Waffle House, Tuesday Morning

[deathsmajesty]

"Why won't they just leave?" Liliana demanded of the alien beside her as they hunkered down in a booth, trying to subtly keep an eye on the TV-headed creeps milling about outside the restaurant. They seemed loathe to actually come into the restaurant, quite likely due to the staff's absolute unwillingness to tolerate nonsense, but they weren't leaving, either. Just standing there, holding up various reward offers towards the glass like that might entice either person to come out.

Of all the places Liliana had intended to visit today, this Waffle Hut wasn't one of them, and of all the people she intended to see, Stark was most definitely not one, either. But they'd both ended up getting menaced by an ever-growing crowd of TV heads and had ducked into the one place that had offered sanctuary and, well...now here they were. Sharing a sticky booth, getting stared at by the crowd outside and utterly ignored by the staff within.

[For said glowy alien, please]

Comments

[stykera]

Stark wasn't certain he was actually better off in here with Liliana than he was out on the streets. The creepy TV-people hadn't done anything truly harmful. Yet.

"Maybe I should just go home and try to avoid them," he suggested, looking at the door almost longingly.

The look he got from the server waiting to take his order was doing a wonderful job dissuading him from trying to make a break for it though.

[deathsmajesty]

He hadn't attempted to murder them yet, either, so...

"The door is there," Liliana said, indicating it with a wave of her hand. She was fine with letting him play bait if that would get her out of here. She had errands to run in town proper that were...not this. "Try not to help anybody on your way to the parking lot."

She didn't know why that felt right to say, it just did.

[stykera]

Stark hadn't attempted to murder anyone on the island, actually.

"I don't think I'm supposed to leave," he said, eyeing the server nervously, and then the cook behind the counter who had cleared their throat in a somehow menacing fashion. "Without ordering. And there isn't anyone out there to help!"

[deathsmajesty]

Not how the nearly-murdered woman remembered it, actually.

"Lucky for them," Liliana said. "They might survive this way."

She was just going to ignore the glaring server and throat-clearing cook. That would surely work out well for her.

[stykera]

Look, someone in this conversation had been deliberately harmed by the other and it wasn't Liliana...

"I don't know what you think happened but it wasn't what happened."

[deathsmajesty]

Well, you see, she'd been fighting for her life at the time...

Liliana just raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh?" she asked, voice frosty. "While I will admit that earlier parts of the evening were a blur, but I distinctly remember you coming in with an offer to help, but the help you were offering was to help me shuffle off this mortal coil!"

The server didn't blink at this accusation, but also moved onto clearing their throat. Impatiently.

[stykera]

"You were dying," Stark said incredulously. "Helping with that is what I'm for. You were be nearly dead already and there wasn't anything I could do to change that so I offered what I could!"

And then she'd basically tried to eat him which was very rude, tbqh.

[deathsmajesty]

This proving that he was wrong, there has very clearly been something he could do to change that.

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!" Liliana scoffed. "Helping doesn't mean strangling me into silence and dragging me into the void!"

"Mmm, ma'am, I'm gonna need for you to keep it down," the server said, sounding bored, "and y'all need to order something if you wanna stay. This ain't a bus stop for your free waiting convenience."

[stykera]

Having someone forcibly steal some of his own life away wasn't a thing he could have done by himself, Liliana! Now was it?

"Strangling you? I didn't do any strangling! Why would I have strangled you? Or dragged you anywhere? That's not what I do that isn't what I am that isn't who am! None of the strangling came from me!"

[deathsmajesty]

"Sir, I'm also gonna need you to chill out," they continued with a sigh. "Should I start with coffees then?"

"Fine!" Liliana snapped. "Coffees, fine!"

"Ma'am, you're gonna wanna check yourself," the server warned before heading off to get them coffees. Because adding caffeine to this could only be a great idea.

"You came into the apartment, soothed me with my moth--" Nope! "--and then kicked open a door and started to drag me through," she seethed.

