By the time they've reached the Fifth Precinct Zerxus is aching and exhausted, which doesn't help him stay above water as he looks for Kahl. It's starting to feel hopeless - he can't dive beneath the surface in full plate, he can barely manage this - and he reaches a hand up to press against his eyes as he stops moving forward, just treading water.
There has to be a better way to do this. They're connected, he'd even felt it when he wasn't himself, so if he can just -
Kahl! I'm close, I need you to come to me. By habit, he's slipped into the simple focused call the Ring of Brass used when they were linked by Laerryn's spell. It doesn't work, of course, and he starts trying to infuse his words with more purpose, more emotion; he leans into the righteous fury on Kahl's behalf, and the profound depths of protectiveness he's felt since the moment Zerxus laid eyes on him.
[And his hand was there - Astarion didn't need him, but he was there, in the silence, in the lack of warden patrols, in the exact right angle to make snapping a neck as easy as it can be, even though Thrawn's species is not quite the same as any of the humanoids on faerun.]
Zerxus knows where to go. He isn't stalling, but he isn't rushing either; it's a very deliberate pace.
This definitely won't fool either god, but it's the principle of the thing.
As they approach the makeshift cabin, though, he just has to stop and roll his eyes. Of course the sheet of metal has been forged into a grandiose arch gilded with onyx; of course flames lick the slanted threshold, smelling of blood and ink and ash; of course the knocker is a horned skull with gleaming ruby eyes.
He glances at Kahl and murmurs, "I don't suppose you brought any of those googly eyes with you?"
He flips up a single quarter-sized googly eye out of nothing in his palm. It looks like nothing so much as the trinket-making of prestidigitation - except that it doesn't disappear after six seconds.
He hands Zerxus the eye, for wherever he'd like to place it.
Zerxus doesn't call for Kahl right away. All in all, it's probably around an hour - he talks to Ashton, drinks some water, gathers enough strength to stagger to the upper deck.
Tempus isn't pleased with him, but lets him collapse against his side. Zerxus stays like that for a bit, curled up with his eyes closed, just breathing.
Kahl appears, immediately, crouching three feet away from Zerxus, glaring. He looks frazzled - unhurt, but with his hair in unusual disarray, a high flush in his cheeks, his shirt crumpled.
Usually, when Kahl moves himself from someplace else, he appears standing. For him to appear in a far more settled pose suggests - if Zerxus considers it - that he has been here the whole time, invisible.
[He's not actually wearing rumpled pajamas, and he doesn't really have bags under his eyes, but somehow he manages to give that impression as he answers the door. The bedhead is real.]
The first thing Zerxus does, upon finally waking up in a room that doesn't truly belong to the Hells, is pray to Kahl.
There's a desperate undercurrent to it, a dread he could have extinguished with a glance at his warden item, but he’s not in the most rational of mental states.
He wakes up and comes shooting out from under Zerxus's bed in an orange yowling streak, hitting Zerxus's chest just a little bit like a bowling ball with knives.
[ Stuff had gotten in the way, but with him spending time in his room avoiding people after the breach, he has time to do what he wanted: a scrapmetal tiger on top of his painted rock. ]
Zerxus does glance at his item, so he knows where Kahl is. Instead he walks further into his own cabin, the seating room that once held portraits of the First Knights and now venerates the Lords of the Nine.
He kneels in front of the newest one and not the oldest, because Zariel has more of a claim to vengeance than Asmodeus ever did, and says:
"Kahl. I'm not angry at you, but we do need to talk."
There's anger there. It's just not directed at Kahl.
Edited (dammit that worked in the preview) 2025-10-30 04:44 (UTC)
After hours Hanna doesnt normally frequent the chapel, hes never been a particularly religious person, but he figures if hes going to ask some questions, he better be respectful about it. It also helps that train of thought when his boyfriend just so happens to be the priest of the god he wants to talk to.
Hanna slips inside, knows which alter to walk up to and he very carefully sets down a small handful of carefully chosen dried sardines. None of them are broken, full little fish and the sort that he thinks any cat would be happy to have.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he nods to the alter before meandering over to a pew. "Hey, Kahl? You up?"
