bit for PSL
Mar. 15th, 2018 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
donovan_deeganDominic looked at the others around the table, pulling at the edges of his gloves as they settled in. This was not going to be a pleasant conversation, but it was one that they all needed to have. His crystal ball, pages of notes, and some of his books were in front of him. Luna took the seat beside him, and gave his hand a squeeze. He took comfort in her nearness.
"Alright, Dominic, you wanted us here, we're here," Miranda said, firmly reminding him of his audience.
Dominic nodded. "I scryed Adrien's situation, and we have to discuss where to go from here."
"What's to discuss?" Donovan asked. "We help get the kid home. Don't we?"
"Much of what I've seen is... hard to interpret, because I am unfamiliar with his world, have no specific attachments to use as foci, and given the distance. So this is information as best I've been able to gather... but..."
"But that's why you're asking for help this time?" Luna guessed. "Because you need help interpreting?"
Dominic took a deep breath, wishing he had his pipe still, then shook his head. "No. Because this is going to affect all of us, in the long term."
"I think you need to fill us in some more," Miranda said, a bit grimly.
"Adrien's family... To a point all visions are comparatively clear. At some point in the very near future... his mother is going to go missing." He waited for the assorted, and expected, reactions. When they settled, he continued. "His father is going to be lost in obsession over trying to get her back. Adrien is going to be in many ways a prisoner in his own home for sometime, and even small measures of freedom will always be an inch away from being taken away from him. His life there is going to be a misery in many ways until..." He swallowed and trailed off.
"Until?" Luna prompted, softly.
Dominic looked in her eyes, looked at her and only her. "It goes grey."
Luna paled and shook her head, thinking of that sweet little boy asleep in the other room. "Grey," she whispered.
"It just means a life changing choice," he said softly. "We don't know for sure that it will be the same crossroads that you and Nimmel came to... But I can't say it wouldn't be. But short of some sort of intervention... it is the most reasonable guess given the way his life was deteriorating until then."
"Alright," Donovan said, "So we stay when we bring him back, long enough for you to find out what makes his mother disappear and stop it."
Dominic sighed, really missing his pipe. He shook his head, looking at his crystal ball again. "Something is coming here. I'm not sure what. But the Storm of Souls? It set more in motion than I can see. We're needed here. If we're gone long enough to do anything..." He swallowed. "There won't be much of anything... or anyone... we care about to come back to."
They all sat and absorbed that.
"So... we have to send that little boy back to... to die?" Luna whispered, tears in her eyes.
"To possibly take his own life sometime within the next few years," Dominic said softly. "That is one option."
"One option?" Luna jumped on the life line. "What other option is there? If we can't go and help him there..."
"We can keep him here," Miranda said softly. "That's why you want us all here. Because you want to have us raise this child. Dominic..."
"With time, I can try to focus in on what happened to his mother, from here. I can't find answers now, but the more time I spend with him... the better chance I have of breaking through. There is a complication though." He stood and pulled a marker from his pocket. "Mother?" Miranda nodded and the tabletop was covered in what looked like parchment. "Dad, Greg, what do you know about magical pathways?"
"Like... laylines?" Greg asked?
Dominic nodded. "Our world... has a lot of magic. Think of it like spider webs, each strand is a place where magic flows strongly." A map appeared on the parchment of interconnecting lines, the page more black with lines than brown with blank space. "We have thousands upon thousands of spiders adding to the use of magic, and drawing from it, Especially here in Callian. But his world..." The lines vanished and he started drawing. "It has almost no magic, but what there is...." When he was done, there was one small web, compared to what had been there before, and two even smaller ones centered off of lines off the main one, and a few tiny ones here and there mostly unconnected. "This web.." he pointed to the main one, "It exists in his world as it is. His family seems to be at the heart of it. I would wager that has something to do with the champions and butterflies he keeps talking about. These..." he tapped the two attached ones.. "As near as I can tell, the blossom around the same time as his crossroads."
"Could his crossroads be about the power?" Luna asked, standing for a better look.
