Application(s)

[necromartyr]

1. Player Information
Name (or internet handle): Kirsten
Current characters in Bete Noire: Jan Valentine

2. Character Information
Name: Lazarus
Livejournal Username: necromartyr
Fandom: Original
Image: Right here.

3. Character Information II
Age/Appearance: Twenty-eight, though his ragged appearance can make him look a bit a bit older depending on point of view. Lazarus is a scrawny, somewhat sickish young man with permanent dark circles under his eyes and a bit of twitchiness. He’s blond, with dark blue eyes and a constantly tousled, troubled look about him. His hands are marked with thick black tattoos on the backs of each, heavily inked dark circles filled with a complicated alchemical diagram - the Sorcerer’s Mark, as it’s called in some areas, though Lazarus just calls them his marks. They serve no purpose other than for vanity and for recognition for what he is. Aside from that, Lazarus is heavily marked from his Pilgrimage - he suffered many small injuries over the course of the journey that scarred over and couldn't bother to heal. He also has a mark from tip of his middle finger to wrist (on the inside of his hand) and circles around the wrist that, while usually a very faint scar, glows bright gold in the sunlight.

History: (FANDOM CHARACTERS ONLY) Provide a wiki link, or a link to a summary of the character's history. If no such summary exists, please write one at least a few paragraphs long.
Personality: From the outside, Lazarus is a mildly sarcastic sorcerer with a shit past and horrible luck - though he'll never tell his history to anyone who isn't very, very close to him in the first place. He's resigned to his fate, considering that his sort are naturally mentally unstable and are required to put themselves in near constant peril, and focuses instead on relentlessly tracking a man by the name of Siva. Lazarus' sense of humor is wry and often self-deprecating, and he doesn't see a reason in changing any of that when he's content enough with it. He doesn't make friends easily and tends to abandon or betray the ones he does have.

In fact, he's a wreck. More of a wreck than he looks.

Lazarus is a man that long ago dedicated himself wholly and solely to one goal - finding Siva. That takes precedence over every other distraction he may have, every opportunity that might arise, any chance out that he may find - his mission comes first. He could honestly probably abandon his pilgrimage at nearly any time and settle down in nearly any land he chose. His past would haunt him, yes, and those tattoos on the backs of his hand will never fade, but he could live in relative peace. He could have a real life. Maybe even have a family. He could give up and not many would honestly spite him for the decision; sure, the old men and the Magi would frown upon such a decision, but they didn't care about one nameless sorcerer wandering off on his own and he could move into a land where no sorcerer's temple was within a hundred thousand miles.

The path he's heading down leads only to ruin, misery, and death. And he knows it. If he had more sense about him, he'd have turned away a long time ago.

But he won't.

It's from both a dogged sense of duty to put Siva, the man he helped build up, back down, and from a misguided hope that somehow he's wrong. Siva has a method to his madness; Lazarus just wishes he knew what it was and better yet, wishes it were something with a positive outcome for them all. Maybe it is. He hopes it is. He really, really hopes it is. Because if it isn't, he will have to do what he believes is necessary and try to put his former closest friend down like a mad dog. Because Siva is his responsibility, in his own eyes; Lazarus fully believes that Nai's destruction was his fault, though the logical part of him knows that that's silly. He couldn't have known. The emotional part says he damn well should have recognized the signs. All of those little not-so-rights he'd seen but ignored, due to some... loyalty (infatuation) towards his companion. He should have somehow known and figured it out, and he should have waited until Siva was asleep, and he should have cut his throat eight years ago. Say it was a thief in the night. Cover his tracks, all while giving himself a sickening little pat on the back for a job well done. He would've gone mad, but that would have been the end of all dirty little secrets Nai had.

Lazarus unconsciously enjoys emotionally self-flagellating. He chooses options he knows will cause him emotional pain because it feeds a martyr complex born from years of terrible sorcerer training, which in turn caused him to mentally play himself up in a position of taking suffering to lessen the suffering of others. It's something he first thought up as a sort of help to rely on getting through his boyhood training, a comforting little thought that somehow morphed into a full-blown complex in his adulthood. He'll sometimes put himself in danger and put others before himself for both the satisfaction of helping and a more selfish need to feed that particular complex, and as penance for his imagined hand in assisting Siva destroy Nai - there's a distinctive line between 'this will make me look and feel good' and 'this is completely suicidal', however, and whether he does self-flagellate depends on what his mood is.

Though he shoulders the guilt for Nai's destruction (and sees himself almost as culpable as Siva in its destruction), it's not really out of revenge for fallen family and friends. He hadn't seen any of them for nearly a decade, and his parents had drifted from the center of his world to beloved strangers. He hadn't any real friends that he could remember, aside from Siva. Siva was his world.

