{I am a Fire Escape}

Temeraire tips his head, a low rumble of amusement running through him as he shifts to sit down, tail beating heavy against the ground with the motion before he stills. “Yes,” he says, patiently, “I do talk.” He’s seen that sort of surprise often enough, now, that it’s not really offensive anymore. It’s almost endearing, in a way, because it means they’ve never met a dragon like him, and that is flattering. 

He is quite, he likes to believe, one of a kind.

“Yes,” he says again, “I do quite like the music. There is not music exactly like it where I come from, and though I miss the music in China this is also quite nice. It is nice to fly to.” His eyes gleam as he considers the man and his odd little chair, and then he says, “My name is Temeraire,” with great gravity. “What is yours?”

“It’s good music, though it’s not the sort I’m used to hearin’ or playin’, either,” Levin says, nodding in agreement. “Not sure where this China is, but - where I’m from in Jugdral, there’s a lot more wind instruments, an’ the stringed ones aren’t usually hooked up to anythin’ to make ‘em louder. It’s, uh, an experience to be hearin’ things still blarin’ so loudly so far out.”

The festival brings people out in droves, and Temeraire is loving it. Though he of course enjoys spending time with his crew- or rather, that is, his friends- it’s also nice to see so many other people. The smells are delectable, he’s of a size that he can sample the wares and still taste them, there’s music and laughter- he spends much of the first couple of nights simply winging overhead in one area or another, though he ends up avoiding Tranquility simply because it seems that the smell of him is still disconcerting to prey animals, and he sent the petting zoo into a frenzy quite without intention to.

So really, he ends up in the Sea of Nectar for the most part, hovering around the stage, soaring in loops and whorls and long, lazy sweeps of his wings, often nearly invisible against the darkening skies. He loves the music- it’s soothing, or uplifting, it makes emotions well in him until he wants to release it into the sky with a great roar, except that would disrupt the music, and so he doesn’t.

For the most part, he goes unnoticed, but when hailed, he drops down quickly enough, and so it goes this time. This man’s just as awkward as anyone else has been, but he’s learned to take it in stride. He drops down and lands neatly, then tucks his wings in against his sides and extends his face towards the man, curious. “Hello,” he says, brightly, though still a little dazed from the music. “May I help you?”

“Holy shit,” says Levin, very smartly. “You really are a dragon, an’ you talk.”

...Well! That’s kind of a rude introduction. He backtracks, hastily. “I mean, no offense - I’m sure dragons wherever you’re from all talk a lot. I’ve just never met a talkin’ one where I’m from before - or, leastwise, not one in much of a mood to talk to me.”

Knoll gives Levin a feeble smile at the other man’s attempts to reassure him. “I hope so,” he says. “I had both of them wrapped. I didn’t– I didn’t use them.” Gleipnir he supposes he could have used, and it might have been prudent to do so, in the battle he’d faced; he’d been given permission to use it. Or at least, as much permission as could be had given the circumstances– But the tome had been left unused. He wasn’t worthy of wielding such a precious tome, especially not against…

He swallows. Knoll supposes he has no reason to be so careful with Naglfar, not after he saw it used so many times, not after he’s seen all the destruction it’s wrought firsthand. But when he looks at it he remembers the bowed head and hunched shoulders of Grado’s prince, curled over a desk, sputtering lamps casting long shadows. Writing, writing, writing. Writing even after Knoll begged him to rest. Writing symbols Knoll had never seen before. At the end of everything Knoll had snuck up and stolen Naglfar, unable to bear the thought of it destroyed, knowing that even if Lyon had not penned the tome himself that his lifeblood lay within its pages. It was a piece of him, even if it was an awful, jagged one, and it is one of the only things Knoll has left–

–Levin is talking to him. With a valiant effort, Knoll drags himself out of his thoughts, blinking as he tries to parse whatever it was Levin said while he wasn’t listening. Cover his hands. Cover his… hands?

