Temenos Mistral ☆ Yellow Rabbit

[hanaban]

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week 0, monday!

[inquired]

[ it's a bird, it's a plane! it's... hanako up on the roof at night! temenos was just exploring this fine evening, and when he opens the door, book under his arm, he's not expecting company.

but! it's not unpleasant, so he calls out: ] Came to enjoy a birds eye view?

[ hello little gremlin ]

[hanaban]

[ Hanako sits up from where he'd been lying down on the roof's surface, readjusting the hat back properly on his head ]

...Something like that! But I can't see how far out the city goes from here.

[ He tried the subway, but that just loops back around, not helpful ]

Did you come up here to read? The moon isn't nearly bright enough for that.

[inquired]

[ hehe. he smiles in greeting, placid and affable as ever, and makes his way over, standing near where he's sitting and looking out at the horizon. ]

Mm. It's quite mysterious, isn't it? I tried to walk to the perimeter of the places we've newly found, and couldn't seem to get a bit further. It seems our little cage's only gotten a bit bigger, one way or another.

[ tsk. but! with the reading bit, the smile gets a little more playful. ] And I did. I've got a bit of a cheat for that very problem, you see.

w0, sunday

[hanaban]

[ He's going to wait until almost everybody's cleared out of the arena, for Temenos to get medical help (please somebody help him), for him to be alone no matter how long he'll have to tail after Temenos like a silent specter.

It's later in the evening when he finally gets his chance. ]

[inquired]

[ temenos is a pretty observant guy. it takes most of this tailing for him to notice, but he's also spent much of the day since the execution ends not out and about. when he's going to the jail to check on his erstwhile friends is when hanako gets his chance.

he's got the staff of judgement with him, changed back into his robes, and eventually. eventually, he calls out: ]

... Hanako. [ because he can. guess. ] You can stop following me at any time now.

[ his demeanor is the same as always. placid, lilty. quiet. ]

[hanaban]

[ He could stop, but he only does when Temenos does, stare boring holes in the back of his robes but fragile when he turns around, unable to meet his gaze.

His hands are clasped behind his back, knife held in them, but not so inconspicuously that Temenos wouldn't be able to see the blade poking out from the side.

...

He doesn't come any closer, still ten feet away. ]

w1, saturday

[hanaban]

[ Hanako doing that thing where he trails after Temenos like a ghost instead of coming out properly to say hello, where is he after trial? ]

[inquired]

[ in the park! walking around the lake, actually. though... he will let hanako trail him for a little while, and then call out, lightly: ]

We have really got to stop meeting this way, you know.

[hanaban]

...we don't have to.

[ there's something weirdly calming about stalking Temenos, he doesn't know why. maybe it's because he feels like he won't get yelled at. ]

Are you not angry about what happened?

w2, tuesday

[hanaban]

[ ambushes Temenos outside... Cutting Edge! Hanako clings onto his arm and shifts his weight towards the store ]

Hey, come with me! I need your help!

[inquired]

[ to cutting edge we go! this arm clinging is allowed because A) it's hanako and B) it's affection week. ]

Oof - very well, you don't have to tug. [ off to the cutting edge!! ] And what do you require, exactly...?

w2, sunday

[hanaban]

[ where is Temenos...

Hanako's waiting, as he does, for him to be somewhere calm and quiet before he pops his head out from around the corner, half-hidden while he peers over at Temenos and sends him telepathic messages to stop and turn around and say hi

... ]

[inquired]

[ jiiiiiii

temenos is out for a walk today! thank god his mind palace is not open, because he eventually feels the staring, and turns over his shoulder? and then smiles, amused. ]

Should I keep walking this time, or come to you?

