tushanshu_logs | i'll say it to be proud

Entry tags:

i'll say it to be proud

Characters: Solomon Wreath and OPEN
Date: Anywhere between 6 May to 14 May.
Location: Various locations around the city. Specifically, places where people have died--anyone from PCs to kedan. The only place I know specifically will be the fountain where Bakura was killed, but if anyone has other specific areas in mind, you may assume Sol has been there.
Situation: Solomon needs to practice his control of his magic, since his control item was broken before he entered the game. This means using hotspots where people died to help him out. People are welcome to interrupt him at any stage of his practice, though his manifesting the echoes of people who died is only something that will happen later in the week.
Warnings/Rating: Death and after-death. Skulduggery's thread contains graphic details of a death (specifically, drowning).

After his semi-healing, Solomon's first priority had been, overwhelmingly, to regain control of his magic. His conversation with Skulduggery had left him a few steps beyond unsettled, and even now he wasn't sure what to think. Added to their differing timelines was Pleasant's uncharacteristic certainty that the armour was related to Vile, and on top of that was the fact that he knew the Temple's most closely guarded secret.

In the end Solomon had been forced to come to a simple solution: regardless of Skulduggery's current beliefs and knowledge; regardless of the current situation on the turtle; there was one thing Solomon needed, and that was use of his magic. Focussing on that, with luck, would allow his subconscious thoughts to ponder the other issues.

Necromancers didn't strictly need control items to use their magic, but it was usually how they were first introduced to it and it had been quite a while since Solomon had bothered to use magic without his. It was something like using a muscle he hadn't for longer than was wise, so to give him an edge he sought out places in the city where death had occurred, or were close by similar locations. Fountains. Street-corners. Parks. Frankly, it wasn't all that difficult.

His exercises were a simple routine. He would sit, meditate upon the deathly energy in a place, and then gather the shadows to him. They'd cluster on the walls or ground or features around him; at first two-dimensional, and then three, wrapping around his wrists and shoulders, curling around his body like a flock of affectionate birds.

Once he could hold them to him for as long as he needed without losing control, he moved on to spreading them around him as he needed and wanted, and in various shapes. If there was music nearby, he would make the shadows dance to it, filling the air with twisting shapes and cloaks, fading in and out from nothing. Once upon a time he had used to do this purely out of boredom. There was something beautiful about it. Something mesmerising. Something calming, and comforting, to watch the shadows sing and know he was the one performing, manipulating the shadows deftly like puppeteer. He hadn't done it in such a long time and it took more effort than it had with his cane, but now, it was soothing.

Eventually he was even able to summon the shadows of those who'd died where he sat. They weren't ghosts, of course; they couldn't speak or even interact. Necromancers couldn't communicate with the dead unless it involved the deceased's physical body. They were just shadows, cast black like graphic puppets, defined enough to tell details of their features. He could have traced the manner of their last moments, if he wished, but for now, he was content to assure himself he could fight without his cane if he needed.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Bart was taking a walk around the Metal Sector. Not a patrol, not an official one in his mind, but he was keeping an eye out for anything amiss. Too much had been happening in Keeliai lately for him to sit at home, though, and he'd felt like the air had changed, somehow. He noticed when it was cloudy, but he'd stopped seeing when it wasn't.

He started to cut down an alley way, heading for the crowded market, but came to a stop when he saw that this alley was already taken. A man was sitting there, right on the ground, like he owned this patch of shell. Ordinarily, Bart would have walked around him, perhaps after giving him a few spare juulan - with all the attacks, there had to be some homeless kedan.

However, the space around the man was filled with swirling... blackness that he doesn't have the right words for. Inky dark shadows that were deeper than the shadow Bart himself was casting on the ground. The one in front of the guy is larger and - his brain wanted to call it humanoid, but no, it couldn't be. It had to be a trick of the light.

Unbidden, the memory of Sinbrilee's portals to the Death realm surfaces in his mind, and he thought it seemed rather like the darkness that was in the corners of his eyes in that place, that he could never properly focus on.