"Possibly, I tried to look into that. I couldn't directly. Not by following his line, but following his world as a larger pattern... the timing fluctuates, but those webs appear within the range of one week, give or take a day on either end, no matter his choice. This web..." he tapped the stronger of the two connected ones, "fluctuates. More than the other. But they both hold strong. No matter what he chooses, these powers rise."
Luna nodded, considering. She looked to the largest web. "That...."
"His father's obsession ties into this power, but I can't see how. Not yet. Maybe once I can see more. For the moment... I just don't know. But if he stays for a while with us, I can keep researching and after whatever is coming here is over.... I know time moves differently on different planes. Klo Tarak met me long before I met him," he said softly, taking off his glasses to gesture with them. And so that he didn't have to look directly at any of them. "I figure that if we can tap into that... We can hopefully get him home as soon after he vanished as possible. But not knowing the time conversion myself, a year here could be ten minutes there, or a decade. I was hoping we could get some help with that..." he said to his mother.
"Murry?" Greg asked, perking up a bit, despite the dark topic.
"M'urr'i is an archmage of the..."
"MURRY!" Greg said, throwing a rocker hand sign in the air.
"Greg...."
"Muuuuuuuurrrrrrryyyyyy...."
"Are you quite finished, Gregory?"
"Murry...." he said, sheepishly.
"M'urr'i might be willing to help," Miranda said, glaring at her youngest, but her words were for Dominic and Luna mostly. "However, you're forgetting something important, Dominic."
"I know. I don't know the first thing about taking care of a child, and Luna and I both are starting full time jobs, that's why I was hoping that Dad and Greg might be willing to help out..."
"Not just that, Dominic," she said, then sighed. "He's a young boy, sweetie," she said with a sigh. "At his age... boys shoot up like weeds. He might stay that size all year, or in a week he might be a half a foot taller. An adult could miss a year and come back to when they left and play it off like they were never gone. But that much magic in a world with almost no other magic? His family might not believe it is him. We might be putting him back into a harder situation than we're trying to save him from."
Dominic sat down hard and as the parchment vanished, put his elbows on the table and his hands in his hair, setting his glasses on the table.
"What about his father's obsession if he's gone?" Donovan asked, softly.
Dominic leaned back a bit and put his glasses back on. This at least he had an answer for. "Honestly, I checked that already. Largely unchanged."
"He cares that little for his son?" Luna asked, eyes distant but hard. A touch from Dominic to her hand brought her back to the room.
Dominic shook his head. "As near as I can tell, the obsession is fixing his family. It's the same obsession if it is one person missing or two. The only real change is the swing in how much he is willing to risk his own safety for that end, and honestly, he's so far past the line as it is... this might change the whens, but not the overall." He looked to Luna. "He's putting all he is on the line to try and bring her back but in the visions where he is back there during that? He's suffering under his father's desperation, caged for his own safety. It isn't a man who doesn't care, it's a man who cares more than he can handle wisley. He loves his son... but that grey crossroad...."
Luna nodded slightly, letting go of some of her own anger. "Then.... what do we do?" she whispered.
"That.... is why we're here now..." he said, softly. "As I see it, we have two options. Send him home if Arch Mage M'urr'i is willing to help us, and let him take his chances, hope he makes the right choice in that grey. Or... keep him here, keep studying, and try to find a better answer down the line. Ideally, find his mother and send them home together, so that his father's extremes don't hurt any of them. But doing that..."
"Means taking care of a child, finding his missing mother a world away, and then trying to figure out how to convince them that he is the same child.... Even if he looks older," Donovan said.
"On top of keeping him, and everyone else, safe during whatever is coming," Dominic said grimly.
"How are we supposed to ask a little boy to make that choice?" Luna asked, whispered.
"We can't," Dominic said. "Ask a little boy to choose life or death? We were about his age when Jacob..." Wow, you could feel the evil eye Miranda gave him from worlds away. He shut his mouth, and changed tactics. "A boy growing up with this knowledge? The chances are high this could be what sets him off to consider suicide in the first place. Knowing the future and being unable to change it, unable to save the people you love..." he trailed off, shaking his head. Personal experience there. "We make the choice, for him."