[stykera]

"I don't drag people anywhere," Stark snapped.

This was quite the morning for people making assumptions about him and Stark was not here for it.

"And I don't kick down doors I'm there to guide and to ease the transition. That's what I exist to do!"

[deathsmajesty]

"Well that's sure not the fuck what happened!" Liliana snapped right back. "And what makes you think I wanted your help peacefully dying any more than I would want to be dragged into death? Who are you to decide that I should die?"

[stykera]

"You were already dying! I didn't do anything to change that. All I did was try to make that better for you. I didn't decide anything I just knew you were."

[deathsmajesty]

"There is no better in death," Liliana said tightly. "There is only the cold of the void and worse. There was pain and fear and - do you have any idea what it feels to be helplessly dragged to--!" Again she stops, vibrating in place with words she is not saying. "Have you considered it might be a better use of your time and energy to actually try to save, rather than strewing banana peels between them and their grave?"

[stykera]

"There is better," Stark insisted. "I know. I'm a Stykera and this is what I'm for."

"And...it isn't always cold. There isn't a void and people go to different places. I've seen it and I've felt it and I've..."

He'd spoken to people who had passed.

"You go where you're meant to but you weren't going where you were meant because something interfered!"

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana rocked backwards, shocked by what he said, her already pale complexion going the color of curdled milk. "J--" she said, then bit her lip hard enough that it turned white beneath her teeth. "You don't know where I am meant to go," she said, trying to sound bitter but her voice was just hoarse.

[stykera]

"I never do until the end," Stark said gently.

Well, he'd known where Zhaan would go. Zhaan had known where she would go.

"There are different destinations. But you weren't...it was all wrong. They were interfering and that isn't meant to happen!"

[deathsmajesty]

"Wait." Her head snapped up. "They? What they?"

She sounded very surprised by the plural.

[stykera]

"I don't know who they were. They were in your memories. Although...they weren't. They were...I don't know. I could feel them."

Stark's hand went to his throat involuntarily.

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana surged to her feet and the server, coming back with their drinks, glared at her. "You're gonna wanna sit back down, sugar," they said, setting the coffee down. "We don't play here."

Liliana sat, but only because she wanted to. Honest.

"What memories?" she demanded, very clearly rattled. "What do you mean you could feel them? What--what happened?"

[stykera]

Stark flinched when she stood, looking longingly at the door again.

"I...I see things. When I'm attending to the dying. Memories. And yours were...very vivid. He was hurting me. And he had hurt you? And there was so much pain and so much death and..."

He shivered a little, hunching his shoulders as he wrapped his hands around his coffee cup.

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana's hand jerked, knocking over her coffee. "What did you see?" She wanted to sound terrifying, furious, dangerous, but her voice betrayed her, leaving her sounding...small. Vulnerable.

Heartbroken.

[stykera]

Stark flinched again, jerking away from both Liliana and the rapidly spreading coffee.

"Nothing on purpose!"

He started blotting ineffectively at the spill with a handful of napkins before their server arrived with a long-suffering sigh, a towel, and a pot of coffee to refill the cup.

"I don't know what they were but they were all dying, horribly, and then there was a man and he was choking me and I couldn't breathe..."

[deathsmajesty]

What did it say that the 'they were all dying, horribly' honestly did nothing to narrow down what he might have seen? You know what, never mind, don't answer that. Listen, not all of those deaths were even hers, some massacres she just witnessed.

The choking...okay, it did narrow it down, but only to a handful of options, not a single one.

"Describe it," she said through clenched teeth. And then paused, breathing heavily, closing her eyes and counting backwards from ten. "I mean," she said speaking slowly and carefully, "I would greatly appreciate it if you'd tell me, in as much detail as possible, what it was you saw."

[stykera]

"Which thing?" Stark asked. "The man choking me? He was large and terrifying. The creatures dying? They were like nothing I'd ever seen and they were...ill. All of them. Struck down by something."

