They are a frenzy of bees, they come trembling, buzzing, crawling across the island, searching out its mysteries like golden honey. And what, oh what, will they find - ?
Lysander does not think they will find god.
But he comes, too, drawn to the magic like the rest of them are, drawn to the promise of something strange and new. Within him yawns a new eternity, or perhaps it what he always has been, rediscovered, given back. He wears his recovered immortality (but different - what gifts are ever returned unchanged?) like a familiar cloak, gauzy across his shoulders; his antlers glint like gold, though they are still only bone.
It is night when he reaches the statue. In the darkness, with the moonlight a trail away across the water, the silhouette could almost be Calliope. The likeness is enough to make his heart stutter in his chest, and remind him he is no closer to a god than he was before the desert. It is enough to make him - almost - wish she were here still, that black lioness who cared not for mysterious but for truth, and would cut to the heart of any beast to get it. Lysander thinks he understands her, now. At least more than he once did.
But it is not Calliope. It is no one, smelling of everyone and nothing, and when he is near enough to see the way the pale light paints it he sees that its surface is uneven, corroded (he does not wonder if it is Isra’s doing). Somewhere in the trees a creature cries out, so strange he can think of no name for what it might be. For a moment, then, he remembers the beast out of the sea that had hunted him in Vespera’s temple, but his slight smile doesn’t fade and he does not turn from the statue until he has read the note.
When he does, at last, go to the forest with the sea at his back, it is no Relic he thinks to hunt. Such games were well enough, but he has no interest in such a tool, not when he has his immortality, and Florentine has her dagger, and every world and crawling second is open to them.
Instead, he (like so many others here, unknown to him) hunts a king, a killer, a ghost. And when better than in the dark?
@Random Events
STAFF EDIT***
@lysander has rolled a 1! He has been awarded +1 EXP point.
