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Liem Talbott

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Liem's mindscape is dark; quiet; contemplative. Any feelings or sensations that Liem doesn't intentionally project himself seem distant, as though echoing from a far-off room. Following any given sense to its source is bafflingly difficult.

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[It has been days since the shardbearers went to Alenroux and discovered that it was deserted before nightfall for a reason. Even more days since the leaders of the Meridian and Zenith had called upon their followers to investigate the fate of a missing man, and ask for his rescue or the retrieval of his shard. It’s been a week since a priest of Abadar and a jinba archer had set foot into the woods of Alenroux for their own reasons… and if sheen half a day less than that since Liem Talbott had died on the forest floor.

What made it worse was that Hayame had been there, and yet because of her weakness… For most intents and purposes, Liem had died alone.

More debt. More things between them that she does not know what to do. In her ignorance, Hayame does only what she feels is her duty, what she feels is owed… what she hasn’t begun to pay him back yet. She stands guard, she warns others off stepping on this patch of root-filled land, and-

She tires. The man who had healed her had warned her that her body would pull from its own physical capabilities to reknit flesh and reseal blood vessels, but still she is exhausted. Exhausted enough that… When Liem begins to awaken and claw his way free from the roots…

Hayame is a deep in sleep by his “bedside”, curled up tight and her face pillowed in the crook of a limb.]

Edited 2022-11-20 13:32 (UTC)

[Liem comes to wakefulness gradually, becoming aware of a softness weighting his limbs and slowing his thoughts. He crawls free of the feeling bit by bit, and as he does so, he pushes at the membranous womb of sap and earth and root that now cradles him. He is at the Tree again, and this time he is the one being birthed from its maze of root and soil. The thought dawns on him as his fingers claw through a thin layer of dirt and punch through to air.

His hatching is not a swift one. His limbs now remember the jelly-like weakness that had overtaken them when he was first summoned, and he needs to rest frequently. As he discovers, however, despite his dampness and his confinement, he is not unclothed. He is still wrapped in the sturdy garments he'd worn to Alenroux, and although they are still torn in places from the final moments of his fight, he is relieved to find that they smell of nothing but sap and petrichor.

He's pulled himself half out of his cocoon and is slumped limply against a large nearby root when he spies the sleeping figure curled nearby. His heart lifts when he sees that, aside from some clear amount of exhaustion, she seems to be as whole and well as he could have hoped for. He has to clear a week's worth of disuse from his throat before he can raise his voice enough to speak.]

Hayame.

[Normally, the slightest noise would wake her. Hayame had trained herself to respond to any possible threat, to sleep with one eye open (metaphorically), and yet… this isn’t a normal sleep. In the space of an hour her body had been forced by magic to repair wounds that, if by some miracle hadn’t killed her, would have taken weeks to heal… and that sort of thing wasn’t free. Honestly, she didn’t want it to be.

But it means that she sleeps like the dead now, deep and still beyond the slow, rhythmic rise of her chests. She almost looks peaceful, even as fingers break the seal of the sap cocoon and claw the earth, as a whole man begins to drag himself free…

Until he says her name. That registers somewhere, she stirs herself, forelegs and back curling momentarily in tighter to her belly as if all ready to reject the offer of wakefulness and curl in tighter to sleep… But there’s a reason she should wake up. There was something important-

An eye opens. The only one she has left, still a bit red with burst vessels at the edge but intact again, resealed, and most important… she can see him. Her pupil dilates, her body is slow to respond, but she should say…

What did she say?

She’d practiced and pondered a thousand times in the days it took his body to reform around the shard she had carried at her breast in weary, bloody steps from the woods of Alenroux to gently place in the soil of the Tree, so now… Why doesn’t she know what to say? None of it seems right-]

… Liem.

[His isn’t the only voice there rusty from disuse.]

[He watches her stir, come to wakefulness in a slow and heavy way that he would never have expected from the hawk-eyed woman at his side a week ago. Liem sees her lift her head from its pillowed position in the crook of her arm, and sees her open her one remaining eye to meet his gaze.

The expression that spreads over his face is just as slow and weary as she looks, but it is intensely grateful.]

You brought me here?

[She doesn't need to answer; he knows she did. Like the details of an especially vivid dream, he remembers her hand plucking him from the forest floor and her determination accompanying him during the rest of the dark, friendless night that followed. Her presence had been rough and jagged and pain-filled, but it wasn't loneliness, and that made it a comfort as he'd nestled close to her labouring heart.