[deathsmajesty]

Yeah, that still was not narrowing anything down, Stark. Description was not your gift.

She just watched him for a moment with wide eyes that seemed almost bruised - emotionally, not physically. And then she sighed and sipped her coffee. "I honestly have no idea what you saw," she said.

[stykera]

"Neither do I!"

Stark sighed. He'd gone back to clutching his coffee cup like it was a talisman to protect him.

"Onakke," he said finally. "The ones who were dying."

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana spilled her coffee again. The server behind the counter made an impatient noise.

"The onakke?" Liliana repeated. "You saw--but--how?! How do you even know that name? What did you see?"

[stykera]

"One of them said it and they were all dying but he said I couldn't have you but I wasn't trying to take you!"

Stark was almost desperate to have her believe that. "I wouldn't. That's not what I do. Not unless I'm forced to."

[deathsmajesty]

"But how?!" she sputtered, momentarily mentally caught up in the mystery over the heartfelt emotional plea. "I don't remember the onakke! How could I? They died thousands of years before I was born!"

[stykera]

"I don't know but I saw them and I watched them dying horribly and therewas nothing i could do and one of them spoke to me and that isn't meant to happen!"

Not to mention the other people Stark had seen.

[deathsmajesty]

Surely nobody of importance!

Again Liliana just looked at him, completely confused. "Of course it's not supposed to happen! You're not supposed to be in my head! And neither is that!"

She delivered a withering, nasty frown, but not to him. It was directed downwards. At the booth, perhaps?

Or possibly, just possibly, to the delicate veil on her hip, made from numerous thin metal chains.

[stykera]

Surely not.

"What about the others?" Stark asked. "There were others and there shouldn't have been anyone there it was all wrong! I wasn't trying to harm you in any way I was just trying to make it easier for you."

[deathsmajesty]

"I don't want easier!" Liliana snapped. "I am the Mistress of Death, not its servant, and I will never, ever bow to it! I am immortal."

Which was not the same as undying, mind. Not that she was interested in splitting hairs that finely.

Their server was back, wiping up the spilled coffee and looking vastly unimpressed with the declaration as well. Once the spill was cleaned up, a third cup was left, along with the towel - and an unsaid message Clean it up yourself next time.

"...Wait, what others?"

[stykera]

"You didn't feel immortal! You were most of the way dead already and all I did was be there to assist you, not any of those others! Not to be shown horrors from your mind, not to be threatened, not to be used!"

He'd get back to the other men in a minute. Probably.

[deathsmajesty]

There was that fine hair she hadn't been splitting. Liliana was immortal in the same way (though not the same mechanics) that a vampire was immortal: ageless and unaffected by natural causes. But she could absolutely still be killed. Even at their strongest, Planeswalkers were not in general indestructible or undying and she was still less than what she'd been.

But she had no compunctions just eliding right over that!

"I didn't threaten you!" Liliana said, offended. "I couldn't even speak! And I certainly didn't invite you into my mind!"

[stykera]

"You didn't threaten me," Stark agreed. "They threatened me. The man with the shadows and then the other one..."

He looked at her, shoulders hunching again. He was very good at making himself small when the situation called for it.

"He was more frightening than the first one who was choking me. You. Both of us? And you. You...you did something else."

[deathsmajesty]

"The man with the shadows? Choking--?"

Sorry, Stark. You really needed to stop pairing the things you wanted to focus on with the things that carried a lot of emotional weight for Liliana. Because she barely heard the last few sentences.

"I--I don't--" Her hand crept up to her throat and she looked...small. Young. Devastated.

[stykera]

"I felt it," Stark said miserably. "Choking on the shadows. I'm sorry you felt it first."

[deathsmajesty]

The Void will have you, Lili. Its hunger will never die. It will have us both.

"He--" She stumbled over her words. "I--."