[ lol. hi!! ]

w3, saturday

[hanaban]

[ Ryuki carried Hanako off to the hospital immediately after trial, but it only took another hour or two for the drug to wear off and for Hanako to regain consciousness again. He looks fine, now, IV drip attached to his wrist that he keeps trying to pull his sleeves down over. He's still not used to a physical body... did you know, you have to feed and take care of bodies... ]

[inquired]

[ ohhhh its so good to see him like, conscious - temenos doesnt know what the fuck the iv drip is but he can guess, knocking on the doorframe with his hand and poking his head in. his brows meet, worried. ]

...Hanako. Glad to see you're awake. How are you feeling?

w4, monday

[inquired]

[ i'm firmly of the belief that we just yeet things directly into memshare so. temenos is somewhere, in his priest clothes, reading a book or something equally lame.

and then this happens on the comic panels around him. ]

[ last night, you had a heart to heart with crick wellsley. crick wellsley, godsblade (newly anointed); your by chance companion, a man who has pulled you out of trouble by your vestments more than once just by existing in your sphere. a pure hearted, endlessly good knight, a lost little lamb desperately in need of guidance. someone you have come to be quite fond of.

he asked you last night if there was anything in this world he could have faith in, and you gave him the answer that keeps you moving, realistic, cynical, honest. "That you must find out for yourself. Though I must warn you, there are few things worthy of our faith."

and in his crick way, he calls you out on what is undeniable truth, that you don't have much faith in the gods. chosen cleric or otherwise, what you have faith in is the truth, the logical, the things that make sense. he knows this about you, but even so, he confesses his worries and his life story, tells you a fact that shocks you - that he met roi, once upon a time. that roi is the reason that crick even became a knight.

roi, a foundling just like you, who found you when you were tiny and terrified and banded together with you. roi, who attracted the kindness of the pontiff jorg, who was adopted at the same time you were. your brother, not in blood but in every other manner. and... you see so much of roi in crick: it's hard not to. they're both the same. honest. bright - so bright, they're hard to look at, sometimes. earnest. faithful. morally sound. the purest heart of the sacred flame.

but roi is gone, disappeared to the wind five years ago, and the young man who stands before you, eyes brimming with tears, tells you his dream is to cleave wickedness from the world. you can't help yourself but to poke holes in it, ever the cynic, just like you were for roi. just like you always were, for roi.

it's such a familiar conversation that you choose not to sit on it, for once. crick deserves a tiny bit of leeway, after everything you've put him through, and you push past your own guarded nature and pull the information like brambles out of your throat. casually, like it doesn't still feel like an open wound, you tell crick of roi's disappearance, and of the way he is the source of your cynicism and your realism, of the way you've mistrusted the church from the moment he disappeared, and how doggedly you searched for the truth for what happened to him ever since. you miss roi so desperately it's hard to talk about him outside of the logistics of his disappearance. he was your very first loss.

...something shines in crick's eyes when he speaks to you. he looks sad - upset, even, in the way he does when you remind him that his world of faith is not so clean and bright, but he agrees anyway. he really is learning, crick - you wonder if it's for the better or the worse, that you could be jading something so pure. honestly, crick admits, there are problems in the sacred guard, and immediately wants to jump to work.

...but talking about roi exhausts you. the weight of your sadness is harder and harder to bear, nowadays, no matter how easily you hide it behind your cassock. you fake an excuse about crick's injury from an earlier fight, reaching out to touch his arm, and crick calls you out on just wanting time alone. it stings, a little, to be so easily read, but it comes with a mix of pride and affection, and you compliment him on his perception, though you've been left feeling exposed. he leaves you for the night; you head to the inn for a night of tossing and turning, something close to what's called sleep.

--

in the morning, you awaken to a hubbub in the center of stormhail.

you've seen this hubbub before - the shocked crowds, the murmuring. someone died, last night - someone was murdered, and you imagine it had everything to do with the very same sacred guard and the truth you've been seeking all this time.

"That's one of them from the sacred guard, isn't it? How'd this happen?" says a concerned townsperson. another gasps, says a prayer. you ask them to move with a combination of politeness and your general aura as the inquisitor and stride through the crowd, and as it parts -

for the third time, a part of your world shatters into pieces.

slumped up against the brick wall outside of the headquarters of the sacred guard is crick wellsley. his body is mangled; blood seeps through his white cloak and down into the white snow, down his white, lifeless face. by some miracle of aelfric, at least his eyes are closed.