He finds the strength to crawl further out of the gaping wound in his chrysalis, hauling first one leg out and then the other so he can slump with a sigh down next to it.]

Thank you.

[She means to extend a hand to him, to offer her help in pulling himself from the strange cocoon of sap and roots and grave dirt, but…

Though she had let him ride astride her back in the heat of battle… she hesitates to touch him now, in a moment that is without the surge of desperation and fear that had allowed her to abandon the cultural mores that kept her so apart from the other shardbearers. She wanted- She wanted to, she knows it would be so easy for another, and yet… her fingers just curl in the soil instead of fastening around his hand, and he… He helps himself out.]

I did.

[She answers, instead, though she does not do much to his thanks but briefly bow her head. It wasn’t deserving of thanks. They had fought beside each other, and it had been her duty, as long as she’d drawn breath, to try and save him as well. Barely… she had managed it. Only barely.]

Are you-

[Hayame has been reminded all these days as she waited for him to revive that… She didn’t know how to care for another person. Even though she meant to, and she has brought things that she prepared… She swallows, awkwardly trying to make her exhaustion heavy limbs pick herself further out of her impromptu nap.]

Are you yet in pain? If you hunger, I have… water, and food.

[What did people who came back from the “dead” require?]

Not in pain, no.

[Liem glances down at himself when Hayame asks, as if to confirm that he’s properly whole, but below the rents and punctures in his tree-damp leather, he feels completely whole. Tired, yes, and not entirely well—much as he’d been that first day after emerging from the sarcophagus beneath Yima’s manor, after the worst of the sickness had passed. But despite a certain shakiness in his limbs and a residual unease inhabiting his guts and lungs and head, he’s untroubled by any sickness or injury.]

I should probably try to eat something, though.

[It has been a week since anything last passed his lips, after all. Important as food and water seem, though, they aren’t the things foremost on his mind. Thoughts of the dream he’d had during his long sleep bubble to the surface, making his gaze turn more intent as he regards Hayame.]

… Did we slay it? Do you have the shard?

[He barely smells like blood anymore. All that fills her senses is rich earth and growth... as ironic and twisted as that somehow felt. Since their encounter, she's been obliged to change her own clothing, the torn and blood-soaked sleeveless robe replaced by a secondhand, slightly patched blouse that doesn't seem to fit very well. But fit had been the least of her concerns below modesty, and without a stipend from either sect and only what coin she'd had leftover from the few times she'd disgraced herself to serve as a packmule for hire... She'd spent most of her money on other things.

Like the canteen and cloth bag she achingly moves to grab from the other side of her heavy body, placing it wordlessly beside him. Inside the bag, a few basics- a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, strips of dried meat, and a salt-preserved fish. No words accompany it, just... an offering. She uses her few words for more important things.]

We did.

[At that cost, but... They had. And still, days later... her now empty hand moves to the sash about her "waist", hovering subconsciously over one side of it as she nods, her expression dead serious.]

... and I do.

[She had found it near to his, in the bloody, rot-covered grass. Found it, and thought he was dead, only to feel relief too soon when it hadn't... felt like him. But since then... She has it, still.

It is not hers alone to decide what to do with.]

[Although neither food or water are what he wants most right now, Liem accepts the canteen and the bag of food, placing the bag in his lap while he uncaps the canteen to wet his throat. Although he doesn’t drink more than a few sips, the water does at least help to rinse some of the iron-sweet taste of sap from his mouth.

Having done that, he recaps the canteen and places it down, leaning it against his leg.]

I thought you might. I had… a dream, before I emerged.

[His fingers work at the ties on the bag, easing it open while his head remains leant back against the roots, his gaze on Hayame. By the weight and bulk of the bag, he doubts he’s going to eat most of what’s inside, at least at the present moment. But he suspects Hayame doesn’t want it back.]

It was about the man: the one whose shard that is.

… a dream.

[Do the dead dream? Hayame almost doubts it, until she remembers… that the way she always thinks about this process is inherently flawed. In Horos, in this place… The shardbearers didn’t die just because their body did. Somehow. Liem hadn’t been dead, he had been… a hunk of crystal without a mouth to speak or limbs to move. A “soul”. And “souls” didn’t die easily.

