Pen, but cues from Zelda have made him cautious about following them. Much of his caution has to do with not wanting to offend Lysander, who has been a good host, and not wanting to make the situation any worse than it is. He is not feeling as emasculated as might be expected from a man his age, but he is embarrassed that his presence has caused this.]
Gladstone, & co.
He is huge. Martin. He can't leave like a shadow, he can't leave unnoticed; he is a mountain. Still, his leave-taking doesn't have to look suspicious, and it doesn't. There's nothing about him that draws any particular attention. He holds the door open, pointedly, for Alexandra and Pen, and Alexandra:
well, Alexandra is saying something quietly to the both of them. Both of them look very much like friends leaving, just to chat.
Almost. Unless one is perceptive. Lysander is perceptive. He can see Alexandra, working on taking charge, and he can see Pen, furious, and Martin, confused but furious, and -
Eh. He lets them go. He has the opportunity to try and stop them, but he doesn't insert himself into that narrative. His pale eyes have swept the room, resting (studying [searching]) those who seem to be involved in the untethering of a little group of his guests, and Nicholas: well. He excuses himself from the bar, and heads over to Nicholas and Zelda. And Diana, Frederick, Bran: tangential celestials.
Diana blinks at Bran. Warm, charming Bran. If she were fond of him, it would be difficult to tell: she isn't fond of anything, except destiny, her numbers, her studies: learning, knowledge, crossed destinies, curses. Cold calculations: Bran? well. Diana blinks at him and says: "Really, Bran. And why is that, I did not realize you were interested in my particular school of focus. Are you certain you are not interested at this juncture in time because you are trying to cover for somebody? Where is Martin off to?"
N. Hyde
Nick is on his way after Pen and Martin and Alexandra, prepared to do whatever he can to intervene even though it looks like Alexandra is doing a good job all on her own. Nick doesn't know what he'll do; he just wants to provide support. He is trying to conceal the worried tilt of his brow, but it shows to anyone who is looking.
He has the sense, though, that Zelda will try to detain him again, and he can see Lysander coming. His gaze follows Martin and Pen, still stuck and tearing away, then he stops. He is only partially facing Zelda still.
Bran, for his part, laughs. "So suspicious," he comments, in that offhand amused sort of way. "Martin didn't especially care for my thoughts on the evolution of runecraft. I don't know where he's off to." A beat. "I realized I didn't know much about you, actually, and half the purpose of a party is to get to know people better, isn't it?"
Gladstone, & co.
Nick said: he should follow them, go with them, leave; Zelda is still committed to not stopping him, per se, but: detain. Deter, hold back: stay. Are they standing now? Did everybody rise?
"Why should you go too?" Beat. "Does she still fight with Robin all the time?"
Frederick rests his elbow on the back of his couch, amusement deepening at the corners: just so. "What thoughts on the evolution of runecraft were those?"
--
Exeunt, Alexandra, Martin, Pen.
Gladstone, & co.
[Zelda. +6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Diana: +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
[Nick +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
[Fred +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
[Bran +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Lysander +8]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: 16
Diana: 15
Frederick, Bran: 13
Zelda: 11
Nick: 7
N. Hyde
Nick: React, if necessary. Ask some veiled questions.
Gladstone, & co.
[Zelda: Converse, harming nobody. Oh, hello Lysander.]
[Fred: Curious waiting.]
N. Hyde
Bran: Well, let me tell you about that! Smile smile.
Gladstone, & co.
Diana: Hmmmmmmmmmmmm........................ empathy read on Bran, then maybe intimidate him into stuttering, just for the pleasure of being a bitch.
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: Oh, oh. Will delay, join conversation after whatever they're saying now is done. Then hello.
Gladstone, & co.
[Diana: I am empathic.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Only in an evil sort of way.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Mm. I am intimidating. Stutter, Caspian's apprentice.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[Please. I trained under Hannibal.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
N. Hyde
[Charisma + Expression. I do know lots about runecraft actually.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
Why should you go too? Nick has drawn in a breath; there is another thoughtful glance that flickers after Pen and Martin, and he does not answer this question, recognizing it as rhetorical. And really, what could he do?
"She does still fight with Robin," Nick says, because he is courteous enough. "Never bad enough to have called for certamen, though. I'm not even really sure what the procedure is, for the Order."
Gladstone, & co.
Zelda recognizes that the jig is up, so to speak. "They aren't going to fight certamen," she says solemnly, meaning to reassure Nicholas. "They're probably going to Gladstone's gym, after visiting the armory."
--
Meanwhile, Diana is chilly. And chilling, and she perhaps paints her mouth with the blood of infant children, and has winter in her heart; and she raises one chilly eyebrow at Bran, giving him this sluice of an up and down glance, like: oh, yes, sure, 'dazzle' us with your thoughts.
Frederick: just interested, see. Hopeful, even, though he glances back at the room before Bran really begins spinning his web.
N. Hyde
Gym is not a scary word; armory is. As Zelda speaks, Nick seems only partially reassured; his body is still halfway turned from her, toward the direction that Pen and Martin took. "How bad do these things get?" Zelda does not seem alarmed, and to some extent he is trying to take cues from her.
He is perhaps among the least martial of his own Tradition, though, and he knows fights with other magi can get ugly among those more skilled with weaponry than himself.
---
Meanwhile, Bran's warmth is only somewhat diminished in Diana's presence, and not for long: Hannibal's student does stutter somewhat at first, but he plays this off as a perfectly natural reaction to being put on the spot by Frederick. There is this way his eyes move toward the other man, a third party suddenly added, and he hesitates.
Then smiles, and launches into a description of recent adaptations to the old Arts, how they are moving forward with the times and changing shape and how those meanings must inevitably alter too, and how some of this, well, maybe it's a good thing. It's innovative. He articulates himself well and clearly, point and counterpoint, meeting both Diana's cold cold eyes and Frederick's as he speaks.
Gladstone, & co.
"How bad do what things get?"
Enter, Lysander. Notos: the wind is swift, when it comes, at the end of summer, ushering in autumn's golden dying; the wind is swift, and sharp. The question is asked with a remarkable lack of demand: Lysander is just choosing that particular phrase as his entrance.
"Nick, Zelda. I noticed you two need a drink. Anything I can get you?"