“Oh,” says Knoll. He looks at his hands, which are clenched into white-knuckled fists in his lap. He wills them to relax, stifling a wince as his fingernails part painfully from the flesh of his palms. “Um…”

His palms are mostly covered already by the sleeves of his undershirt, but he’s not sure if that’s enough coverage to satisfy Levin’s requirement. Frowning, he shuffles his clothing around, twisting things so he’s able to wrap both of his hands in his cloak. Then, after a glance at Levin’s face, he hamfistedly pages through the tome, trying to be as delicate as he can without the use of his fingers.

The tome is an interesting read. Skimming through, Knoll sees standard invocations to higher powers, interspersed with more of the strange, childlike graffiti. Everything is written in the common alphabet, which has a disorienting effect on him, but he’s not trying to read it read it, just get a sense for its general contents. 

Curiosity sated, he awkwardly closes the tome, then carefully nudges it back over to Levin. Then he frees his hands. 

“Thank you,” he says. “That was… interesting. It really does look like all that strange writing is an organic part of the tome.”

Levin feels for Knoll, really. He doesn’t know what it is about the tomes that cause such a strong reaction in the man, but he knows that look in his eye. It’s something distant, lost in thought, lost to the world around him - Levin knows it well enough. His usual experience with it never quite seems as anxious as Knoll’s, though.

Knoll comes back down to reality at the sound of his voice, though. Levin’s still uncertain about letting him page through the tome, but his mind instantly changes the moment Knoll actually starts looking through it. Like, seriously. He knows he’s the one who told Knoll to cover his hands and all, but - still. Watching him paw through it as delicately as possible with his hands all wrapped up in his robes is genuinely amusing. Levin tries not to laugh about it, though, if only to preserve Knoll’s feelings; he seems like the sort who’d get self-conscious about stuff like that easily.

“Not a problem,” he says, smiling as he collects the tome into his hands. “It really is. Like I said - I questioned it less when it was in the original tongue, but in plain script it’s really odd.”

It’s one of the better days for him. Not necessarily a great one - he feels weak and slightly nauseous when he attempts to stand on his own, which means that it’s Mobility Aid (”a cool wheelchair, that can like. Handle various terrains. Preferably somethin’ I don’t have to push by myself all the time. Maybe put some cool windy decals on it.”) time.

To say that he’s a little startled when he wheels out into the hall and finds a skeleton would be an understatement. He almost jumps clean out of his seat, which is an achievement, and the chair seems to wobble uncertainly when he crashes back down, as though threatening to tip over. That’s not the only change, though - the entire hall is filled to the brim with banners and other decorations in oranges and blacks and purples, and pumpkins, too. Why pumpkins? The fuck’s a “Halloween”?

Levin shakes his head, and wheels the hell out of there. The skeleton may or may not be fake, but... jeez. Kinda creepy to see that first thing.

The rest of what he finds in Nectar is far more pleasant. The first thing he hears on exiting the Flats is distant music from the Central Hub, and he all but ignores the lovely flower displays to speed on over (Really, they’re lovely - just not his thing! He isn’t even sure he can identify half of these plants! He’s pretty sure those flowers over there don’t exist in any part of Jugdral, and if they do, he’s content to remain unaware of them!). There’s fair games as well: some standard faire, other than the flashing lights and shiny new mechanisms; others are strange and new. He could probably win something at one of the dart games, honestly, if he could keep his hands steady - but that’s still not what he’s interested in.

He stops at a decent distance from the stage and stays there, sinking down into his chair, letting the music wash over him. There’s new styles, strange and unfamiliar, but it doesn’t matter; he likes them all the same. Eyes closed, his fingers move idly, picking out notes and chords as though playing them on the lute he doesn’t currently have with him. Perhaps he can borrow one, maybe he can get on stage and bring back his act as a bard. That would be fun. He can’t move like he used to, but...