Kahl appears perched like a gargoyle on the pew in front of him, not as a cat but as a gangly red-headed teenager whose limbs seem to bend in too many places, but who nevertheless definitely still has the tail of one silver sardine poking slightly out of his mouth, mid-chew.
[ There was a certain satisfaction in being in the midst of a disaster he didn't cause, doing his best to mitigate the damage.
It still meant accepting who he could and couldn't save, and that hits him just as hard when he's himself again.
Praying to Kahl feels strange for a second, one life still blurring into the other, but much of the emotion is the same. You were so brilliant, and so brave, and I wish I could have done something.]
Kahl doesn't arrive immediately, but he doesn't ignore Zerxus either. Instead, there's a growing feeling in Zerxus's mind of a profound quiet, the kind one gets in deserts or on winter nights, vast and present, listening.
Hanna is kind of exhausted. He's had a very long day, just finishing cleaning up after the party he'd thrown together.
The Form Familiar spell had drained all of Atticus and took a bit out of him too, but thats what happens when you bind a human to a demi-god with nine, potentially everlasting lives.
He's not done yet though, slipping an unopened tin of smoked oysters into his pocket and heading over to the chapel. It might be a dumb thing to do, admitting to a god the obliviously stupid thing he's done, but it isnt like attempting to fix it isnt worth some pain. Because it is.
He opens the cardboard box and pulls the tab back, folding it back closed and presenting the offering in the nicest way he can on the alter. And it isnt because he thinks he will have to wait long, just fueled by exhaustion that he falls back onto one of the pews and closes his eyes, Atticus propped up on the pew beside him.
Kahl, who understands Vincent's lingering issues with Kasper a bit better than he did a week ago, hasn't thought anything of chalking Vincent's withdrawal up to the graduation all on its own.
After a few minutes, Kahl's big, warm, tiger head is a heavy weight in Hanna's lap.
Nokov goes looking for Kahl. Even if he hadn't misplaced his communicator (something which he hasn't found interferes with anything, so remains an unimportant loss) he would go looking in person.
The 'looking' is very literal, as he chooses to start by sitting in the chapel, staring at what Kahl's follower put up. He doesn't pray to him, even if it could just be called a practical approach to communication. But. He looks.
Not that Kahl can throw stones about sociability. Fortunately (?) for Nokov, Kahl comes to the chapel pretty frequently to catnap on other people's altars, and finds him.
[ About a week before the port is meant to happen, Zerxus prays to Kahl. There's a lot of worry and guilt tangled up in it, but most of all he wants to talk.
He's in his cabin - which has reverted back to Nessus, but not entirely. He couldn't quite bear sleeping in his childhood bedroom but he kept his mother's book shelf, and his father's fishing rods, and their family portraits. ]
He appears on Zerxus's knee as a bird, darting glances around the cabin, observing the changes, then flumphs into the tiger, sprawled across Zerxus's lap to pin him down.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
For Porthos, shortly before Constantinople
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There has to be a better way to do this. They're connected, he'd even felt it when he wasn't himself, so if he can just -
Kahl! I'm close, I need you to come to me. By habit, he's slipped into the simple focused call the Ring of Brass used when they were linked by Laerryn's spell. It doesn't work, of course, and he starts trying to infuse his words with more purpose, more emotion; he leans into the righteous fury on Kahl's behalf, and the profound depths of protectiveness he's felt since the moment Zerxus laid eyes on him.
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Hello, darling.
You might have noticed that things have been settled with the newcomer. Your name was spoken.
I'd like to revisit an offer you made me.
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[And his hand was there - Astarion didn't need him, but he was there, in the silence, in the lack of warden patrols, in the exact right angle to make snapping a neck as easy as it can be, even though Thrawn's species is not quite the same as any of the humanoids on faerun.]
What can I give you?
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after the SH event
Do you have some time? I would like to speak with you.
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Narrenschiff, Day One
This definitely won't fool either god, but it's the principle of the thing.
As they approach the makeshift cabin, though, he just has to stop and roll his eyes. Of course the sheet of metal has been forged into a grandiose arch gilded with onyx; of course flames lick the slanted threshold, smelling of blood and ink and ash; of course the knocker is a horned skull with gleaming ruby eyes.
He glances at Kahl and murmurs, "I don't suppose you brought any of those googly eyes with you?"