[Lalala, manip subt.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
N. Hyde
[Can I see through you this time?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander suspects nothing, and just wants to make sure that Nick and Zelda are well-watered. No traps at all.
N. Hyde
Lysander again: and Nicholas does not quite dread his appearance, but there is again this uncertainty. He is unsure of the correctness, so to speak, of what Pen has done, and does not wish to get her in trouble with her mentor; part of him fears he may have already done this. Still - from Lysander, there is no sign of the web of traps laid earlier.
As to drinks, Nick glances first at Zelda; the glance is somewhat unreadable. Then, "Whiskey. Thank you." His discomfort with having someone else, particularly the host, get a drink for him is palpable, though he is also aware of decorum.
Gladstone, & co.
"You're finicky, for one of the Chakravanti," Lysander says. "Be at ease; we want you here." His eyebrows are up, as if he takes this statement as something apt to be challenged: the look he gives Nicholas, like he might slip the knife under his skin and peel him upward.
Zelda says, quietly, "A club soda please, Horace."
N. Hyde
Lysander says he is finicky, Zelda orders a club soda, and he is prepared to die of embarrassment regardless of whatever reassurance Lysander offers him. "I appreciate that," he says, to Lysander. Perhaps he does.
Gladstone, & co.
[BUT DO YOU. Perc + Subt for Lysander.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[I can't even, as the kids say.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
N. Hyde
Nick totally appreciates it. He is appreciative of the fact that Lysander is going out of his way to be a good host.
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander waits a beat.
He asked them, after all, how bad do what things get. If Nicholas doesn't seem ready to answer him in the space of a moment (Zelda is, as is usual, a quiet presence; she says nothing, dreamily, and Lysander lets this pass), then Lysander simply says, "You should open your present soon. When Pen gets back; where did she go?"
[inits again! +8 Lysander.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
[+6 Zelda.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )
N. Hyde
[Nick +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: 11
Zelda, Nick: 7
N. Hyde
Nick does not seem ready to answer in the space of a moment; he seems a touch distracted at the moment, though Nick frequently seems a touch distracted. It is not uncommon for him to go about his life using his Sight (even for as much trouble as it has gotten him into in the past.) He is not doing that now, but his daydreaming qualities remain.
He brings his full attention back to Lysander, at the question. "She went somewhere with Martin and Alexandra. I'm not sure exactly where to." Not an untruth.
Gladstone, & co.
"Hmm," Lysander says. "One whiskey and club soda coming up."
He leaves Nicholas and Zelda to it, getting caught eddy-swirl in this conversation and then that on his way back to the bar, the handsome hispanic man being the only one still manning it.
Zelda looks at Nicholas, like she is debating with herself about what to say to him next. Zelda is not necessarily easy with other people. "There are a number of people proficient in the art of healing, should anything go amiss. The people of House Flambeau will often fight, being of natures given to hot tempers."
N. Hyde
Nicholas looks back at Zelda, and while he is often at ease with other people, it is difficult for him to be so just now. "I suppose that's kind of reassuring," he says to Zelda.
There is a moment's silence in which he struggles to find a question to ask that doesn't involve asking whether he is handling this situation terribly or how likely Pen is to end up skewered. The stormclouds rolling in now don't hang over him very often in his adult life, and he is doing his best to summon the wind to blow them away and break them apart. "So you used to be in a cabal with Pen, right?"
Gladstone, & co.
"Yes." That's all; surely such a question is the prelude to another, follow-up question. Zelda fingers the golden collar, bright yellow sharpest color in the room, and she is facing Nicholas directly (is he still half-turned toward the door?), so her look cannot be sidelong.
N. Hyde
Ah: Zelda does not like to talk about herself. What do two introverts do at a party together? Ideally they would not have been abandoned in such a place; Fate, fickle as it is, had other plans. There is a beat that suggests that Nick did not necessarily have a follow up question planned, because so many people would have continued on blithely.
He has, by now, turned away from the door. He is watchful, waiting for Lysander's return and to make sure that the bespectacled man is adequately distracting Diana (and yes: he is still quite passionately articulating his opinions.) "Where did the two of you meet, originally?"
Gladstone, & co.
"My library," Zelda says. Is she supposed to give context to a fantastical story? There is a pause, and she is considering it. Says, after a brief moment, "But do you mean to ask how we became to cabal up or how we were friendly for a time? I do wish to know how you and your cabal get on, if you are comfortable discussing your cabal here."
N. Hyde
Nick does not like to talk about himself, either. Then again: as comfortable as he frequently is with silence, this is a situation that is far outside of his comfort zone. "That is what I meant to ask, yes," he says.
And then there is a pause; finally he dips his head in silent assent. "The cabal is still very new to me," he says, "and I think we're still figuring out how we're working together. I think I benefit more from it, to be honest, than I would have in a cabal with only other Chakravanti. I constantly hear new ideas, and it challenges me to look at new perspectives. I think all of us will be better for it, once we know each other better."
Gladstone, & co.
"What are the others like?" Zelda asks, curiously. Her curiosity is a curious thing in and of itself, for it feels mild, compared to the intensity most of her brethren are able to bring to bear upon any given situation (including Penelope, and of course Lysander). Perhaps that makes her curiosity more friendly. "I do not believe anybody truly likes being challenged with new ideas, or only the rare person will actually feel happiness at having their own opinion overturned, but ... " Zelda trails away. "It must be nice not to have others of your Tradition around to demand you follow a certain path. Were you in a cabal with other Chakravanti beforehand?"
Gladstone, & co.
[Meanwhile, Alexandra... Manipulation + Leadership.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen. WP.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Martin, pfah, WP.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
+7 Pen.
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
+7 Martin
Gladstone, & co.
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Doo-de-doo, Meleelite.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Doodeedoo. Avoid, avoid.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Doo-de-doo. Split, baby.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[And.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Urk.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Uuuurk.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[OW.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
"Well, you said you've met Thane, so you know him and Robin," Nick says, and there is - something in his expression here, some shadow. It was only last night. "And I don't know whether you've met Elizabeth Courtright or not. Liz is a Chorister that joined us a little after I did. She's a very sweet person. Calls us to be better, I think."