He’s lost in thought like that until the shadow passes over his face, and his eyes snap right on open. There is, a dragon here. There was not a dragon before. The part of him that remembers the dracoknights of Thracia goes high on alert, blaring out a warning signal, but -

Beside him, in the wheelchair, the Forseti tome feels calmingly warm. He breathes out; this is not a Thracian dragon. It definitely is a dragon, but it’s not so harshly spiky and fierce looking. There’s something about this dragon...

It’s hovering in the air now, lower than before, within reasonable earshot of him speaking, and the performer on stage is just about to wrap up. It’s not like he’s shouting rudely in the middle of the performance. “Um? Hello! Big dragon!”

Knoll bows his head. “No,” he admits quietly. “If it’s beyond the scope of a bandage of a stave, it’s beyond me. My apologies.” He isn’t quite sure what he’s apologising for.

He makes a worried motion with his hands at the mention of his tomes, dipping his head again. “Thank you,” he says. “I hope so too. They aren’t truly mine; I’m keeping them in place of their proper owners.” It’s true enough.

“A god…” Knoll echoes, wondering. Certainly he’s seen his fair share of divine relics, tomes among them, but the concept of a baby god gives him pause. Were gods born? Surely they were a power that merely was. But then, Knoll’s never been the pious type, and has never been drawn to a higher faith. The highest power he believes in is the great strength of the earth beneath his feet. 

Despite his self-admitted lack of faith, the prospect of looking through a tome supposedly authored by a god intrigues him, and he extends a cautious hand towards Forseti. “May I?” he asks. 

Levin shrugs, and gives Knoll a sympathetic smile. “Hey, hey, no worries - me, too. I wasn’t exactly anticipatin’ any help for it now, anyways.”

He winces in sympathy when Knoll mentions that the tomes weren’t his, and does his best to seem optimistic with his reply. “Well. I’m sure they’re not gonna like. Tear ‘em up an’ incinerate ‘em, or anythin’. I’m sure they’ll get back to you good as new.” He pauses, considers that this maybe isn’t the best comparison, and changes direction a little. “Or, well. At least, in the same condition they were in before. You know.”

Knoll’s offer to take the tome sets him on edge, even though it shouldn’t - Forseti is currently de-powered, its ancient runes reading in fully legible script, and yet, somehow, he hesitates to let the man take it. Doesn’t want him to, when it’s something so personal, something others would have killed for the right to use-

But he can’t deny Knoll, either.

Levin’s hands are trembling around his glass. Min looks away. She’s never been in a battle - for it to be a battle, both sides have to be armed - but she knows the feeling of witnessing a slaughter. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. It wouldn’t do to mention now that she’s never heard of Silesia or Jugdral; it would seem disrespectful, to imply that wherever his wounds were acquired doesn’t exist in her world.

“And thanks,” she offers after a good minute’s silence. “I’ve never been compared to anyone’s mom before. I don’t really, um, make a habit of helping random strangers.” Oh, yikes. That sounded bad. “I - where I just came from it could turn into every man for themselves really quickly if things went wrong, and then by the time I started really wanting to help… the people there weren’t strangers anymore. So I don’t…” Trailing off. Min gestures a sort of ‘you know what I mean’ in place of finishing the sentence.

When she looks back, the glass of water is drained, and Levin looks slightly better. His blanket is draped comfortably around his shoulders, covering any of the black muck that has spilt onto his clothes, and his complexion is a touch ruddier, less sullied by fever-sweat. That has to be a good sign, right? Unless dark magic helps you get better before you get worse.

“Anyway, in my world nobody has green hair,” Min says, forcing her voice into a lighter pitch. “I dunno much about genetics but you can’t get like, green or blue or pink hair the natural way. You either have black hair, brown hair, blonde or red - a natural red, like orange-y red - and if you want another colour, you have to dye it. And yeah, I know, it’s boring,” she adds with a genuine smile. “Where I was born, almost everyone has black hair. A lot of people dyed it as a fashion statement. I went kinda teal-y once when I was a teenager? I don’t think it suited me.”

