Beacon

"Beacon" is a BOTGD 2 Act 1 thread written on June 23, 2019.
==Summary==
Following Urdr's instruction, Milae speaks to Verdandi and assists with her power, helping her understand that the source of her new abilities is likely a form of seidr, and he helps her see a clear vision of the Sorceress.
==Full Text==
Yun Milae: “Ahem.”
Verdandi felt a light touch on her arm as she set off to her guard duties, and what she saw was a short half-breed in a dark cloak, looking up at her inquisitively. “Do you mind if I talk with you a moment, Verdandi?” he said in a low voice, to avoid eavesdroppers.
Verdandi: Verdandi all but jumps out of her skin at the unexpected touch, only just stopping herself from shrieking aloud. “Who are you?” she whispers. “How do you know my name?”
Milae: “I am familiar with the current guard. It will be only a minute.” He gestured with a hoof into the shade of a nearby smithy. It was still within sight of the villagers, but the noise coming from inside the building would hide their conversation from passerby. “I don’t mean to frighten you; I was hoping to help you.”
Verdandi: At this point, she’ll accept help from just about anyone. “Alright,” she says warily, walking into the shade of the smithy. She turns to face the half-breed, resting her hands on her hips. “So?” she inquires. Verdandi blinks heavily, willing her eyes to focus on the figure before her.
Milae: Milae lowered his hood and folded his heavily-bandaged arms underneath his cloak. There were a few spots of blood despite his efforts to bind his wounds. “I have been…hearing a few things about you, Verdandi. Your unusual experiences, as of late.” His eyes met hers, and he noted the dark circles and unfocused gaze. “I think it is safe to say this has been keeping you up, yes? Memories that are not yours. Things that you don’t understand.” He didn’t waste breath in describing what he already knew about her.
Verdandi: Now severely unnerved, Verdandi takes a small step backwards. “…Yes,” she says slowly. Her gaze drops to the bloodied bandages around his arms, and a small frown crosses her face. “How do you know that?” she demands, looking back into Milae’s eyes.
Milae: “My name is Milae.” He lifted his chin slightly. “I have been…graciously gifted with knowledge and power that most others would have difficulty wielding or comprehending, and with these, I serve the Rebellion. But they also gave me a sense of…something strange about you, Verdandi, and I believe I may be the only one to give you guidance on what this is. If I am correct, of course.” He shrugged, looking a little self-satisfied. “But I usually am.”
Verdandi: Verdandi raises her eyebrows. “Really,” she says in a flat voice. “Then what do you know about me?”
Milae: Milae raised his eyebrows in response.
“Verdandi Østergård, from the Wildest North, a daughter spurned by farmers. You carried messages for the Wilderwest until inadvertently helping Rhenco and thus becoming entangled with the Rebellion. You can heal wounds and you have terrible nightmares of blood and battle from which you often wake.” He spread his hooves out in a silent seeking of approval. “Does that about cover it?”
Verdandi: “I…” Verdandi gapes at Milae. “You…” She clears her throat. “How did you know that?” she snarls. She hadn’t told anyone about this. Not even Liam. He only knew about the situation with Rhenco because he was there.
Milae: “I don’t say this to try to gain an advantage over you,” he said, in a gentler tone. “I say this to earn your trust and your confidence that I know what I speak of.” He looked around them again and then back at Verdandi.
“These things aren’t happening by accident. They have been accelerated by something. I have a suspicion that that something might be…me. That’s why I wished to talk with you about this.”
Verdandi: She rubs at her temples. “How?” she asks in a defeated tone. “I am so tired. And I don’t understand.”
How could one half-breed be the cause of… everything that’s happened to her?
Milae: He gestured past the smithy and out to the fields beyond the village, pulling his staff off his back with a smooth motion and gently planting it gently in the dirt to use as a walking stick. “Would you walk with me? This may take a minute to explain.”
Verdandi: What have I got to lose? “Yeah, alright,” she agrees, running a hand through her hair. Verdandi yawns widely before setting out towards the fields.