Or did. Now honestly Nick is not sure, and perhaps he was premature in thinking that this was what Liz's role would be. Perhaps she has another he can't guess at yet; he is still learning much about his new friends. Zelda suggests that it is a rare person who truly likes being challenged with new ideas, and at this Nicholas shrugs. "I wasn't. I was Disparate before that and I didn't have a cabal. I still meet with the other Chakravanti in the area pretty regularly, but I think cabals are based as much on trust and mutual regard as anything else. I trust the people I'm with now."
Gladstone, & co.
[Z: ? Rlly?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[Yep. Or did until last night!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Gladstone, & co.
"That is a very idealistic view of social politics," Zelda observes. "But Pen and Robin were always very idealistic." Zelda considers, for a moment, what she is to say next. She doesn't quite want to introduce Nicholas to some new person, and throw him to the wolves. But she is not very good with people, and finds herself feeling awkward when responsible for someone new. Like Nicholas. She touches Nicholas's elbow to get him to move with her toward the side of the room.
Lysander returns, bearing drinks.
N. Hyde
"You sound as though you don't approve," Nick says, and he could say more on the nature of idealism, and whether or not it necessarily excludes pragmatism (or any other -ism, for that matter). But he waits. Zelda touches his elbow, and he allows himself to be directed toward the other side of the room.
And as Lysander returns, Nick makes eye contact, and he smiles: perhaps in the vain hope that it is not too late to start having fun at this party.
Gladstone, & co.
"I do? Oh, thank you Horace," Zelda says, taking her club soda. The glass is a tall one, bubbles streaming upward. They catch candlelight; they look enchanted. She stirs the ice around with the wooden stirrer Lysander has thoughtfully plunked into her drink.
Lysander smiles at Nicholas, too. And certainly, the smile seems to touch his eyes; seems to recall that whatever metal is there, now, it was once forged in warmth, in heat; it was once molten, malleable, a changeable thing: it had no hard shape, not yet. Lines around the eyes, around the mouth. He seems to like Nicholas, doesn't he?
Doesn't he.
Zelda says, "I don't know. What do you think the worth is of idealism?"
N. Hyde
Doesn't he. Nick is not sure. And: it is entirely possible Lysander could like Nicholas, while disapproving of his involvement with Pen. Nick hasn't ruled that one out.
Still, he takes the drink. "Thank you, again." He looks at Zelda. "Well, it's pretty difficult to move anything forward without a sense of how things ought to be, isn't it?"
Gladstone, & co.
"One does not need to be an idealist to have a sense of how things ought to be," Zelda says. "One can be a pragmatist and achieve the same effect, with more hope of success."
Lysander: well. He doesn't immediately vanish, having brought the (kids) Chakravanti and Bonisagus their drinks. He listens, with an air of curious complicity; he isn't interrupting because he doesn't have anything to say, and his purpose is still:
to make certain Nicholas is not feeling adrift.
N. Hyde
"Do you think they're exclusive?" Nick asks, and: he certainly has his own opinion on that, though he is genuinely curious about Zelda's. He has shifted his stance to accommodate Lysander, though the potential of having the Adept weigh in tugs at the ends of his nerves in a way that unravels them just a little further.
He has had a drink: very brief, and very cautious. He needs to have all his wits about him here.
Gladstone, & co.
"Yes," Zelda says. And silence. She is not a conversationalist, not the way Robin and Pen are, or even Evelyn. She was the quietest member of their cabal; is still, often, the quietest in a room of quiet people.
N. Hyde
Zelda is not a conversationalist, and so Nick does not try to force her into conversation. He says, "You said you were going to show me a book?" Because he is not prepared to mingle without a buffer. Might've been, had things gone differently tonight and had he not been called a penny mystic by one person already.
Gladstone, & co.
"Do you want to see it?" Zelda sounds shy, and she glances from Nicholas to Lysander. It is not a permission-seeking glance, but it is a curious one, or even:
ah, here it is. An expectant one, because Lysander, while not someone who must always be in command (what a lie; in his way, he is always in command, even if it is only of himself} of the situation at hand, is also not one to let a possible answer to a question go by without trying to reach for it.
"Far be it from me to keep anyone from their books, but do you think they're exclusive, Nicholas? Do you consider yourself an idealist?"
N. Hyde
Zelda asks whether he would want to see it, and he is surprised that she should be shy: she offered. Perhaps it is also that Nicholas is secretly surprised to find a Hermetic who is shy about anything. "Of course," he says, but this is before Lysander -
Nick is still cautious. He stands with one of his arms folded across his chest, his glass lightly resting against his shoulder, his other hand gripping that elbow. It's as casual as it is slightly closed off. He is not using his counselor body language, tonight. "I think other people would call me one." A beat. "I think we can expect the best of others and situations without losing discernment for things as they are. Which, admittedly, might be an idealistic answer."
Gladstone, & co.
"Mm." Lysander. "Is that the reason you would say others might call you an idealist? You expect the best of others and believe you do so without losing 'discernment' for things as they are?"
N. Hyde
Nicholas: still cautious, still careful of his words. He would be regardless; perhaps less reserved with them were it, for example, Pen asking the questions, but still, in a sense, refining as he speaks. And aware, still, of the setting. "Possibly. I've generally heard it more in the context of my belief that balance in the Wheel is possible, and that it would right itself without our help. I don't think that's to the exclusion of the understanding that it is out of balance as it is and that we can help the process."
Gladstone, & co.
"You were an Orphan for some time before you were initiated into the Chakravanti, is that correct, Nicholas?"
N. Hyde
Nick's hesitation is nothing, the space of an inhale: perhaps Lysander doesn't notice. "I was. Almost two and a half years."
Gladstone, & co.
[Lysander: *peer*]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
[Erk, no doubling tens. 5 suxx.]
N. Hyde
[Subtlety?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
[Nicholas's hesitation is because he picked up earlier on something from Lysander, some sense of disapproval toward Disparates, some sense that there might be something personal behind it. He is wary; he suspects a trap here.]
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander has been fairly good at reading Nicholas Hyde tonight. Not all the time. Not every moment. The Chakravanti whose magickal signature feels like a reverence, a sacrosanct space, a church-yard at gloaming, well, that guy: he remains somewhat mysterious. But Lysander even knows something Nicholas might not be aware of himself, remember, and sometimes his perception cuts in like a knife. And he reads Nicholas right now, well enough, though his eyebrows crawl upward at such a great length of time. He thought Penelope was bad.