Levin freezes when she thanks him, trembling in place before he gives a rather strained bark of a laugh. “Oh, geez. Sorry that it’s my mom you got compared to, then.” He’s able to smile, just a little, just for a moment, before it slips off his face and his eyes close. “...I getcha. Me, I guess I’m more of a do-gooder myself - but sometimes I can let myself pretend that doin’ nothin’s better than doin’ somethin’.” Like the time he literally abandoned his country.

Ha, ha.

His eyes crack open as she talks about natural hair colors and dyes in her world, intrigued by the concept. “Sounds a bit like Isaach, where I’m from - pretty sure most of the people there have black hair.” He shifts in his seat. “To be fair, our ‘unnatural’ hair colors are pretty common, an’ not a lot of people dye their hair - in fact, I don’t know of anyone who really does. Even if they did, I doubt the pigments would stick, an’ people with darker hair would prob’ly be shit outta luck at makin’ any changes show up.”

John had been to the ocean a couple times. He lived kind of far, so it was always a big trip with his dad. The beaches in Nectar are more tropical than those in Washington, so it’s just enough of a difference to not make him too sad. Just a little sad, so he mostly tries not to think about those times. For now, he’s looking for shells.

He bends to grab one, and pauses, watching a sand crab wriggle into a hole. At the sound of the man’s voice, he looks up. His question takes him by surprise - he hadn’t really thought about wind, about the breeze, since he came here. Just another thing he tried not to think about, really. He stands slowly, thinking about his question.

It would make sense that other people with weird powers are here - Jade is here, and so is Kanaya. He just never really thought to ask about powers. So that doesn’t surprise him as much as meeting someone with the same… affinity? He never considered himself a wind user - wind friend, maybe. Breeze buddy. A part of the wind, shaped by it as much as he shapes it. That’s kind of a lot to drop on someone, though.

So he says, “I guess? Not so much in this place, but I can do…” He trails off as he makes a puny little sand tornado at his feet. “That.”

His eyes go wide with delight as he watches that little sand tornado - it’s not a lot, if this new man’s word is anything to go by, but it’s exciting to watch, refreshing. Too often were the winds turned into nothing more than just another means of combat, just another thing for someone to fight with. But that little tornado is - there’s something joyful about it. It’s exciting.

“That,” Levin says, quite firmly, grinning ear to ear, “is still pretty neat. It’s nice to see people havin’ fun with it, even if it’s not much.”

He sighs, wistfully. The day is still, and yet - and yet, if you looked closely, his hair and scarf seemed to be moving, slightly, as though carried on some unfeelable breeze. He turns back to stare at the book in his lap.

“Jesus,” Min mutters. “I’ll get you a glass of water,” said louder, a touch cheerier, to mask the shiver of recognition she gets at Levin’s grin, his ‘just gotta outlive it’. That’s what they all think. Just live one more second and a generator will be powered; just live one more day and they’ll be closer to getting out; just live and they’ll be sticking it to the Entity. Or whoever, honestly. Some of the people back there had real personal grudges against the things hunting them.

She turns on her heel and heads out of the library - leaving the door open, so she can hear if Levin suddenly starts coughing himself to death. The kitchen is across the hall, all ebony steel fixtures and bowls of glossy, potentially poisoned fruit everywhere; Min pushes a bowl aside and finds a glass to fill at the tap. The water comes out a bit odd, frothing violently before settling, so she fills another glass and sips some. Tastes fine. Levin’s already poisoned anyway, what is the water gonna do to him that his dark magic isn’t?

Back to the library. Min keeps a firm hold on the glass until she’s sure Levin isn’t going to drop it. There’s an armchair across from his, and she plops down in it  and watches him drink in tiny spurts. Already that restless itch is scrabbling at her legs, the urge to fuck off and he made his bed, leave him to lie in it, leapfrog the competition while you still can looming over her like a ten-foot-tall shadowy cartoon vampire. She shifts uneasily.