Lazarus has issues with his former friend that he rather refuses to talk about or even think about.

In addition, he's not... completely stable, mentally. No sorcerer or sorceress really is. Lazarus, a naturally somewhat shy boy, was "toughened up" by the training he received from strict schoolmasters, but at a cost: he developed a nice outer shell and ability to tuck his negative feelings away, but that feeds the neuroses that his magic dug up and magnified. Most of the time he can be a bedraggled but mainly pleasant man to those he considers friendly, and politely scornful to those he doesn't - but under extreme emotional duress, the other side comes out of him. He becomes more hurried in both thought and action, trips over his words more often, laughs humorlessly at things that only half make sense, and can become violent on a hair trigger temper. He lashes out at people around him and is more likely to talk about things he'd normally keep to himself. It's also one of the few times he'll ever legitimately admit what's bothering him instead of dancing around the question or point-blank refusing to answer, aside from being drunk - being drunk has the added bonus of possibly ending in him sobbing into someone's shoulder.

It's happened before.

Being as self-destructive as he is, Lazarus refuses to entangle himself in any genuine and concrete relationship (romantic or a very close friendship) because he knows he'll only bring the other person pain - either from his increasingly more likely death, or from the emotional breakdown he's steadily creeping towards. He would feel guilty for doing that to someone, and for exposing them to his mad private life - how he sometimes can't help but scream nonsense just to try and relieve some of the stress building up inside of him, the way he lashes out without realizing it, and his occasionally violent moods. He's unraveling from the inside out and he knows it. And just maybe because he's a little afraid of (replacing the Siva he used to know) letting anyone get too close.

Aside from that, his obsession with his old friend is too complete at the moment to make room for anyone else - the part of him that wants to be the martyr says it's because they'll be put in danger from either Siva, the pilgrimage, or him; the part of him he would rather not acknowledge says it's because they would slow him down or they could be used against him.

That doesn't explain why he continues to be a normally somewhat chatty man instead of a total recluse. That's because Lazarus wants a legitimate, honest loving relationship - familial, platonic, or otherwise. He doesn't remember his parents very well, and his formative years were spent under the cold eye of headmasters. He doesn't remember friends from his hometown at all. All he remembers is Siva Siva Siva, and though he's sworn to either save or kill the man, Lazarus has more or less invested himself wholly in Siva through one way or another. He loved Siva (in what way he isn't sure and that's an incredibly uncomfortable topic he refuses to think long and hard about) and that ended... not very well, and since he won't let himself make real relationships in the years since Nai burnt, Siva continues to be the only tangible thing Lazarus has to him. He still wants affection and just won't let himself have it.

Basically, he's a nervous wreck with some powerful magic and some huge issues with being loved. And Siva.

As a note, he's also immensely irritated when called a "magician", and will not hesitate to correct someone else about the difference between a magician and a sorcerer. While being rather bitchy about it.

Sexual Preferences/Orientation: Lazarus doesn't fear sex; he's not averse to the occasional one night stand, though it's unlikely that he'll initiate it himself. He doesn't fear commitment either. And he doesn't fear having friends, as long as they're casual and don't pry. Lazarus is a confused jumble of wanting someone to care for him and knowing that it's impossible for him to have that. He distances himself emotionally and, when he starts to become too terribly attached to someone, usually spurns them without warning to try and keep them at arm's length.

As for orientation, his one night stands have been with women - but his feelings towards Siva were never clearly discernible and he was rather infatuated with the young man in his early adulthood. Might have loved him, but won't examine the possibility. He's never been particularly picky about who he's attracted to, either. If someone were to become the other thing close to his heart, someone other than Siva - well, it wouldn't damn well matter what gender they were. He'd love them.

Powers: Lazarus is a sorcerer; during their training, all sorcerers are required to learn a certain amount in the “main” schools of magic and are then expected to choose a school to focus on and eventually specify in. Lazarus can do the following:

- Manipulate the basic elements: he can move water and fire however he pleases, but he cannot create one from nothing. He can pull moisture from the air to “make” water, but if he were in an extremely arid climate, he would be unable to do so. He could draw on heat in the environment and his own body to “make” fire, but in an extremely cold or wet climate he could only draw from his body heat and then (if it was cold enough) freeze to death. Due to not focusing on the areas very much, he can’t move earth or do more with wind than make a slight breeze.

