Raistlin Majere of the Red Robes (hourglass_mage) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-05-12 16:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, maxwell trevelyan (the inquisitor), raistlin majere |
Who: Raistlin Majere and Maxwell Trevelyan
What: A visit for spindleweed tea
When: Recently
Where: Max's home
Rating/Warnings: Mostly low;
Status: Complete!
In Thedas, spindleweed was one of the most commonly found herbs - it grew near bodies of water, which was why Max recalled finding a bountiful supply near the Storm Coast while traveling with the Inquisition. Not much else there besides damp, marshy terrain. Ancient dwarven ruins that had been abandoned since the Divine Age. Waves that crashed loud as thunder.
But spindleweed also had many uses, many restorative and healing properties - especially when it came to ailments affecting the lungs. In fact, seeing an abundance of the herb growing outside someone’s home was a sure indicator that one of the inhabitants was very ill; it was also a surefire way to garner some sympathy. Trevelyan had a canister of the stuff now, dried spindleweed that could be steeped for tea, and he was waiting at home for Raistlin to come and collect. Ever since they met at a local occult shop, and Max had recommended a few herbs for medicinal uses, he’d been a steady supplier of spindleweed especially.
Or he could just recommended the general cure-all in Ferelden: pickled eggs. So weird.
The house was pretty spotless, a comfy renovated Dutch colonial in Anaheim, but Max spruced it up some anyway. He liked to entertain guests, and this involved also ensuring he had enough alcohol at the bar. It was a refurbished cabinet he’d turned into a mini bar, really, but much of the house had been refurbished anyway. Max liked that sort of thing.
Raistlin would pass on the pickled eggs. He’d tried one once, mostly under Tas’s insistence that it could actually help. ( “Max is from another world, Raist! Maybe eggs from Thedas have some kind of magic quality. Maybe they have magic chickens!” Gasp! “Wow! Wouldn’t that be something? Magic chickens! Wouldn’t you just feel silly if they worked and you didn’t try them just because they smell funny?”) And to shut Tas up for two minutes, Raistlin had eaten one of those eggs whole. Never again.
But, Tas was gone now. Raistlin had thought he’d be happy to see him go wherever it was Tas went when his feet became itchy. The mage didn’t have to worry about coming home after a long day to find some random asshole (Tas’s new Close Personal Friend) parked on his couch, or opening the pantry to find his laptop wedged between two boxes of cereal, or wondering from which shop Tas had taken random This’s and That’s (“They just fell into my pocket. You know, you’d think the shop owners around here would take better care of their stuff!”), or threatening great bodily harm whenever he caught the Kender lurking outside the door to his room or, worse, inside his room and leafing through his books.
The apartment was blissfully quiet and without distraction. Raistlin could – and often did – spend long afternoons well into the night hours researching and studying his magic. His bed had again become more a storage space for books and notes than a place for sleeping. Time just seemed to get away from Raistlin, completely unaware of how late (or early) it was until his alarm clock went off telling him it was time to go to work.
He was getting things done, making great progress on his research on the ice stones Kitiara had given him for Christmas and what they were capable of doing. They were fascinating things, these stones, full of power with limitless potential. The Other within him was fascinated by them as well, and although Raistlin did not trust the entity one bit, The Other had lent him a brief bit of strength needed to actually wield one of the stones for a small amount of time. It wasn’t more than a few minutes, but that was all it took to whet Raistlin’s appetite for more.
However, that all being said, there had been evenings in which Raistlin had found the silence in his apartment unbearable. More times than he’d be willing to admit, he had looked at his phone and fought the urge to text Tas, just to see where he was. He would never come out and say so and adamantly deny it if anyone accused him, but he did wonder where Tas was, if he was alright, what kind of trouble had he found, what kind of great adventure was he having? And…would Raistlin ever see him again?
Without Tas around to pester him, Raistlin was also finding it more and more difficult to remember to eat. Isabela texted him periodically to remind him to eat a goddamn sandwich, but he’d started dropping weight again. A few pounds at most, he didn’t look emaciated or like the scarecrow of the man in his Dreams, but it was concerning nonetheless. As was the cough, which was worsening as well. Pickled eggs notwithstanding, the spindleweed appeared to do quell the attacks and prevent more from happening if taken early enough in the day. Plus, it tasted better than the “mud and twigs” tea Raistlin had in the Dreams. So this made Raistlin a regular customer of Max Trevelyan and his herbs. For his part, Trevelyan didn’t seem to mind it when Raistlin paid him a visit at his home.
