Abraxas Domain

[speak_n_spell]

Scale the steep pitch of the Singularity’s crater, and eventually the stone and scree gives way to low herbaceous scrub. Look up, and trees begin to dot the hillside, growing ever thicker and greener and denser the farther one walks. Mist wreathes their roots, rising from carpets of moss flung over the enormous matchstick tumble of other, fallen, trees. Look down again, and realize there’s a track of sorts underfoot - twin ruts pressed into the ground, giving rise to the rich scent of crushed ferns. The tracks weave through the trees, so large now that their boughs shade out smaller saplings, trunks enormous columns yards and yards apart. Plenty of room for a wagon to pass. The sun glows emerald through broad leaves, thickening the humid air like honey. Follow the tracks.




A colossal tree reached the end of its lifespan and toppled, punching a hole in the canopy as it took neighbors down with it. The open space torn up by its roots has long grown over with grasses and wideleafed ferns. A spring bubbles from a jumble of rocks unearthed by the rootwad, trickling over and through and beneath mossy rocks until it pools in a basin lined with pebbles and reeds. Look a little closer, and signs of human modification to the pool become clear: stones set in place to keep the water from seeping back into the ground straightaway, lillypads and algae scooped away so the water source won’t be choked out. Similar clues pop out from the glade’s too—perfect beauty; intermingled with the shrubs are berry bushes, runners of beans, clusters of corn and wheat, a low-lying patch of strawberries. Tucked in the hollow of the downed tree itself is a mortared stone oven, with an iron pot hung from a tripod nearby. A little fence of woven saplings keeps a handful of goats from churning the pool to mud or stripping the berries and beans, but does nothing to stop as many chickens from scratching the entire area for insects. One of them is perpetually napping on the stone oven, unconcerned about ending up in the pot.




Intricately carved and brightly painted in blues and yellows and greens, the bow-roofed wagon sits around the backside of the giant fallen tree. The biggest mystery of the domain is how the wagon isn’t the first thing anyone notices. Bundles of herbs hang from the eaves above the door, alternating with wind chimes of bleached wood, bone, and glass. The shutters stand open and light shines from inside, visible even during the brightest daytime hours. The door may or may not be open, but a glance inside reveals many cunningly-inset cabinets and drawers, their surfaces serving double-duty as benches, tabletops, counters, and bed platforms. Every surface is carved and painted with motifs of plants, animals, or even people going about their tasks. Any area not so embellished is padded with elaborately embroidered and woven textiles, cushions, or curtains. A fat iron-belly stove squats in one corner, a kettle perpetually nearby.




Behind the stone oven, much of the tree’s heartwood has rotted away. A dark tunnel stretches beyond the light of the fire, twice as tall as a person and three times as wide. Take a light and venture inside, and a secondary workspace is revealed; shelves and worktables carved into the sapwood, lined with books and papers, bound and unbound, stoppered vials of inks and tinctures, scales and weights and other tools meant to render materials to their base components. Smokeless lanterns hang at regular intervals from the ceiling, interspersed here and there with bored chimney holes to vent smoke and fumes. Reed mats line the floor, new overlaying old where the resident rodents and birds have caused damage. A screech owl squints balefully from the farthest recesses of the trunk. It may or may not swoop at visitors.

Comments

[speak_n_spell]

Of course, you're a friend of Alucard's, and I happen to like you just fine all on my own. [Sypha crosses her legs, sets an elbow on her knee, and her chin in her hand. He looks rattled, fidgety, and not just in a 'brimming with energy all of the time' sort of way.

It's not exactly a surprise when the latest Singularity nonsense is at the root of Jaskier's ill ease. What knocks the bottom out of her stomach is that he saw into Alucard's past, a spike of horror and denial that he might have experienced the same thing she did--but, no. A sick sort of relief overwhelms her when it turns out to be merely the other worst day of Adrian Tepes' life.