- Life and death (as in causing those states of being directly)? Sort of. Lazarus is attuned to Death magic, either from interest in it or just natural skill - conversely, he's not so good with Life-related magic. He could stop someone's heart, but there's no guarantee it would stay stopped; such spells take a heavy toll on the caster's heart as a price, and Lazarus has never had a strong heart. He could promote rot and disease, though once again they take a strain on the caster themselves and he uses them sparingly. He's no good with magic relating to life (either healing or bringing someone back from death; any wisecracks about that and his name are met with a stony "My name is Lazarus, not Christ.") and if he tried to bring someone back from death, it would almost certainly fail and probably kill him in the process. A sufficiently powerful sorcerer can overcome natural weaknesses with certain magic after years of practice, but Lazarus is only average - and damn happy about it, considering what great amounts of power do to a sorcerer's sanity.

- Necromancy? Yes! In fact, that’s exactly what Lazarus specialized in, while Siva went for Life magic. He can raise corpses, but it’s taxing if he raises too many of them and they’re stupid hunks of meat and instinct anyway. He can try for legitimate thralls with some intelligence to them, but that’s tiring - and proper creatures must be netted together before raising. And though he could try for calling upon wraiths or banshees or various other horrific monsters that are either aligned with death or have been killed, that requires proper pacts with the beings themselves. And summoning those beings to make a pact in the first place requires very specific materials and tributes, and nothing ensures the necromancer safe from the creature's wrath. And if they're dead, he'll need to make a sacrifice body for them to inhabit and warp to their original form, and then he can summon them. Necromancy is an incredibly complicated area of magic and Lazarus is very careful with it.

- Potions: Lazarus can make potions, brews, poultices, poisons, and etc. with the materials around him. Considering he’s used to more exotic materials to work with, this skill may or may not be near useless in Bete Noire at first. After some work at what he can get his hands on in the city proper, however, it could be a very useful thing indeed; he has some materials he carries with him for potions, but it's not very much and he couldn't do a lot with them.

In addition, Lazarus relies more on traditional weaponry than he does his magic for survival, and is a relatively good shot. He’s also got a buildup of toxins in his body from the Propecian trial - if his blood dripped onto something else, it would sizzle and could probably function as a poison if someone with necessary skills manipulated it properly.

Reason for playing: A couple of days ago, I was explaining to a good friend a story idea I'd had - about some crazy old wizard smashing a bunch of worlds together helter-skelter just because he felt like it, and what that would do to the massively separate people and things having to deal with such a thing. Then I started thinking about the wizards themselves - sorcerers, I set on, it sounded regal somehow - and what their lives would be like. I started rambling on aimlessly, off the top of my head, how these sorcerers were trapped in a rigorous caste system and how their magic would drive them slowly insane. How they would go on a massive journey to try and hold onto their sanity and go through so many terrible trials to test their skill, their guile, and their mettle. This also scared her, she told me, and she left.

After that, I at first started writing out bits for the prototype that would eventually become Siva - a crazy, gleeful, completely off his rocker sorcerer with more power than he knew what to do with - and I said, "That'd sure be neat to play." I started writing out details of Docelle and eventually the idea really seized me. I eventually decided Siva would be too one-dimensional, settled on his foil - the tortured hero slowly losing his mind over this journey - and decided on him. After fighting with myself over the name of this mysterious hero (his name went from Riel to Cobane back to Riel then to Rien and eventually settled on Lazarus), I came up with a reason for him to keep torturing himself on this path and started writing some more.

WELL THIS IS LONG but tl;dr I've never been seized by an idea like this. I want to explore Lazarus' image of himself as a tortured hero, I want to see what he'd do separated from his total obsession with Siva and what may happen if he, say, actually made some friends instead of running away from what might hurt him. Instead of just stuffing down his issues and slowly degrading sanity, having to face it head-on. And having to assert his identity in some way other than "the sorcerer who hunts the other sorcerer" or "Lazarus the hunter" or "Siva's old friend".

4. Original Character Supplement
World History: Lazarus is from a world (well, worlds really) where magic is a somewhat common superpower, turning normal humans into engines of creation or destruction. It also has a nasty side effect of dropkicking the SAN stat right in its teeth.

Well, it’s easier to start at the beginning. Once there was a dodgery old wizard by the name of Mannel, vastly powerful and completely out of his mind. He lived in the world of Docelle, a land where magic was real and all of existence was like something out of high fantasy - continents composed of massive forests, seas full of many-toothed monsters, skies occasionally dotted with some flying contraption of some sorcerer somewhere that should neither exist nor work but does, merely because it is willed to do so.

Well, Mannel decided one day that he would rule the world. Just like that. But the world he had, Docelle, wasn’t enough for such a mighty and wonderful wizard! He must have more, a land worthy of him. So, creating and then using an incredibly intricate and horrifically powerful spell the likes of which Docelle had never seen (a process which took a decade), Mannel did something no sorcerer had had the stones nor the means to do before - he merged Docelle with as many other worlds and universes as he could snag in his magical “net”.