Keeping him awake, that was what she was going to do. “Where’d you come from?” she asks. “Were you in the middle of a battle? Is that why you’re… dark magicked?” Then, because she can, she adds: “And what’s with the hair? Like, it being green.”

“Thanks!” he calls after her, somewhat hoarsely, before sinking back lower into the couch. He coughs a few times after that, the bad, wet kind that kind of hurt - but he’s proud to say that he doesn’t actually cough up dark magic all over the floor again by the time Min returns. Which is good, because jeez that’d probably be a doozy for whoever had to clean it up later.

It’s actually a really good thing he doesn’t drop his glass, either. He feels like he’s just about to, a few times, hands and fingers trembling just slightly even though his grip on it is iron-solid - but he doesn’t, and the water brings with it a sort of cool relief he was only vaguely aware of needing before.

“...What’s with your hair? Like, it bein’ black,” Levin shoots back, eyebrows raised with a mild amusement, even if it’s a bit of an unfair comparison. People with black hair certainly exist in Jugdral - hell, his own mother had black hair. “Green hair’s a pretty common color where I’m from. It’s a family trait for me, at least on my dad’s side.” His eyes glaze over just slightly, and he sinks lower into the couch. “His brothers were blonde, though. An’ my mom - Rahna had black hair, I guess. Like yours.”

It strikes him that this is odd, for him, and so he sits back up with a smile that’s a bit too cheery. “’Course, you pull it off better, I think,” he says, brightly, and he means that genuinely enough, at least.

Alexis is starting to think Nectar might just not be particularly fond of them, at this point.  It’s a lovely place, and they can sit and stare at the water for hours, but little things like this keep happening - even if, at least here, they’d like to firmly mentally establish that whoever-this-is was far enough left for them to be blind to him.  If they don’t establish that now they’re going to get caught up on thinking about it later, so – now that’s how it was, regardless of how true it might be.

Tripping over him, however, almost grinds their face into the sand before they instinctively move to catch themself - there are more comfortable positions to be caught in, to be sure, they can think of at least seven instinctively and none of them are this - their boots aren’t made for traction on sand, or it’s not intended, at least.

(If they’re mumbling curses under their breath, it’s a perfectly reasonable and logical thing to do.)

You all right there?  Alexis pushes themself halfway up to kneeling, ignoring the sand for now, and casts him a Look.  “… What’s it look like.  Y’normally take your rests on th’ ground?”

“Nope!” says Levin, quite brightly, as though completely oblivious to The Look. “Normally, I have perfectly functional legs that can walk for distances along a beach! Unfortunately, that’s just not where I’m at right now, I guess. We all must give things up.”

“Ah!” Knoll says, as the man collapses. “S-Sir! Are you all right?!” Is he injured somehow? Knoll kneels and reaches for him, body moving automatically. Then he slows as he realises he cannot see or smell blood. Whether he is simply poor at balancing, or is suffering from some deeper ailment, it’s beyond Knoll’s skills of battlefield triage to treat. Especially, he thinks ruefully, with his staves locked up someplace far from him, well out of reach.

So he settles for rocking back on his heels, giving the fellow some space. Space Knoll finds himself grateful for, as he has to disguise a sudden bark of laughter in a forced cough. 

“A-Age two thousand and one,” he says, wondering why his usual emotionless fugue has suddenly deserted him. “You are certain that’s the same tome? And not a… an unusual practical joke?” He wouldn’t put it past the creators of the Ark to do something like that, if their cruel humour was enough to rip strangers from their homes and pit them together. 