That's stupid. They're hundreds of leagues from Sinbrilee.

But Malicant was in Keeliai now. Bart frowned at the vertex of his thoughts. Sharply, he asked, "What're you doing?"

It had been obvious for some days now that there was a great deal of death to be had in the city. Solomon could barely set foot anywhere without feeling the whisper of some death or another. On one hand, that was good. It meant he had a source of power readily available until he could manufacture another item.

On the other hand, it was ... dangerous. It was possible for a Necromancer to become drunk on power, especially without a control item. That was what had happened to Vile.

In a way, summoning the victims' silhouettes made it easier not to fall into that trap. Vile forgot there was such a thing as individuality. He had seen the souls of those he took as drops in an ocean meant for his use. Solomon was determined not to be like Vile, if only just out of principle. Vile had been a monster. The souls of those passing by helped somewhat as well.

Solomon knew when someone had entered the alley, but he ignored the other person in favour of maintaining his breathing and his concentration. The shadows swirled and added to the silhouette he was building. Her features weren't quite defined--yet--but he knew the face. He'd met the girl to whom it belonged not all that long ago, and known she'd died. Sensing death here felt different, but it was still death.

The man's voice almost broke his concentration, and the surface of the silhouette rippled and threatened to lose cohesion. "If you please," Solomon said mildly without glancing over, "I'm quite in the middle of something and I'd appreciate it if you didn't distract me."

He rebuilt the silhouette painstakingly from the echoes in the alley. The height, the width, the shape, the hair-length, the features of the face ...

Hayley had difficulty learning lessons. It was a way she had always been and not something she much cared to change. The things that truly mattered, she felt, she could work on changing if the need was there. For everything else, it would be a waste of time and energy. And so it was that she was wandering around the dangerous streets of the Metal Sector alone again, taser in the messenger bag at her side, the hood of her red jacket pushed down to ensure her better awareness of her surroundings. She might be reckless, but she wasn't stupid.

She was unaware of the significance of the area she wandered into. It was only the man sitting there that caught her attention, the way the shadows molded around him and seemed to do his bidding. Batman. Malicant. Nico. The names and memories flashed through her mind, trying to place what he was doing and who he might be affiliated with as she froze on the edges of the small and quiet intersection.

Her heart was pounding in her chest as she took a few more steps forward, her fear hidden beneath an almost flawless facade of nonchalance. She lifted a skeptical eyebrow as she approached, donning an insincere grin and raising her voice to ensure that he heard her.

"Do you think maybe you could take your spooky shadow thing somewhere else? I mean, I'm sure you think it's the coolest thing since sliced bread and.. maybe it is? But there are a lot of other people here who can do.. well, sort of what you're doing. You just need to, you know, keep it inside and not freak out the random people walking around by playing Creepy McMagicShadow in the middle of the street."

Just when he was starting to think he had a handle on the shadows, they would dissolve. Solomon could catch them before they vanished, give them solidity, and doing so made the shadows wash across the area like an ever dissolving-resolving wave. At least to the untrained eye it looked deliberate.

In reality he was concentrating very hard. Hard enough that he'd actually forgotten to pay attention to who was around him, since there seemed to be few passersby to begin with. The girl's voice interrupted him so abruptly that every shadow in the area fell as though struck by gravity, dissolving before they hit the ground.

Solomon took a few deep, slow breaths to restrain the irritation and came aware of the dull, persistent ache in his thigh. He'd been sitting still for far too long.

"No," he said, gingerly stretching out his leg and wincing at the pull of the flesh wound under the bandage. "I'm afraid I need specific public areas." He looked up and studied the girl. There was a decently strong resemblance between her and Pleasant's apprentice. Dark-haired, about the same age, carried themselves in a similar manner. "If you're unnerved, perhaps you ought to continue elsewhere."

