Two horsemen ride up to a tavern...

Katrin rubs her temples wearily. "It's been a trying day. I'd rather not play games." She runs a hand through her long hair, letting out a long sigh. "Your appearance does not match your vigor. As I've said before, if you'd rather keep your secrets, I won't fault you." It's only now that Katrin realizes just how much of a toll the day has taken, on her and her companions. "I can't stand lies. I think you understand that. It's only a matter of time before yours run out." She lets out another sigh as a low throbbing starts in her temples. 

"Do you think that I consider this a game, Katrin?" Thrandimir asks, his tone suddenly deadly serious. "One us died today. Why the sudden fascination with my age?"

"If you are as old as your appearance claims, that skeleton wouldn't have fallen to pieces," she snaps at Thrandimir. Katrin can feel herself tipping on the edge of exhaustion and anger, and closes her eyes briefly to reel herself back in. "It's not the age that's the problem. It's the illusion." Katrin rubs her temples again, the throbbing growing. "I understand your intentions back there. But I've met people like Gesrik before. He meant what he said." Her eyes flash. "I refuse to hide. I can't. And if you'd prefer to keep hiding, then that's fine by me. But don't expect me to adhere to your rules."

Thrandimir shrugs, stalking circles around Katrin as he talks. "You call it hiding, I call it counterintelligence,"  he remarks, gesticulating flamboyantly.  "Gesrik said himself that there's power in a name. Well, he knows your face now. Maybe your name too, if he heard Kaed. I've met people like Gesrik before as well and you beat them by striking from the shadows then they least expect it and cannot defend themselves. Tackling him head-on isn't brave , it's just foolish. A quick knife on a dark night will end him with far less bloodshed and loss of life than an open charge. Kou is but the first casualty on that list. Honour won't just get you killed, but also those who follow you." The wizard pauses for a brief moment, sizing up Katrin's reaction to his words. "Or do you really think that you don't lead this party?"

Katrin watches Thrandimir and his circling with a measured expression. "And do you take me for a fool? I have my pride, yes. But don't equate pride with stupidity. I merely wanted to see my enemy, and I wanted him to see me. If you think that's foolhardy, so be it." His last words sting. It was the last thing her father had said to her before she'd left, though the wording was a bit different. About how she was abandoning the family for some foolish adventure. About how she was tearing them apart with her absence. She never wanted to be a leader. But it seems to be a role she finds herself facing more and more. Her eyes are hot iron as she looks at him. "Suppose I'd better stop being foolish then, shouldn't I?" Her words are biting, though she knows this egomaniac won't feel them. 

Emma H. said: "And do you take me for a fool?"   Thrandimir stops and tilts his head to the side with an almost affectionate smile. "I don't, Katrin, or I wouldn't be here ,"  the wizard lets the sentiment hang in the air for a second, "but I do know a thing or two about pride and, generally, it tends to come before a fall." Thrandimir resumes his pacing as his words run away with his mind. "Believe it or not, I'm trying to help you, or do you think that I'd hand off those gauntlets and that shield to just anyone ? I may have my tricks, but I'm no inspirational leader to rally the common folk. You're a veritable beacon of hope to the people of Fireblade, but a good leader has expert advisors with greater knowledge than their own. A good leader has the wisdom to take that advice and make an educated decision for themselves based on the bigger picture. You will decide what you will decide, but I would be remiss as your friend if I didn't drive you to follow your head over your heart when it comes to tactics."

Her expression remains stony, but she raises an eye. "Well, I'll give you that. Inspiration is certainly not your realm. Intimidation, maybe." She winces as her headache spikes, rubbing the space between her eyes. "I know what I am. I don't want it, but then we rarely get a choice in these matters." She looks back over to the camp, desperately wishing for nightfall so she could sink into sleep and try to forget the past day. She looks back at Thrandimir, a slight smile on her face that doesn't quite reach her eyes.   