"What about your time without guidance made the choice to devote yourself to 'the Wheel' and its balancing a likelihood? What made you believe in that stewardship?"
N. Hyde
Time without guidance, Lysander says, and this time it's Nick's eyebrows that raise just a fraction. However, this he chooses to let move past, because Nick did have guidance; however, whatever guidance he has had is a personal thing (and perhaps something he hasn't even discussed at length with Pen yet.)
"I received guidance at the time when I was personally unbalanced," he says, simply. "I'm not sure that would have happened on its own, or if it had, what unnecessary suffering I might have caused. I came to understand that I had a responsibility." And this is a personal answer, perhaps moreso than he is comfortable with, and yet intrinsic to who he is, both before and after Awakening.
Gladstone, & co.
"Mm. Is it your responsibility to eliminate the unnecessary?"
The question is asked as a gauge, a temperature-taking, to be followed by something else. Nicholas's phone vibrates, or chimes, or does nothing at all but a little green light blinks and blinks.
Zelda is quiet, but watchful and observant.
N. Hyde
His phone vibrates in his pocket; Nick ignores it. There are times when that is the only sensible thing to do, potential emergencies or questions about weekend plans be damned. "Unnecessary suffering?" The qualifier here is important; he senses this. "Maybe. Or at least to do nothing to add to it."
He is aware, in the periphery, of Zelda and her watchfulness. Trying to process two people absorbing his words just now is too much though, so his eyes remain fixed on Lysander.
Gladstone, & co.
Nicholas's host, his lover's teacher, the warrior of House Flambeau, does not come across as a hot-tempered man: not necessarily. He tries to present himself as more affable, more easy-going and friendly-hearted than he is, but he is not necessarily cruel for cruelty's sake. He is callous; he is manipulative. He cared very deeply once for some Thing that he still serves with the choices he makes. He is strong-minded, and difficult to pin down; difficult to give shape to, quite.
Flambeau are mercurial. Lysander says, an abrupt change: "I fear I'm being rude, picking at you and your motivations. Some might say it is very noble to live righteously in your own spirit, and that is enough." Warmth, see. Mild warmth, mild hint of a smile. "Let me know if I can introduce you to more 'intellectual maenads,'" he borrows Pen's phrase, just so.
"Are you outdoorsy, or is it just the Verbena? Apollonius is drunk, but you might be interested in his foraging stories. Some of them have crossed into other other realms."
"His stories have made me seasick before," Zelda states. "On dry land."
N. Hyde
[That was abrupt. What's going on here?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Nothing.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
[...?]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
N. Hyde
[Contest.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
[Fightfight.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )
Gladstone, & co.
TRAPS. No, there are no traps here. This is a moment of mercy: Lysander has decided not to spring a trap, because this is a social occasion, and whatever his feelings about the boy his student has decided to sleep with, he wants to show him to a good advantage among his colleagues. He doesn't think Nick is showing to good advantage right now.
N. Hyde
It is hard not to feel defensive suddenly at that abrupt shift: Nicholas, as has been established, is insightful (and sometimes that's difficult). Noble, well: Nick is not sure what he thinks of that, perhaps because he does not think of himself as particularly noble (does any Chakravanti?) And he is not sure whether Lysander does, for that matter, either. "I'd like that," he says, and maybe he would, because there is some mild warmth there in him too.
Apollonius: his eyes search the room for whoever that particular man might be. "I spend a lot of time outside," he says, which is the truth. "I'd be interested in hearing about that."
Gladstone, & co.
The blonde man who has been furtively smoking a cigar has given up that ghost; he is leaning forward to engage with the redhead who stepped in earlier, Diana (who looks like she is about to eviscerate a child, gleefully), and Frederick. Salt and pepper man, with those long slashed dimples that sense of hardness, blue blue eyes. He could be Alexandra's father (he is not, but it's something about the striking juxtaposition of blue eyes with hair that is meant to be dark).
So Lysander leads Nicholas, and Zelda too, because Lysander is a good host and he sweeps everybody up together, to the bar after all. The handsome hispanic man and the nondescript man are both still there.
"Allow me to present Fausto Mithradates Cuchullain Gavriel, bani Tytalus, and Apollonius Aurelius Avery Adonaïs, bani Criamon. Fausto, Apollonius, allow me to present Nicholas Hyde bani Chakravanti. He's in Pen's cabal, with Robin."
The very very very handsome man has flashed a soulful look toward Nicholas, Lysander, and Zelda impartially; soulful looks are the natural state of things, when one's eyes are quite so dark, so lovely. He offers a hand.
Apollonius grows no less nondescript upon closer attention. He is average; boring. A weedy man, narrow of shoulder, lanky perhaps of limb although not quite lanky enough for true lank. Has hair of an indeterminate brown, or is it blonde? Difficult to say not because of any Mystery, but because genetics didn't care to settle the matter.
"Hullo."
N. Hyde
There are two men he is meeting now, and it leaves out the blonde man and the blonde woman, but then again one part of that duo is off with Diana. Nicholas has no desire to revisit that conversation tonight: let Bran handle it, with his quick smiles and hair the color of rising dawn.
His own name sounds meek and common, alongside the names they've chosen for themselves. One of the questions he has had: why the hell do they choose so many when two or three suffice to make an introduction, but he suspects that would be a rude question at this juncture. His hand meets Fausto's (an interesting choice, he thinks), and he offers the same firm and friendly shake he gave Lysander. "Hello," he says, and offers the same to Apollonius.
Then, to Fausto, "Do you know Robin also, then?" Well, he gets the impression that they all know each other, the most intense hivemind ever to materialize on Earth.
Gladstone, & co.
He isn't wrong. New England can be insular, and this is a party for Lysander's cabal mates and those he has decided to favor (?) with an invitation (or those his favored guests have decided to invite along).