(All the same, he thinks, they’d left him Lyon’s cloak…)

“…Yes,” Knoll says. “I had several tomes taken from me upon my arrival. The common ones are no great trouble to replace– I know the invocations well enough to write new ones myself.” This last bit is said with a touch of pride. “If not here, then when I return home, and can get proper materials.” It would, he thinks, perhaps be less trouble to write new tomes himself than to try and buy more, what with the reputation the Demon King’s war has given Dark magic. But…

He chews his lip worriedly. “…Two of the tomes I had with me were…” He hesitates, not wanting to say too much. “…special. I could not replace them without help, or great effort, or both.” It sounds as if this Forseti –at least in its orginal, untouched state– would have been such a tome. Knoll hasn’t the faintest idea what the man means by Forseti blood, but he can grasp the basic concept. He feels a stab of jealousy that this man gets to keep his precious tome, while his are stolen away. He wouldn’t even use them, even if faced with danger; they are both too precious for that. He just wants to see them safe, and by his side. 

Remembering himself, Knoll looks up from his lap, shaking himself out of his reverie. “Forgive me. My name is Knoll. Yourself?”

“Quite peachy,” Levin grunts, dragging himself back into a sitting position – though he made no effort to sit back on his chair, already deciding that it’s far too much effort for his traitorous legs to handle. He pauses, and then pulls a face. “Actually, scratch that – not really doin’ my best here. Sometimes things don’t wanna work when I want ‘em too, an’ I shake a lot for no reason, an’ I get weirdly specific pains in places I haven’t hurt. Prob’ly not much you could do about that.”

He can’t help but smile when Knoll questions the tome’s authenticity, almost laughing himself. “Yeah, you’d think that,” he says, eyes closing as he smirks, so confident in himself. “Except, that’s what it actually said, back when it was-“

And then he pauses, smirk falling from his face as his brows furrow in thought. “…You know what, I never could read the language, but I could understand it, you see – an’ I’m pretty certain that’s what it’s always said, actually. Except now it’s in plain text, an’ it seems kinda stupider, somehow.” He laughs, and scrubs the back of his head. “Considerin’ that this tome was bestowed upon my ancestor a little over a hundred years ago by a god, I mean, I guess that over two thousand years is pretty respectable for a god. Maybe he was a baby god, or one with a pretty good sense of humor. Like, there’s a good prayer or two invokin’ him in the front, an’ then – an’ then-“

He flips through to a random page, trying to find some of the more bizarre things Forseti had left behind. “’Naga paints my tomes to cover my pen, but the wind god Forseti strikes again’. Yeah. He just put things like that, in his book.” Levin laughs, genuinely. “Gotta admit – I like his style.”

Knoll’s tale, though, of the two tomes he lost, strikes a genuine chord in Levin, and his face falls. “Aw, man… Like I said, I dunno who I’d be without Forseti – I can only imagine it’s worse for you, with two of ‘em.” He thumbs the tome absent-mindedly, worrying the edges with a worried frown. “Forseti’s irreplaceable. Not even with help or great effort could I restore it if somethin’ were to happen to it. I hope you’re able to get yours back, an soon.”

Knoll is still very intimidated by the trains. 

He’s ridden them once before, with Hilda, but he hadn’t gotten off at any of the stops then. He wants to explore the other seas now, having had his fill of Crises’ familiar gloom, but he’s nervous about taking the train by himself. It had seemed safe enough before, but Knoll is nothing if not good at worrying. He’s standing at the edge of the train station, letting successive trains pass him by. He is close enough to see the innards of the trains clearly, and to get bumped and jostled by the denizens embarking and disembarking, but he makes no move to enter any of the trains himself. So far, too, he’s seen nothing of the non-denizens, those brought here like himself.

Until, that is, a train pulls up to the station, opening its doors to reveal a green-haired fellow draped in blue fabric. Knoll feels a pang of nostalgia; several of his allies in the war had hair that shade of green. Then, curiosity: he’s never seen this person before, but perhaps he’s a relative of someone he knows? 

“Oy! You takin’ the train, as well?”

