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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 7364121" data-attributes="member: 79141">Session 45, Part Two - The End of a Beautiful Friendship[MEDIA=youtube]OoIfpXGWp8E[/MEDIA]On their return to Flint from Odiem, Leon and Kasvarina travelled into the bayou to the secluded cave of the Thinker, otherworldly patron to both Leon and Orum Dwist.  Dwist came with them, as did his bodyguard Throgmorton, and they brought Uriel too, to keep him off the streets of Flint and out of harm’s way. To their alarm and surprise, they found the cave empty. There was no sign of it ever having been occupied: the star patterns on the walls were gone and, more worrying still, so were the four planar idols the Thinker had been ‘safeguarding’. Leon and Dwist attempted to contact the Thinker to no avail. Distraught, and exhausted from his long ordeal in the Vault of Heretics, Dwist left immediately.  He and Throgmorton went to report to Sebastian Harlock of the REID.  The others settled down to wait.Uriel spent this time in almost constant meditation, trying to order the conflicting abilities and personalities of the many incarnations he had reclaimed and to puzzle out why he still could not access their memories, even though he had revisited them all.  On top of all of these abilities, Uriel had begun to develop an astonishing suite of mental powers that were unique to him and were, he believed, a corollary of his slow and steady rise beyond (if not above) the level of mere humanity.  When he was only Uriel – naïve, just a few years old, alienated and locked in the realm of the gith for his own safety – Uriel had come to regard this burgeoning need to grow as ‘transcendence’.  The rediscovery of his past selves seemed to have hastened this process: Increasingly, he felt able to shape reality itself in a number of surprising ways, and was sure this was a sign that he would soon transcend the mortal sphere altogether. Returning to more mundane matters, Uriel also spent time preparing for Methia as best he could, choosing to focus on his martial incarnations and equip himself accordingly.Left to their own devices, Leon and Kasvarina found themselves in a delicate position: Leon was keen to help Kasvarina deal with the mental turmoil caused by revisiting her past, but this care and closeness inevitably caused their emotional bond to deepen. Their feelings for each other were undeniable and yet they only exacerbated Kasvarina’s confusion. On the second day, she excused herself and disappeared for a while.  When she returned half a day later, she showed Leon a spell she had been working on (and which she had mentioned to him a few weeks ago when they first visited this cave).  She drew an oblong door in the air, and taught him the secret rune to open it.  When they stepped inside, there was a bright, cold room with a table and two chairs.  Kasvarina called this a Chamber of Dreams and told Leon it was her gift to him.  He could augment it as he saw fit, add other chambers, create doors to other places he wanted to visit, and above all, be safe here.  She then asked Leon to use his daydream spell to decorate and furnish it for her. As it was, the room very much reminded Leon of the chamber Lavanya had brought him to when she rescued him from imprisonment in Flint.  He asked Kasvarina what she knew of the Lavanya, but the question confused her; she had clearly never heard that name before. So Leon dropped the subject and thoughtfully, carefully, did as he was asked, creating a beautiful, warm, relaxing space that hopefully expressed his admiration in a way that was not too forward or overt. Kasvarina smiled at what he had done and her gaze became more direct.  She said she understood his reticence, but hoped he might have guessed her true intention.  “I am pleased that you have behaved in such a gentlemanly fashion, but I was rather hoping for a bed.”  Leon obliged, and he and Kasvarina spent the rest of their remaining time together in the Chamber of Dreams.And so it was that Leon found himself in a difficult position when – after Korrigan returned from Ber, but before he came back from the Hidden Valley – Kasvarina made an astonishing proposal: Since she learned of Nicodemus’ deep treachery she had fumed and fulminated, to the extent that Leon became concerned about her state of mind.  Then she began asking questions about how the group had encountered Nicodemus in the past, where and when and all the details in between.  Eventually, Leon revealed the existence of the strange syringe they had found on Lya Jierre, which they felt must be involved with the summoning of Nicodemus (given accounts of his arrival on the Quital estate and his possession of disposable bodies). Kasvarina said she wanted to use this to summon Nicodemus.  “I may never otherwise have the chance to confront him. I need to do this,” she pleaded. Despite his love for Kasvarina, Leon did not feel able to acquiesce himself and insisted they spoke to Korrigan when he returned.  Kasvarina was unhappy about this but understood his position.  “We will wait to tell him,” she agreed. “Not to ask his permission.”There were other more pressing matters to deal with when Korrigan first returned: the sudden departure of Matunaaga whose martial skills had been key to their confidence in dealing with whatever they encountered in the Dead Magic Zone; and the problem of Korrigan’s son, Kai, and what to do with the poor little boy when the unit departed. Once again, Korrigan was forced to consider his place in the unit and weigh his duty to Risur against his duty to his son. Uru was kind enough to invite Kai to stay in his garden, but no one thought that would be a good idea.  Then they ran through a list of people Kai could stay with, but none of them was powerful enough to fend off those who sought him.  The problem was twofold: practically, Kai needed to be defended from abduction and in the past only Korrigan and Co. had proven themselves capable of doing so; emotionally, it was terribly unfair to leave the poor boy in the care of total strangers – once he recovered from the shock of leaving his de facto mother, brothers and sisters behind, he became extremely dependent on his father and unwilling to leave his side.  (There was an intriguing corollary to this: when Kai was close to his father, Korrigan felt his connection to the planes broaden and deepen.  Kai was covered in filigree markings, just like Korrigan; when they were in close proximity the faint golden glow of these markings became brighter.  Korrigan was reminded of the vision he once had in the Ziggurat of Apet.  In it he cradled his as-yet-unborn baby son in his arms beneath a starless sky.  The world on which he stood was clearly alien, formed of dark purple rock. Then the ground beneath his feet shifted and they were now on a different alien world.  This happened again, and then again, and kept on happening until vision ended and they had visited dozens of unknown planes.) After frantic talks, an audacious solution was settled upon: they would take Kai with them to Methia!To this end, Uriel and Korrigan went to Nevard’s Henge. There they met Sana Santora, a disciple of Nevard (who also once sat on Korrigan’s political council), and Bernard of Glenwade (Korrigan’s estranged druidic friend who once accompanied them to the Dreaming but whose evident feelings for Korrigan’s wife caused a rift between them after she died. The two men embraced one another; time had done something to heal both their wounds.)  With the druids’ permission, they used the Arc of Reida to relive the moment five years ago when the half-orc shaman Pazamu performed the ritual of forced faith upon the unit so that they could escort Nevard Sechim up Cauldron Hill.  Using the trick he had learned during previous memory events, Uriel ‘borrowed’ the scroll, disrupting the event in the process.  Once Uriel and/or Leon had learned the ritual, Korrigan could use it to link himself with Kai and thereby prevent the child from coming to harm.  Of course, this solution was not free from drawbacks, the most vexing of which was the need to perform the ritual every day. However, Kasvarina would later present a solution to that problem too – once she had been granted her wish, and found herself refocused and invigorated. Which brings us back to the matter of ‘Needlewire’…</blockquote>

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