Milae: The two of them, a rather odd pair, began setting out along the well-trodden path outside of Haligan’s village, a spread of trampled grass and dirt which came up to the top of a sloping cliff, and the sky alternated between shining sunlight and cool cloudy shadows as the wind dispersed the stormy weather of the past week. The butt of Milae’s staff made a rhythmic tapping sound on the path and he looked up at the sky, tracing their shapes, idly wondering if he would see another vision in them like the ones from his youth, but he didn’t expect anything.
“Before I explain, I want to know the extent of your experiences,” he said. “I know much, but not everything. How often do these odd bouts of magic occur with you? How well can you control them?”
Verdandi: It feels like a fog has fallen over her mind; it takes Verdandi longer than it should to come up with an answer. “I… the first time, I had no control at all. I healed Liam, and I almost fainted afterwards.” Her voice takes on an unearthly quality, like she’s in a trance, when she continues. “I’ve only done it one other time. Liam attacked his father and I healed him. I did it on purpose that time.”
She gives herself a shake, her eyes focusing again. “It’s mostly just the dreams,” she admits.
Milae: “Hm.” He continued along, his ears twitching as a noisy flock of gulls circled overhead on their way to the sea. “Well, the reason I approached you, and the reason why I suspect I may be a catalyst to your problems, is that you may have gotten yourself entangled in some time magic, also known as seidr. I want to see if this is true before doing anything too drastic.” He pointed with his staff up ahead to a clearing on the side of the path, a brightly-lit affair dotted with tree stumps. The river was nearby; they could hear it distantly rushing on its way to empty into the ocean.
Verdandi: Verdandi looks ahead of them, but she isn’t really seeing the clearing. “I… I don’t know,” she whispers. “I haven’t done anything like that intentionally,” she says. “Only the healing. That’s the only thing I did on purpose.”
“Limited control. That is something,” Milae mused. The two of them walked into the clearing and Milae perched on a tree stump, wrapping both his hooves around his staff and holding it close to his shoulder while his feet dangled above the ground. “Please, sit.” He gave an apologetic smile. “I promise nothing will hurt you.”
Verdandi: Verdandi sinks down onto a different tree stump, looking at Milae expectantly. “I’m confused,” she says plaintively. “None of this makes any sense.”
Milae: “Of course. I was confused, too, when I was give my gift.” Milae propped his staff up against his shoulder and unwound the bandages from his arms. The scars were still slightly tender but they had improved remarkably fast, as usual.
Once his eternal wounds were bare once more, he held his staff again and began drawing in the dirt in front of him, making one perfect circle in the dust. “For starters, I want you to try and relax. You are fiercely fighting against whatever is giving you these new powers, and that is why you are struggling. You are waging war in your own head, and this may be why you see war every night.” He looked up at her, drawing a single long line bisecting the circle in two. “Take a moment to breathe. Listen to the world around you. Listen to yourself.”
Verdandi: After giving Milae a skeptical look, Verdandi closes her eyes and does her best to focus on what’s around her, rather than being drawn into memories and nightmares. She breathes in and out at as even a rate as she can manage, but nothing seems to happen. A frown flits across her features.
Milae: Milae slowly made two more marks in the dirt, inside of the circle, in the center of each half. The sound was barely audible as a soft shifting slide through the ground. “Just focus on your breathing,” he said quietly, keeping his voice calm and even. “Listen to how it moves within you, how it feels to pull it all in…” He drew another circle outside of the shape on the ground. “…and release.” The end of the staff hissed back around the line he had just drawn in the opposite direction, completing the circle twice. “Do not be scared, or frightened if your mind returns to the things troubling you so. Embrace them, take control of them, instead of the reverse. Discover them.” He watched her keenly, looking for any sign of something new.
Verdandi: Her mind takes the now-familiar path back to the nightmare–always the same, even if the faces are different. In the daytime, with sunlight upon her, the images aren’t as bad, but even still, Verdandi’s heart pounds in her chest as her breathing picks up speed. It’s hard not to panic at the sense of vividly remembering something she’s never seen.
She makes a helpless, scared sound low in her throat.
Milae: “Shh. Easy, now. Slower.” Milae carefully slid off the tree stump and knelt in front of Verdandi, carefully placing a hoof on her knee and looking up at her with the same intense focus. “It’s alright. You’re not alone. Take it slowly.” He gently moved his hand to rest on hers and squeezed it softly. “I’m going to assist you. Would it help if you tell me what you see?”
