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Who: Jacob Kane (Cain) & someone else. Maybe you.
When: October 14th and forward.
Where: All around Keeliai.
What: Hoofing it around town to get a better finger on the pulse of current happenings. If it's a place where people are, Cain could feasibly be there.
Warnings / rating: Nah.

It was really rather astonishing how quickly Cain could adapt to things. He even surprised himself sometimes, what with the fact that he had literally been pulled into another world with a universe-threatening war and only a few hours after the fact he was on the streets looking for more information. Part of it, he acknowledged, was simply that it hadn't sunken in all the way yet. Regardless of that fact, it was always smarter to push forward than stand still when the world was still spinning around him.

Early on, it was easy to see that he was pissing off some kedan just by being around and initiating conversation. Cain started to pick his questions more carefully, but it wasn't going to stop him; kedan population seemed way higher than foreigner population and that was where he was going to need to get gossip or info if from anywhere. He wasn't above pestering some people on the street or trying to get shopping done if it looked like he might get away with starting a conversation.

Hell, Cain was even willing to stoop to the old classic: "Hey, do you have the time?"

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"Not really," Solomon said absently, because he was currently standing at the entrance to an alley and trying to determine who had killed who in the particular bout of violence lingering there--payment for some materials he required for his Dreaming portals. With the amount he'd paid out for Emily-Helen's funeral, about the best he could offer was divining deaths of family-members. Fortunately, the kedan had family-groups tightly-knit enough to make it a lucrative practice even in spite of his current unpopularity.

Still, the fact that someone had asked that was strange, and Solomon extended his senses around him just in case he was about to get attacked by a gang. Then he flinched, stepped away from the person beside him as he turned to face them, and managed not to gag on absolutely nothing.

The person was a man who would have looked perfectly ordinary, if it weren't for the fact that looking on him felt rather like looking into oil. Slick, rainbow-shaded, repellent. He wasn't dead, hadn't died--if anything there was a faint skate of people he'd killed nearby, but less tangible than they had been two weeks ago, thank goodness. It was just his very presence, running counter to the death Solomon could feel from everyone else, as if the man rejected its touch completely.

Even Valdis hadn't felt like that, for all that she was meant to be a death goddess.

"Now I do," Solomon said evenly, stilling himself and ignoring the shiver that ran down his spine. "What are you?"

Having someone outright react to Cain wasn't actually something with which he was unfamiliar. Those with Deathsight, far and few between as they were in the population, all had some sort of tell that they had noticed Cain's impossibly-long clock. Most asked similar questions or pretended they hadn't seen. One notable encounter had a skittish young man turn tail and flee just at the sight of it.

No, Cain wasn't unused to the reaction and the man in front of him looked closely related enough that it was entirely possible he had Deathsight. On the other hand, this was another world with new rules and he couldn't quite make that assumption out of nowhere. That he was brave enough to ask spoke well of his guts.

"Just a guy," he said with a genial shrug. He canted his head just enough, gave a very pointed searching look. He wasn't one to keep secrets, but he wasn't about to answer something that hadn't specifically been asked. "Why do you ask?"

Edited 2014-10-15 02:15 (UTC)

Well, he was obviously used to the question, or some variant of such; he barely batted an eyelash at the directness of it. For all that the man's presence was repellent, the more Solomon examined him the less invasive that presence seemed. He'd been startled by his initial awareness of the trait, not the trait itself--it felt like a slap at first, but once accustomed it felt more like a polarising magnet.

In fact, the more he looked at the man and the narrow corona around him, the more it looked as though--that was impossible, surely? "You're immune to death," Solomon said slowly, and in spite of everything, in spite of how much he'd changed even the short time he'd been in Keeliai, he felt excitement as a low-grade turn in his gut. "Or at least immune enough that the nuances don't matter. How old are you, exactly?"

This man wasn't like Bakura or Valdis. He didn't die, only to rise again. He just didn't die. Immortality in its true form. In spite of himself, Solomon knew that the fact he was impressed was showing.

Okay, that was a bit new. For all of the experiments that had been run on him, every bit of self-questioning Cain had experienced for thousands of years, all this time and no one had cut to the chase as quickly as that. It was as disconcerting as it was exciting. Cain was no fool, he knew to be wary of such a man as could tell such a fact of his existence at a mere glance.

Yet he found himself grinning in response. Having someone know what he was and do nothing but express currently-innocent curiosity was like clean air in his lungs. It had been a while. "Almost twenty-eight hundred," he answered with a dip of his head. "How did you do that?" That statement, you're immune to death reminded him sharply of something in an inhuman voice that still haunted him, but he shoved it aside for now.