"Don't you trust your own God?" Thrandimir queries, his voice burning with curiosity. "You have no choice in this, because Tempus chose you ." The wizard's dark eyes sparkle in the light of the setting sun at the prospect. "What better way to honour Kou's legacy than to wear the mantle that your God has thrust upon you with pride?"

Katrin gives a mirthless chuckle, pulling out her hammer and inspecting it thoughtfully. "Do you have a God, Thrandimir?" She looks at him, eyes narrowed in thought. "Do you have someone you trust? Implicitly ?" She laughs incredulously. "I find it amusing that you question my faith, as if I don't know exactly what it is I've gotten into."   

"I trusted you with all of our lives today," Thrandimir offers candidly. "I could have vanished with the scroll the moment Gesrik that showed up. I certainly thought about it. However, I stayed to fight. I put my magic and my faith  in you to see us through." Thrandimir takes a step back to look the Dwarf up and down. "I don't question your faith, Katrin. Just the sense in giving a powerful and ruthless foe an edge in a desperate conflict, just in the name of honour. The people of Fireblade can't eat honour."

Katrin rubs her temples again as her headache spikes. "Doesn't entirely surprise me that the thought crossed your mind. You are a man of self-preservation. If my memory is serving me correctly." She looks at her hammer again, turning slightly to look back to where they had come from. "I'll preserve his body in the morning." She gives him another measured look, before turning and walking back towards the camp. 

"Actions are what matter, not thoughts," Thrandimir counters. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions. What really counts is the end result. I stayed . We fought and, but for Kou, we survived to bring Fireblade the aid that Marianne says it needs. Let's remain focused on that. There'll be time to grieve when the job is done." The wizard accompanies Katrin back to the camp, scratching at as his beard and hair as they walk.

Before they reach the group, Katrin stops abruptly. "Yes, there will be time. But I've never had that luxury. And you don't get to tell me when and where that happens. No one does." Katrin turns as if to go, then stops again. "Thank you, for your wisdom. I'll be sure to keep it in mind." She turns fully, returning to Bill, and pulling out her bedroll.  Katrin lays it on the ground, and is about to rise, when a voice filters through her head. Not hers.  No. That will be for another time. Instead, she stays on her knees, and wearily unbuckles her sword belt from around her waist, setting the sheathed steel on the ground. Her buckler hangs from the saddle next to the shield found in the ruins. A reminder of a simpler time, perhaps. Before hobgoblins and magical retreats. Before the orcs. Rising, she removes it from the saddle, placing it next to her bedroll. She moves over to the cart, drawing out an old mace from the stack of looted weapons. Her eyes sweep over Kou, and she sends a silent prayer to the clouds above them. She returns, crossing the mace over the shield, kneeling down in front of them to begin her ritual. Over the next hour, Katrin doesn't move, her eyes are closed. It would appear as if nothing is happening at all. But as the hour slips by, the metal starts to glow, and Katrin spends the final minutes with her eyes open and flaming, molding it with her hands until a new weapon lays in the dirt, smoke rising from the fresh, hot steel.  

Cal settles in for the night in his own corner of the camp. He settles his things out around him in a small circle, his bag spilling over slightly onto the dirt. He takes a seat in the middle, gently pushing everything back inside the sack. It feels a tad heavier than it had before, but then again, so did everything else at the moment. It struck him as odd that he felt such sorrow over Kou's death. It was of course sad, but when he thought more on it he'd not really known the man even a single week. And yet surely that must be enough time to develop such feelings? His mind drifted back to Farwinter. He was younger than, much more so, though he couldn't remember exactly how long ago it was. It'd been a particularly warm for the middle of Nonum, so he'd been eager to take advantage of it and had run out after lunch, breaking away from his Pa to disappear into the trees. The leaves drapes themselves in flowing arches over the spindly trail in a dizzying swirl of rich red and yellow hues that only pulled him further in. It wasn't long before he'd found him once more - the large bird sat proudly as ever on a perch only a little ways above him. "You always wait for me, don't you Mister Squawks?" He craned his neck up towards the creature, which looked down quizzically towards him, seeming to acknowledge his words if not respond outright. "It's alright, for I'll come see you." The warmth of his smile nearly matched the days itself, standing there that autumn day.  Days later, when he first saw the boot-prints in the early-morning snow, the arrows jutting from the trees, and the blood-tipped feathers scattered across the forest flaw, he hadn't felt much anger. Nor sorrow, really. Just confusion. He didn't go back in those woods for some years. It'd been easier that way. Cal rummaged through his things once more, pulling forth the small crystal gem once more, fiddling with its lights as he prepared himself for the watch that night.