This time, she didn't spill her coffee, just clutched at it with trembling hands. Nor did she look at him, feeling vulnerable and exposed, almost naked. "I do not wish to speak of it."

Honestly, it was all she could do not to crawl across the table and drag the memory from his head with clawed fingers. She wasn't as adept at lethemancy as she was with other aspects of necromancy, but she was good enough to make sure it stuck. But she didn't understand Stark, wasn't sure if she could make it happen.

For the first time in awhile, she missed Jace. Missed Jace terribly.

It was fine. He could keep it. He didn't know what he'd seen. Who he'd seen. Didn't know the details, couldn't understand. Couldn't possibly understand the depths of her fear and guilt and shame.

Join me, Lili. All the torment of the Void will be ours to share forever."

[stykera]

Stark was not inclined to give up memories readily. Liliana could try but it likely wouldn't end well for either of them.

"Then don't speak," he said, still curling in on himself as much as possible. "But the other one... he was more frightening. He didn't do anything but he was worse. And then he was gone and you were... pulling. At me."

[deathsmajesty]

"The other one?"

Liliana tried to figure out which of her memories could be worse than that.

...Actually, without the emotional tenor that went along with what had happened to Josu, there were a lot of memories that could be classified as 'worse' than that, truth be told.

"Worse how? What did this one look like?"

[stykera]

"Just a man," Stark said, looking intently at his coffee cup. "With golden eyes."

Who had been quietly and thoroughly terrifying

[deathsmajesty]

"Him," Liliana snarled, setting down her mug so heavily some of the coffee jostled over the side. Their server didn't even move just pointed at the towel that had been left behind. "Did he hurt you?"

It didn't matter that Liliana had lifelinked Stark. Didn't matter that she absolutely would have drained him if Gladio hadn't intervened. The Raven Man had no right to touch him. To be in her head at all!

[stykera]

"No. He didn't."

Stark shook his head, still making himself as small as possible.

"He just talked. I don't want meet him again. Ever. He's... frightening."

[deathsmajesty]

"Yes," Liliana said quietly, finally folding under the stare of their server and wiping up the spilled coffee. "He's...I don't know how to describe him. Or explain him. But you are correct in your response to him. I call him the Raven Man. He's been...following me...since I was a girl."

She looked up at Stark, brow furrowing. "What did he say to you?"

[stykera]

"That he had plans for you and that someone was waiting for you on the other side," Stark said softly.

"And that you'd heal yourself if you stopped being 'squeamish.' Which you did."

[deathsmajesty]

"Which I did," she agreed. "But not on his say-so."

Neither thing Stark said was new or surprising, but that didn't mean that it didn't make Liliana shiver hearing him say it. Keep me out of your plans, Raven Man, I want none of them.

She was pretty sure the faint echo of his laugh was just her mind playing tricks on her. Pretty sure.

"I wasn't going to let you drag me into the void without fighting tooth and nail," she said crisply. "I will not go gentle into that good night nor any other."

Oh no. She would rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[stykera]

"I wasn't dragging you anywhere! I wouldn't. That's not what I do."

Stark was going to need so many hashbrowns to recover from this conversation.

"I wasn't trying to do any harm. I wasn't forcing anything. You were dying and I knew you were dying and I tried to help you. I'm not wrong about knowing someone is dying!"

[deathsmajesty]

She just looked at him, arching an eyebrow. "Ignoring, for just a moment, how incredibly disingenuous it is to offer a dying woman help, but not with saving her life, and also ignoring how I will never see that kind of 'help' as a kindness, how, pray tell, was I supposed to know any of that?"

[stykera]

"There was nothing else I could have done to help! You were dying and you were too far gone for me to offer anything else. I'm a medic, of sorts, but you were beyond that sort of help!"

Stark sighed, frustrated.

"I wasn't trying to harm you. I wouldn't do that. And it can be a kindness. It's meant to be! You chose to...whatever that was you did. To me."

