[Log] West Haven

[thequestgiver]

Characters: All on the road to West Haven
Open? Yep
Where: Starting at the gate of Schwanheim, on the way to and in West Haven
When: The 5th of Rebirth's Height


It was a clear morning, a touch warmer than the previous days, a sign that Rebirth was progressing along. For the more superstitious of Schwanheim's residents, it seemed a good omen for the heroes' journey to the unfortunate town of West Haven. Of course with how the weather of Rebirth ran, it might be pouring rain by the time they left the gates but that was Rebirth for ya.

[[OoC: this log will be split into 3 parts/sub threads. You don't have to tag the preparations or travel threads to arrive at West Haven.]]

Comments

GOOD MORNING, CUDDLES. :D

[ofchaosandorder]

A bemused smile quirked at the edges of her lips. "That is the answer I have come to hear. It matters not what I tell you, but what you perceive," she returned cryptically before taking another slow drag off her cigarette. "Anything I tell you could be a lie, after all, and you would have no way of knowing."

/BURSTS BACK ONTO THE SCENE

[ex_apaintingdarkly917]

Dark flew immediately back to the well where, sure enough, he found the source of the energy blast: a very attractive and incredibly powerful woman. He glided down low enough that he could dismiss his wings and land lightly on the ground, waltzing onto the scene for all the world like they were all waiting for his arrival.

"I guess that gem was yours, beautiful?"

[sorcerous]

"So you made it for us," said Loki. "To lure us here."

That was his guess, reading between the cryptic words. His eyes narrowed; if only these others were not here, if only he could speak to her, one sorcerer to another.

It did mean that she was dangerous, though. To create a place like this took incredible power; to know that it would bring a specific group took foresight. The two, together...

"Have you learned what you came to find?" he snapped. Angry, now, because he did not like being tugged from one place to another, on an invisible tether, bound by reins that cannot be felt. "Perhaps you'll deign to tell us what is behind the thorns, before you sweep away in smoke."

[ofchaosandorder]

She glanced over at Dark with a disbelieving expression before rolling her eyes and turning back to Loki, again inhaling the light grey smoke as he spoke.

"Chaos," she answered simply, smoke escaping in a puff at the word.

[ex_apaintingdarkly917]

"Well if that's all," Dark interrupted with a shrug, "what are you waiting for? Let's party."

[sorcerous]

And Loki turned to Dark. "Silence your tongue!" Fury, in him, in his voice. "If you would like to ransack the town for trinkets, please, do so, and spare us your presence. In the meantime, some of us would rather solve the problems for which we have been summoned."

He was a hypocrite, of course. He had not intended to summon this woman -- he had intended to destroy this city, or at least its center of power. And he had, of course, taken Obi-Wan's and Bakura's energy without telling them how he was using it.

Nevertheless: Dark annoyed him.

"Is there no balance here?" he asked the woman, his mind working quick. "Chaos should destroy at the rate that order builds, should it not? Or are the thorns the price for springing haphazard cities from the wilderness?"

[ex_apaintingdarkly917]

"I was talking to the lady, smartass," he snapped back, effectively ignoring everyone else in the circle and not particularly caring that he was.

[sorcerous]

"And the lady was listening," pointed out Loki, delicately, "to me."

[ofchaosandorder]

"Balance is a fragile thing," Anya answered, looking far too amused at the bickering. "Both sides try to build more and more power, thinking they will overcome the other without any regard for it."

[ex_apaintingdarkly917]

Dark ignored Loki with a broad, charming smile. He didn't even glance in his direction as he addressed Anya.

"And you're here to balance the equation, is that it?"

[ofchaosandorder]

"What do you think?" she returned with a hint of a sly smile, looking almost the way a cat toying with a mouse might.

[sorcerous]

"And how is order responding to chaos' intrusion?" asked Loki. "And where do I find them?" -- an arch of his eyebrow. "Or have I already?"

Was she part of order?

[a_wider_world]

Balance. Chaos.

Darkness.