"Can... Can we arrange a spell to send him home, but bring him back here after his mother vanishes, so they seem to his father to vanish at the same time?" Luna asked, thoughtfully. "You've seen how much he clearly loves his mother, Dominic...."
"I still don't know why or how she vanishes. I can't tie a spell to that...."
"Not why," Luna said, "when. Then he can have the time with his family that is still good.... and then come back here before it gets bad..."
"I'd... need help with that, but... maybe...." Dominic said, thoughtfully.
"The kid has that hero complex..." Greg said, thoughtfully. "What if we offer him a different choice...?"
"What choice?" Dominic asked.
"I get it," Donovan said. "We tell him we need his help, because his mother will be in danger in the future, but he can help us save her, that's all true. He can choose to stay here now and get started immediately, or go back home for awhile first, since she isn't in danger yet... so he can be with her, and come back here when she needs us...."
"Maybe, that has potential," Dominic admitted. "It's going to have to be phrased carefully...."
"I could make the offer in Orcish..." Donovan suggested.
"Dad, we really don't need him wondering why you are offering him purple kittens in the spring... " He rubbed at his face.
"I'm a bard, and a father. I can do this, Dominic...." he said, a bit more seriously.
"If we send him back, I'm going to have to find a way to suppress his memories of us, of this place, until he's back."
"Can you do it? Without hurting him?" Luna asked.
"I'm pretty sure. If I do it soon." Dominic hesitated then looked at them all. "Either way...can we really raise a child, not knowing what's coming?"
"We did," Miranda said with a bit of a smile.
"I say we do it," Luna said. "We can't send him back to kill himself, and if we can help his family...."
Dominic nodded, "I agree."
"Pam and I wouldn't mind babysitting, I'm sure," Greg said.
"Miranda and I have been getting tired of waiting for our boys to make us some grandkids..." Donovan said.
"What? Quilt doesn't cover it?" Greg teased.
"Hey, I love that guy, my jokes leave him in stitches."
Miranda rubbed her face slightly. "We are willing to help, Dominic."
"If I am going to block his memories.... it has to be soon. We need to ask him tomorrow."
"After breakfast, then," Donovan said.
Dominic nodded. "If... if he chooses to go back, we'll need a sleep spell so I can work..."
"I can work one into his tea," Luna offered.
Dominic nodded. "Alright then. Tomorrow morning...."
"Alright, Dominic, you wanted us here, we're here," Miranda said, firmly reminding him of his audience.
Dominic nodded. "I scryed Adrien's situation, and we have to discuss where to go from here."
"What's to discuss?" Donovan asked. "We help get the kid home. Don't we?"
"Much of what I've seen is... hard to interpret, because I am unfamiliar with his world, have no specific attachments to use as foci, and given the distance. So this is information as best I've been able to gather... but..."
"But that's why you're asking for help this time?" Luna guessed. "Because you need help interpreting?"
Dominic took a deep breath, wishing he had his pipe still, then shook his head. "No. Because this is going to affect all of us, in the long term."
"I think you need to fill us in some more," Miranda said, a bit grimly.
"Adrien's family... To a point all visions are comparatively clear. At some point in the very near future... his mother is going to go missing." He waited for the assorted, and expected, reactions. When they settled, he continued. "His father is going to be lost in obsession over trying to get her back. Adrien is going to be in many ways a prisoner in his own home for sometime, and even small measures of freedom will always be an inch away from being taken away from him. His life there is going to be a misery in many ways until..." He swallowed and trailed off.
"Until?" Luna prompted, softly.
Dominic looked in her eyes, looked at her and only her. "It goes grey."
Luna paled and shook her head, thinking of that sweet little boy asleep in the other room. "Grey," she whispered.
"It just means a life changing choice," he said softly. "We don't know for sure that it will be the same crossroads that you and Nimmel came to... But I can't say it wouldn't be. But short of some sort of intervention... it is the most reasonable guess given the way his life was deteriorating until then."
"Alright," Donovan said, "So we stay when we bring him back, long enough for you to find out what makes his mother disappear and stop it."
Dominic sighed, really missing his pipe. He shook his head, looking at his crystal ball again. "Something is coming here. I'm not sure what. But the Storm of Souls? It set more in motion than I can see. We're needed here. If we're gone long enough to do anything..." He swallowed. "There won't be much of anything... or anyone... we care about to come back to."