There was something odd about the girl. Something Cain didn't have. It felt like death, but--surely not? She was much too alive to be a zombie or a construct. Even Pleasant's deathliness was like a constant tenor. This was more like a dull thud in water.

"Have you suffered a near-death experience in the recent past, by chance?" he asked abruptly. It was too strong a sensation to be just that, but perhaps death came about more acutely here.

The sudden dispersal of the shadows was more frightening than the way they shifted upon her arrival. Her entire body tensed for a split second, ready to run. She settled when he didn't immediately attack her, when it occurred to her that maybe he had lost control or willingly let his abilities sink away in order to address her. Maybe he wasn't one of the monster's pets; maybe he wasn't so bad.

"There are probably a lot of things I 'ought' to do," she replied offhandedly, even giving him the obligatory air quotes to accompany the word. Then her hands settled around the strap of her bag again, watching him. Her muscles remained tense and yet she maintained the same carefree smirk. "Why do you need specific areas?"

At his question, she paled slightly and her smile slipped away. It was such an unexpected inquiry that she began to worry that he really was one of the possessed - or Malicant himself. "I'm sorry?"

Ah. Of course. Being kidnapped and brought into another dimension to fight a war on turtle-back was hardly a reason to be rude. "I do apologise," said Solomon, rising a little less smoothly than he would have liked and bowing, keeping his weight on his good leg. "Solomon Wreath. I am a Necromancer, and due to the circumstances of my arrival I unfortunately don't have all the items I usually possess for use of my magic."

He spread his hands to indicate the intersection around him. "This is a place where someone has died. I need such places to regain control of my magic since I've arrived."

Which was frustrating, and tiring, but at least not nearly as difficult as he'd feared. All that practice when he had been a bored acolyte progressing far beyond what the masters were teaching had paid off.

"I apologise also if I've startled you," he continued blandly. 'Startle' was putting it nicely. "Necromancers can tell such things. It's simply ... unusual to see someone with the shadow of death over them who isn't undead." Unusual? Impossible. Either it was a simple near-death experience or death here was far more malleable than even his dimension.

The hospital was slowly becoming a dead end with regards to inquiries about the black armour. Some had seen it, but had no idea who was inside, and couldn't tell Skulduggery anything he didn't already know. At a loss for anything else to do, particularly with the consoles as compromised as they were, Skulduggery had decided to start back at the beginning - the scene of the crime.

The fountain where the boy was killed was in the Water Sector. Skulduggery hadn't had a chance to examine much in the immediate aftermath of the explosions, and now that city life had gotten relatively back to normal, there was every chance he'd discover something new. The trick would be doing it without alerting any of Malicant's loyalists or cultists.

That would be easier said than done. Skulduggery wasn't exactly a wallflower, even when he wanted to be.

The good news was, he did discover something new before he'd even stepped into the fountain square. The bad news was, it was a person. A person who required interrogation. The last person in either dimension Skulduggery felt like interrogating, much less giving the time of day to.

He walked up without stopping, scattering the shadows that had been drifting in his way, and came to a stop in front of Wreath. "Raine was a miracle worker, I see."

In Hayley's usual backward fashion, Solomon introducing himself with a bow put her more on edge than his penchant for molding shadows. She entertained the idea of curtseying for only a split second before practically laughing at the notion, instead staring with a mixture of curiosity, admiration, skepticism, and fear. It was the dangerous people that appealed to her the most.

"Hayley Stark," she replied in introduction. He had given her enough information that depriving him of her name would be rude at best. The girl's eyes moved to scan the area, finding it unfamiliar and wondering who might have died here that would bring the man to channel this area. It was only mildly disconcerting to her that the idea of a Necromancer was no longer as fresh and exciting as it once was.

"I died, but I came back," she explained evenly, more interested in knowing more about him than in keeping her secrets. "That happens in this place. But if you're like the other necromancers I know, then you can't control me or anything, right? You can only raise the dead - most of whom are buried at sea - and.. apparently control shadows? That one's new."

