by Kai » Fri Mar 21, 2008 11:48 pm
Entering the house, Cerene found herself picking over a clay-plastered scorched mess. The house was probably not very safe anymore, and they'd likely gotten to it just before the air inside ran out and the fire finally exploded out into the night in the blast that would destroy the structure utterly.
The layout of the building was fairly simple. She stepped into a large foyer, and once inside she could go either right or left or forward. Forward led to the crumbling and blackened remains of a sitting room, while the left and right led to hallways. Each ended in a flight of stairs, the right leading up and the left leading down. On the ground floor she didn't see any corpses as she passed, so it was possible that the children outside were at least most of the population of the house.
When Michael knelt down in front of them and asked for their names, the children looked at one another somewhat anxiously. A couple of them cast a glance over to the blue-haired young woman who'd claimed association with Redda. The boy who spoke was probably about ten. "I'm Ezra, this is Juris, this is Laszlo, and the girls over there are Ngaio, Regina, and Joey," he said, pointing at various children in their turn. "The baby is Joella, and the boy holding her is Pétur, and over there are also Ibrahim, Ourania, and Jenn."
Ezra turned back to Michael. "Who're you?"
Zea frowned and absently bit one thumbnail at Sorune's request. "I don't think she has the energy to guide you. I don't think she could even...well..." She looked to the side of Sorune, and then up and around as if searching the ground and air for Redda. Finally Zea seemed to find her somewhere near the singed treeline. She shook her head. "She's too weak to do it on her own, but if you really want to do this... I can help her get to you."
She hesitated to explain how. Fact was the young necromancer was apprehensive about allowing some strange ghost to attach itself to her friend in any capacity. She looked from Redda to Sorune, trying to reconcile several conflicting urges in her mind. Did she want to help this ghost at the expense of Sorune's comfort? He didn't know what he was getting into if he started allowing things like this, but it was just a one-time thing after all, and he was essentially requesting it.
"Oh, all right," Zea said. She flicked her fingers at the ghost, beckoning her forward. "Now you hold on," the medium told the spirit. "When we're ready for you, you'll know." Zea closed her eyes a couple of times, trying to focus on Redda's aura, and Sorune's and the parts of her own that could span both boundaries. The connection between the astral and the plane of shadow was one bridge, and the connection between Zea's astral self and Sorune's was another.
Refusing to dwell on the potential awkwardness of it, Zea reached up to the taller man and placed both hands on either side of his face, the fingertips of both hands curling over his jaw. She forced back distractions, little ones. What she was doing. Why she was doing it. How warm his skin was compared to John, the only 'living' creature she touched with any regularity these days. With great care and a few long, even breaths, Zea started to open herself more cautiously to the presence and influence of this one specific spirit. At the same time she found the shifting planes of Sorune's aura that responded to her own, and forced the two to make contact.
As Redda forced her way through Zea and into Sorune, the girl grimaced at the uncomfortable straining and stretching that came with allowing a ghost to pass into and immediately out of her. Sorune sensed Redda driving into him from Zea, and it felt for a moment as though his body were not big enough for the two of them. Legs, fingers, eyes, all only built for one person. For a brief span it felt as though he could be squeezed out of his own body until Redda settled in with him somewhere around the edges. Not only was there another presence inside every part of his body, he could feel her lurking in his mind like a veneer over his own thoughts. From her he could glean many crudely-transferred emotions. Bitterness, anger, grief and even fear. While such things might be typical of the recently-dead, the way things had happened couldn't possibly have helped.
Sorune heard a faint whisper, as though one woman were trying to shout over a crowd of his own shouting thoughts. "East. Toward the sunrise."
Then he heard fainter words, as though he were picking a conversation out of a crowd. It was Zea, standing immediately before him. She was saying something to him, or to Redda. "--out of him when we're done, I won't help you anymore."
Sorune felt a silent assent from the ghost that twisted inside him, fear and frustration stretching down through his blood vessels and into the furthest reaches of his flesh. Redda's feelings were his feelings, but only to a certain extent. "I'll go," came those maddenly faint words inside his mind. Then a burst of anger. "But find him. You find him."