Zone E -- Highlands

[Strazio Rockwell]

So many damn questions. And Strazio was sure Tearen knew the answer to most of them, or at least had a damn good idea. The mage had finally pinpointed that subconscious unease that he felt when they had first met. It went far beyond just a healthy portion of paranoia, no, it had the trappings of something far more insidious. That subdermal scratching was not an internal creation, but rather the external machinations of his companion. While he wasn’t convinced that Tearen’s probing was malicious he was irked by the wanton disregard for another’s thinkpan. As an act of passive-aggressive defiance Strazio opened the floodgates. Every negative thought, emotion, and feeling was stirred up and brought front and center for the intruder to glut himself upon.

“Well now, that was unnecessary,” Tearen noted.

Strazio growled, the sudden surge of ill thoughts had soured his stomach, he stopped walking and answered, “you shouldn’t be poking around in other’s heads without permission motherfucker.”

“I…” Tearen began, his eyes scanning Strazio’s scowl, “I apologize, I’m just trying to understand you better, if we’re to be allies it would behoove us to work as a team rather than enemies.”

Sparks cascaded across the boy’s skin, leaving burns in their collective wakes. Once again he had lost his temper and things had turned sideways on him. Strazio took a deep breath and averted his gaze.

“Just,” Strazio began, trying to decide on what he wanted to say, “what even are you? You’re like a hierophant or something like that right?”

“Hierophant?”

“Yeah, well, if you have to ask you aren’t one,” Strazio answered, “a hierophant is a rare form of magus from my homeworld, they can read minds and do all that telekinesis shit that you can do, I’m a thaumaturge, well kind of a thaumaturge, it’s complicated really, hard to have any common language when there is so few of us in the first place, anyways if you aren’t a magick user then what are you?”

Tearen thought for a moment and answered, “I’m a man by necessity, a god by habit.”

“Oh well that clears things right up doesn’t it,” Strazio said, injecting as much sarcasm into his voice as was possible.

“We should keep moving,” Tearen stated.

“Yeah.”

Moving Tearen and Strazio from E10 to E12