Thurvishar D'Lorus (thatdlorusbrat) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-09-16 11:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, ₴ inactive: bonnie bennett, ₴ inactive: thurvishar d'lorus |
Who: Thurvishar D'Lorus & Bonnie Bennett
What: Thurvishar misses an appointment and Bonnie investigates... turns out Thurvishar got trapped in the time-funky Lighthouse for a long morning Vallo time, and quite a bit longer than that Lighthouse-time.
When: This morning
Where: the Lighthouse
Rating: G
A half an hour had gone by of waiting for Thurvishar to arrive before Bonnie decided she wasn’t going to wait any more. This wasn’t like him. When they had a meeting, he didn’t tend to keep her waiting. Definitely not this long. Something was up. When she double checked with staff members to see if anyone knew where she could find him, she became concerned. He hadn’t been seen at all that day, and as far as anyone knew, he hadn’t scheduled the day off. Thurvishar just hadn’t shown up.
Texting and a network message didn’t get her anywhere. He wasn’t home either. Bonnie was beginning to run out of ideas, when a past conversation made its way to the surface of her memory. If he was in his Lighthouse, the journal wouldn’t work due to the magics that surrounded it. Maybe he was in there, and had lost track of time?
Bonnie had never been in the lighthouse though she knew its location. The idea of a place where the time worked so differently and you could easily get trapped in it was not something that appealed to her. It just didn’t sit well. But that didn’t really matter, the Lighthouse wasn’t for her and so her feelings about it were irrelevant. If he was there, she was just going to have to deal with those feelings and make sure she didn’t stay in long.
Her trip from the DOA office to outside the lighthouse was brief. She ignored any unsettled feelings she had about the magic in place there and walked toward it, searching the building for anything that might be out of place. The building itself looked fine, but something about the wards was...not. Something was off, but she couldn’t quite place it.
“Suck it up, Bennett.” she said under her breath, “It’s just a building. It won’t kill you.” In terms of magic spaces, this was hardly the strangest place she’d ever found herself, even if she removed Vallo itself from the list as well. She took one step, and then another, walking right at the portal that would take her inside.
“Thurvishar?” she called as soon as she was in, making sure she was loud enough for her voice to carry. “Are you here?”
Thurvishar D’Lorus, who had meticulously kept a running record of just how long he had been stuck inside the lighthouse (four weeks, three days, seven hours), blinked at her from an armchair by the fireplace as if he couldn’t quite believe it was her.
“Oh thank Taja,” he muttered under his breath and tossed the book he was reading to the side. “Bonnie, you’re a sight for sore eyes. Is the portal still open? Can you still leave?”
He looked no worse for the wear - still impeccably dressed, not having gone hungry or anything ridiculous like that. Thurvishar kept the lighthouse stocked just for this eventuality, and of course it had rooms to live in, working bathrooms, and a kitchen. He’d lived in here for years as a child, but it wasn’t an experience he was delighted to repeat. He rose from the armchair and strode up to her, peering at the magic that lay open before him. It looked like it should - nothing like the strange unresponsiveness it had been exhibiting up until this moment.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, “and I’ll explain.”
She stopped in her tracks when she saw him in the armchair. Well he seemed fine, at least. But his reaction would indicate otherwise. When he asked if the portal was still open, she turned back around in alarm to examine the way she had just come in. It seemed fine, but that didn’t stop the panic that rose her chest. The idea of being trapped in here made her blood run cold. Not just the idea of being trapped, but being separated from her family. It was something she couldn’t even let herself think about with panic setting in.
You didn’t have to tell her twice to leave, so with a nod, she stepped back through the portal, assuming he would be right on her heels.
She wouldn’t admit the amount of relief she felt when she found herself back outside again. She’d been in there less than a minute, and that was more than enough for her.
“What’s going on?” she asked as he followed her out. “I went to meet you at the office and no one had seen you at all. How long have you been in there for? In lighthouse time?”