She turns her mouth against the palm of her hand and closes her eyes for a moment, simply breathing through her nose until her heartbeat evens out. Then she straightens up and folds her hands on the table.] Yes, yes I can see how...I mean, I understand how it's difficult to talk about that, with him. [She's barely managed, and she was there]

I meant what I said before: I'm at your disposal. Do you have, um, questions, or do you need to talk about how very very fucked up it is?

[cointosser]

[The compliment gets only a twitch of his lips when, on a normal day, he would absolutely flatter her back -- Sypha is a beautiful woman, after all, and he finds both her bubbly energy and her work with magic fascinating, especially when he is still such a novice with the latter.

Today is not a normal day, nor is this a normal visit.

Finally he reaches for the wine, having started the conversation, and swallows it heavily, missing all its fine hints of fruit.]

I don't know. Honestly, I wanted to tell him I don't know how this would help. But... having someone who was there, who understands it, is relieving, in a strange way. [Not that he's happy she was there, that she had to aid him in this... it was a mission, was it not?] I've spoken to Hector about him. Dracula. Er. [He starts pulling a string out of his coat.] I don't know if you've met. He worked for Dracula, for a time. As he told me. And I know bits of him from Hector, and even less from Alucard, and I suppose... I want to know what made him that way. In the moment I saw him, he sounded terribly weighed down with regret. But Alucard did not hesitate to end his life anyway.

[speak_n_spell]

[A muscle bunches at the corner of Sypha's jaw as Jaskier recounts his fragmented understanding of Dracula's onesided murder-suicide pact. She sees, now, why Alucard sent him her way: because she is, above all else, a Speaker. Her very purpose on this earth is the collection and recounting of history, as many facets of it as possible. Speakers are not unbiased, no human perspective ever is, but they do their utmost to map causes to their effects, and the paths are rarely direct lines from good to good, or evil to evil.

Sypha always assumed she'd have to separate her lived rage and pain and horror from an accounting of Dracula's war one day, if she survived. A first hand record like hers will be priceless to future historians. Only, it isn't even over yet. Abraxas snatched her away in the middle of another bloody sortie. She's barely had time to process anything she's survived this past year, she's not ready to be dispassionate about it.

Fuck you very much, Adrian Tepes.]

Ironically enough, I first met Hector here in the Free Cities. Our paths never crossed in all the bloodshed, which was..probably for the best. [Speakers don't take human life, as a rule, but she's become a very unusual sort of Speaker recently. She presses her palms to the tabletop, takes a deep breath, and tries to exhale as many of her misgivings as possible.] I'll do my best to paint you the whole picture as accurately as I can, with the information I have. But, before I start, I want--I need to make one thing very clear. [Sypha leans forward, entreating him to listen, to understand.]

By the time that memory happened, Dracula was directly responsible for the deaths of half of Wallachia's human population. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of innocent people torn apart by monsters and vampires. It sickens me that Alucard had to be the one to stop him, that he was the only one who could, but please don't doubt for a second that it needed doing.

[cointosser]

[The sound he makes is one of half-hearted amusement, because, simply put, he agrees. He does not bring up that Hector has been a light in his heart here, even for all his past mistakes; it is a complicated relationship, as he understands it, what Hector had with Dracula. And he would not have wished for anything that would have resulted in any further pain for his lover.

But it says plenty, he thinks, that he did not go to Hector for further information on this story, either.

Jaskier's hand still where they pick at his coat.]

Hector had mentioned something as much, some time ago. [He looks away not because he disapproves of her request, but because he is staring at the evidence now of how the past year of memories -- whether he has lived them or not -- has changed him. He swallows only saliva, not wine, rubbing the temples under his hanging bangs.] It is hard to explain, that I was a not quite as worldly, in a way, when he told me. I thought of it as a tragic story. One which, while being told, being remembered, holds no outward effect on my life.

[He inwardly winces now to hear it. But what was he to think of it? It is another sphere, another peoples, and another bloodthirsty war. There is always some sort of war. There is always bloodshed. Geralt had warned him as such some years ago, but he had not had the lifetime, really, to understand it. Now he has seen the brutal sweeping of war. He has heard how the wiping out of life in Sodden Hill was described like a hand sweeping ants from a table.]