your stomach does an unpleasant, horrible twist, and his name tears out of your mouth somewhere between horror and despair - "Crick!" - as you shove past the last of the crowd to drop to his side, to check his pulse. it's the same thing you felt when the pontiff died - that the healing magic you have mastered is useless, that this supposed gift you were given is pointless in the moments it matters the most. you press your fingers to crick's wrist. nothing.

roi's disappearance, first. the pontiff, dead on the floor, mauled by a beast in his own cathedral. and now...

you don't really realize it, but like any number of mourners you've comforted before, you find yourself asking no one - why. the whammy of grief and frustration - why crick, of all people, even if you know the answer - burbles uselessly in the back of your brilliant brain, and it's as you're still holding his wrist that you notice the scrap of paper clutched tightly in crick's free hand. slowly, you uncurl his fingers, icy cold and stiff, and pull free what looks like a torn page from of a book, with a single line of writing.

"Surrender yourself not unto silent dusk. For the light shall fade."

it's the same words. the same ones scribbled onto a scrap of bloody paper in the pontiff's final book of scripture. it's a clue. it's a - it's information.

it's as you're holding this in your hand, eyes wide and head already starting to spin, that you hear the sacred guard bark at the crowd to leave. one in particular comes to the corpse, to you, and speaks with loathing. - "what are you doing here?"

you snap at one of many useless crows that he's your friend, that you want to help with the investigation, but you're called dead weight, and the sacred guard scoffs and sends you away. you go, without protest, clutching the paper crick died for in your hand, safely stolen away from the prying eyes of the crows.

for a moment, you look past them. you think of crick, his beseeching eyes and naive, pure dream. his want to fix corruption, the way roi had, the way you want to. the last bastion of goodness left standing in the church of the sacred flame, the little lamb who you'd grown quite fond of, now struck down - a lamb in the den of the wolves - and you stare at the paper in your hand.

"Your clue is safe, and it was not laid out in vain. I will follow the path you've laid out before me."

and you do what you've done a hundred times in your life. you do what you did when you were standing at the body of the man who raised you, the only authority figure you've ever known and trusted. you do it now, at the body of your little lamb, who despite all the questioning you led him to, believed in you.

you close your eyes, and you tap into yourself, and you put all of your grief and heartbreak down at the bottom of your soul. it doesn't matter, how you feel. what matters is what always does.

you close your eyes, and you tap into yourself, and say: ] The truth...lies in the flame.

[ invocation spoken, you let the world around you fade away to blue. (visual. to 55:06 - 58:03.)

--

by now, this visualization technique is familiar enough to you, but there's something different about feeling the light of the sacred flame form the ghostly shape of crick wellsley. silent and unspeaking - they never speak, when you see them - he walks up to you, and waits patiently for your guidance.

you feel something heavy in your heart as he does - waiting to be guided, like always. a lost little lamb, expectant. waiting. you want him to be able to move on in peace. you close your eyes, in the midst of the visualization, and regard him after a slow, deep breath. Crick. I swear to you, I will carry on the work you were torn from yesterday.

...and so, you must be off.

crick's ghost gives a near imperceptible nod, then turns around and starts walking under your guidance. you follow him, follow the path that he takes, into the rooms of the sacred guard, into a library. his ghost shows you a book that's a little too worn, and he touches it - you do the same, thinking it might be the book that he tore the page from, but as you pull the book, it's just the scripture on the creation of the heavens and earth. you frown at something scrawled on the inside about the heavens and making the earth shake, and when you look up, crick's ghost is turning around and walking outside - you follow him.

you see him again up in the rafters, and realization hits you, followed by a rush of affectionate pride, followed by a hollow sort of sorrow. clever little lamb, who read the clue, who investigated the 'heavens', who leads you to a pressure plate on a tall column that opens a door in the stained glass paneling of the cathedral. you follow his path as he walks away - you can imagine his startled expression but you won't, and he leads you down the stairs and to the stained glass.

crick's ghost stands before the door, his back to you. for a moment, you feel like you're standing in your home again, watching roi disappear into the distant night, and you realize that this is it. the ghost stays still. he doesn't look back for even a second. you swallow.

...You became a true knight before you passed, Crick. No ordinary man would notice such a thing.

you feel the power of the sacred flame pulling away, and you roll your shoulders back, and exhale, and release. the world around you flickers, and the ghost, his mission complete, fades away into nothing, framed and translucent by the holy sacred light that leaks in through the glass...