A beat. "Is your last name really Wreath? Is that like W-R-E-A-T-H or like R-E-E-T-H? Does anyone ever call you Sol?"

Died, but came back. And she said it so matter-of-factly, as if it were ordinary for people to simply come back without being undead. Perhaps here it was, but if so--if so! The potential abounded. If he could learn more about that process, perhaps the Passage--well. Perhaps it wouldn't be necessary, perhaps they could make it happen more quickly. Either way, it was certainly an avenue of investigation he couldn't let Pleasant discover.

Solomon debated for a moment. Standing was making his leg ache, and he wasn't so plebeian as to lean on the wall. He was about due to stretch his magical muscles. With a motion of his hand he drew back the shadows and moulded them into a bench against the wall. Its surface shifted and its edges fluttered where they sank two-dimensionally into the wall, but when he sat down it was solid enough to hold his weight, and that was all he wanted. It gave him the opportunity to compartmentalise his use of magic, at least.

"Other Necromancers?" he asked, and didn't bother to hide his interest. "There are other Necromancers here?" That could be ... useful, depending on the manner in which their magic worked. "No, I can't. You're alive in every sense of the word; a Necromancer can only control the dead."

With some exceptions. No one had tried to control Skulduggery. No one knew enough about how he'd returned to try. The news that the dead were usually buried at sea was also useful. Solomon wasn't particularly fond of zombies, and it was unlikely the turtle had the means for him to do anything like what Serpine had done to the White Cleaver, but it was nice to know just what sort of resources he had at his disposal.

Her last question made amusement flicker across his face in the form of a smile. She was eager. His favourite acolytes had always been the ones eager to learn. He'd never found one to make his apprentice, but he still enjoyed working with them.

"No, they don't," he said, and let his amusement show in his voice. "And it's spelled W-R-E-A-T-H. It's a name I chose for myself when I was younger, to protect myself from others controlling me with my given name. Would you like to sit?" The bench was a few feet long--enough for a wary teen to leave some space for herself. He ought to be able to handle a bit of extra weight now the bench had settled. It looked like smooth obsidian, unaffected by the light.

Most of the locations Solomon had used so far consisted of streets and alleys and doorsteps. The fountain was something of a welcome change. He was getting damp, sitting on the edge as he was, but he wore his thick coat and the dampness didn't seep through to his shirt. Pleasant, really.

A moment later he felt the corona of Skulduggery's presence and sighed. He should have known better than to invoke chance.

The shadows drew away from the skeleton and then settled, drifting aimlessly around the ground and the fountain, and curling around Skulduggery's ankles like black seaweed. Solomon opened his eyes and gazed back at the skeleton, his face blank. "So she is."

His thigh was still wounded, and he still needed a bandage and a cane to get around without doing further damage, but it wasn't life-threatening and he knew enough first-aid to take care of it in the meantime. If it became a problem, he could always return to the hospital and see if they could spare some more healing for him.

What he wanted to know, right now, was why Skulduggery Pleasant had approached him of his own volition for the second time in less than two weeks. At least this time he wasn't throwing a punch.

He was pretty sure that darkness wasn't supposed to jiggle like Jell-O nor was it to recoalesce into a more perfect copy of a person. The apparition was a copy, too. The familiarity of the profile, the turn of the nose, the way her hair curled out at the nape of her neck. He knew it. It was a copy of Hayley.

If it was a copy. This wasn't natural, not something this identifiable. This wasn't being able to see Jesus in a tree if you stood to the northeast and squinted when the light hit it just right. It was immediate, so much that he ignored the caution against not distracting the man, and crouched down beside her, too quickly to be seen until he was already there. "Hayley?"

The name was a question, tinged with open concern, but it fell on deaf ears. There was no reaction, no sign that she was more than a shadow. He couldn't even see her take a breath. It was only then that fear and alarm crept in. Before, he nearly believed it could be her creating the shadows and dabbling in another physical form, but she wouldn't ignore him like this. She'd know that he wouldn't let it drop without confirmation that she was OK. Nothing she'd told him about studying magic mentioned sitting around in an alley with an old dude. Something wasn't right.