But that change is a story for another time, I think. I have lived through true warfare myself now. A change in perspective. Suffice to say, I can find empathy and pity where I find it needs to be placed, without losing sight of the forest's entirety.

[speak_n_spell]

[He speaks in a winding, twisting, almost temporally disconnected way that sharply reminds her of Speaker Elders. Sypha can't say she completely understands what he's trying to get at, what he's experienced, but she trusts that his empathy is genuine.] My grandfather used to say that, just because we find a story in our past doesn't mean it originated there. That sometimes, it's possible to hear stories from the future, and that those can change the courses of our lives. It sounds like you might know something about that.

[Sypha takes a moment to sip from her cup. The Horizon may not be real, but she feels all the normal physical impacts from activities - like a mild burn from bubbling ink, or a dry throat after a chat. This is going to be a long story, she'd better pace herself. She sets it in easy reach, rolls her shoulders back, and falls into the cadence of a practiced orator.] The story is a tragedy, born of ignorance. You likely already know that Alucard's mother was human, and that his father was Dracula, the most powerful vampire in our world. In many ways, he ruled over all corporeal monsters, and commanded many other spirits and wraiths. But he was also ancient, and reclusive, and did not keep human chattel like many of his vassels. He'd been withdrawn to his Castle for so long that most ordinary people thought he was only a myth. There was an...uneasy sort of truce, between him and other scholars of magic, or those who protected humanity from lesser monsters.

Alucard's mother drew him out of that isolation. From what little he's told me about her, she was an extraordinary woman, who convinced Dracula that he could not judge humanity from his towers. Somehow she encouraged him to travel the world and live among humans as one of them, so he would leave on periodic sabbaticals.

In the summer of 1476, a Bishop of the Church in Targoviste came to Lisa Tepes' home and arrested her on charges of witchcraft. She was a doctor, and they were men who maintained their power by convincing the populace that their only hope of salvation was through God. Scientific remedies threatened that power, as does magic, so both were punishable through the Church. They took her away, bound her to a stake in Targoviste's main square, and burned her alive.

[Sypha interlaces her fingers, thumb tapping a rhythm that directs the flow of her words. Her expression is oddly calm, voice matter-of-fact, an observer removed from the events she recounts. But her hands shake ever so slightly.] Dracula's face appeared in the flames of his wife's pyre. In his rage and grief, he gave the people of Wallachia one year to make their peace with death, and remove all marks of human occupation from the land. The Church did their best to repress this information in the aftermath, but some did heed the warning and took their families abroad. Most, though, lacked the means.

Based on Alucard's own account, he overheard his father's pronouncement and immediately spoke in opposition. His mother was human, and she'd believed that knowledge and education would elevate humanity and overthrow institutions like the Church. I don't know that he personally agrees with that view most of the time, but in deference to her memory and wishes, he defied his father. And Dracula nearly killed him for it. [Sypha touches her chest, drawing along the line of an imaginary slash. Jaskier must have noticed the scar - Alucard goes around with his shirt open 86% of the time. Perhaps he's even shared its origin with the bard before.] He barely survived, and fled to a private sanctuary beneath the city of Gresit. One year and five months later, I and the last member of a bloodline of monster hunters, ah, disturbed his rest.

[Her own appearance in the story triggers a noticeable shift in her tone. Sypha frowns and drums her fingers on the tabletop.] I don't know if the fact that Dracula failed to kill him the first time was intentional. And he never went to Gresit to hunt Alucard down, though he could have. There's no real chance he didn't know about the sanctuary. Perhaps, even in the immediacy of his grief, he couldn't bring himself to actually murder his own son. Or maybe he was too busy preparing an army of a hundred thousand Night Creatures to ravage the country, who can say.

[This makes a natural place to break, wet her throat, and leave Jaskier some room to react - she may be a trained to share history, but so much of that relies on the listener coming from the same cultural context. Maybe none of this is making sense at all.]