"We have the same, eh, teacher," Fausto says. He is older than Robin by at least five years, possibly (probably) more. Handshake is a brief squeeze from Fausto, perhaps because one of the rings he is wearing is very cold and the other very hot, and both of these temperatures will impress themselves upon Nicholas's hand. He has a rather thick French accent, and it's easy to imagine him devastating anybody's heart: that voice, those eyes, general air of confidence. Fausto of House Tytalus, ladies and gentlemen. "Who is absent from these proceedings, in case you were wondering where he is too. What is it you, eh, you are a very, you feel to me like a cathedral; is today a holy day you celebrate?"
N. Hyde
The temperature of the rings: it catches him off guard, and it's evident in the slight twist in his expression when he withdraws his hand. Fausto is likely used to this.
The other man tells Nick that he feels like a cathedral, and the pull of a corner of his mouth suggests that this is a thing he has heard before, or similar. "My family does," Nick says, "but I do not." It's not said with any specific passion or dispassion: that sort of religion is simply something that has never spoken to him, so to speak. "It's not strictly intentional - not a magickal effect to mark the day or anything."
It makes him wonder whether Liz has done anything to mark the day.
Best to move on, Nicholas. He glances to Apollonius, then. "Lysander mentioned that you were given to...foraging?"
Gladstone, & co.
"Did he now did he indeed," Apollonius, with a muddled blink.
"I'll leave you to it," Lysander interjects. Hand on Nicholas's shoulder again, just at the base of the neck, and then the Flambeau is moving on: this time toward the blonde woman and her brother-or-not-brother. They give the impression, but impressions are fleeting.
"Just a moment, Lysander, I would have another word," and Fausto gives Nicholas an apologetic (charming) grimace, then follows the Flambeau away. Zelda leans against the counter, sipping on her club soda, and casting a glance toward the door before fixing her attention instead rather doggedly on Apollonius.
"I do consider myself a man able to scrounge anything, blood from a stone it can be squeezed, water from a flame sure thing, truffles, piffle, phoenix feather, why certainly, map which will take you through the near umbra and into the deep locked away by Orion Segundus these many years, the lost child, berries that are good to eat, even fae; I like to find it all. Especially rewarding I find is the searching outdoors for glades, for shallowings, those places where why once you wouldn't even believe me if I told you."
He gives Zelda a warm smile, Apollonius. As if she has not believed him before.
"Verification is a time-honored tradition," Zelda says.
N. Hyde
Lysander's hand near the base of his neck gives him a slight start again, though less so than before; anyway, Nick is focused on Apollonius now. He inclines his head, polite, toward Fausto as the other man goes to leave.
The exchange between the two Hermetics makes him smile, perhaps enough to feel comfortable to take a second small sip from his glass. His eyes have a glint of interest, a sharp sort of bird's eye attention. "Do you do that with any specific purpose, out of curiosity? Or just to find it?"
Gladstone, & co.
[Wits + Esoterica. Discourse about Cool Spirit-y Quest-y Forage-y Things, especially Wonders. Do it, Apollonius! Do it so well that the ST can skip over specifics!]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]
Gladstone, & co.
[Thank you, Apollonius. As an NPC, you have won the day.]
N. Hyde
[Intelligence + Cosmology!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
What follows is, perhaps, what Nicholas had initially girded himself to meet at a party of (powerful) Hermetics before Pen texted to let him know that she was waiting downstairs. Apollonius is a prime specimen and nothing could be clearer now. He rubs the hooked bridge of his nose (as if his nose had been broken once before. Even that small flaw is barely worth description - a sign of life which is He is: exacting, erudite, and extremely pedantic about what he knows and what he believes.
He is also something of a tall tale teller or he obscures the kernel of narrative inside a great big encyclopedia of trivia. The trivia is interesting, certainly: fast-talking Apollonius knows a great deal about finding things, and things to be found, and things which were Lost Long Ago, are Losing Themselves Now, about that which is Unnamed, that which is just beyond the threshold, something which calls. That's the ghist of what Apollonius says, after discoursing (and he allows Nicholas to break in now and then, and Zelda too) about how once the mythic world and the chimeric world were closer together and it was easier to do this or that and the world was bigger, then, was bolder, brighter, how one might find this if one goes about it this way about how sometimes simple ingredients for spellwork are a bitch to find and blah-dee-blah blah blah all the uses for things Found and for Losing Things all the potential reasons one might have (and it is always a Use, really)after all of that essentially his answer boils down to:
"'Just to find Hah! There are such visions out there for those who open their eyes and look, and what they tell us about our own courses! What nobler purpose?"
N. Hyde
Nick had prepared himself exactly for this. He was ready. He spent the couple of hours after Anna left with Thane but before Pen arrived browsing through all of his books, many of which are dog-eared and well worn and have been borrowed from friends (he knows some fairly well established and rather generous Chakravanti, after all). He didn't memorize trivia, but instead: refreshed himself on topics that were likely to come up, refamiliarized himself with the terms that they were likely to use for topics related to the spirit world so he didn't trip himself up using his.
He is glad of that, just now. He is able to follow well enough, though he doesn't follow Apollonius down the rabbit hole of trivia when the Hermetic waxes on. (Rabbit hole? No, this is a warren.)
And he is interested. His questions are curious and won't shame him later, and neither will the contributions he offers.
When the Hermetic finishes, Nick's next question is earnest, and shy almost. "Do you have any advice for me, then, as I'm beginning to look?"
Gladstone, & co.
"Stick to one quest at a time," Apollonius says, sagely. "And make certain you have a tether, so you do not lose track of the world. That is how one either becomes a lost thing oneself, or how one finds oneself a Marauder."
Gladstone, & co.
[Time for the duelists to sneak back into the party. Alexandra first. Dex + Stealth.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Gladstone, & co.
[Martin. +1 diff, because HUGE.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (3, 7, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen. >_>]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Pen: No, I am as sneaky as Alexandra! With a higher diff.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[ONCE MORE.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Fine.]
N. Hyde
Nick nods, soaks in this sage advice and reflects on it; and he will take it to heart, too, as he delves into locating Shallowings and communicating with the spirit world more and more in the coming years. His burgeoning responsibilities will come to overshadow his sense of wonder and desire to explore by the time they move to Denver: he will be wearier and warier then, but he doesn't know that now.
"That's good advice. Thank you."
He's asking Apollonius about books he's found particularly enlightening (and Zelda, too, if she is so inclined to contribute), when the duelists finally creep their way back into the Solarium.