"What did you do to her?" It's meant for the seated man, but Bart's yellow eyes barely flicker in his direction. What had he said, something about not distracting him. Distracting him from what - from whatever he was doing to Hayley? It's clearly him doing it; the energy duplicates that Bart can make never look like anyone but himself, and he'd know if he was doing that. He reached out, intending to shake her shoulder as hard as necessary to provoke a reaction. "C'mon, Hayl."

For all her playing at apathy incarnate, certain things continued to pull the girl out of her act and into sincere expression. She eyed the bench curiously at first. Then her expression morphed into genuine surprise when he sat upon it, allowing the admiration and interest she felt to show in her smile. Hayley wasn't about to join him by any means, but that ability was certainly one to know of and perhaps even to endeavor to study if she could.

"But you could tell I was dead," she stated, though it was meant a question. Alive in every sense of the word would hardly mean giving off indications of death. She glanced down at herself, as if she might suddenly find herself decomposing or emitting creepy shadows of her own. Successfully reassured that she seemed as normal as a clone could ever be, she returned to look at him.

His question about other necromancers was intentionally ignored. While Sabriel's presence was common enough and she didn't really care much about Skulduggery, she had no interest in putting Nico's name out there.-

She had a brief flicker of panic, wondering if he could read her thoughts, before she realized how absurd it was to be forever paranoid of the idea. Then she was focusing on his words again, on his invitation to sit. Again she eyed the bench, again she came to the same conclusion. "And thanks, but shadow benches aren't really my thing."

The shadows curling at his feet were theoretically intangible, but Skulduggery could feel them. They drifted just on the edge of consciousness, stubbornly trying to fade from his awareness, and failing. The sensation started to make his head hurt, and so Skulduggery lifted slightly into the air to hover at a point a few centimetres off the ground, where the tips of his feet just barely cleared the shadows. For a few moments, he was content to let an awkward silence fill the space between himself and Wreath.

"What can you feel?" he asked suddenly. "Or are you practicing to become an Elemental? I have a few pointers, if that's the case. For one thing, water shouldn't be black."

A centuries-old hope flickered, as was its way, before dying. It was much more likely that Wreath could feel the death which had happened next to the fountain less than a month earlier. That gave Skulduggery a potential new lead, albeit one he wouldn't have asked for and didn't particularly want.

It was probably far too much to expect a teen to actually listen to a request for silence. Solomon sighed internally. He should have known better. Theoretically, it was good practice for his concentration, except for the part where he didn't feel like he'd quite reached a point where he could work with that sort of distraction.

He watched the teen run straight through his shadows, debated attempting to stop him, and dismissed the idea. He was obviously the hot-headed sort, and Solomon wasn't particularly inclined to get into a fight today. Particularly as his new unwanted companion knew the girl whose death he was investigating.

"She's not real," he said with faint notes of amusement in his voice. "She's merely a shade."

The teen's hand went straight through the silhouette's shoulder, sending the shadows billowing outward like ink dropped in water. Hayley's face rippled, which was just as well. It held the same expression it had when she died. Solomon let the shade dissolve, and the shadows scattered to drift aimlessly. He didn't do the same with the rest, but he wasn't on guard--yet. Simply ... prepared.

"As far as I'm aware, Miss Stark is enjoying her time elsewhere in the city," he said dryly. "I'm simply borrowing her death for research purposes."

For one thing, now he knew resurrection didn't reduce the power of a death. He hadn't expected so, since the moment of death remained static in time regardless of what happened afterward, but it was still nice to have the hypothesis confirmed.

In fact--in fact, now that he wasn't trying to summon shades, this boy had his own sort of deathliness over him. He was alive, to be sure, but there was a sort of hitch in the sensation. Solomon had sensed that hitch before. Skulduggery had it, if a slighter version of it. How interesting.