Thrandimir grins wryly and shakes his head to himself as Katrin walks away from him. The wizard follows suit and returns to his tent, throwing himself into his research, where he finds the forge cleric's insights to be most inspiring. Only once night has fallen and the first watch is upon him, does Thrandimir come out from the confines of his hastily erected shelter, in search of his pale young friend. "Good evening, Ascian," the wizard observes, gazing up at the stars without looking at his companion.

Ascian sits huddled by the fire, the length of rope that has become his constant watch companion slowly unfurling between his hands.  "Hello," he says noncommittally, staring sightlessly into the flames. "You don't need to stay up. I'll be awake."

"Oh, I have work to do before I sleep," Thrandimir assures Ash as he leafs through his spellbook. The wizard glances past the campfire towards the cart, where the lumpy silhouette of Kou's corpse beneath a blanket can be made out in the flickering firelight. "I will miss him," Thrandimir notes wistfully. "He had a good heart."

Ascian looks up from the fire at last.  "Will you?"  It lacks accusation the words might otherwise imply, colored instead as light as he with a pale sort of observation. His attention drifts not to Kou but instead to their sleeping companions, Kaed's words from the night before at the forefront of his mind in the face of the day's unsettling events.  He is a very charismatic man, if that is what he truly is.   When he looks back to Thrandimir with unblinking eyes, there's a question to them that runs beneath the blunt statement he voices.  "The others don't trust you."

" Yes ," Thrandimir replies indignantly. However, the wizard's good-natured grin shows that he doesn't take the question to heart. "Katrin says that I lie about my age," he notes as though it were an answer to Ash's statement. Closing his book, Thrandimir turns to face the young man fully. "Do you trust me, Ascian?"

Ascian stares at the wizard, measured and numb and exhausted as he scans through opposite grey eyes. In the back of his mind the phantom echo of electricity still hums, a last vestige of Kou and where they'd been and all the undead within it. Was it possible to trust anything, when it was beginning to become difficult to tell where he was? What he was? Was it possible to not , and still function? He had to have faith in something before he broke, and the time had long since passed when that thing could be himself. But Kaed had also seemed so sure it shouldn't be Thrandimir. And now, it seemed, Katrin too. "Should I."

Thrandimir's eyes sparkle in entertainment. "Good answer," he notes with a respectful nod. "I consider myself trust worthy , if that is what you are asking. I take care of my friends. I would not betray your secrets to another. Everybody has secrets. It's a part of what makes us sentient. Sometimes a lie can be a convenience and sometimes a lie is a way of life. For those who live a lie, eventually it becomes difficult to tell where reality ends and the lie begins." The wizard swishes a hand through the air and his hat turns from grey to purple. "Often, that doesn't matter. Not when reality can be whatever you want it to be."

Ascian listens warily, until a faint frown falls across his face. "It does matter. Knowing what's real." His hands still on his rope, gaunt and white, one with a ring and one without; he looks at the newly-purple hat before he looks back to Thrandimir, his stare resolute. "It matters, to me."

"So choose," Thrandimir challenges, meeting Ash's stare with new intensity. "Which world do you want to be your reality?"

