dust to dust (leironuoth)
Skandra had to wonder how he'd do, himself, in a city that saw sunlight as often as it saw rain - in both cases, never. The last time he'd been here, he'd been looking for a good time and nearly gotten through into the Red Vault for his trouble. Of course, that was the story with Skandra Tyullis wherever he went. Good times. Bad times. Near-imprisonment. Eventual escape and victory. Standing as he was now in one of the crowded lifts - at last relieved of his burden the stone - Skandra wondered what all of these short and troublesome elves would think if they knew this place housed one of the greatest fighters to ever walk their country with his head held high. Probably they'd all shit themselves, lean against these dusty wood-and-metal walls, and beg for deliverance. They typically did not know how deliverance arrived.
On the tip of the spear.
Even with no windows - and he was thankful there were no windows, without a doubt - you could feel the immensity of the space that was being traversed. Level by level, story by story, the elves were emptied out of the lift. It stopped at every level just in case someone did not know where they were going, of course, and the fellow who operated the lift from within was given to barking out the names of important landmarks on that level. A heave of his lever brought them to a stop. Sweating arms exposed the fellow would remove his goggles and begin hollering in their faces. The Last Box! Then later, Bahamut's Nest! And a dozen no-name taverns in between. The urge for a drink was strong. So was the urge to dismiss all of this and be on their way. One fellow surely could not be so important. Everyone wanted Ilúvatar to live - but nobody was willing to ask themselves at what cost.
Or why.
On their way to the lift, Leironuoth had insisted on stopping into the Shrine of Illereon. Skandra wondered how it must feel to see statues of yourself, illuminated in the most eerie fucking fashion imaginable, staring at you no matter where you moved. After a time Leironuoth had settled for patting the cheek of the statue. As though somehow complimenting him, and letting him know that it was all right that he'd died. Skandra thought he'd be much more flip with a statue that had been him until it was not any longer. Then again, who knew how much Leironuoth could actually recall of those past lives? It was yet another question that he wasn't going to ask.
"He's prettier than you," was Skandra's judgment.
"He had another sword," Leironuoth replied absently. "Rusted, but his uncle gave it to him."
"The Champion of the Lion carried a rusted sword?" Skandra's eyes widened mockingly, and he looked to his left, where Leironuoth was wearing a faint smile. "What's next? Pantaloons?"
"The statues are never right," he murmured; then he threw up a hand. "Fuck it! Historians too-- let’s leave.”
More than one patron of the shrine had looked up in outrage and annoyance. So off they'd gone, and here they were, with Leironuoth talking amiably to a very pretty girl in a robe. Skandra and the lift conductor were staring each other in the face absent any note of antagonism.
Mostly they just seemed not to know what to say. The conductor rolled his eyes, as if to ask, can you believe this son of a bitch? Skandra shrugged his shoulders ever so slightly, lips pursed in thought, as if to respond - yes. It happens all the time. Now they were both staring at the wall of the lift. The conductor had a look on his face as though now exploring mentally all of his deficiencies when compared to the handsome devil making small talk with a girl behind him. The conductor didn't know it, but there was only one Champion of the Lion at a time, and that was the conductor's biggest shortcoming. After all - dying and coming back to life eleven or twelve or twenty or however fucking many times would make you a little more confident when you were speaking with women. For Skandra's part, he only thought about one face these days, and it didn't have the wide green eyes he'd dreamed of before the Breaking.
So where did that leave him? Or her?
Heavy doors creaked to reveal the Lunar Temple. Skandra was the first one out of the lift, hands jammed into deep pockets, hood pulled low and over his eyes. It felt strange with a hood on his head, instead of a hat. Almost as though he was missing a part of himself. The hat was as distinctive as the face, and he needed to be rid of it. Onainat would give it back or pummel it to death, and either way he wasn't sure it was a problem. Wind was gusting, and fall was in full swing if the cool air was anything to judge by, but he barely felt it. The lifts and buildings of the temple were all situated at cardinal points - north, south, east and west. So this, the northern lift, had placed them behind the northernmost building in the temple compound. From the looks of its sloping roof and strange white-glowing walls it was the main house of worship. Skandra descended a small set of stairs to find himself in a round 'receiving area', with stone railing that reached one's gut to keep one from falling off.
Somehow moonlight had infused the water of a fountain in the center of this waiting area. It, took, seemed to glow with strange and unearthly magic. The glow was bright enough that there were no torches in the vicinity, only a pair of benches in the wooden style, wooden slats laid across b-frames cast in wrought iron. Skandra didn't wait for Leironuoth and his new friend to exit the lift. He simply took a seat on one of the benches, and began searching for a clove. Another gust of wind slapped his hood into the side of his head. There was gray fog all around them. Clouds, maybe, or the low trailing parts of one. Almost seemed like mist if you weren't paying attention. They were definitely higher up than Skandra preferred.
And he still didn't know what the hell he was doing here.
He was wrong about her. She didn't want just anyone. But he didn't know, ultimately, if she wanted him or not. When he got back to Terestai he was going to ask her about it. Maybe. If he could work up the guts. This was nonsense. He'd fought dragons... well, he'd evaded death at the hands - talons - of an angry dragon. He'd dueled the greatest alchemist in the world to the death at the base of the tree which was the foundation of all life. Surely if he could do that, he could woo a woman, no matter how stern and icy she might be in most cases. Skandra doubted there was much of a chance he would break that reserve after the last time. Back to business, so quickly, when ... maybe he was just anxious about how long it had been. Or maybe precisely, how long it had been since he'd been any good at it.
The girls in Ashara did not count.
Only when the flaming match had ignited his clove and met its ultimate end, being thrown over the side - where it doubtless would fall so fast that it would break someone's skull open and kill them - did Skandra turn his eyes toward the short stair, and the lift which lay beyond. Leironuoth was only just now emerging from it.
And they had a lot of ground to cover.
"Did you have a nice chat?" Skandra asked, loud enough to be heard over the wind. "She seemed like a lovely girl."