Whitestone: The Gap Year Begins

[whitestone_npcs]

The two come to consciousness, with no memory of what preceded the unconsciousness, in the middle of a cluster of trees. An orchard, branches laden with pink and white blossoms, tucked against the white stone wall of a castle.

It's a bright spring morning, sunlight spilling down from a clear blue sky. There doesn't seem to be anyone around besides the two of them, at least not immediately.

Comments

[mistertwister]

Okie bolts to his feet, takes in his surroundings. The guy next to, Crichton(?), he's from the Eterna. Is this another excursion? He hopes not. They did a lot in the hopes they'd never go on another one.

"You good to move if we gotta?"

[ss_buttcrack]

Crichton jolts up from his prone position, but doesn't quite make it to his feet yet. He's too startled by the sight of trees, and the softness of grass and earth beneath him where he sits. It smells, God--it smells like actual nature. He can feel the hay fever clogging his nose already.

Despite that, he has the most absurd urge to roll around on the ground. But Okie--that's his name, right?--Okie's alarm reminds him that they might still be in danger of some new level of bullshit. That, finally, gets him up off his ass and onto his feet.

"Yeah. Sure. Haven't gotten my cardio in yet today..." he lets that trail off as he looks around. He doesn't see anyone else yet.

"Your name is Okie, right? Any clue how we got here? My memory is a little hazy."

[mistertwister]

"No idea, but I know how I've ended up everyone else the last year. But this feels... Too well made for that."

The breeze feels like heaven on him, but he doesn't trust that something truly good happened to him. He's looking for something wrong, something to justify his dread.

"You recognize this place at all, maybe? Ain't anywhere I've been."

[ss_buttcrack]

"Yeah..." Crichton agrees, taking another long sniff of their surroundings and then almost instantly regretting when it makes him sneeze. "Yeah, usually the fake stuff doesn't set off my allergies like this." He never thought he'd be grateful for hay fever. Wonders never cease.

"Something about it strikes me as familiar but I really can't put my finger on what. We better scope this place out a little, see what the locals look like." See how human they may or may not be.

"Are you okay? You're not hurt anywhere?"

[whitestone_npcs]

Before Okie can answer, a peremptory voice cuts in: "You there! Stand where you are --"

It sounds like a young man's voice, and the owner of it has just stepped around the corner of the wall. He's in dark leather-and-chain-mail armor, under a dark gray cloak pinned at the shoulder with a pale yellow sunburst emblem. There's a crossbow in his hands, not aimed directly at either of them but held in a way that suggests aiming could happen at any moment.

"State your business here," he snaps, "and be quick about it."

[mistertwister]

Okie turns at the voice, preps himself to bolt. It's a person, that's... something. He doesn't like his chances against a crossbow, thought.

"Look man, we don't even know where we are right now."

[ss_buttcrack]

Crichton is already well aware that he's got no shot of outrunning a cross bow bolt, so he raises his hands in immediate surrender. But, something's bothering him. That emblem...

"Hey, I know that emblem. Is this... Whitestone?"

[whitestone_npcs]

The guard frowns at the two of them behind his helmet, both puzzled and suspicious.

"I'll ask the questions here," he says. "You clearly know something of where you are -- where did you come from, and how did you get in here? And why?"

[mistertwister]

"Wait, fuckin' Whitestone?" That'd be exciting. He wonders if he should bring up Cass, but at best it's super suspicious to immediately ask for a political figure by name, and at worst it's not their Cass.

"I don't think we've got the answers to that, man. Far as I know we just woke up here."

[ss_buttcrack]

They ARE in Whitestone! But... when? That's going to be the important detail. He's not breathing a word about Cassandra until he knows that.

"Hate to say it, but he's right. We don't have any more idea about how we got here than you do. We mean no harm, but we sure could use a little help getting our bearings. Is there someone we can talk to?"

[whitestone_npcs]

The guard eyes them both, a long mistrustful glance that is only just barely not a glare.

"I think that could be arranged," he says. "If you'll both come with me."