"That's not a choice."  Ash recoils from the bald inquiry, fingers tightening back around the tether across his knees. "Yours is . You tell me you're trustworthy. You tell me a lie is a way of life. That's not real." He says the last words like a mantra, a reminder; a rote prayer spoken a hundred times to himself. A knot begins to form in the rope beneath his hands, quick and urgent.  "Where does the lie begin. "

"Let us begin with 'Thrandimir'," the wizard muses, clearly enjoying the exercise. "I have told you that that is my name. Everybody who we both know calls me by this name and, thus, it is my name, yes?" Thrandimir pauses, waiting for some sign of acknowledgement. "When we met, I could have told you and everybody else that my name was something else. Let's say that I had told everybody that I am called 'Jessica'. Then everybody would now call me Jessica and that would be my name, would it not? Which is the truth?"

Ascian stares at Thrandimir and his obvious exhilaration, feeling something in his stomach sink dismally lower in kind. Shifting closer to the fire, he tries in vain to maintain some sense of heat, feeling what little had been in him to start with begin to seep out. "I see.  I won't ask again." He is a very charismatic man, if that is what he truly is.   He bends over his harried knots again, looking up only briefly to add flatly,  " But they will."

Thrandimir blinks vacantly at Ascian, as though the man has missed the point entirely. " Do you see? I'm not so sure that you do." The wizard gets up and crosses to Ash, settling down besides him and weaving little illusions of a man walking through the world in the flames in front of them to illustrate his words. "You are Ascian now . Perhaps you were also Ascian before I met you. I don't know. I wasn't there. I'd be interested to know though. Interested to hear what stories you could tell me. Where did you come from? What did you do before you put arrows through orcs and bandits? Who were you before you were Ascian?"

Ascian starts slightly as Thrandimir approaches him, gaze wary. He listens to the wizard in silence, hands not ceasing as the illusions unfold in the fire in front of him. The urgency surprises him, though the questions that accompany it are far worse. With each word the heavy feeling inside him sinks steadily lower, and knots in the rope form faster in kind. For a long moment he stares at Thrandimir, gauging the wizard, before he looks away.  "I don't know," he says quietly, as the little illusion atop the firewood sinks an arrow into the flames.  "I don't know what I was then." Rope tightens and frays once more beneath his fingers. " What I am now." He looks back with empty eyes to the hat that might be purple and the hat that might be grey, and then to the wizard beneath it who has the choice; slowly, his fingers start working backwards. "But I know that it matters."

"We all wear different hats at different times in our lives," Thrandimir tells Ascian with a soft chuckle, inching closer and taking off the floppy, pointed garment to turn it over in his hands as the purple slowly fades, "but that doesn't mean that they don't have meaning, or their own truth to them. You said that you won't ask and that wasn't what I'd meant," the wizard notes, shaking his head. The shaggy tresses of his silver hair are all too perfect in the light of the fire. "If you have questions, then ask them. I have a tendency to wax philosophical, but I haven't lied to you. To you, I am Thrandimir. Tell me, if another knew me by a different name, then which would be the more real? If there is the lie and the reality, then what holds the most truth to you? The fact of the matter is that you are my friend and you can trust me to be exactly that. Does that matter?" So close to the fire as Ash is sitting, beads of sweat have begun to pearl around the edges of Thrandimir's face. This close up, the wrinkles seem almost smeared and blurred in the flickering light.

"Yes. It matters." Ascian frowns at Thrandimir, his eyes landing on what had, in the daytime, looked like perfect wrinkles. On the hair that looks less natural in the discerning firelight.  "What's real is whatever you call yourself. If it's different than either, then that's two lies. Not one." The rope in his lap finally stills, draped between his knees; the fire is close enough he knows he should be sweating too, though anything but the promise of heat doesn't come. He scans over the wizard nevertheless. "What do you call yourself. Alone. It isn't Thrandimir."

Thrandimir leans in close to Ash and lays an arm about his cold shoulders, reaching out with the other to once more work his magic on the flames. The smoke above the campfire dances and swirls, forming letters in the air. His name; Thrandimir. The wizard's fingers flourish again and the letters move, rearranging themselves to form a new name. The name that Ash has asked him for. "Not nearly as ostentatious, is it?" He jokes with a snort of self-deprecation. "I don't show just anybody that. Be careful with it. One day, somebody might come looking."

