Catching up

Jp with Omni, Lucian and Bandorchu

Alexis smiled, grateful for his words, but not convinced.

She reached out to the things he had left behind in the oasis, minus the bedroll Silina was resting on, and pushed them into his arms.

“You vanished on me. What happened?”

He held the items, supplies that would have been useful when he had left. He was grateful that she had kept them, though he would have understood her keeping them or being rid of them. Being reminded of the trip though, not his worst memory, but it still sucked.

“Ambushed by the black cloaks. Same ones I had pissed off before, lookin’ to sell me off as revenge.”

Looking back at Silina for a moment, he could imagine it like it had happened last night.

“Silina saved me and she guided me here. I had thought you were the new Prophetess, which is why I was in the streets last night.”

Alexis huffed in dark amusement.

“Not quite that glamorous, no.”

She glanced at Silina shortly.

“… even more grateful to her, then.”

Her eyes wandered over the now so familiar cavern walls, their inscriptions all but tattooed in her memory.

“Been holed up here for most of the time.”

Tarmen gave the scribblings a look over, the first time he had noticed them. They immediately fascinated him.
If not for the nature of their reunion, he would have been asking about them in more detail, but right now he was realizing how childish he had been here.
She had been alone while he had been having a tantrum. A part of him argued against that, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was true.
He changed his thoughts to what he assumed she was hiding from Voah. The hammer.
If she was here, he could guess that it was because of that artifact.

“Found anythin’ useful among all this history?”

“Define ‘useful’.”

In all honesty, the more she learned, the less Alexis felt she knew. Her eyes wandered to the depiction of the hammer being broken.

“Some answers. A helluva lot more questions.”

He withheld a chuckle to avoid the pain from it, but a humored wrinkle pulled the corner of his mouth.

“So nothin’ out of the ordinary. I’ll want to hear about these questions later.”

Taking a drink, he looked at his thumbs for the his next question.

“No point askin’ how you are, so is there any direction you have set,” he gestured to both of them,” either of you?”

“Me? Away from here. And soon. Cause I think my new friend within the Brotherhood will come looking for me before long, and I can’t have him stumble upon you.”

Alexis said, dead serious.

“I assume you came across the obelisk near the city? There seem to be two more of them, in the desert. Gonna see if I can find them somehow.”

He nodded upon remembering to odd shard of rock where he had first separated from Silina.

“Assumin’ this Brotherhood will be after them too?”

“The obelisks? No, not necessarily so. Don’t think so, at least. I’d assume whatever I might find, they already know.”

Alexis again found herself looking into the dancing flames.

“… I just happen to have something they very urgently want.”

The ex-Arbiter listened to their exchange, trying to put it together with what she had learned. It wasn’t much. She had different news entirely and she wondered how they would feel about it once they heard.

From what she gathered, Alexis headed to the holy city looking for Islana and Tarmen had willfully joined her. At some point they ran into the dark robes in the desert and got separated. Tarmen pissed off the dark robes somehow and had saved Silina? Tarmen came looking for Alexis who had been staying here in Gra'akast and looking into the Ozainae history...

She decided to begin with some clarification.

"Pardon, but... are the dark robes the same as this "brotherhood" to which you have referred?"

Alexis nodded.

“They are indeed. ‘The Brotherhood of the Ebony Hand’, to call them by their full name.”

"By the..."

She cut herself off from saying "Pillars".

"It seems like you've uncovered much more than I probably should have, but... that's how we ended up in this mess to begin. I stumbled onto the den of this brotherhood and escaped with a map of Ostiarium. Since that time, one of them, a man with white eyes, has been hounding me. There is much more to that story, but we will come to that later."