Gladstone, & co.
This is how they creep.
Alexandra, first. Cheeks flushed, eyes bright, thick straight hair particularly glossy somehow, a flake of ruby red; she looks around, cautious, before slipping into the Solarium, making a sign with one hand behind her back that is the All Clear. Martin comes in next and nothing about him has changed. He still hulks; he still casts a long shadow. Sharp eyes might notice some minor change, but sharp eyes are unlikely to see him come in. He is surprisingly sneaky for someone so large, with such power of presence; then again, bears themselves are surprisingly quiet and surprisingly quick. One never expects them to move as they do, and then they wield terror. Penelope is the least stealthy, which probably surprises no one. The young woman slips in after Martin, a shiver of silver light gleaming on a lake and red-fire hair which is somewhat tousled.
The three immediately begin behaving as if they were always just right there duh having a totally normal conversation right there where they have been this entire time. Totally.
Apollonius asks Nicholas what languages he is able to understand, just as Zelda did earlier. And when he receives an answer, he shakes his head as if it is a shame, and scrunches his face up before he can figure out a book or two to recommend.
Zelda is better at books than Apollonius is. He admits it, too.
"Ask a Bonisagus or a Shaea if you want help building your library."
("He's talking to Apollonius."
"Martin, there can be no excuses."
"But it can wait until...")
"I," Apollonius says, "should perhaps find somebody to write my memoirs for me, while I dictate." He eyes Zelda, speculatively.
"Hmm," Zelda says.
This is when Martin's shadow falls across them all. He clears his throat. "Apollonius, Zelda." He doesn't quite glance over his shoulder at Alexandra or Pen who are - oh. There they are. Alexandra by Apollonius's side now, and to Nicholas's. "Hello." He offers a hand to Nicholas. "We weren't properly introduced before."
He blink blinks.
N. Hyde
Ask a Bonisagus, Apollonius suggests, and Nick, too, glances toward Zelda, remembering how she'd been ready to take him to go see some other book earlier. Bound in unicorn hide. He might have had more to say to her then, but there's talk of memoirs, and if Zelda happens to glance in his direction there is some amused spark in Nick's eyes.
That is when Martin's shadow falls across them, and Nick half-turns to face the man who dwarfs him, even though he is not particularly small (nor large.)
There is a large hand thrust toward him. Martin blink blinks. Nick also blink blinks. Then, as though it is an afterthought, a mere oversight, he says, "You're right, we weren't," and shakes Martin's hand. "I'm Nicholas Hyde. Chakravanti. I don't think I caught your name earlier."
Nick definitely caught his name. This is a lie, even if it is one to allow the man to preserve his dignity.
Gladstone, & co.
[I am going to mean everything I am about to say, man. Willpower.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
N. Hyde
[Sure you do.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]
N. Hyde
[Perception + Alertness?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
((Oops - diff 7, only two successes!))
Gladstone, & co.
"Jean Martin," Martin says. After a beat, he adds, "bani Flambeau."
Unlike many of the Hermetics in the room, Martin is perhaps unique in his lack of rings. He does not have a single one; there is no glint of metal at his throat or at his wrist. He is unadorned. The only adornment which would be appropriate would be a crown; it still seems that way, even though he is looming.
"Over here for a second, man?" He tilts his head to the side, like: c'mere this-way-please. Once they're separated from the group, Martin says:
"I'm sorry about my behavior earlier. I was a dick and didn't mean to be. Bran was just so wrong, I was all riled up to start with and I, eh, didn't mean any slight."
This is complicated because Martin didn't mean any slight, back before: he was just arrogant; he was just prejudiced. He'd mean it now, out of pure spite. There's anger running beneath: He can't believe he is obliged to apologize to this worthless nobody.
Wounded pride, shame, all of these are bad things. Belligerence is difficult to dissipate, especially when one feels one is wronged, regardless of how many initiates get lucky in a fight. He is trying to mean it enough to satisfy -- something.
And Nicholas, who is sharp-eyed, will notice signs of blood under Martin's nails, in the crease of his palm. Martin smiles with rue; it is false. It is false as any false heart ever was. "I'm sure you know how it is."
N. Hyde
This leaves Nicholas with a decision, or perhaps several. He could accept Martin's apology and let the man simmer down as he goes back to the rest of the party. He could find a way to let Martin know what he knows, build question upon question as Lysander might have done, as Nick might do in many other circumstances.
He could find a way to make himself an enemy tonight.
Being called a penny mystic did not make him angry; he has been called worse by better. It's the man lying to his face that crystalizes there in the pit of his stomach, stops up his lungs.
Nick is frequently a kind man, and like many kind men, he is aware of when his kindness is being imposed upon. "I'm afraid I don't know how that is," he tells Martin, as his gaze sweeps over Martin's princely mien, light for a moment where it seems he'd wear a crown, notes the blood beneath his nails and in the crease of his palm. In the end they come back up to meet Martin's. "Lies don't become you."
Gladstone, & co.
[My temper is totally in check.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
Martin does not look as if he wants to punch Nick in the face. He does, but he doesn't look as if he does, not because he is hiding his dislike so much as because first he looks nonplussed and then he manages to have mastery over the temper which would induce him to do so.
"You don't know what you're talking about," Martin says. He wants to follow it up with another insult, but he just runs his tongue over his teeth. Settles on, "But I guess that shouldn't be too surprising."
He can always say he meant 'because Nick doesn't know me' if he's taken to task by Alexandra or Penelope.
Blink blink. "Can we be cool?"
N. Hyde
Nick has seen this look before. Nick has seen this look, once or twice, before someone actually did punch him in the face: this is the way of teenage boys.
It should probably be his cue to stop, and retreat, but Martin says he doesn't know what he's talking about. So instead his eyebrows just raise a fraction, and he says, "I don't know. Can you be cool?"
Gladstone, & co.
For as long as he has to be.
"I'm trying, man," Martin says, with a shrug. He folds his arms over his chest. Good arms, stay folded. There may be some blood in the creases of his palms and under his nails, but there is no sign of injury. "I'm trying tonight." Emphasis on the last word.
N. Hyde
As confusing a night as it has been, Nick doesn't particularly have much desire to fight here with Martin, at least not in any kind of oppositional way. He hears that emphasis, and he draws his own conclusions about what it means, and he has already made his point.