Trevelyan’s home was nice, warm and comfortable. Inviting. Raistlin strangely felt more at ease stepping inside. He couldn’t quite put his finger on the why. Perhaps the simple knowledge of the herbs he was about to receive was psychosomatic enough, but Raistlin wasn’t the type to put a lot of stock into that sort of mumbo jumbo.
As much solace as Raistlin took in being in Trevelyan’s house, The Other did not. Raistlin could feel it squirming like a worm as he walked up the front steps to the front door. He took a bit of satisfaction in that as he knocked.
Now, it wasn’t as if Trevelyan was lodged up the backside of his fellow mage, breathing down his neck - however, it didn’t take a genius to deduce that something was going on with Raistlin. He was thin, pale, cheeks hollowed and gaunt - he remembered Isabela (a much closer friend of Raistlin, though Max knew in Isabela terms what exactly close meant) making quips about how models would kill for those cheekbones, but even she had to admit that seeing Raistlin so thin was alarming. Seeing him as he was recently, it could be considered alarming for a few reasons.
Plus, both his roommate and his sister recently moved away. Max had experienced that a few times - he supposed for some people, it just wasn’t meant to be in Orange County. He’d lost a few Thedas-mates as well. Cullen and Leliana, though the latter was still around somewhat. Lurking in the shadows as she did.
So he made a mental note to keep an eye on Raistlin, and he hoped this visit would be a start. Opening up the door, he offered a friendly smile that reached his eyes - warm, like a hot cup of coffee. They said you could see into a person’s soul, through their eyes, and maybe that was true - his didn’t hide much. He may specialize in winter spells as his second specialty, but he was overall a warm person. Ironically.
No, he didn’t specialize in fire, as Nasir liked to tease him about. There had just been some...accidents, was all. When he was still learning.
“Come on in,” Max stepped back to give enough room. “I’ve got your spindleweed all set. How have you been feeling lately?”
Raistlin’s default expression was one of stoicism, not one to smile often or for no reason. However, Trevelyan’s warm greeting did not go unnoticed, nor did it go unappreciated. Having spent so much of his life simply the tolerated (if only barely) twin brother of Caramon Majere, being greeted with a smile, no matter how small, meant something, even if he didn’t always show it.
For whatever reason, though, The Other really did not seem to like Max Trevelyan and his warm-as-coffee greetings. It seethed and recoiled at the man’s presence, making Raistlin’s skin itch and his chest constrict as though an elephant had sat on it.
For a moment he felt as though he had to struggle to even speak. “Much the same,” he managed to wheeze as he entered the home.
“Well, hopefully I can help with that. If you’ve been tired lately, I also have deep mushroom which helps with regaining stamina and lessening fatigue. I wouldn’t use too much - “ Because otherwise it was lethal and no one wanted that; deep mushroom was always a tricky bugger to work with, and it happened to grow on the carcasses of dead spiders in abundance in the aptly-named Deep Roads so Trevelyan didn’t have to go too far to get it. “But if you use a little to flavor something, you’ll feel the effects.”
He had the spindleweed in his hand, holding the canister, and he wished he could do more for Raistlin - because really, the guy looked awful. “But anyway, have a seat,” Max offered then. “I’ll make some tea.”
“Thank you,” Raistlin nodded once and took the offered seat. He wouldn’t say necessarily that he was tired. Fatigued did seem to be the better word for it. The way an insomniac would feel after not being able to sleep for a few days. Using magic, channeling the energy through his body and bending it to do what he wanted, it could be draining. Raistlin was aware it was taxing his already taxed body. He had no idea how the Raistlin of Krynn could seemingly survive like this. But he understood. He understood what it was to have no appetite, to have even the freshest of foods appear to be putrid and rotten. And the magic. Once he had started using it, he could not even think what his life had been like without it, nor did he want to. It was why he tolerated the worm living in his soul. As once he had been obsessed with chemistry and science, magic permeated nearly every waking thought.
He coughed into the back of his hand, a deep rattling followed in his chest. “Perhaps I will try some of that deep mushroom. Just a bit, of course.”