"Of course," he observed, "you've some experience with dying yourself, don't you?" He was beginning to wonder if this wasn't some sort of afterlife after all.

"As you please," Solomon said with a shrug. Perhaps not a wise girl, but a cautious one. How old was she? Thirteen or fourteen, if she was of Cain's age. Too young to be so cautious. That was, unfortunately, the way of life. The way Solomon was seeking to change. There'd be no need for caution if no one could die.

"I can," he acknowledged. "All Necromancers from my dimension can sense when death has occurred. Usually that only involves locations, but I've enough experience to sense it in people. Not--" Dryly. "--that it's terribly common. The undead are decently common where I come from, but the resurrected, not so much."

He waited another beat to give her the opportunity to answer his question, but when she didn't he prompted, "Tell me about the other Necromancers."

"Really? I can think of several rivers over the centuries which would disagree with you." The response was very nearly absent, because Solomon was regarding the inches of space between Skulduggery's shoes and the ground. That was a trick he'd never seen before. As far as he was aware, no Elemental had learned to actively fly.

Of course, given where Skulduggery had been, that wasn't terribly surprising. The intense desire to escape could create some unique talents.

"That's something you learned with the Faceless Ones, I suppose," he observed a little sourly. "I didn't realise your grudge against Necromancy had extended quite so far as refusing to touch shadows. Rather impractical, isn't it?"

He blatantly ignored the first question. If Skulduggery was asking about this particular fountain, then he was asking for the death that had occurred here. Solomon hadn't tried to sense it too deeply, yet, except that it had been violent and very, very recent. If Pleasant wanted Solomon to help investigate his little project, he'd have to offer a little more than a punch to the jaw.

"Very likely," Skulduggery agreed. "I've taken to only walking in blinding sunlight. Even then, there's one persistent shadow I'm never able to escape from."

It was very dry humour, delivered in an equally dry manner. But as far as Skulduggery was concerned, Wreath hadn't earned much more than that. The one selfless thing Wreath had gone out of his way to accomplish was suggesting the way in which Skulduggery ultimately managed to come back - and even then, the suggestion had won him the chance to train Valkyrie. A chance which, if Skulduggery were a more vindictive man, he might have pointed out led to all the trouble with the Passage and the Death Bringer in the first place.

But this wasn't the time for personal grievances.

"What can you feel?" he asked again, indicating the fountain. "This was where the armour murdered a child. If there's anything you sense that could help me find either one of them, I'd appreciate you telling me."

"You're like, freakishly polite for a necromancer." Not that Sabriel, Nico, or even Skulduggery were particularly impolite. Solomon just stood out as being more textbook in his responses and invitations. He seemed less interested in amicable approaches and more in fulfilling a need that she had yet to sparse out. She would be lying if she said she wasn't all too eager to try to learn though.

"And it's clones, not resurrection," she corrected. "Where I'm from, people don't come back at all - dead or undead. So trust me, the whole me being alive after being dead thing isn't all sunshine and rainbows or whatever."

Truth be told, she was still remarkably uncomfortable with the memory of her death. Even with Hannibal's permanent demise, some part of her knew he might still be out there in his own world or an alternate universe somewhere, wreaking havoc. Even if he wasn't, talking about her death sometimes caused a tightening in her throat or even ghost pains from what she had been through. It wasn't something she liked dealing with.

"The other necromancers are.. people like you. They do spooky things with shadows and death and they're all pretty cool. The thing is, and, well, don't take this the wrong way? But I haven't decided yet if you're a villain who's going to like, turn around and try to murder me yourself, so I feel like maybe talking about my friends is a little premature, you know?"

After a brief hesitation, Hayley moved forward to take a seat on the bench as offered before. The seat was more appealing now that she'd declined it and, in seriousness, she found herself wanting to know everything about the man.

"Although, mm. There's this one skeleton guy who's new. I don't really know enough about him to care. Magical detective guy? He's pretty cool too, but not exactly the kind of guy I'm just going to go hang out with over coffee! Maybe that's like, specie-ist or something? I don't know."