Ascian shudders reflexively upon being touched, his shoulders tensing involuntarily beneath the wizard's arm as if anticipating a blow. They don't quite relax even when it doesn't come, his attention wandering warily instead to the letters rearranging themselves in the ashen air in front of him. A look of faint confusion crosses his features as he looks from them to Thrandimir before it abruptly clears. "I know what to do if they do." His considers the wizard for a moment longer before his gaze drops, nodding shortly as his hands slowly start untying a knot again. "Thanks. For something real."   

Thrandimir shrugs. "I often find reality disappointing. You are your own master, Ascian. Your reality is defined by your actions. Once you decide who you want to be, you can make that real." Releasing Ash, the wizard shuffles back a touch to be able to look his friend in the eye. "What is the last thing that you remember before arriving in Fireblade? What is your oldest clear memory?"

Once you decide who you want to be, you can make that real. It was a nice concept, and easily said for a wizard, who could bend perception at a thought. Ascian thinks of the tower, of his certainty it would be beneath his fingertips when he leapt from horseback; of the earth slamming against his spine when he was wrong. It didn't matter that he wanted to be someone who could expect things to be where they appeared to be; he had no more say in that than he did what color Thrandimir's hat was. He almost tells the wizard as much, but finds he doesn't quite have the words. "Walking," he says dully as the wizard pulls away, his muscles tentatively relaxing. "My shoe broke a few hours outside Dragonvale. I used rope to keep it together until I could find new ones." He leaves the details of that finding nebulous, focusing on unwinding a final knot.  "Rain. That's the oldest. It was blinking in and out. Like someone was pouring it over the edge of our roof and had to keep refilling a bucket." The rope unspools in front of him and he doesn't pick it back up again, the dark circles beneath his eyes looking cavernous in the harsh firelight. " I didn't understand then. Now I do." He looks baldly and uncertainly back to Thrandimir, still sitting closer than Ascian is used to.  "Why. What's yours."

"The sound of my mother singing," Thrandimir reflects, wistfully. "The light through the window was uncomfortably bright, but she hung a blanket over it for me..." The wizard trails off, lost in reverie for a moment, before refocussing on the here and now. "I just wanted to better understand who you are. Good night, Ascian. I'll be up reading for a little longer if you need me." With that, Thrandimir returns to his books.

His dreams run dark, as they often do, blood on the floor and voices calling to each other, saying a name he knew over and over, a familiar voice weeping near him, his aunt he realised with some surprise. He has never remembered this before, the fragments gradually coalesce into a clearer picture night by night or week by week, the progress seems faster and faster these days. But tonight it goes no further, he wakes up, sweat slicked but freezing cold, the temperature doesn't seem to bother him but he can feel his body is cooler than usual, he sees the ribbons of darkness dissipate as the anger he had been feeling fades. Knowing he will be nearby and awake he looks for Ash, seeing him quietly sitting picking at a rope. For a few moments he steadies himself, not wanting to show weakness even in the company of this young man, despite their burgeoning friendship. "I am..." he pauses, not sure he wants to speak, "I am so cold, but my body doesn't seem to care, it doesnt hurt. But these changes are almost nightly, what is happening to me?" The sound of his voice cracking a little doesn't escape his own notice, and embarrassed at his own weakness he stands quickly, moving away from Ascian, and moving closer to Kou. He stands in silence for a few moments looking at the body, thinking back to the sight of Gesrik ending his friend,  the shadows curl out of his eyes and from his shoulders as he stares at the body.