The one who was abandoned by Death.

"Ah, yes." Now Solomon's smile turned vaguely ironic, and so was his shallow bow. "Solomon Wreath, Cleric of the Necromantic Temple, at your service." He straightened. "Sufficiently powerful clerics can sense the details of a death in a location. I've ... refined that talent, somewhat, since coming here, since so many people arrive after dying themselves."

He wouldn't usually dive so easily into a detailed explanation, but people here and shown themselves to be far less averse to Necromancy and Solomon couldn't remember the last time someone had greeted his ability to sense death with delight. In fact, he couldn't remember it happening at all.

Solomon canted his head, still examining the man. It was almost frustrating how little he actually could see--where in others their death lay in the heart of their souls, this man's soul rejected the presence of death from around him. It wasn't a matter of seeing what was there, but seeing what wasn't--as though the man was a void. "You're repelling the residue of the deaths around you."

Now there was a mouthful. Of course Cain knew what necromancy was and had foiled a few would-be necromancers in his own time, but to meet someone for whom it was an actual practice worthy of an actual title was different. No less a bit disgusting (death wasn't something to just be messed with), but if this Solomon had actual power behind him while still living, it was something to capture Cain's interest all the same.

"Jacob Kane," he introduced. Only family really ended up calling him Cain, mostly because only family knew him over enough identities that using a singular name was easier than the multiple identities. "So you've repurposed the skill. What's that mean? Repelling the residue?" he asked. That was a new one, and he regularly hung out with Enforcers who were the one true group of death magic practitioners.

Both less and more of a mouthful than 'Death Bringer', which Solomon had no intention of using in any context other than a pseudo bluff. Solomon was watching Kane's face and saw the flicker, and smiled grimly. Aha; not so different after all, immortal or not.

"Like this," he said, turning and extending a hand to summon the shadowy silhouettes of those who had died in the alley. They were a spread of three, littered about in the positions in which they died, though Solomon already knew he could reverse the shadows to reveal the preceding events. Not those responsible, unfortunately, but the effects of outside forces on those who had died.

"Death leaves a residue in the place where it happened," he explained. "Usually that's all Necromancers can sense." He glanced over at Kane. "You're standing in the middle of gang territory, Mr Kane. There's plenty of death to be had here, and all of it is avoiding you."

It was perhaps because of his immortality that Cain held the sanctity of death above all others. He was the admitted exception to the rule, something that was natural but had no place in the laws of the world, and due to his brother's current vocation, he felt a very sharp need to protect the balance of life and death. Although he was on the side of the living, it was almost unwillingly and he would gladly hand down what deaths needed to be given in order to maintain balance. Anyone who would fight that, through running away from their time or trying to reclaim the dead, was someone Cain couldn't condone.

Then again, in a land between life and death... Cain was willing to admit there might be something he didn't know. That didn't mean he would forfeit his own morals, just that he was open to expanding his understanding.

Cain's head turned, sharp, when the shadows twisted into shapes and watched in quiet and masked awe the bodies that were no longer actually there. That was a trick even the Enforcers couldn't do. Tilting his head without fully regarding Solomon, Cain commented, "Yeah, it's never really stuck with me... Now you're saying it extends outside of me, too?"

"I don't know," said Solomon. "How does it usually work? Do weapons simply not penetrate your skin, or do you suffer injuries that never heal without outside impetus, or do they heal instantly on their own?"

It was difficult to tell the exact distance when Solomon couldn't see anything within the sphere of Kane's influence. He couldn't actually see souls--just deaths. For most people here that was enough, because most people here had died at least once. With someone like Bakura or Valdis, it was possible to see some vague ripple left by the presence of the souls they carried, but even then Solomon couldn't actually see anything within their selves.

For a moment, Cain was silent. Those were good questions and the answer was simple enough but sometimes he just couldn't abide by doing something simply. Not when he was in another world being confronted by a man who could see his lack of death while they were in the middle of a war on the back of a turtle. Simple was for squares.

Instead of answering verbally, Cain snatched the switchblade from his pocket, flipped it out and stabbed it right through his offhand. He grunted, face twisting just a bit; the sheer speed and precision he had done it with actually made the pain less than it would seem, but that was still painful. Blood dripped freely out of the wound he left behind and he waited.

"This help?" he asked. The slowly pooling blood stopped, rippled, began dripping upwards to return from where it had come. As the blood was settled back where it belonged, the frayed skin and torn muscle knitted itself back together. Good as new. Thankfully it seemed the recent spat of violence in the area kept any kedan from lingering and it was just the two of them paying attention to their own conversation.