"A for effort, I guess," he says, and then, "We can be cool for tonight. Is that it?"
Gladstone, & co.
"Yup. Well no wait, you really like Penelope right?"
He's just a concerned friend. Sure. Martin looks Nicholas over closely, sifting for something gold-panning mining for a certain thing.
[PERC + EMP. Plus WP.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
N. Hyde
[Eh, she's okay I guess.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[-_-]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
N. Hyde
[contest]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Suck it, Penny Mystic. Penny Liar, too. HAHA.]
N. Hyde
Yep. Nick really really likes Penelope. A lot. There's something that appears in his expression when Martin asks him this question: furtive, as though he's not sure how to respond, as though he's not sure what to say, and also: his eyes flick over to Pen and they are traitors. Most people would miss it, but Martin is on point here.
N. Hyde
"I'm with Pen. Of course I like her. Why?"
Gladstone, & co.
Martin rubs his hand over his mouth before tucking it back into his crossed arms; what did the gesture hide, if anything? His eyebrows flick upwards and his voice is a low rumble. "Yeah. She's pretty great. That makes sense. You seem to mean it."
Pause. "Good luck with that. We all look out for one another. And ...good luck fitting in tonight, man. It seems like you're doing just fine though."
[Manipulation + Expression.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: is, and the Bear Prince has an exquisite command of nuance here, trying to imply a few things. 1. Yeah, Pen is pretty great. Maybe I know just how 'great' she is, eh? Bullshit alpha male crap. 2. Yeah, Pen is pretty great, i.e., meant for greatness, i.e., who the fuck are you, little nothing boy? 3. Nick needs luck. Because there's no way it's going to last; Martin's damned sure about that. 4. Part of the reason there's no way it's going to last is obviously because Nick is an outsider. 5. Again, Nick totally needs luck, he is not fitting in or good enough to fit in without pity making room for him at the table so to speak. Just fine is code for as best as can be expected.
N. Hyde
There are a few reactions that war inside Nick at the moment. Martin's taunts touch on hurts that are half-healed and deeply buried, in the way of most adults who were troubled in childhood and adolescence. Those waters run deep. But there is also that; Nick is an adult, and he recognizes insecurity and wounded pride (and posturing masculinity, so often a byproduct of the two) for what it is.
He smiles at Martin in a way that suggests a warm sort of camaraderie, that implies that he understands Martin just as Martin understands him. "Yeah, you do too. Fake it 'til you make it, right?" A beat. "I guess I'll see you later."
Gladstone, & co.
"Yup." Martin looks at Nicholas like he'd enjoy turning the man into a clot of ash, then watching it skid smear shatter on the ground. But he smiles pleasantly, rubs the side of his nose, and leaves Nicholas to rejoin Apollonius, Zelda, Alexandra, and Pen.
But wait, Nicholas has left the herd. Danger, young zebra. Danger.
N. Hyde
[Init: Nick +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Zelda: +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Pen: +7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: +8
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Lysander: +8
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Diana: +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
Gladstone, & co.
Martin: +7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Frederick +5
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Oh, and Apollonius. +6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
N. Hyde
Nick does not look like he'd enjoy turning Martin into a clot of ash, but perhaps there's something sharp in his smile, in the way his gaze levels as the Hermetic turns to go. It's been said that Nick is not cruel, but there's also this: it's difficult for anger and compassion to exist together, in the same space, and there is a duality to all life.
He, too, plans to go to rejoin Pen. Maybe he feels a little better tonight about holding his own, in his own way, regardless of whatever most of the Hermetics here think. It's only then that he notices he's off by himself, so he takes a sip from his whiskey and starts moving back in the direction of Pen, Zelda, and Alexandra.
N. Hyde
[Bran +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Gladstone, & co.
Apollonius, Martin: 14
Fred, Bran: 12
Zelda: 11
Lysander, Alexandra: 10
Diana, Nick: 10
Pen: 8.
DECLARES.
Pen: Oh good Martin is going away he must have apologized successfully yay Nick.
Diana: Yes yes blather on OH GOOD LOOK HEY MARTIN OVER HERE BRING YOUR FRIEND YOU JUST LEFT BRING HIM NOW I COMMAND IT.
N. Hyde
Nick: Flee. Flee back to the group.
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra: Sigh. Sacrifice self for the cause. Ask Zelda to borrow her book, then head towards the couches.
Lysander: HEY MARTIN, you are very popular suddenly, I want to know all about that new bandage just under your arm yeah I can see it I know what you were up to but now you get to TELL ME.
Zelda: ... Give book, but cautiously.
N. Hyde
Bran: I can't distract Diana anymore. Gonna head back to Martin.
Gladstone, & co.
Fred: Continue conversation over Diana w/ Gil.
Martin: Oh shit. Tactical retreat. Tactical retreat! Which means back to Diana, and a blatant OH HEY BRAN I LEFT A THING FOR YOU IN THE HALL COME SEE to try and shake Lysander.
Apollonius: Welcome Nick back! Fail to be effected by most of the Things Going On Around The Room, because you just want to talk more/listen more.
Gladstone, & co.
"Welcome back, Nicholas!" Apollonius says, as soon as Nick turns back towards Apollonius and the ladies (a very fine rock band, Apollonius would no doubt say, a very fine rock band name indeed). "I was just telling Penelope and Zelda that they should, I'm sorry my dears I do forget you don't work so closely together any longer, but I was just telling them that they should go along with you on a 'nature walk' so to speak if you ever feel like leading one."
He notices what's going on. He just doesn't care, or fully parse it.
Martin notices what's going on, too. He definitely cares. He can see the movement that is Diana, rising to gain his attention; sees it at the same time Bran gets up, begins to come back towards him, and there, there, the fucking one that you say clever girl to just before it gets you, Lysander off to the side stretching in that way he has before --
Martin is not in the best mood. He adjusts his sleeve and, with great will and purpose, says, "Ah! Bran!" Rumble-thunder boom, turning his back to Diana (and keeping Lysander out of his direct line of sight) as he does, "Hey, step outside with me for a moment?"
He tries to put out the sense that this is important business, not to be interrupted.