Verdandi: In a faltering voice, she says, “It’s… a battlefield. No matter where I look, there’s people dead or dying, and so much fighting. There’s always blood.” Underneath her eyelids, Verdandi’s eyes move back and forth rapidly, as she’s taking in the mental landscape. She frowns. “It’s… night. That’s different,” she whispers. “It’s night, but there are torches everywhere, and people are still fighting. Um… there’s… there’s a black fog rolling across the battlefield, and it wraps around some of the soldiers. When it lets go, they’re dead.”
Milae: “I see.” He continued holding her hand in an attempt to comfort her. The images didn’t sound too terribly familiar…but then again, certain details did ring a bell. And he could guess at what war she had seen. But she was too young, which made it all the more puzzling. He wrinkled his nose, thinking of how to phrase his next question.
“Verdandi, when you see these things…where are you? Are you fighting in the midst of these visions, or simply watching from the sidelines…or something else altogether?”
Verdandi: “I’m just–there. In the middle of it all.” That’s the worst part of the nightmare, the fact that Verdandi can’t do anything other than watch. “I can’t move, even when I try.”
Milae: He exhaled through his nose, his brow furrowed as he watched her signs of distress. “Alright. It’s fine, you are here, out of danger. I want to try something, just briefly, and I want you to tell me if anything changes.” He lifted his free hoof slowly to his shoulder, and his scars shimmered slightly, the light hard to see under the brightness of the sun. He simply held it there, a very low frequency of his power resonating within himself. “What do you see? Is anything better? Worse?”
Verdandi: Verdandi hadn’t realized the nightmare had a fuzzy edge to it until everything sharpens as if she’s standing there, clear as day. Or, clear as night, in this case. She notices a figure serenely crossing the field, the black fog emanating from her. In the light of the torches, Verdandi can make out the woman’s deep purple clothes, and the dark metal headdress glinting on her forehead. “I… everything is clearer,” she says, sounding nauseated. “And there’s a woman. I think she’s making the black fog.”
Milae: Milae narrowed his eyes. Ah. Her.
“That’s good, Verdandi. I believe this is part of your gift. Is there any sense of time, here? Is this long ago? Is this in the future? Can you tell?” He thought he knew the answer already, which would be neither, but he wasn’t quite sure what that meant if that was the case.
Verdandi: “I don’t know,” she whispers. “I–I think it’s recent?” Verdandi guesses. As she says it, she is filled with a sense of conviction. “Yeah, it’s recent.”
Her heart is still pounding uncomfortably, but her breathing has slowed. Talking through what she’s seeing, with someone who seems to understand, it’s a relief.
Milae: He squeezed her hand and got to his feet, though he was barely taller than Verdandi while she was sitting. “Wonderful. That’s wonderful.” He felt a rush of adrenaline, fueled by curiosity, worry and excitement. “You can let go of all of it now; I am sure you see too much of it at night. I want to offer some of my own answers, and then perhaps we can get to the bottom of this.”
Verdandi: Verdandi opens her eyes and blinks a few times as her vision focuses back on Milae. “Please, I’ll take anything at this point. I don’t understand this.” Her exhaustion sweeps back to the forefront of her mind, and she yawns hugely. “I just want to be able to sleep again.”
Milae: He lowered his hand from its readied position, but not before he let her see the strong evidence of magic he was using. “As I mentioned, you have a connection to seidr, the ability to see through and even manipulate time. This is a rare ability, and something I have not seen in anyone besides myself.” He smiled in hopes to soften his next words. “I know you have led a rather uneventful life up until recently, so I believe I would be right in guessing that you have not encountered anything…resembling a deity. If so, I have no idea how you acquired this power.”
Verdandi: Verdandi snorts. “I grew up on a farm.” She ponders his words. “I’ve… met powerful beings. Nala, erm, the Warden, I mean. And Rhenco, I suppose, is powerful too. But no deities.” Her brow furrows, trying to piece together what Milae’s getting at, and coming up short.