Re: Narrenschiff, Day One
"I don't have to carry things."
He flips up a single quarter-sized googly eye out of nothing in his palm. It looks like nothing so much as the trinket-making of prestidigitation - except that it doesn't disappear after six seconds.
He hands Zerxus the eye, for wherever he'd like to place it.
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Tempus isn't pleased with him, but lets him collapse against his side. Zerxus stays like that for a bit, curled up with his eyes closed, just breathing.
Then, finally,
Kahl?
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Usually, when Kahl moves himself from someplace else, he appears standing. For him to appear in a far more settled pose suggests - if Zerxus considers it - that he has been here the whole time, invisible.
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There's a desperate undercurrent to it, a dread he could have extinguished with a glance at his warden item, but he’s not in the most rational of mental states.
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He wakes up and comes shooting out from under Zerxus's bed in an orange yowling streak, hitting Zerxus's chest just a little bit like a bowling ball with knives.
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Backdated
Anything you want to tell me?
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[Try again.]
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sometime after the breach
That's for you, Kahl. I hope you like it.
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I love them.
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Voice
Were any of your people hurt?
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He stopped when I made it clear Billy was mine.
[In his cleaning rounds, Zerxus may have noticed a few spots with faint new scorch marks on the floor.]
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Zerxus does glance at his item, so he knows where Kahl is. Instead he walks further into his own cabin, the seating room that once held portraits of the First Knights and now venerates the Lords of the Nine.
He kneels in front of the newest one and not the oldest, because Zariel has more of a claim to vengeance than Asmodeus ever did, and says:
"Kahl. I'm not angry at you, but we do need to talk."
There's anger there. It's just not directed at Kahl.
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Chapel
Hanna slips inside, knows which alter to walk up to and he very carefully sets down a small handful of carefully chosen dried sardines. None of them are broken, full little fish and the sort that he thinks any cat would be happy to have.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he nods to the alter before meandering over to a pew. "Hey, Kahl? You up?"
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He hastily swallows it whole.
"Yes."
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It still meant accepting who he could and couldn't save, and that hits him just as hard when he's himself again.
Praying to Kahl feels strange for a second, one life still blurring into the other, but much of the emotion is the same. You were so brilliant, and so brave, and I wish I could have done something. ]
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Post CKs graduation party
The Form Familiar spell had drained all of Atticus and took a bit out of him too, but thats what happens when you bind a human to a demi-god with nine, potentially everlasting lives.
He's not done yet though, slipping an unopened tin of smoked oysters into his pocket and heading over to the chapel. It might be a dumb thing to do, admitting to a god the obliviously stupid thing he's done, but it isnt like attempting to fix it isnt worth some pain. Because it is.
He opens the cardboard box and pulls the tab back, folding it back closed and presenting the offering in the nicest way he can on the alter. And it isnt because he thinks he will have to wait long, just fueled by exhaustion that he falls back onto one of the pews and closes his eyes, Atticus propped up on the pew beside him.
Re: Post CKs graduation party
After a few minutes, Kahl's big, warm, tiger head is a heavy weight in Hanna's lap.
"Congratulations," Kahl murmurs. "Trouble?"
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spam
The 'looking' is very literal, as he chooses to start by sitting in the chapel, staring at what Kahl's follower put up. He doesn't pray to him, even if it could just be called a practical approach to communication. But. He looks.
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Not that Kahl can throw stones about sociability. Fortunately (?) for Nokov, Kahl comes to the chapel pretty frequently to catnap on other people's altars, and finds him.
"MrrRRrr?"
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text, during the trevor nonsense, also that gif in the top is craaaaazy
Poppy told me something that made me remember that technically what I'm doing with Trevor is stopping him from getting vengeance?
Only not really, because I'm not trying to stop him from hurting the Admiral, myself, I only want to reduce his collateral damage...
Anyway, does that kind of of thing effect you and your domain?
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that kind of thing?
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cw child abuse/dissociation mention
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He's in his cabin - which has reverted back to Nessus, but not entirely. He couldn't quite bear sleeping in his childhood bedroom but he kept his mother's book shelf, and his father's fishing rods, and their family portraits. ]
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"I'm here."
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