...and you're standing in the too-silent cathedral alone, the world in its normal light, carrying only the ghosts you always do. ]

I'm going to find the truth, Crick. [ you say, out loud. his ghost is gone now, but you promise him anyway. ] The truth you were diligently working towards.

[ and you step off into the darkness.

in the belly of the proverbial beast, you find the book crick tore his page from - you find a secret library, and you find the deputy of the crows, who informs you with a cackle that it was the head of their ilk who killed crick - that he had to die because he knew too much. you, by leading him to the truth, led him straight to the lion's den.

you're so angry, suddenly. angry for the injustice of it all. angry for crick, angry for the pontiff, angry that your intuition about these gods-damned crows has always been right, angry enough that it shows on your face when you ask where kaldena is.

the deputy points it out, and mocks you. "Does it hurt, knowing your cute little assistant's been killed?"

you don't respond, lest she know that she's right. the deputy tells you cheerfully that kaldena's gone, and you have to die, that the hound must be brought to heel, and you draw the staff of judgement with a kind of quiet, holy fury that you never show.

"Fine. Seal your lips, you so called messenger of the divine." you snap, and with the other travelers at your side, you will walk out of here alive. you will pass judgement on the deputy cubaryi, on kaldena herself.

the truth, the truth that crick wellsley fought to find, must be brought to light. ]

[hanaban]

[ He is never reading books ever again, lest he gets pulled into the grips of one like he is now, helpless to escape. They're wholly unfamiliar feelings to him: the love, the pride, the sorrow, the indignation, the fury... For as much as he thought Temenos to be infinitely calm and composed, it's Hanako who feels empty inside as the memory fades and he returns to himself. ]

That's...

[ he unclenches his fists; they hurt, relaxing after all this time ]

You got revenge.

[ RIGHT. YOU'D BETTER HAVE. ]

w5, monday

[hanaban]

[ Weekly stalking resumes... It looks like this week, Hanako's trying a little harder to stay hidden, though, and if Temenos turns around to look, he'll find that Hanako's almost consistently peering up at somewhere above Temenos' head instead of at him directly.

Kinda like

he wants to know Temenos' thoughts, what goes on inside that mind palace ]

[inquired]

[ because i want to play with this joke as much as humanly possible, hanako will see in his stalking that he's found temenos sitting outside of the storybook cafe!

he's sitting very still, and it looks like he might be poring over his notes for something. what hanako will get to see up above his head in his mind palace is a perfect mental reconstruction of a crime scene as imagined in images. more specifically, it appears to be Satan's - his body, the and the state of the spirit halloween where he was found, as well as a shadowy figure that could be an unknown assailant. the thought image eventually changes to show pieces of evidence from the case, and their potential applications. it is a little foggy, and is in pixel-esque sprite art because i think it's funny.

temenos himself is unmoving. hand on his chin. deep...deep in thought.

mind palace ]

w6, monday

[inquired]

[ where's hanako. temenos is coming to find him! i forgot to mention he's in his usual clothes but seems a little fluffier than usual. ]

Hanako. Do you have a moment?

[hanaban]

I'm busy.

[ He is outside the shooting range stalking the perimeter and trying to find a way to sneak inside. They keep turning him away at the door!! "elementary school children shouldn't be playing with guns" HE IS NOT ]

w6, sunday

[inquired]

[ will is alive!! it is a good weekend full of horse emotions!!!!

temenos is coming to find hanako pretty much right after the proceedings, and when he sees him, he offers him a bright smile. ]

Hanako. Do you have a moment? I believe we ought to chat.

[hanaban]

[ haha............. he's in trouble, isn't he!!! ]

Sure thing! What about?

w7, monday

[hanaban]

[ hi ]

[inquired]

[ help. hanako gets a little nod of the head and temenos makes a gesture for him to come closer, a smile on his face. it's not even a scary smile this time, just his usual relaxed one. ]

Come here, my wayward lamb. I've something for you. No strings attached.

[ you have to tell me if he gets close enough for emotions okay ]