[deathsmajesty]

"You didn't answer my question," Liliana pointed out. "You came in, offered to help, bathed me in a light that whispered to me that it was all right for me to let go and then suddenly the door to the void opened and I was being throttled and dragged to it. How, precisely, was I supposed to know that that specific aspect wasn't you?"

Her haughty expression turned to something else before being wiped free of all emotion. "Do you honestly think that was the first time someone saw I was injured and vulnerable and tried to finish the job?"

[stykera]

"What about any interaction we have had, or anything you may have heard of me, would make you think I would walk in and try to murder you?" Stark asked, almost pleading. "In front of witnesses, no less? Why would I want to harm you?"

You know, before she tried to eat him.

[deathsmajesty]

"The part where I was experiencing it certainly helped," Liliana drawled. "I was, as you say, dying, it's not like either Ignis or Gladio knew what was what going on. You could have swanned in, done whatever, and then wept how you'd tried to help but it was too late and no one would have been the wiser."

She glared at him. "I had just fought off a demon, had nearly bled out, and was dying on a living room floor. I was vulnerable in a way I haven't been in sixty years - and do you know what happened the last time I was in almost that exact same position? Someone tried to kill me. A perfect stranger, a healer, someone I had begged for help. Yes, I harvested that energy that was going towards trying to convince me to let go and used to to heal myself because I was fighting for my very life."

Her violet eyes blazed with light. "You want to tell me it was all a misunderstanding, that yes, your help was still going to end with me dead in the floor, but in a nice way, but that you were a passive actor in what happened after you opened the door? Fine. I will even believe you. But take thirty seconds to think about what happened from the point of view of the woman whose formative memory was getting strangled by--"

Oh look! Liliana was just gonna shut the fuck up real fast.

[stykera]

"I saw someone who needed help and I did what I could," Stark insisted. "And I knew something was wrong as soon as there was interference. I had no intention of harming you! The man with the shadows was choking me and I couldn't do anything. I was trapped in your memories just as much as you were and if I could have closed the doorway I would have."

[deathsmajesty]

Once again, she flinched at the mention of the man in the shadows, but where there was nothing but underlying fury when she spoke of the golden-eyed man, the emotions underlying the discussion of the shadow man were much more complex.

"Fine," she said softly. "I believe you. All right? I believe you."

[stykera]

"I'm sorry," Stark said desperately. "I wouldn't have tried if I'd known what would happen, or that you could come back from the edge of death the way you did..."

Of course, if he hadn't shown up that might have led to a very different outcome for one of the occupants of the apartment. He was a convenient energy source at times.

[deathsmajesty]

Eh. Beefslab had a ton of HP. He probably would have been fiiiiiiiiiine.

Except we all know that Ignis would have insisted, which might have been for the best considering how good Gladio was at yanking Liliana off people she was harvesting...But still, a vastly different and more unpleasant outcome for sure. Stark had been a guilt-free juice box!

"He is waiting for me," she said, unaware she was repeating what the Raven Man had said, "in the void. j--The one you're calling the shadow man. I've always wondered, but now I know for certain." And that knowledge hurt, in a way she couldn't hide.

She was so very tired.

"I... understand," she said finally. "You didn't know. You couldn't know. Just like I didn't and couldn't know what you were not what was attacking me." Another pause. "Are you still injured?"

[stykera]

Stark shook his head. "No. I'm...I'm fine."

Sure, he still had the occasional nightmare but it was just the year for that sort of thing for him. "I've, I've had worse things happen. I've survived. And someone once did something...not the same. But it felt similar, after."

[deathsmajesty]

Look, sometimes you just woke up with screaming nightmares. That just was a thing that happened.

Liliana nodded. "Had you still been feeling the ill-effects, I wouldn't have gotten you a health potion or a salve or something," she said, a little awkwardly. "If you'd like, I still can. To make up for what happened."