They all sat and absorbed that.
"So... we have to send that little boy back to... to die?" Luna whispered, tears in her eyes.
"To possibly take his own life sometime within the next few years," Dominic said softly. "That is one option."
"One option?" Luna jumped on the life line. "What other option is there? If we can't go and help him there..."
"We can keep him here," Miranda said softly. "That's why you want us all here. Because you want to have us raise this child. Dominic..."
"With time, I can try to focus in on what happened to his mother, from here. I can't find answers now, but the more time I spend with him... the better chance I have of breaking through. There is a complication though." He stood and pulled a marker from his pocket. "Mother?" Miranda nodded and the tabletop was covered in what looked like parchment. "Dad, Greg, what do you know about magical pathways?"
"Like... laylines?" Greg asked?
Dominic nodded. "Our world... has a lot of magic. Think of it like spider webs, each strand is a place where magic flows strongly." A map appeared on the parchment of interconnecting lines, the page more black with lines than brown with blank space. "We have thousands upon thousands of spiders adding to the use of magic, and drawing from it, Especially here in Callian. But his world..." The lines vanished and he started drawing. "It has almost no magic, but what there is...." When he was done, there was one small web, compared to what had been there before, and two even smaller ones centered off of lines off the main one, and a few tiny ones here and there mostly unconnected. "This web.." he pointed to the main one, "It exists in his world as it is. His family seems to be at the heart of it. I would wager that has something to do with the champions and butterflies he keeps talking about. These..." he tapped the two attached ones.. "As near as I can tell, the blossom around the same time as his crossroads."
"Could his crossroads be about the power?" Luna asked, standing for a better look.
"Possibly, I tried to look into that. I couldn't directly. Not by following his line, but following his world as a larger pattern... the timing fluctuates, but those webs appear within the range of one week, give or take a day on either end, no matter his choice. This web..." he tapped the stronger of the two connected ones, "fluctuates. More than the other. But they both hold strong. No matter what he chooses, these powers rise."
Luna nodded, considering. She looked to the largest web. "That...."
"His father's obsession ties into this power, but I can't see how. Not yet. Maybe once I can see more. For the moment... I just don't know. But if he stays for a while with us, I can keep researching and after whatever is coming here is over.... I know time moves differently on different planes. Klo Tarak met me long before I met him," he said softly, taking off his glasses to gesture with them. And so that he didn't have to look directly at any of them. "I figure that if we can tap into that... We can hopefully get him home as soon after he vanished as possible. But not knowing the time conversion myself, a year here could be ten minutes there, or a decade. I was hoping we could get some help with that..." he said to his mother.
"Murry?" Greg asked, perking up a bit, despite the dark topic.
"M'urr'i is an archmage of the..."
"MURRY!" Greg said, throwing a rocker hand sign in the air.
"Greg...."
"Muuuuuuuurrrrrrryyyyyy...."
"Are you quite finished, Gregory?"
"Murry...." he said, sheepishly.
"M'urr'i might be willing to help," Miranda said, glaring at her youngest, but her words were for Dominic and Luna mostly. "However, you're forgetting something important, Dominic."
"I know. I don't know the first thing about taking care of a child, and Luna and I both are starting full time jobs, that's why I was hoping that Dad and Greg might be willing to help out..."
"Not just that, Dominic," she said, then sighed. "He's a young boy, sweetie," she said with a sigh. "At his age... boys shoot up like weeds. He might stay that size all year, or in a week he might be a half a foot taller. An adult could miss a year and come back to when they left and play it off like they were never gone. But that much magic in a world with almost no other magic? His family might not believe it is him. We might be putting him back into a harder situation than we're trying to save him from."
Dominic sat down hard and as the parchment vanished, put his elbows on the table and his hands in his hair, setting his glasses on the table.
"What about his father's obsession if he's gone?" Donovan asked, softly.
Dominic leaned back a bit and put his glasses back on. This at least he had an answer for. "Honestly, I checked that already. Largely unchanged."