He puts two fingers to his lips and gives a sharp whistle, then tilts his head to indicate that they should precede him out of the orchard and into the broader courtyard. As he steps aside to let them pass, two other guards (evidently summoned by the whistle) approach briskly from that direction.

This is starting to look less like an escort and more like an arrest.

[mistertwister]

"Yeah, yeah, we comply," Okie grumbles, shooting Crichton a look that says Right?

"I'll go wherever you want me to, but if you try to drag me I'm gonna throw a fit."

[ss_buttcrack]

"Yeah, we're going quietly," Crichton confirms. He's keeping his hands where everyone can see them as he shuffles forward.

"Any chance we aren't headed directly to a prison cell right now?"

[whitestone_npcs]

"I'd say a pretty good chance," the guard says judiciously as the others fall into step around them, "so long as neither of you makes a violent move. Where you are headed right now is inside, for the captain to have a look at you."

The guards walk them across the courtyard, up a broad paved path, and then indoors and down a flight of stone stairs. A younger guard is waiting just inside the door, and goes running off after a muttered word from the first guard.

They wind up in a windowless room, furnished only with a couple of plain chairs and a table. (Crichton will not recognize this space as the dungeon he's seen here once before, in a memory -- but he wouldn't be wrong if he were to guess that it's on the way there.) The guards don't invite them to sit, but won't stop them if they make to do so.

It isn't long before the captain shows up, a burly, middle-aged man with straw-colored hair going silvery at the temples. "Right," he says, looking from one of the new arrivals to the other, "what's your story, then?"

[mistertwister]

God he wishes he could talk to a lawyer. Okie puts himself against wall, if allowed.

"The short an' easy version," he starts, slowly, "is that the two of us are very far from home an' don't know how we got from where we were to where we are." He's gonna use up all his elegance quickly, at this rate.

[ss_buttcrack]

Is it weird that a guard acting reasonably is somehow a novelty? Here's hoping this captain follows that pattern. For now, he's willing to see where it goes. Worst comes to worst, he does happen to know a secret way out of the dungeon thanks to Cass.

He grabs one of those chairs and turns it around so he can straddle it. His fingers drum anxiously on the backrest. "My friend here has summed it up nicely. I'll add that I know of this city because I've visited once before but that was a while ago. Don't know how we got here this time, but we didn't come to make trouble. Only things we have to our names are the clothes on our backs. We could use a little help." Is he leaning into that to try and get some sympathy? You bet your ass he is. They're going to need somewhere to sleep tonight and they don't have any cash.

[whitestone_npcs]

"A little help," repeats the captain, almost tonelessly. "What did you have in mind?"

"Captain ..." One of the guards steps toward him, and lowers his voice, not quite out of range of hearing. "This is some kind of magic bullshit, isn't it? Two men pop up out of nowhere, no one sees them come?"

The captain gives the younger man a narrow look. "Yes, so?" he mutters.

"So shouldn't someone tell the Lady de Rolo?" the guard persists, still low-voiced.

It wouldn't be clear to anyone not paying very close attention, but something in the captain's face darkens with some unspoken worry. "We'll see," is all he says, no louder.

[mistertwister]

"I'd take no jail time, for a start." He's too nervous not to be a little sarcastic.

He tries not to jump at the name. He tries to be ready for if she doesn't recognize them. He hopes the disappointment won't show if she sees him without knowing him.

[ss_buttcrack]

"That, and maybe a little bit of charity if you can spare it..."

He eyes that guard, worried about what news this could bring, but he isn't prepared to hear Cassandra's name. His lips twitch and pull tight. Never did have a great poker face. If she's here then... will she know them? He's not getting his hopes up.

[whitestone_npcs]

He glances back and forth between them, his gaze sharpening at the way their faces change. "I take it that's a name you know. When was it you said you were here before, mister ...?" Focusing on Crichton, with a look rapidly darkening toward suspicion.

But before Crichton can answer, the door opens again from outside and yet another younger guard leans in. "Sir," he says in quick low tones, "the Lady --"

Behind him, rather louder -- though with a possibly alarming note of strain to it -- comes a voice both Crichton and Okie will recognize. "The Lady will announce herself, thank you, Lewis."