Supposedly.]

Are you prophet as well as priest?

[But she’s still looking at him. To him, for more information on this “dream”, her fingers hovering near the cracked shard in her sash.]

[Although Liem smiles faintly at the question that Hayame asks—prophecy is certainly not an ability he has ever had—her question is a legitimate one. He shakes his head gently as he withdraws the crusty little loaf from the bag in his lap.]

Not a prophet, no. But the dream I had… it felt like communion to me; like he was reaching out somehow from his shard to mine. He appeared before me, looking like a living man, and spoke to me.

[He slides the little belt knife at his waist from its sheath and, finding it clean, begins absentmindedly working a chunk from the loaf. The bulk of his attention is still on Hayame.]

He wanted to thank us. And… you remember the man we saw while we were fighting the monster? The one with the mask? He mentioned him. He said he heard someone call him… [He pauses, his hands stilling as he tries to remember.] Aetós.

[Like communion, he says, and Hayame looks down sharply at her sash, eyes narrowing as she regards the shard tucked inside and for a moment seems to question… Why Liem? Was she not the closer one, her very flesh just there pressed against the remnant of that… that man-monster’s “soul”? Had it been easier to reach the dead than the living and vigilant? Was there something about her that the shard found lacking? She certainly hadn’t put the shard anywhere near the tree grave dirt, not yet ready to risk what might be reborn from it, not without consulting someone she trusted first, but…

But her newfound inadequacy will have to wait.

Hayame listens, and she repeats the name to cement it in her memory.]

Aetós…

[He wanted to thank them. That should theoretically absolve the man from some blame, it implies the person who had become that monster truly hadn’t intended that fate for himself or for them, but…

Remembering those frantic, mind-splitting images and frantic thoughts threatens to make her head ache again. Still, she tries, her brow furrowing.]

And that man… did something to him?

[She never asked to be part of this investigation, what did she care for these strangers? Yet- A hand moves to her forehead, struggling to sort through the chaotic jumble.]

He clarified nothing else… ?

[It's difficult to remember all of the details of his dream clearly. He has to concentrate to bring them to his mind, like he's trawling through the swirling mess that his mind has become after a week of deathly sleep.]

I think he must have done something. Manon said that he didn't know what, but that his shard got… mixed up with a bunch of others.

[Liem's brows furrow, stay knit tightly together as he nibbles at the piece of bread he's sliced from the loaf. He remembers barely anything else about his communion, and what he does remember only raises more questions. But perhaps, if Manon's shard can be purified, he can clarify what he'd meant.]

What I want to know is… that man, Aetós. Was he the reason Manon ran to Meridian, even though he was aligned with Zenith? Could he even have run to them with his shard in that state? Or did that only happen once he was in Meridian?

And why did Yima seem to think his shard might be corrupted beyond saving? I didn't know such a thing could happen.

[It all reeks of a conspiracy to him, but they don't have enough pieces to puzzle together anything useful.]

[She remembers the running. Not just her own, but his- this Manon’s, a desperate flight in fear. She remembers reaching for the trees as if it were her and not him, she remembers the pain and the confusion that had filled her head until blood trickled from her nose and eyes and her legs refused to listen to her because she should have two and not four. She remembered… trying to get to Meridian. That had been clear… hadn’t it?

Where did you just… get shards from? Where had she heard something like this…]

How…

[Liem had spent more time in Highstorm than she had, she is reasonably sure, so perhaps…]

How do people living here without them get shards? Like the ones born here…

[Liem is distracted from his own musings by the question Hayame raises. It's not one he's ever considered, and he blinks in faint bemusement at what she seems to be implying. Though almost more strange is the fact that she seems to expect an answer, like this is something Liem might have any knowledge about. He has no idea why that might be the case.]

I don't know. [He answers slowly, unsure. After another moment, he tips his head slightly to one side, thoughtful.] I knew that some of the shard-bearers here are native to Kenos, but I've always assumed they must simply have been born that way.

[He eventually came to think of their arrivals in Horos as a sort of birth, and certainly what he saw in his sun-bead implied that he'd left his old, shardless body behind with his world. Surely such births happened the usual way as well?]

Is that… not the case? I confess, I've never heard anyone speak of such a thing.