"Congratulations, you have a masochistic propensity for drama," Solomon said dryly, flicking a hand at the silhouettes so they dissolved back into ordinary shadows. "A simple 'option number three' would have sufficed, I assure you."

Although it wasn't exactly option number three--the injury didn't just heal, it reversed, even the blood-flow. Some sort of localised time field? Possibly. Solomon didn't have any experience with time-magic, but it could potentially present as a kind of polarisation on this level. "Physically speaking it goes no further than your skin, but since I can't see your soul I can't actually tell where the field ends and you begin on a metaphysical level."

At the jibe, Cain merely grinned, bright and facetious and put his blade away. Even the blood that had been drawn to the steel had moved back to its proper place, saving him some of the trouble of clean up. Once the shadows disappeared, he turned his attention back to Solomon, hands automatically going into his pockets to maintain a very casual stance.

"C'mon, you and I both know that wasn't option number three," he said to better echo Solomon's own conclusions. It was easiest to call what Cain did healing, but all in all, it was just the reversal or denial of the injury in the first place. However, that didn't stop it from hurting even as things brought themselves back into position. "That's comforting, though. That I've still got some mystery about me even with a guy who can see dead people."

"Option number three and a half, then." Solomon turned around to face the man properly, eyeing the hand that had rejected injury. In a way it more solidly confirmed what he was seeing--time-related or not, the man's being rejected any sort of physical injury. Repellent of death, repellent of harm. "Can you get sick?"

At the jibe Solomon only smiled back. "Give me time."

"Nope," Cain answered easily. The last time he had gotten sick was eons ago. He knew it had happened, but hardly remembered what it had been like, only able to fill in the gaps with the intellectual knowledge of what illness entailed rather than remembering how the symptoms felt. Seeing where Solomon's attention was, he flexed the hand and then held it out in case the necromancer wanted a closer look.

He shrugged. "I've got plenty of that to give. What about you?"

"Another four-hundred to six-hundred more years," Solomon said easily. "Sorcerers in my world have an extended lifespan thanks to the rejuvenating effect the use of magic has." It was a line he'd used a number of times since he'd been there, and it showed in his cadence.

He did, however, examine the hand, though only by sight--he wasn't sure what would happen if he touched Kane's skin directly, and didn't want to find out right now. "I don't suppose you know anything about how it happened and how it works?"

Cain nodded, letting his genuine interest color his expression. Magic extending a lifespan was not something he had heard of before, mostly due to the fact that the living couldn't even use magic in its proper form. The idea that it might have a life-lengthening effect was fascinating and could go a long way in explaining why only Enforcers were capable of wielding it. Regardless of what the clock on Solomon's neck said to the reality of time he had left, Cain believed him when he said it had an effect on aging.

"All I know is when it kicked in," he said. It was partially a lie of omission, because he sure as hell knew what the defining moment was that must have triggered it. That terrifying and world-shattering moment of Remus dying in front of him, priceless heirlooms weighing him down as he ran for his already-endless life. No way he was going to tell a stranger about that. "I was twenty-four."

"And you're over one-hundred times that now. You didn't try to figure out what had happened?" It was intriguing and strange at once. Who wouldn't try to figure out what was happening? By the way in which the man accepted questions, it obviously wasn't an ordinary state of being where he came from either.

"Late for a Surge," Solomon murmured, "but perhaps an equivalent." Then he smiled. "I've done a great deal of research about the nature of death and the metaphysical foundation of the afterlife. If you've some time, why don't we go somewhere less obvious than an open alley-way to talk? My research is in my apartment office. At least there we can have something to eat and drink."

If he could figure out why this man not only didn't die but repelled the ordinary nature of death--did that mean his soul was, literally, rejecting the lifestream?

"Who says I didn't try?" asked Cain, an obvious tint of incredulity to his tone. Just because something had happened didn't mean there were any answers to be found, especially not when Cain's case was one of a kind. Despite all of that, did Solomon really expect him to be completely straightforward about everything he knew in relation to this form of undyingness? Maybe he was one of those closeted optimists. "This isn't a common affliction where I come from."

That said, the offer was certainly tempting. It would give him more ground to cover and a semi-safe place to lay low in case of any aggressive natives later on. Of course, he didn't intend to burn a bridge so quickly. Just the offer of a snack was pretty alluring. "Lead the way," he said, arm outstretched for Solomon to begin their walk.

If nothing else, it would give him the opportunity to take Solomon down if he started thinking about open experimentation on Cain. Research, he could deal with, but he'd had enough of being cut up and dissected for the century, thank you very much.