Her words brought up miserable memories, the shadow of a misinterpretation gone horribly wrong, and when he glanced directly at her there was fire behind his eyes.

"Something has changed." His voice was sharp, commanding. "Conditions are different now, else you wouldn't need to be here."

He kept his Force sense held back from her presence, not quite daring to test her lest he find an echo of Anakin's darkness. But he looked at her without fear and without gentleness.

"There's a prophecy, isn't there."

[ofchaosandorder]

"Prophecies always exist for any situation you care to look for," Anya returned with a bored tone before looking back at Loki. "And you should know what Order's counter was."

[sorcerous]

Now, there was something about Obi-Wan, wasn't there? A quiet calm, a surety, and the raging tempest of Loki's heart longed for it. He shifted closer to the Knight, not even entirely sure why.

Loki exhaled, slowly.

"Then you should know that they could have done ever-so-much better than me."

Such a bald-faced admission! Loki had wanted to believe he was the hero they'd been looking for ever since they arrived, and he still did, he still wanted to believe.

[ex_apaintingdarkly917]

So not only were they supposed to be the solution, now they were supposedly the cause? This balance crap was a bunch of nonsense, but it told him one thing.

"You can't send us back."

Which made her actually pretty useless, despite the huge stores of power he could sense within her.

[a_wider_world]

"But there's something specifically about this time, this place, that called you forth."

In retrospect, there had been so much the Jedi Order had missed about the Force, about the webs of tiny coincidences that told just how right the time was for what had happened. His own long-ago words to his mentor rang in his ears, mocking him now in the echoing voices of King and stable-boy and ordinary villager.

They all sense it. Why can't you?

He would not allow a second world to be destroyed if he had any kind of forewarning. And he intended to decipher that warning this time.

"You aren't the main event," he said slowly. "You're only the messenger. And you wouldn't be here unless you had something to tell us."

[ofchaosandorder]

"Order chooses its own champions. Who is more or less suited is of no consequence," Anya dismissed. "And to send you back would be to deal a blow to the party that is losing this round of battle."

She cocked her head slightly to look at Obi-Wan. "Tell me, Knight twice removed from your homeland, what do you think you see? What are you expecting to be told?"

[a_wider_world]

"The rules of the game."

He was not intimidated by her knowledge, nor particularly startled--but then again he had always been fairly good at keeping his cool under most kinds of pressure.

"If you do in fact care about balance, then you know this has to be a fair fight. There is something our side has not yet been told." A brief, mirthless smile tugged at his lips but died before it could reach his eyes. "The endgame is for us to decipher. But we're at the beginning now, and unless we have some sort of message, the scales remain unbalanced."

[sorcerous]

"And starting us off with advisors such as King Erasmus is hardly fair," Loki pointed out, archly, in agreement with Obi-Wan.

[ofchaosandorder]

"If you think of it as a game with rules that never change, than you've already lost," came the airy reply before Anya took another slow drag of smoke into her lungs, holding it for a long moment before letting it go again. "And there no such thing as a fair fight. If it were fair, there would be no need for any of this as both sides would be civil enough to not try and backstab the other at the first hint of weakness," she continued, tone very dry.

[sorcerous]

"I would be happy to backstab whomever would present their back to me," said Loki. Breezed past her words: "I want to speak with these essences. Or their servants. And you did not answer when I asked if you were one or the other."

[a_wider_world]

"Loki," Obi-Wan said sharply, finally turning his attention from Anya to the other man. "Let her speak her piece before things get any worse."

[ofchaosandorder]

There was a glitter of dark amusement in Anya's smile. "You've already spoken to one... and I don't think talking to the other would do you much good."

[ex_apaintingdarkly917]

Dark watched, quiet now, weighing his interest in the woman and what she might have to say with his complete and utter disinterest at the thought of being a pawn in a war between order and chaos.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, being stuck here for a while, he thought. If he was okay without Daisuke, maybe Daisuke would be alright without him, and the kid could finally take a break. But if he wanted to stay, should he be fighting this battle or not?