Milae: “Trust me, you would know a Norn if you saw her.” Milae put a hoof to his chest. “Myself in particular…I had a run-in with one or two of them, and now, well…I am both parts blessed and cursed. I travel timelines, alternate events that could have happened, different choices others have made that changed the course of time very differently from what you know. But it was these powers that led me to whatever energy you have contained within you, so I feel it necessary to help.”
Verdandi: “That’s…” Verdandi’s not sure what to say in response, so she trails off. Haltingly, she says, “Sometimes, there’s this voice in my head, and it’s not mine. I… don’t remember hearing it until recently, but it’s still… familiar.”
Milae: “A voice, hmm?” He nodded thoughtfully. “That has been part of the package as far as I am aware. Have you seen who is speaking?”
Verdandi: “No,” Verdandi says, shaking her head. “It’s just… there.”
Milae: “Well, pay attention to it. It could be someone trying to reach you.” He peered at her, tilting his head to the side. “Are you alright? I hope that was not too much for you.”
Verdandi: “I’m… okay, actually,” she says, her surprise evident in her tone. “This helped,” she adds, smiling at Milae. “Thank you.”
Milae: He dipped his head in response. “Since our powers appear to work in tandem, let me know if there is something you wish to see more clearly. That is the most I can do, for now.”
Verdandi: “I can also heal,” Verdandi blurts out. “That’s how all of this started.”
Milae: “This I know,” he replied. “The circumstances requiring such powers…are something I would rather avoid, but I would enjoy seeing that…” He thought for another moment and began digging through his pack. “Actually, if you are able to, could you show me now, if you tried?”
Verdandi: “W-what do you mean?” Verdandi stutters. As she watches Milae dig through his pack, she’s filled with a sense of foreboding. I don’t like where this is going.
Milae: He pulled out a very small dagger, no longer than his own hoof, and noticed her look of apprehension. “Ah, it’s nothing severe, I promise.” He worked a very light cut into the back of his wrist, where his hand joined his arm. It gently filled with blood, and he tucked the dagger away, holding the small wound out to her. “If you don’t mind?” he said, eager curiosity welling up inside him.
Verdandi: Verdandi lets out a nervous squeak, looking between Milae’s wrist and his face with wide eyes. She takes a shuddering breath, then holds out her hand over the wound. Her eyes slip closed as she concentrates, until a golden light starts to seep from her palm. Even in the light of day, the same golden glow peeks through under her eyelashes, and the cut knits itself closed.
Milae: Fascinated, the goat watched as Verdandi did her work, and he leaned in slightly closer to get a good look. In doing so, his hand bumped up against hers and he suddenly cried out and gripped his staff for support, gasping as a wave of fire seemed to sear through his scars. They glowed brightly gold, the same as Verdandi’s magic, and he pulled away as his wound sealed itself, staring in shock as his arms continued to shine brightly. He gritted his teeth in pain but his eyes were bright with excitement.
“My gods,” he whispered.
Verdandi: The glow cuts off abruptly as Verdandi snaps back into herself at the pained cry from Milae. Her eyes widen in horror, darting around as she tries to make sense of what she’s looking at. “Gods, are you alright? What’s happening?!” she exclaims.
Milae: “I…I don’t know.” He was disproportionately excited. The glow slowly faded away but he was already digging through his pack again as he did so. “I will have to write that down…Verdandi, I think that is more than enough for today, I don’t want to strain you further, but I will be around if you need any more help, I promise.”
Verdandi: “T-thanks,” she stammers, pushing herself to her feet. “I’ll, er, see you around,” Verdandi says before beating a hasty retreat from the clearing, and back towards town. She should head to her guard post, now, but she needs to do something else first. She won’t be missed for a little while yet.
Milae: Milae watched her go, holding his staff with both hands. His goat eyes blinked briefly as he saw black feathers in the corner of his vision.
“What do you think?” he said under his breath.
“I do not understand.”
“Neither do I. What should we do?”
“Watch her. Especially in battle.”
Milae shifted his weight. “I wasn’t really planning on…”
“I was not making a request.”
He huffed. “I’ll do my best.” With a flap of her massive wings, she was gone again.
Category:BOTGD 2
Category:Verdandi Østergård
Category:Yun Milae
Category:Urðr
Category:Events
Category:Act I