"I assume everyone with a hint of intelligence would," Solomon said with a shrug. Rather than walk past the man, he put a hand on his shoulder and drew the shadows up around them, and shadow-walked right into the living-room of his apartment building, stepping out of the shadows on the wall as though he did this every day. Which he did.

"Tea or coffee?" he asked blithely, taking off his coat and hanging it up by the door.

"Your faith in humanity astounds me," Cain said drolly. There would need to be a lot more than just a hint for someone to maintain their curiosity for so long, not to mention the crushing weight of living so long against the tide in a world where life and death were always walking the tightrope to maintain a proper balance. Maybe it hit people differently when it was more common to see people live past one, two, even three or four hundred somehow. Made the time less scattered and lonely.

He pulled away quickly once they were somehow right there in the apartment, muscles gone tense and senses on high alert. "What the hell was that?" he demanded. That was not right. Reapers and Enforcers could obviously go wherever they pleased whenever they pleased due to lack of physical form, but for living people like himself and Solomon, the instantaneous movement should have been completely impossible. He was strangely irritated at the breaking of such a basic tenet. "That wasn't necromancy."

Well, he presumed, anyway. Necromantic arts were all focused around the dead and dying, and neither had anything to do with whatever that had been. Shadowwalking?

Solomon didn't try to hide his amusement as he turned. His dark eyes glinted with it, and though his smile was on the surface pleasant, it was also laughing. "That depends on what you define as Necromancy," he said. "The word has gone through so many changes. In the past, it even meant 'magic' in an almost entirely generalised sense. I'm going to make tea. You can even follow me, if you like."

So saying, he made his way into the kitchen, his bearing as blithe and amused as it had been since before they even arrived. Was he teasing? Yes, he was teasing.

Cain scrubbed a hand over his face, then ran it through his hair before he stepped away from the wall and placed himself in the doorway to the kitchen. He was taking in the layout of the apartment quicker than anything, making sure he had a place to go if this somehow went awry. It wasn't distrust of Solomon (not entirely), but paranoia in general creeping back to the surface after the recent escapades that led to him getting kidnapped from Arizona and tortured in Texas for a week. That had left a few mental marks.

"I know that," he said plainly. "But we're speaking English right now, so English definition of necromancy. Coffee," he added when he saw where exactly Solomon was going in the kitchen. He didn't mind either, but he really did just want to be a nuisance right now.

The coffee was next to the tea, so it wasn't all that much of a nuisance. "Necromancy deals in the dead, correct," said Solomon, and turned to face Kane, leaning back against the counter while the kettle boiled. "On the surface shadows and death don't seem to be related, but only if you approach them in a purely physical sense. But magic isn't physical, it's metaphysical, and that's where the connection lies."

He wasn't using a lecturing tone, or condescending to Kane, but it was plain that Solomon was a teacher and had been for long enough for the tone to leak into his tone when he was explaining things. The problem is that this was fairly complex theory, so he had to pause to consider how to continue. "The planes would have been explained to you when you arrived," he said. "Are you familiar with dimensions? Universes?"

Whereas Solomon was leaning on the counter, Cain made himself comfortable against the doorframe. Far be it from Cain to invade the man's space or give up his own when getting into the heavy material of necromantic arts and complicated theoretical physics. Who cared that they had met only about ten minutes ago and were already deep in discussion about the true nature of the universe and what it might mean when someone literally could not die?

"I've read up on the the theories. They're older than you might think," Cain said. With a hand outstretched for Solomon to continued, he prodded, "The ones you're getting at are more about making different choices and forcing the universe or timeline to compensate by branching out, right? Or are we talking like first, second, third, fourth dimensions?"

Edited 2014-10-15 08:52 (UTC)

"Neither," said Solomon, and then paused. "Though it's possible the planes are analogous to fractal dimensions--I'll have to consider that more deeply. Interesting." He waved his hand a little as if to dismiss the tangent. "No, I'm referring to planes of existence and the universes they inhabit. You should have been given the talk about the planes of Life, Death and Dreaming when you arrived, and the fact there are multiple universes, self-contained. Though I imagine they're individually capable of the multiple reality theory, we're looking above that. I think I need my book."

The last was murmured, and Solomon tapped his foot on his shadow. His shadow wavered, turned into a three-dimensional ferret twice the size of an ordinary ferret, and went shooting out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

"Right now," Solomon continued as the kettle perked and he turned to attend their drinks, "the place we and the turtle occupy is the metaphysical current, the lifestream, which runs between these planes, and correspondingly the universes, and binds them together. Following me thus far?"

Earth Sector

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