[She really does seem to just expect that he will know- or rather, that it is very likely he will know more than her. Ever since she emerged from the crystalline cocoons of Horos, doubly so after clawing her way out of the sap and dirt in Kenos… Hayame has always been the one who knew nothing, and it has always prevented her from feeling… capable, strong, sure… from feeling like herself. Like how she used to be. Was supposed to be.

She’d known how the world worked, once, what her place in it was and the most that she could do in it, but then… and then there, now here… She has never understood. It’s always been other people who knew magic or world travel or cosmic consequences but. Liem looks at her just as confused as she was, and that means…

She has to be the one who knows something, even if she doesn’t understand it, possessing only a vague idea that it might be relevant.]

There are… others here, who seem as jinba do, but are not.

[Others who had made her hearts clench with hope only for it to wither and die each time she’d realized… no, not this one either. They looked like her, but they didn’t know her world or understand her story. And yet still, pathetic enough to cling to anything even only the most shallow of connections… she had taken their invitation to frolic in the day of Alenroux. She had… hung back, but she had been there. And she had heard things.]

I heard them talking… saying that- that Yima is the one who is supposed to make shards, but they’d heard of a temple service that could supply them to those born without.

[The image of the shards in the night creature’s skull is swimming in her head, alongside the chaotic sense of fleeing, the pain of some sort of tampering with her (no, Manon’s) shard.]

So someone else… has to be making shards.

[Right? She didn’t understand the significance or difference between those born with or without beyond perhaps… that “magic” nonsense they were said to be able to access, but… apparently it was more desirable to have one? And if so-]

If only Yima makes them, what if- What if that means they must first be stolen from another?

[Liem listens soberly to Hayame's explanation, absorbing it with a quieting of his hands and a faint thinning of his mouth. Given the disquieting flashes of communion they'd gleaned from Manon, and how intrinsic shards clearly are to the being of any shard-bearer, he immediately distrusts the idea of any illicit service that might claim to provide such a thing.]

I was not aware that Lady Yima could make shards either. I thought those she produced were all pulled from other worlds, like we were.

[He's not certain that he's understanding Hayame correctly in this instance. Perhaps that is what she'd meant regardless. But whether Yima has such a power or not is ultimately immaterial to the matter of this temple service. He frowns, thinking hard.]

I don't… see how a shard could be stolen. They are supposed to be our souls, the cores of our beings, so to be repurposed for another would be… unconscionable, certainly. I can't imagine someone could survive having theirs taken, if it was even possible.

[Is that more likely or less than shards being created wholesale? He'd like to think that there's no way a soul could be stolen in that way, but that interpretation of what shards are might not be completely correct.]

Do you remember how fragile the other shards around Manon's were? I wonder if they might have been counterfeits, somehow. It must be incredibly difficult to make anything even approaching what our shards are capable of. That might explain why they were like that.

[Hayame shakes her head, slow and heavy.]

That is what they said... that she "makes" them.

[But whether they believe it is then predicated on believing the gossip of, essentially... centaur housewives? Hayame doesn't know if they are more trustworthy than anyone else, she had never formulated her own theory on how it was that they even had shards in the first place. She'd never thought on the nature of a soul, when she'd been forced to spend so much of her life focused on preventing a shameful end for her body.

Liem, for his part, seems to at least have a better idea on what he thinks the property of a soul is.]

Maybe they... can have the soul taken out, somehow... and made into empty vessels...

[Would that work? Could some ritual or magic then allow a person without a shard to use that hunk of stone to become one? She doesn't know- But what he mentions about the condition of the other shards makes her think, her brows furrowing (at least, one is- the other is hidden beneath her makeshift bandages).

Who's voice had that been? Still too fragile.]

Counterfeits...

[It was just as likely or unlikely as anything else, but-]

Why, then, put in just one real one... ?

[Was it a sick experiment? And even if it was... What would even be the point?]

[Liem has nothing to offer to Hayame’s musings about how a shard might be emptied of the soul within, made into an empty vessel to receive something else. Is that any more or less possible than a soul being crystallized from nothing by some unscrupulous sorcerer? He’s nowhere near knowledgeable enough of such things to even begin to say. Though, at least if that were true…]

In that case, there would be other missing shard-bearers who have had theirs taken. Even if the process wasn’t fatal, the victims couldn’t be allowed their freedom without drawing unwanted attention.