"He cares that little for his son?" Luna asked, eyes distant but hard. A touch from Dominic to her hand brought her back to the room.
Dominic shook his head. "As near as I can tell, the obsession is fixing his family. It's the same obsession if it is one person missing or two. The only real change is the swing in how much he is willing to risk his own safety for that end, and honestly, he's so far past the line as it is... this might change the whens, but not the overall." He looked to Luna. "He's putting all he is on the line to try and bring her back but in the visions where he is back there during that? He's suffering under his father's desperation, caged for his own safety. It isn't a man who doesn't care, it's a man who cares more than he can handle wisley. He loves his son... but that grey crossroad...."
Luna nodded slightly, letting go of some of her own anger. "Then.... what do we do?" she whispered.
"That.... is why we're here now..." he said, softly. "As I see it, we have two options. Send him home if Arch Mage M'urr'i is willing to help us, and let him take his chances, hope he makes the right choice in that grey. Or... keep him here, keep studying, and try to find a better answer down the line. Ideally, find his mother and send them home together, so that his father's extremes don't hurt any of them. But doing that..."
"Means taking care of a child, finding his missing mother a world away, and then trying to figure out how to convince them that he is the same child.... Even if he looks older," Donovan said.
"On top of keeping him, and everyone else, safe during whatever is coming," Dominic said grimly.
"How are we supposed to ask a little boy to make that choice?" Luna asked, whispered.
"We can't," Dominic said. "Ask a little boy to choose life or death? We were about his age when Jacob..." Wow, you could feel the evil eye Miranda gave him from worlds away. He shut his mouth, and changed tactics. "A boy growing up with this knowledge? The chances are high this could be what sets him off to consider suicide in the first place. Knowing the future and being unable to change it, unable to save the people you love..." he trailed off, shaking his head. Personal experience there. "We make the choice, for him."
"Can... Can we arrange a spell to send him home, but bring him back here after his mother vanishes, so they seem to his father to vanish at the same time?" Luna asked, thoughtfully. "You've seen how much he clearly loves his mother, Dominic...."
"I still don't know why or how she vanishes. I can't tie a spell to that...."
"Not why," Luna said, "when. Then he can have the time with his family that is still good.... and then come back here before it gets bad..."
"I'd... need help with that, but... maybe...." Dominic said, thoughtfully.
"The kid has that hero complex..." Greg said, thoughtfully. "What if we offer him a different choice...?"
"What choice?" Dominic asked.
"I get it," Donovan said. "We tell him we need his help, because his mother will be in danger in the future, but he can help us save her, that's all true. He can choose to stay here now and get started immediately, or go back home for awhile first, since she isn't in danger yet... so he can be with her, and come back here when she needs us...."
"Maybe, that has potential," Dominic admitted. "It's going to have to be phrased carefully...."
"I could make the offer in Orcish..." Donovan suggested.
"Dad, we really don't need him wondering why you are offering him purple kittens in the spring... " He rubbed at his face.
"I'm a bard, and a father. I can do this, Dominic...." he said, a bit more seriously.
"If we send him back, I'm going to have to find a way to suppress his memories of us, of this place, until he's back."
"Can you do it? Without hurting him?" Luna asked.
"I'm pretty sure. If I do it soon." Dominic hesitated then looked at them all. "Either way...can we really raise a child, not knowing what's coming?"
"We did," Miranda said with a bit of a smile.
"I say we do it," Luna said. "We can't send him back to kill himself, and if we can help his family...."
Dominic nodded, "I agree."
"Pam and I wouldn't mind babysitting, I'm sure," Greg said.
"Miranda and I have been getting tired of waiting for our boys to make us some grandkids..." Donovan said.
"What? Quilt doesn't cover it?" Greg teased.
"Hey, I love that guy, my jokes leave him in stitches."
Miranda rubbed her face slightly. "We are willing to help, Dominic."
"If I am going to block his memories.... it has to be soon. We need to ask him tomorrow."
"After breakfast, then," Donovan said.
Dominic nodded. "If... if he chooses to go back, we'll need a sleep spell so I can work..."
"I can work one into his tea," Luna offered.
Dominic nodded. "Alright then. Tomorrow morning...."