Startled, Knoll says “I–”, then cuts himself off with a gasp of surprise. The man has a tome on his lap. Anima, from the looks of it, so not one Knoll would be familiar with, let alone able to use, but still. A tome, just like the ones taken from him. Before he can really even think about it, he’s taking several steps forward, just to get closer to the man and his tome.

Then the doors to the train shut closed behind him, and it starts to move. Startled, Knoll squeaks, stumbling into and then clinging onto one of the poles near the door. Augh, how embarrassing. 

“Um,” he says, casting a glance at the man. “I guess I am. Taking the train, I mean. You have an Anima tome. They let you keep yours?”

Upon seeing the man stumble and nearly fall, Levin startles to his feet, attempting to make sure he’s all right - only for his legs to decide that nope, they weren’t feeling this sudden change, and for him to faceplant directly onto the train’s floor.

Well. Doing something more embarrassing than the person who did something embarrassing was helpful in making them less embarrassed, right?

“Oof. Yes,” he says, pushing himself up a little, and pulling the tome out from where it had fallen beneath him. “I’d say it’s because Forseti’s literally untouchable unless you’re a Forsetiblood like myself - but any an’ all such magical properties seem to have left it upon arrival. I mean, look at it,” he says, opening the book to the “title page”, if it could be called that, “plain as day regular script - ‘Forseti’s Book, by Forseti, age two thousand an’ one’. They didn’t even change it to normal mage’s runes!”

The seabreeze is calm today, slightly less tropical, slightly more ocean. If he sits on the shoreline and pretends there’s rock instead of sand under his feet, he can almost pretend it’s Silesia. (It doesn’t matter that it’s warm out, not when he’s still trembling and the occasional chill runs down his spine anyway, no matter how many blankets he wears.)

He can still feel the wind, if he tries. It’s nothing as strong as before; he can’t hear the voices of the sylphs, can’t feel the immense power behind them, can’t sense every little breeze and twist if he puts his mind to it. But he can feel the winds around him, at least, and it’s comforting to pretend. Maybe a little humbling, too. A reminder of when he was more closed off to his destiny.

What Levin doesn’t expect to feel is a new presence on the winds, familiar and unfamiliar all at once - no one he knows, but, but.

Someone who definitely knew about the wind.

Levin whips around, turning to stare at the new presence - and then immediately regrets it, because he feels sort of dizzy now - but he has a question to ask now, and he will ask it.

So it is poison. Min ignores the dark magic bit; it may explain the way some of the liquid trail has started to squirm as it dries up, but she doesn’t know anything about magic. Poison, she knows. The bubbling kind that fizzes up the edges of a wound and drains your strength, the sizzling kind that makes it so painful to touch that you have to go slow bandaging it up, the slow and insidious kind that slips into your bloodstream and eats away at your vision. She looks down at Levin, and realises a moment later that they’re in a half-hearted tug-of-war for the blanket he’s holding.

“Sorry,” she says, letting go. “I’m Min. You still shouldn’t go to sleep like that, you know. I’ve had venom in me before and dropped off and I just zzt-” She makes a slicing motion across her neck. “Kicked it. You gotta stay awake. Dark magic’s probably stronger than regular poison too, right? Even more chance of it dragging you down if you pass out.”

Without a medkit - or the weird poison-relieving aura that beanie guy had had, back in the fog, god what Min wouldn’t do for him or Claudette or even Jake to be here now - there isn’t much she can do for Levin. But she can keep him company, make sure he doesn’t fall asleep (and potentially die). “Um… Do you want anything to drink? Or another blanket or something? The kitchen’s just back there.”

“Min… Good name.”