(Meanwhile, Frederick: is not much fussed. He bids Bran a courteous fare well when he gives up distracting Diana, a knowing twinkle (perhaps) in his eyes, and continues to listen and discourse.
Hermetics. They like theories. And philosophy. And interesting topics of discussion, round-table, talk one over the other, ideas spark spark spark.)
[Martin: Manip + Expression. Another WP bites the dust.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [WP]
N. Hyde
Nature walk, Apollonius says, and the look Nick gives Zelda and Pen is a touch amused. He's clearly continued on the same topic in Nick's absence, even after Nick was stolen away by Martin. Then again: Nick wasn't gone all that long, and Apollonius did manage to talk quite a bit, at some length, about the spirit world.
"I would love to take you both along with me, if you wanted to go," he says, and the offer clearly extends to Zelda too, even though he doesn't know her well. It's not an empty offer, the way some might make when such a suggestion was made to them at a party. Nick's smile is a touch reserved, even if it is mostly for Pen.
Bran: he's a neutral party here, and while he enjoys political and social intrigue and he's having fun, his motivations remain his own. Martin wouldn't have had to shout him down; he's happy to swoop in and save the other Flambeau in fact. Bran might have found the idea of a Hermetic and a Chakravanti together somewhat precious, and might have appreciated Zelda and Nick in their own right, and he might be inclined toward mercy for poor vanquished Martin now. Bran also enjoys the social power he wields.
"Sure," he says, as he comes up beside Martin. "What do you need?"
Gladstone, & co.
Alexandra. Alexandra doesn't really sigh, but there's a touch of resignation come to her shoulders which bow inward. Red, it's a vibrant shock of color; a color to be noticed. Flambeaux are not shy, or retiring, or known to be so. She smiles with understanding at Nicholas as he heads back, touches Pen's upper arm as she turns to Zelda and asks to borrow her book.
Zelda blinks, then carefully hands it over with an air of supreme mistrust. "Be careful in your handling of it," she says. The corner of her mouth quirks; it isn't smile, it's a slant-tic of concern.
"I will be, Zelda. I promise." And Alexandra, she heads toward the couches, pausing at Martin (who does a very credible oh shit gotta go now important can't talk) and Bran, a slant to her eyebrows that means something but is expressed only in a Conspiratorial Look in the end. Knowing Look, maybe, and then:
"Diana," in a voice of respectful, bright and golden inquiry. "Did you see the mistake in this book? It reminds me of that text you showed me..."
Oh ho. Lysander considers Martin: suddenly snatched up, like a cheeto in the jaws of a seagull, and rather than chase him down just
well. He is patient. He needn't chase anyone. They're in his house, after all.
Diana: half-risen, mouth open -- fore-stalled by a number of people just being that much quicker. When her teeth click together, certainly some star somewhere dies. She doesn't say farewell to Bran or seem particularly bothered by Frederick's talking; she frowns, and might've bypassed Martin entirely to sweep that Chakravanti up again but Alexandra is a successful distraction.
"Oh? ... " Eyebrows arched.
And Pen.
Pen, whose wit is often quick, quicksilver, sharp and direct; Pen is last to realize that the mobile of her tradition-mates has moved, machinations turning. Pen touches her arm where Alexandra's hand was after Alexandra leaves; it isn't wistful or wishful, but a reaction just the same.
Pen meets Nicholas's amused look with an expression that is - oh, complicated of course; perhaps a shade more intense than usual, and Penelope is an intense young woman. It's just a moment; let it pass and transform. Amusement sparks acknowledging (gentle) humor in return, lake full of gloaming, see, that quite haze where anything is possible - and she begins to smile, slow.
A beat too long after 'if you wanted to go,' and Zelda's, "Ah. I suppose that could be educational."
Wait. Smilesnapsawaypeopletalkingtomewhatheywhat? Pen opens her mouth like she's going to say something; gathers herself, a different kind of (more reserved, glittering) smile instead, impartial for Apollonius and Zelda.
"Of course I want to go, but you would be leading the blind and describing to them what it is you see, for I have no skill at all, Apollonius, not in that Art."
What does Martin need. What a good question.
"You might want to leave your drink behind," he says, as he ushers Bran through the doors. He just needs a moment. A moment to revel in a moment in which he might gather himself.
He'll tell Bran as much too, once they've left the Solarium. "That Chakravanti is a dick; I just wanted a moment. Thanks, Bran."
N. Hyde
Nick makes it over to Apollonius and Zelda and Pen, and the look Pen gives him is complicated before that slow smile, and Nick knows that Pen put Martin up to apologizing to him. So perhaps he gets all of it, or maybe there's more. Regardless, he reaches them and hooks an arm around Pen's waist, the gesture as graceful as it is casual, as desirous of contact as it is a nonverbal way to encourage her to relax: Bran has swept Martin off, and things seem to be going better, at least for now.
"I'll figure out how to give my Sight to you," he tells Pen. "Lysander showed me, earlier."
He has no idea what would be required, or whether he could do it right now, but still this promise of Someday. Nick is still young enough and unfettered by duty enough to promise those Somedays; this is a time when magick is a more joyful thing to him, not something borne of necessity.
He will lose some of that, a few years from now. But not yet.
Bran leaves his drink behind, drops his hands into his pockets as he trails Martin out. As Martin says the Chakravanti is a dick, Bran only smiles. "Well, you did call him a penny mystic," he says, and then he claps Martin on the back. It's comradely, their earlier argument forgotten. "Penelope got you good, huh?"
Gladstone, & co.
When Nicholas checks his text messages there will be one from Thane.
Emoji of a party hat. Emoji of a tree. Emoji of a lighting storm. Emoji of a bee. Emoji of a dancing elephant. Emoji of a clown. Emoji of a holly branch. Emoji of a quizzical but dapper alligator in a top hat.
There will be some from Rob, too.
R: Hey, how are you holding up?
Forty minutes later.
R: That good, huh? I am so looking forward to hearing about your Christmas.
R: Though I rather wish you or Pen were around now. I'm bored out of my (skull emoji)
N. Hyde
[Intelligence + Occult.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
N. Hyde
[Wits + Academics.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )
N. Hyde
[Charisma + Empathy.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Gladstone, & co.
[Erudite Christmas Evening: accomplished!]
No comments:
Post a Comment