“Four weeks, three days, seven hours,” said Thurvishar in his usual exact way. “I spent the time learning conversational Spanish, among other things. No había nada más que leer. The subjunctive was the worst; I still don’t think I’ve got it right…”
He was already turning around, frowning at the wards, trying to understand what had happened to trap him. Honestly, the Lighthouse’s magic against Vallo’s was something he had been leery of - Vallo always seemed to shift things just enough to make them dangerous, and time magic was something delicate enough on his own. “I came down here to check on something in one of the books I keep here, but when I turned back, the wards had closed.” Sabotage wasn’t even on his list of concerns - not yet, anyway. Vallo was too easy to blame.
Thurvishar looked back up at her, going from vague to observant in a second. Bonnie’s expression looked almost ill. “I can’t thank you enough for checking on me here. I know this kind of thing isn’t your cup of tea. I doubt it’s going to be much of mine any more, to be honest.”
If it was possible for her to feel more uneasy about this lighthouse, it was happening at that moment. Four weeks. He hadn’t been gone that long on this side of things. Bonnie had been locked in places on her own for long periods of time before. Close to a year. But everything was so much different now than it was then, and the time between where she was and everyone else was moved in sync.
The fact that he was being so easy about it too. Shaking her head, she did her best not to feel sick on his behalf. “The wards looked off when I went in.” she told him, looking back at the portal. Whatever it had been, it was gone now. “Whatever it was, I must have reset it when I went through.” She hadn’t done anything special herself, so simply going through the portal from the outside must have slipped everything back into working order.
“Are you okay?” extended periods of isolation could be stressful, even for introverts she imagined. Especially if you couldn’t be sure if you’d ever get out. “Do you need anything?”
Thurvishar filed away her observations. “When you say ‘off’, do you mean like the magic had degraded? Vallo interfered? Or they were just not functioning properly?” Wards were tricky when they weren’t working right; sometimes it was difficult to tell what had caused it. He figured if anyone could tell, it’d be Bonnie. Nothing had seemed awry on the other side of the Lighthouse, and Taja knew he’d had enough time to investigate.
“I may take the day off, to be honest,” he answered with a sideways smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m looking forward to being back in my apartment. And no, thank you, I don’t need anything. I’ve lived in the Lighthouse for years at a time - when I was a child, it had a set of working staff. I’m a good three or four years older than a friend of mine who was born a few days earlier than me. It’s powerful magic, but I’m glad to be away from it.”
“Not degraded. They looked strong enough. Not functioning properly is better. I suppose it could have been something Vallo did. But they had been tampered with.” In the end, they were all subject to the whims of Vallo no matter how powerful their individual or collective magic was. So maybe there was something going on with magic wards? Bonnie made a mental note to check the ones at her home by the end of the day, just to be on the safe side.
She almost wanted to suggest the rest of the week after everything he’d just been through. But he’d already been gone for four so maybe that would be too long. “You probably should, you definitely deserve it after that. I’ll come in next week to update you on the covens instead.” She didn’t even touch the story of living there as a child and aging past a friend who was born first. She just…nope. No thanks. It was fascinating magic, but no.
“If you change your mind, let me know. I’m not opposed to doing food or drink runs.”
“I appreciate it, Bonnie.” And he did. But Thurvishar was nothing if not self-sufficient in moments of trauma and angst; the behavior had been ingrained in him from an early age and likely would be going nowhere anytime soon.
He squinted at the sun, the side of his mouth curling. It’d been a while since he’d seen daylight, after all. “You can do one thing - could you please use your contacts to ensure that the covens are aware that there’s been some ward erosion as well? I know not all of them check the Outlander network, and they should be aware.”
That was a small thing to ask, it took next to no effort to send out an alert to her contacts within each coven. At this point she had a mail list sent up for that need, because it happened at least once a month. She would happily do it now. “Yeah, of course. I’ll send that off as soon as I get back to my desk.”
She hoped this was just an extra precaution. So far there had been no other reports of wards failing. “If anyone has heard anything else about wards failing I’ll let you know, but as of right now there’s been nothing.” Bonnie examined the entrance again, as if something was going to jump out at her to make it all click and solve the riddle of what happened. The frown on her face deepend as she considered the consequences of what would happen if this became a Vallo wide thing. There was lot that depended on wards not failing.
“I’ll see you later then, okay?” Her frown stayed in place as she turned away from the door, and got ready to leave. “Get some rest.” She made a mental note to message him later to make sure he was home, and doing exactly that, before she silently teleported herself away, headed for her shop.