"And you've known many Necromancers?" he asked with pointed amusement. She obviously knew some, but knowing a handful was a far cry from having a handle on what they as a magical discipline were like. Especially given the difference in dimensions.

Clones. That was interesting. It also explained why the sense of death felt watered-down, for lack of a better term; Necromancers above all knew the interplay between body and soul. Her death was attached to the soul, not to the body. The body was new, and hadn't been affected by death. Very interesting.

Her honest answer made him laugh. He liked her. He did. She was blunt but without being deliberately disrespectful, and secure enough in herself to speak her mind even to those much older and more experienced. He made room for her, shifting his injured leg to a more comfortable position, and smiled. "That is true, and wise."

His smile broadened at her description of Skulduggery--or at least the part wherein she didn't care enough about him to withhold his identity--though it was slightly contemplative as well. She referred to Skulduggery as a 'Necromancer'? Curious. Though, he supposed, for a layperson an animated skeleton would classify.

"Skulduggery Pleasant," he said. "Yes, I already know him. He's from my dimension, in fact. He does have a habit of attracting attention." He paused, and his smile returned. "I do recall one collaborative investigation wherein he was under a disguise. The witness for which we were searching was in a market, and tore off Skulduggery's disguise in an attempt to escape. He was forced to act as a mannequin for a good six hours before I was able to return and retrieve him. I had to secure our witness, of course."

The last was added with utmost innocence, or would have been if it weren't for the fact that his bright eyes gleamed with internal laughter. That particular investigation had not been fun, one of the few into which they'd grudgingly entered after their split. Being able to leave Skulduggery in the middle of a marketplace for a legitimate reason Skulduggery couldn't blame on pure maliciousness had been the highlight of the entire encounter.

"No," she admitted, having no delusions about the few that she knew making any sort of respectable basis to judge from. That wouldn't stop her from judging. It also wouldn't prevent her from admitting as much. Hayley liked to be honest about her shortcomings when it didn't hurt her to be so.

A laugh was a good sign, in her mind. Making people laugh endeared one to them, gave them all the more reason to keep one around. It was an in, a way of teasing her merits before having had opportunity to prove the better ones, like her intelligence and resourcefulness. Her hands found the edge of the bench, forgetting for a moment that it was made of shadow and might swallow her whole at any minute - she'd seen enough horror films to know how it worked.

"What happened to your leg?" Tact was a thing that Hayley chose to have, when appropriate. An 'appropriate' time was only when she felt she couldn't get away without or worried she might unnecessarily upset whoever the victim of said tactlessness was. The rest of the time, she enjoyed pushing boundaries. "Is it that thing where it's asleep and you can't tell if it hurts or if it's just tingling too much?"

She really needed to spend less time with Bart.

To the latter, she smiled to confirm the identity. The story seemed comical, yet she had no reason to doubt its authenticity. How tragic for Skulduggery. The kind of tragedy that had no real personal impact for a third party listener like Hayley.

"Of course." She was pretty sure she understood his meaning. "So, wait. You two work together?"

She couldn't help but sound skeptical. Which, in turn, lead to sarcasm. "Right, totally. Because why wouldn't you be a creepy magical detective too?"

"I'm a detective," Solomon agreed with faint amusement, "but we don't work together unless it involves exceptional circumstances. Unfortunately, that happens far more frequently than either of us would like."

The last was said a little dourly. The last time they had worked together had, for Solomon, been two weeks ago, and he'd been punched twice for lending his help. He wasn't feeling particularly amiable toward Skulduggery at the moment.

He put a hand on his thigh, over where the bandages were. No warmth, no dampness, so the bandage was holding. Even still, he should avoid too much sitting on the ground for the rest of the day. Hayley's particular turn of phrase made a smile flicker across his face. "I was injured a few minutes before I arrived here," he said. "Rather severely, I'm afraid; the hospital couldn't spare the energy to heal me fully. Such is war."