Nothing like seared nug with with a deep mushroom cream sauce - but Max would just stick with the tea for now. Spindleweed, that is. At the very least, deep mushroom tea - popular with Varric’s brother, before he went insane from what Max understood - would also have the side effect of putting hair on your chest. Meaning, it’d make you the sexual equivalent of an archdemon. Stamina and all that.
Anyway, he put the kettle on to boil and got to work with scooping some deep mushroom pieces into a plastic bag, twisting the top closed. Was this what drug dealers felt like? Oh, well.
Then he sat down as well, copping a squat in one of the living room armchairs. “Tea will be ready in a minute. I’m curious though - “ He wanted to phrase his words as carefully as possible, “...what exactly happened? Will you tell me? I don’t know the details, of course. But there’s something about you. Like it’s not just you.” There was a dark presence in this room, lurking, making the air so thick you could nearly cut through it with a knife. Max felt prickly about it, and that was an understatement - whatever it was, it was just wrong.
Raistlin was a private man. Isabela knew what was going on because Raistlin trusted her to end him without hesitation should he loose complete control. Garrett Hawke knew as well, not simply because he was married to Bela, but he had witnessed the Other come forward and speak to him directly. And Regina knew, but Raistlin had always known he wouldn’t have been able to keep it a secret from her for long. But those three individuals were the only ones who knew anything about what was happening to the mage. He told no one else, not even Tas or Kitiara. It wasn’t any one else’s business. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have told Max anything, but perhaps it was the fatigue that loosened Raistlin’s normal sharp and guarded tongue.
Or perhaps it was the fact that Max seemed genuinely concerned. Raistlin looked at him carefully before he spoke. “You aren’t wrong,” he answered. “It isn’t just me. But I cannot tell you what happened. I don’t know myself. Something happened to the man in my Dreams and this entity latched onto him. Somehow it has come through here. That’s all I know for certain.”
“I see,” Max nodded, and it was a story he’d heard before - in Thedas, it actually happened quite frequently. If what he was thinking of was similar to Raistlin’s situation, that is. “Spirits in the Fade, they often attach themselves to an individual in the mortal world - possession, if you will. They have one purpose and don’t deviate from it, whatever their purpose is.” Like Justice, with Anders - from what Max heard, that had been the very thing to spark the Mage-Templar war.
An inevitability, of course. All the spirit of Justice cared about was achieving, well, just that. By any means necessary - even violent means, to the point where all logic and reason were discarded.
“But spirits can become demons, more malevolent - they can possess someone and then that person also becomes an abomination the more they are lost to the demon. It’s - “ He winced a bit, “...not pretty. I wouldn’t want that to happen to you. Is there anything we can do?”
Raistlin had heard that question asked so many times now, and the answer had not changed since the first time. He shook his head. “I don’t know. It knows whatever I know. I fear any attempt to be rid of it would be met with harsh resistance.” He looked at Trevelyan carefully, glamoured eyes narrowing slightly. “I know it doesn’t like you, though. Just being in your home, talking to you, makes it squirm.”
“Well, I can’t say I’m fond of it either,” Max smiled ruefully. “I do know a few spells - I won’t say what they are, but they’d be effective, I think.” Cleansing spells, of a sort - spirit magic that wiped away hostile magic, turned it outward and away. He’d have to look into it more, and he wouldn’t just start blasting away at Raistlin.
But maybe that’s what he needed, to finally get rid of this thing. For someone to not ask, just do. Actions were oftentimes better than words.
Anyway, now wasn’t the time - Trevelyan ought to do more research on spirit magic anyway; it wasn’t one of his specialities, like Necromancy or the elements. Hearing the tea kettle whistle at him, he got up to make the spindleweed brew, and at the very least, he could help with Raistlin’s cough.
The Other recoiled at the news that Trevelyan knew “a few spells”. If Raistlin didn’t know better, he would have sworn it actually hissed, and he had no idea how that was even possible for an incorporeal being to do. But he was taking some kind of solace in Trevelyan’s words, especially since the other mage did not say what these spells were. It was like putting The Other on notice: You’re only here for as long as I want you here.
The Other, however, had a few things to say about that and had absolutely no qualms about shoving Raistlin’s own consciousness aside in order to make those things known to the Necromancer. So when Trevelyan returned with the tea, instead of glamoured blue eyes, a pair of golden eyes with hourglass pupils were glaring at him.