Was she apologizing? No. Absolutely not. Or, at least, she hadn't yet stooped to offering him an insincere apology. But trying to make it right another way? That she was willing to do.

[stykera]

"I'm fine," Stark repeated. "It hurt. It's over."

That was just his life, wasn't it?

"As I said, someone else did something similar, once. To save someone else."

[deathsmajesty]

Save someone...else? Sounds fake. That wasn't how things worked. Unless, of course, they had a reason to still need the other person alive. Then, sure, she supposed she could see it.

"It hurt, it's over," Liliana agreed with a nod. "That seems the best way to look at it. Mistakes were made that will not be made again."

A hesitation. "I am...sorry. That you experienced...that. Memory. Of mine."

She took no responsibility for it, it wasn't like she invited you into her head, Stark, but she knew how bad that memory was, at least. And could express sympathy that he now shared some small part of it.

[stykera]

Zhaan had knocked him out and used him as a battery to save a life at the eventual cost of her own. Stark was trying not to think too hard on that.

"I've seen other terrible memories," he said softly. "And I have plenty of my own. I'm sorry you lived it."

And that she had those two men lurking, somewhere, waiting for her.

[deathsmajesty]

Oh like the Raven Man was going to settle for lurking and waiting when he could be an active creeper instead!

Ugh, he was just the worst.

She shrugged, uncomfortable with the topic. "It hurt, it's over," she said, like it was that simple. Like it wasn't a weight she'd carried for two hundred years and would carry for thousands more. Like she couldn't trace the woman she was now back to that exact moment precisely.

Like the Raven Man hadn't been there, in the shadows, watching and pulling the strings.

"To make sure it is crystal clear, I have no intention to harm you further," she added, in case the reassurance was necessary.

[stykera]

Surely there would be no repercussions to other people knowing about the Raven Man. Right?

"I wouldn't be able to stop you if you did," Stark said. "Though there are some who might object. I never meant to cause harm at all."

[deathsmajesty]

Perish the thought! It couldn't possibly!

Liliana hadn't lived her entire life not giving a fuck about other people's objections to start doing so now she had plot to get through first. "Which is why I was telling you that I don't," she said. "Since you wouldn't."

She was looking at him oddly, though. Since that wasn't how most people would have replied, even though it was true. "What is your deal?" she finally asked.

[stykera]

"I had thought it best to avoid you," Stark said. "After what happened."

As if that explained his answer. Maybe it did.

"What do you mean? My deal? I'm just...me."

[deathsmajesty]

She shrugged. "Wise," she said. "But unnecessary, now that we've cleared up what happened."

She dipped her much abused coffee. "You radiated light and energy that tried to ease me death, which you have said is your purpose. What in the black-and-white mana does any of that mean?"

[stykera]

"That's just me," Stark said. He gestured at himself. "There's me." He tapped his mask. "And then there's the rest of me."

He sighed, shaking his head. "I'm a Stykera. It's just...what I am. What I'm for. Dealing with death. The dying. Crossing them over to the Other Side. Attending deaths. Someone here said the word 'psychopomp' fits, once."

A ghost had told him that, even!

[deathsmajesty]

"I don't know what that is," Liliana said, still awhile out from meeting Gideon Jura and learning about the gods of Theros. "So, you're some...doorman between life and death? Is your mask a separate aspect of you? Or does it keep your power from just spilling out willy-nilly? If you splashed your energy on someone who wasn't dying, would it have an effect on them? What does crossing over normally entail?"

It wasn't that she hadn't had questions this whole time, Stark, it was that she'd just been too well-bred to ask them.

[stykera]

"The mask is protective. Of me. It keeps me from...leaking. I can take it off, when I'm ready, but leaving it off too long is draining. Exhausting."

Stark sighed again.

"It's not...it's just part of me, the energy. That part that isn't my body. I can...share memories, if I choose. Usually I give them, to offer some comfort. Or just to share something with someone."

He relaxed, a little, uncurling his body a bit to take a proper sip of his coffee.