His conversation with Thrandimir still sitting questionably with him, Ascian is so absorbed in his knot tying he almost misses Kaed's voice, distant and uncertain in the night in a way that Ash recognizes intimately. He looks up from the mindless mess of cord in front of him, watching the barbarian climb to his feet and move away towards their fallen friend. The rope slides from his knees as he stands too, quietly crossing toward the much larger man to arrive at his elbow, a pale shadow in the flickering light of the fire. "What happened." He looks at Kou rather than Kaed, fighting against a morbid urge to reach out to the monk's mind again and search one more time for any vestige of electricity. The faint echo of it in the back of his own still resonates if he looks for it; a current that came to such an abrupt end he had felt its sudden conclusion in the hollow of his jaw. He knows the silence that awaits him if he were to try. He wonders if that would be better or worse. "What changes." His unblinking stare lifts finally from the fallen man in front of them to raise to Kaed, wary and, if he really thinks about it, perhaps even the slightest bit hopeful. "Do you still breathe."

"Yes, and your question makes me ashamed. I should not burden you with my own things without asking of you, these changes in me are a shock but well..." He shrugs his shoulders, looking at Kou, "It hardly seems to matter, in the bigger scheme of things." He looks over at Ascian, offering his hand, " Can you tell me if I feel cold to the touch? Forgive me, but would you know?"

"That's not what I meant." Ascian pauses, hesitating. "I never feel warm anymore. I thought maybe you..." He shakes his head, the words sounding stupid and deaf now that he's voiced them aloud and, as Kaed had pointed out, Kou lays still in front of them. For a moment looks back to the monk, as if expecting him now to climb out of the wagon and be as Ascian is. Predictably he doesn't stir, though Kaed does; the hand outstretched in front of him takes Ash by surprise and he blinks at it as if he's never seen one before. "I don't know," he admits, peeling his arm from where it had been wrapped around his body to hesitantly brush Kaed's. He hovers it there long enough to answer the question and withdraws quickly, looking back to the barbarian with uncertain eyes. "You don't feel cold. Not really. Does fire feel normal to you." He pauses a moment longer, unsure if he actually wants the answer to the question that comes next. "Do I."  

" Honestly I do not trust myself to know, it seems normal but I can feel the cold in me so it may distort things, but then you... no this is pointless.  I am not certain of anything. I am sorry" he steps a little closer to Kou's body " And I am sorry that I could not save you, you deserved a better ending my friend." He bows his head, quiet for a moment. He turns back to Ascian, "I think I exploit you as a captive audience forced to listen to my insecurities, I will not make this a regular habit. If you wish you can always talk to me though if you want to, but for now I am going to watch for danger, rather than fret like a fool."

Ascian  looks at Kou and back, expression unreadable. “You would have died too if you’d tried.” It isn’t the comforting thing to say, but it’s the truth, and he wouldn’t know how to begin searching for the words that might be kinder.  As the barbarian apologizes, Ash blinks almost uncomprehendingly up at Kaed.  “If I’m not your captive audience, you can’t be mine.”  He looks past Kaed’s shoulder to the fringes of the campsite and back, nodding shortly.  “Go, if you want. But you’re not fretting. And you’re not a fool.” 

Katrin pushes herself into a seated position as Kaed wakes her before returning to his own rest. She moves stiffly, setting herself next to the fire, digging in the coals with the tip of her sword. Her headache has dissipated, but the frustration and tension in her body and mind have not. "Or do you really think you don't lead this party?" Thrandimir's comment shoves itself to the front of her mind as she watches the glowing coals. If the wizard had known her story, perhaps his words wouldn't have hurt. If he had known, he might not have asked the question at all. Looking up, her eyes pass over Ascian, sitting quietly and obsessively knotting a length of rope. She draws her gaze back to the coals her sword is mixing together. The heat washes over her, like the rage she'd felt when she struck the cart, revealing herself to Gesrik and all his men. Despite all that the wizard had said, it wasn't something she regretted. She'd known a man like Gesrik before. A long time ago.  "You're very impressive with that bow," Katrin says softly, so as not to startle the young man.  