Levin blinks, wearily trying to calculate whether or not she’s right about dark magic – usually this is something that comes fairly easily to his mind, but right now his brain is all clogged up with cotton, and everything feels hazier. “Depends,” he says, after a long moment, shrugging his shoulders. “On a lotta things. Like what poison, an how fast actin’ it is. An’ whether or not you’re the poor unlucky fuck who’s not particularly resistant to magic.” He pauses again, closing his eyes and smiling emptily. “Or if you’re like me, an’ normally you are resistant, but you also just happened to eat a whole buncha dark magic blows anyway.”

He opens his eyes again, and there’s something a bit kinder, gentler in them, even if he is tired. “I appreciate the concern, though. An’ I’ll try an’ stick to it best I can – but I’ll prob’ly need sleep sooner than it wearin’ off. If it wears off.” That’s a dark thought, even for him. He decides to elaborate. “I was already pretty nearly dead once, an’ I thought I did die, but I must’ve just passed out. If it’s already that severe, though, it could take ages for it to wear off completely, an’ if the ol’ records were anythin’ to go by, it may never completely go away. Just gotta outlive the worst of it.”

His chest feels tight, like he’s about to cough again, and he suppresses the urge as best he can – perhaps not the wisest idea, but he was never a smart man. “…Thanks,” Levin says, after the moment has passed. “Water probably wouldn’t be a. Bad. Idea. Kinda cried a lot while it was happenin’, an’ between that an everythin’ else...”

For all that he was a self-proclaimed dumbass, Levin was, at least, rather curious about the new world he’d been placed in. So when he’d managed to find a place that called itself a “train station” on a rare good day (when his hands shook less, and walking without any sort of support was a thing he could do), well, naturally he stuck around to see what, exactly, a train was!

To say that he was blown away would have been an understatement. A relatively clean method of transport that could carry large numbers of people at a time over very long distances, in a very short period of time!? It was nothing short of a miracle to him! And so he’d very quickly settled himself down in a seat near one of the doors, having no true destination in mind but wanting to see everything anyway. It was all so new, so beautiful – and with his holophone nearby and the Forseti tome safely on his lap (with him, as always; even in its unusable form he simply refused to leave it behind in his room), it wasn’t like he’d get bored of the scenery and find himself with nothing to do.

By the time the train arrives in Crises, his leg is bouncing idly as he messes around on his holophone; the scenery outside makes him anxious, feels claustrophobic and terrifying in the same way that almost dying did. He already knows he will not get off here.

Still, when the doors open, he can’t help but look up, and that’s when he sees the other man – an anxious looking fellow with silvery hair just slightly more purple than Tailtiu’s, all wrapped up in his cloak (what a relatable feeling that is!), who seems rather startled by the train’s arrival. He’s standing outside the station, and certainly doesn’t look ready to board, but Levin figures it’s only polite to ask, anyway.

It was a nice day - one of those bright and sunny ones, warm but not too warm. A gentle tropical breeze wafted through the air, bringing with it the smell of the sea, and also various Tropical Fruits and the like. In other words, too good a day to spend cooped up and languishing inside, with weary and bitter complaints of “woe is me, I’m dyin’, my wife, my son, they don’t know where I am an’ must miss me so terribly...”

Naturally, the one day Levin wanted to go outside and relax was the one day his legs just absolutely decided to quit working on him. Oh, sure, he was able to lean against walls and the railways of the pier, and they’d actually move - but trying to do that without support? His legs may well have been jello!

As a result, he’s only able to get a few incredibly unsteady feet away from the pier before his legs collapse under him, and, well. He accomplished his goal. He’s outside. That’s what he wanted, right? To be outside, and enjoy the day? He can enjoy the day... perfectly fine... right here.

And so he does, for a few hours, at least. He’s quite enjoying himself on the sand, actually, when something - someone - trips over him, and knocks the wind out of him with an “oof”.

Slowly, Levin drags himself into a sitting position, blinking at whoever it was. “You all right there?” he asks, because he’s a decent enough person to be concerned - but he’s also not without snark. “I’m sorry. Didn’t realize this was gonna be a common walkway when I got here.”