"And usually...usually I'm just there to help. To ease the passage. There isn't anyone else there. Just them and they go. Sometimes they're ready. Sometimes they aren't. But they go and I help and there's no pulling. Just this side and the other. They go to different places. I don't know until the end where."

Different beliefs, different destinations and all that.

[deathsmajesty]

Yeeeeah, the concept of an afterlife in Magic: The Gathering was weird. You didn't really wanna think too hard about it in the same way you didn't wanna think too hard about what was holding you up as you ran off a cliff in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

She still looked like she didn't really understand the point of it all, but also like she was certain that was not the right thing to say. "But there are people dying every day," she said instead. "Hundreds, thousands. This plane has more people in it than I've ever heard of. How are you not mad?"

Weeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllll...

[stykera]

"How do you know I'm not?" Stark asked softly. "Sometimes I think I am. Sometimes others think I am. You were nearby, so I felt you. And people rarely die on this island. Very rarely. You stood out."

He frowned at his coffee. "When I was small I was kept by the Scarran upper caste to attend their deaths. Now I can choose to do it. Choose to help, when I can."

[deathsmajesty]

Yeahno, she'd heard it as she'd asked the question. Because she was pretty sure that Stark was at least a little mad. Or, at least, not all the way sane.

"A note," she said dryly, "you should really be more specific about what you're offering to help with. Since I assure you, it did not line up with what the rest of us assumed you meant."

[stykera]

"I thought they knew what I am. I don't hide it. And you... I've never been wrong before. Not about that."

There was one area of his life where Stark was confident. Or had been.

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana was a helper!

"Not hiding something doesn't mean everybody knows about it," Liliana pointed out. "I certainly didn't. And they were gone for ten years for a war; I'm sure much of what they'd known before has been relegated to storage and never retrieved." She gave him a look. "Also, if you're at the bedsides of people dying, then surely you must know how frantic, how emotional everything is. Even if they know it stone cold fact outside of such times, it's easy to forget when you're on the verge of losing someone you care about. Especially if it's an unexpected and ugly death."

And then she dropped her eyes. "I saw that a lot. As a girl. When I was a cleric during the war."

[stykera]

"There wasn't time to say anything else once I... once things started to happen. I couldn't do anything. I was being held there."

By scary men, apparently.

[deathsmajesty]

Yeah, the reminder about the men in her head had Liliana stop lecturing and drink a few more swallows of coffee.

"Scarrens?" she asked eventually.

[stykera]

"Their empire controlled much of where I'm from. They look...somewhat like lizards. I'll be happy to never see another. They were cruel and used me and discarded me. Sold me. Traded me. I'm not certain."

At least that was to be assumed. He'd been on Katratzi and ended up on a Budong before becoming Scorpy's science experiment.

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana decided that Scarrans were what Stark's plane called viashino because that was easiest. "Just because you could...ease their way?" she asked. "Did they die so brutally then?"

[stykera]

"Sometimes," Stark said. "Sometimes they just wanted someone there because they could. We're rare. Stykera. Rarer now. I think I was a...a status symbol?"

[deathsmajesty]

"Ah," Liliana said with a nod. "Yes, I can see that. I have been places where non-humans were treated that way. Fashionable for the nobility to have an elf companion or a merfolk living in their carefully terraced garden pools."

[stykera]

"Neither the Scarrans nor the Peacekeepers thought of me as a person," Stark said quietly. "Baniks are a lesser race. But I was valuable."

[deathsmajesty]

Yeah. Liliana didn't like that, he could see it in the way her nose wrinkled and her mouth twisted. "As a thing," she agreed. "Not a person. Of course."

[stykera]

"I haven't had to live like that for a long time," Stark said. "But it doesn't go away."

[deathsmajesty]

"No," Liliana agreed, her expression going inward for a moment. "It never really does."

Three guesses no prizes where her mind had gone back to.