As Kaed wavers in that nebulous space between wakefulness and sleep, a vision comes to his mind's eye. A dark open plane filled with craggy rocks and broken buildings. Stormy clouds and lightning strikes cut bright blades across his sight. A mountain in the distance catches his attention. Suddenly, he stands at the base. Then up the side. Then at the top. Grey haired with a long flowing beard, a man stands at the top. He turns to look at Kaed, and for a moment, the barbarian is looking in a mirror -- plus or minus 50 years or so. But the differences outnumber the similarities. A scar runs across the man's face, from lower-left jaw to upper right temple. The lines spidering out from the corners of his eyes and lips make him look older than he seems. The biggest difference, however, is the eyes. There are no whites. The man's eyes are entirely black, with whispy shadows drafting out the edges. The shadowy eyes meet Kaed's grey ones. A blade, ornate and glowing brilliantly, drips with cold condensation -- icy formations shifting like bladed teeth on the sword. "Kaed!" the man growls and brings the blade slashing down, rending the vision to dust.

Ascian hadn't expected the voice, and looks up in faint bemusement.  "Thanks," he says after a prolonged beat of silence. "It didn't do us much good back there."  He glances at the coals being stirred at the mercy of Katrin's sword and then to the wagon beyond it stopped at the edge of the camp view that holds Kou. He thinks of Kaed's reaction, and Thrandimir's, and ultimately his eyes settle back on the dwarven woman, near colorless in the harsh firelight. "Did you know him well. You followed the same god, didn't you."

Katrin cracks a small, wry smile. "I didn't know him any longer than you did. But faith does create a connection that can't quite be explained." She traces a sigil in the coals and it flares blue for a moment before fading back to the red coals. Another moment passes, and she trsces another sigil, this one flaring white before fading. "Yes, we both followed Tempus. But we didn't have the same beliefs. Or tenets of faith, I suppose." A genuine smile lights her face. "His faith rested in the warrior Tempus. The God of War. I place mine in the God of the Forge." Katrin looks at Ascian's pale complexion. "They're both Tempus. Just different paths."

"I don't really understand that," Ascian admits after a moment, thinking back on what the others had said as Katrin casts; of Thrandimir and his principle that reality is a choice, when it can't possibly be true. "Thrandimir said something similar. About being multiple things at once. But Tempus has to be more one than the other."

This gives Katrin pause. She frowns into the flickering coals. "Perhaps. Or maybe that's merely perception. Perspective." She had always followed the Forge, and she had instinctively shunned Kou's belief in the warrior God. Perhaps he could be both. More one than the other when it's required.  "Perhaps," she speaks slowly, feeling out her own perspective, "Perhaps he is more one when he needs to be. The warrior in times of war, the Forge for the times in between." Her frown deepens. "Or maybe I've been looking at this wrong from the outset." She looks at Ascian, and she can see the conflict in his eyes, and her frown relaxes. "I don't know about being two things at once. But I do know that you can be two things. The person I was before I left home is not the same one I am now. But that doesn't mean that I wasn't Katrin back then. I'm Katrin now. I just know a few more things then I used to." She smiles, a little bit sad. "Perhaps the same can be said of Tempus."

He continues to frown at Katrin, looking troubled. The words, like the wizard's, wash over him and though distantly he knows they must make logical sense, he can't quite force them to stick.  "You sound like Thrandimir."

Her brow furrows. "Perhaps." The words don't sit well with her, like a stomach ache after eating spoiled food. "If I could sound different, I would. But unfortunately, we may share some of the same ideas." She traces another sigil, and it burns bright white. "I just can't shake the feeling that whatever is hidden beneath that hat is something that I can't trust. Not until I've seen it for myself." She looks back at Ascian again, knowing that the conflict inside him will only grow. Maybe even distrust. But she couldn't lie. 

He considers her quietly, meeting her gaze with an uncertain stare of his own. It was the same question he'd sat on just a few hours ago, and one he himself still wasn't sure he had an answer to. But Thrandimir had trusted Ascian with something, if not the truth, and that had to mean something.  "If he wants us to know, he'll show us," he says at last, thinking of that telltale too-perfect sheen to the wizard's hair in the firelight. " He says he's trustworthy.  You probably have secrets too."