His tone was accepting, if not resigned. Such was war. Such was life.

Solomon folded his hands on his lap. "Tell me about yourself, Miss Stark. You said your world has no undead. Does it have magic?"

Hayley smiled at Solomon's description of working with Skulduggery. A rivalry that could be put aside for the greater good was one of her favorite things to witness. It delighted and fascinated her to watch the dynamics of such complicated relationships unfold, with each party getting what he needed and no more.

"No. My world is totally boring. No magic, no superheroes, no aliens. I think scientists cloned a sheep once, but everyone freaked out, so they made laws against doing cloning after that." She shrugged and looked down at his leg. "I learned some magic here though."

Hayley looked back up at him, wondering how it is that she seems to have learned nothing from Lex or Jason. "I can try healing your leg a little if you want. I mean, I doubt I can fix it, but maybe I can help it heal faster or something?"

Solomon considered that. It was something of a risk, having a novice attempt any sort of magic without a more proficient sorcerer present, but for healing even more so. It was so easy for healing magic to turn to harmful. And while he certainly wasn't going to fault her offer, he didn't think he wanted to take that risk.

"Thank you," he said, "but I'm afraid I'll have to decline. Magic has a habit of going awry in the most unexpected fashions." He smiled at her. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I'd rather not have a novice healer attend me unless a master in the arts is also present."

He regarded her for a moment. "Though if you'll forgive me for saying so, I wouldn't have thought someone of your temperament would be drawn to the healing discipline. You're altogether too ..." He smiled. "Together. Healers are usually passive. You seem the more active sort."

"How unfortunate for you," Solomon said sardonically. "And I'm sure you would appreciate information. I, however, did not appreciate being punched while in the possession of a broken leg. What's in it for me?"

Even as he spoke, he was extending his senses. If this was where the armour committed its crime, he'd have already felt any Necromancy involved in the death. There hadn't been, so the victim was killed without Necromancy.

Solomon's first sense had been of forced drowning, and he'd assumed it had happened in the fountain itself. To his surprise, the core of the death happened a significant distance from the fountain, which meant it had required magic. Water-based magic. The sensation was enveloping more than suffocating, so the victim had been surrounded by water rather than simply having it forced down his throat. That was interesting. It indicated a degree of control over water that Solomon rarely saw; it was easier to drown a person in a water-source already present, rather than create one in midair, without boundaries.

How very curious. He kept all this from his expression, of course, and simply waited for Skulduggery's response.

Some part of her was relieved that he declined. For all her practice, Hayley knew she wasn't any more than a novice with magic and the last thing she would want would be to upset him in a devastating manner for any length of time. At least right now, while they were still getting to know each other.

She smiled at the specific use of her same words, genuinely amused with him. His decline bordered on condescending in her mind, toeing the line of something she would have insulted him for or made a sarcastic remark about. But he hadn't quite crossed that line and so it was easy enough to focus on his latter remarks instead.

"That's almost a compliment." Her smile slipped into a smirk, chin lifting a fraction with amusement and curiosity. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were trying to charm me, Sol."

Hayley let her eyes drift for the first time since seeing him, looking out at the view of the intersection instead of staring at him for the moment. One of her hands rested lightly on her bag - on the side opposite him - while the other sat in her lap. She was alert, even in her seeming carefree state.

"You're kind of right. I learned healing because it's useful, but it's not the only magic I know. I learned fire, pushing, pulling.. all the basics. Nothing too interesting though." She gave him a look. Nothing as interesting as his magic. "Can you travel through shadows?"

Edited (confused words) 2014-05-15 16:14 (UTC)

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 5

i'll say it to be proud

Location: the alley where Hayley Stark died.

Time: After Sol's meeting with Hayley.

Location: ambiguous intersection where Tony died; time: pre-Bart thread

no subject

no subject

no subject

Location: The fountain where Bakura was killed!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: details of death (drowning)

no subject