[cointosser]

[Her deduction makes his raise his eyes sharply, staring at her. If he didn't know better, he would somehow guess she read his mind, or something similar -- that Sypha knew exactly what had happened with Ciri, with the Singularity, with the new memories of the Continent that cling to his shoulders like an unwanted ghost.]

I... yes. You've put it surprisingly succinctly, actually.

[She's hit the nail on the head, so to speak. But he doesn't want to get into it. Later, as he said. This whole visit is about Alucard, and with the dhamphir's blessing, he wants to learn of this past that has alluded conversation between him and his friend for months.

Jaskier shifts as he feels the air in the wagon sucked towards her, waiting for the story to begin. His shoulder rests against the wall, letting it flow over him. A storyteller himself, he knows far better than to interrupt. His attention is on her words, and he nods at something he's known before -- a small tidbit from Hector, or the soft tone of Alucard's voice when he mentions his mother -- and then still when it's new to him, hidden in the past of a completely separate sphere.

Sypha is a thorough storyteller though, a practiced one. A smooth voice with her prickly accent that demands to hold one's attention. The things he can imagine come easily. Pushing the words I'm killing our boy to the back of his mind, almost forcefully.

He sucks in a breath. Burned alive. Murdered, then, by the Church. And Dracula, instead of destroying the Church who had done such a thing, wrote off an entire race. (Do humans not do the same? The images he'd seen carved into the trunk of Bleobheris, painted on the walls of Oxenfurt: pigs with pointed ears, the only good elf is a dead elf, elves in chains, elves lying in the mud without breathing, elves huddling together on a ship.)

His hand goes across his chest. Yes, he saw it, after long enough, but he had known better than to ask considering the trauma Alucard had spoken to him about a few weeks ahead of the reveal. In some part of him, he'd wondered if the two things were related.

Jaskier leans back. Takes a breath that moves his shoulders up, down. His hand combs through his hair. In his heart, having heard those words in the memory, he cannot help but think -- or is it only fragile, foolish hope? -- that the man could not kill his son, not in Gresit, and not after he gave into whatever psychopathy turned him to genocide.

For a moment, he puts his head in his hands, recalling how Hector told him he'd aided in this. How Dracula, he said, had been the only person who had offered a hand to him. And he had helped Dracula kill people for misdirected revenge.]

That is completely fucked. [A wonderful, succinct way to summarize. And with dull understanding:] It is hardly a wonder he wants to sleep.

[In that crypt, he means, escaping from a lives that are over and haunt him: his parents, his lovers, both sides of his heritage.]

/endlessly making a high pitched noise not unlike a broken fire alarm/

[speak_n_spell]

['Completely fucked' is such a Belmont way of summing up the whole sordid mess, Sypha almost snorts a laugh. Only the heavy echo of the story - and the parts still untold - smother her humor. She only nods.] I can understand the impulse, even if it didn't work out for him the first time. Sometimes it's easier to heal in sleep. [And sometimes it's an escape mechanism as dangerous as intoxicants or a death wish. Even now, she cannot wrap her mind around Alucard's declared choice, but it's the least of the issues that need sorting out between them.

Her somber face turns pensive as a tangent tugs her from the story.] The reason we went looking for him under Gresit was a...not a prophecy, exactly. My grandfather thought it was one of those stories shared from a future. A retrospective on events, you know? It sounds similar enough to what you've described that now I wonder if... [There's no way to know if the Singularity is anything like some of the more esoteric Speaker magics, the stuff outside Sypha's niche. But surely there can't be too many methods of accessing future knowledge. She dismisses the thought with a shake of her head and recenters herself.]

What did you see of the battle? Only Dracula's death? Or, say rather, Alucard's perception of it?

[Does Jaskier think him as much a monster as Alucard sometimes sees himself? Sypha remembers dashing into the room, Dracula's smouldering body looming over Alucard, the flash of Trevor's sword--but as many times as she revists it in her head, Dracula isn't trying to drag his son into death with him. He's just...grasping for something out of reach.]