[That, at least, is something they could try to discern for themselves. Do other people from the two cities ever go missing? It might be worth looking into, since Liem doesn’t feel easy about the prospect of leaving that possibility unexplored.]

But as to why Manon’s shard would end up the way it was… I couldn’t begin to guess. Why combine multiple shards in that way to begin with, counterfeit or not? Especially when the end product was simply left to wander the forest.

[It doesn’t make any kind of sense to him. Such a bizarre and unheard of experiment seems like it would have been difficult to pull off, and possibly quite costly as well. What could possibly make it worth it?]

[It doesn’t make sense… and no matter what they say here, there is nothing they can confirm in the grave dirt between the roots of the Tree of Life that would make it so.

Counterfeit… wiped clean… mixed together…

Her hand hovers over her sash, and the shard contained within the pelt. The one that was supposedly Manon’s. But unlike Liem’s, who she’d cradled close to her body in some misguided (or maybe not?) attempt to keep him himself, to keep him “warm”… she hasn’t let this one touch her flesh directly, nor attempted to feel what lurked within it. Not when it may yet be corrupted.

Supposedly, both factions wished to see it cleansed. Only Zenith’s people had spoken of a “mercy killing” if the shard could not be purified. He had “run to Meridian”…

Finally, she murmurs,]

Something must be done with the shard.

[She has an idea… but he had lost his life valiantly against the monster in the wood. He deserved input as well… or she would have simply done it already as he slumbered in the earth.]

[It’s clear to Liem that Hayame is just as mystified as he is by the prospect of strange shard experiments, so rather than attempt to mull things over further at the moment, when neither of them have anything concrete to provide about the matter, he instead spends the moment gnawing another few small mouthfuls from his piece of bread. His appetite probably seems pathetic to a jinba who has been struggling to satiate cravings for large quantities of flesh for the past few weeks, but to be fair, he did just wake up from being dead. He’s still working on feeling back to normal.

Hayame is the one to break the silence. He looks up from the last of his slice, and after a moment he nods slightly in agreement.]

I don’t know what would happen if it were planted here, but… I don’t think it would be wise to find out.

[No one’s ever told Liem what happens to shard-bearers who suffer too greatly from discord, so it’s not clear to him if separating Manon’s shard from its bed of lesser shards might allow him to be reborn as a person instead of as a monster, but it seems likely that even if he were to be revived as a man, he would still be suffering from whatever symptoms had driven him to Alenroux in the first place.

But Hayame must have been considering this in the time he’d been here regenerating. He assumes she has some thoughts about it already.]

What would you like to do?

[ Liem will receive a communion link request from a fellow harbinger sometime around the latter half of the first week of Takiltu. If he accepts, he'll hear a voice curious as if someone was peeking into a house from a door that was unlocked to see if anyone's there. ]

Hellooo..? Liem?

[It's been quite a while since Liem fielded a communion message from anyone out of the blue. He takes a few moments to pick up, presumably putting on pause whatever he was doing at the time, and when he does, his mental voice is cautious — like a traveller pausing in the road on a still, summer night to listen to an unexpected noise.]

Yes? Can I help you…?

Ah, yes! There you are.

Thanks for picking up. I was one of the people who fought Manon, and I've been looking for the others that encountered him. Were you in Alenroux and ran into him as a shardbeast, as well?

[Liem takes a moment to actually recognize who it is he's speaking to. He has a moment of deja-vu, the feeling that he should know who this is, and then finally memories of— Horos: not long before he'd been brought here.]

I assume you're expecting the answer to be "yes." Isn't that why you contacted me?

[It wouldn't make sense for Childe to just contact every single person he knew one-by-one, when he could just put out a public query. Someone must have told him Liem was involved, though the list of people it could have been is, as far as he knows, pretty small.]

Well, I'm sure hoping so. Because if not, I'll have to keep looking, and I don't want to have to make a big public announcement hoping people will come forth if I don't get lucky—especially since it's not everyone else's business what I'm doing trying to contact people who faced the same situation as me. I have been looking for the others, so I asked Yima to help me and she was able to give me your name. Still, that doesn't mean it was accurate.

[ there's a thoughtful pause, as if Childe is trying to remember or otherwise think of something. ] Your name was familiar to me, but I don't remember much from Horos. You were there though, too, right?

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post-Alenroux dissipation;

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