The results were immediate and dizzying. An unknown number of other realities were smashed into Docelle and forced to accommodate one another, becoming one whole world. Some parts of Docelle were lost in transition, some parts of other worlds were also destroyed - but in the end, once the lands had settled, there was a new land for Mannel to rule.

Too bad Mannel, drunk off his victory and singlehanded creation and successful use of one of the most powerful spells to date, toasted himself at the window of his immense tower and, weakened, was blown off of it by a strong gust. Sapped of his magical strength, he fell to his death. And on his death, his tower incinerated immediately, taking the secrets of his world-forging spell and immense power with him.

Since that day, Docelle became not a world but a continent with many castaway territories, forced to deal with these interlopers from other realities. There had to be at least a dozen new worlds or pieces of worlds, most definitely more than that - alien civilizations forced to work together and negotiate borders, trade routes, making allies and enemies with strange creatures they’d never known with customs they couldn’t fathom. Docelle’s sorcerers, difficult as their lives had been before the World Forge, changed dramatically as well.

The Pilgrimage that Lazarus has undertaken is long and arduous, and at the age of twenty-eight, he has been on this rough path for a long seven years and has only visited two of the temples. He has many more to visit, and the path seems endless.

The first was the sorcerer-hostile land of Dorohedel, where he was hunted for sport (as all sorcerers are there, their cloaks and tattooed hands taken as trophies) and where he only survived due to extreme guile and help from sleeper agents and those who sympathised with his situation in their country. The trip to the temple was a mad dash where professional sorcerer hunters monitored the only path, so as to catch any heading to the temple itself - a towering building protected with dozens of powerful enchantments that both saved Lazarus and kept the hunters at bay. There he was bestowed his first recognition of surpassing his Trial (making his way through the hostile country; the thick band from the hat of a hunter he’d killed was his official totem and he always has it tied around his upper arm), and after rest and food, safely escorted out of the country and into the neighboring Propecia.

Propecia is where Lazarus had to test his mettle; a land where everything holds some amount of poison, the time he spent there was hellish. To survive, he brewed the poisonous leaves and foliage into a bitter tea and then forced it down to build up an immunity, which caused intense pain and violent illness night after night. Eventually he met up with (by way of nearly being pickpocketed by) a spry young thief by the name of Penelope, who decided he was worth the trouble of following around if she could have his wallet - using this to his advantage, he promised her the contents of if she would guide him through to the sorcerer’s temple. She was a native of Propecia, and therefore had been born with the immunities her mother and her mother’s mother had had, and it seemed to deeply disturb her to watch him force down the toxic tea night after night. She urged him to leave and abandon this pilgrimage if it caused him such intense pain, and he merely grinned wryly at her and took another sip. It also confused her to see him do this, because though the air and all that was in it would make an outsider feel ill, they would be fine if they stayed away from the more deadly fauna and chose their food and drink carefully. Eventually she lead him to Salvia, the capital city and where she planned to rob him blind and leave him to make his way to a less toxic city. She tried and he caught her, and after she tried to talk him into leaving and he refused, she threatened to abandon him and he threatened to wander out mindlessly into the wild to find the temple himself. Uneasily she led him to Rappaccini's Meadow, an area so toxic that not even Propecian natives would go there - even a butterfly landing on your skin could kill you, and a sting from a bee could rot your arm off. She tried, desperately, to convince him to abandon his quest. He gave her his wallet, bid a brief goodbye, and then threw his cloak around himself, marching into the Meadow, Penelope screaming after him. He still has no idea what became of her after his departure, but she didn't follow him into the Meadow and he was positive she could make her way back to the city on her own.

Rappaccini's Meadow damn near killed him, actually. He was able to fend off the animals there with his cloak and his magic, though the grass and soil gradually ate through the soles of his boots and blistered his feet terribly for the distance he was forced to run to the temple. His throat nearly closed up at the end due to the pollen from the flowers, and the next day he blistered all over where the air touched his skin. Holes were eaten in his cloak where he swatted away a striking rattlesnake and where dragonflies and wasps had nearly touched him. Night after arduous night of forcing down the tea had made him barely able to stand the environment for the brief moment he was exposed. Rappaccini's Meadow’s temple was able to take him into the safer inner recesses for a few weeks and slowly nurse him back to health; for his trial of forcing his way through the Meadow, his totem was to be branded on the hand and wrist with a thin line with the blood of the Dhael, a beast living in one single puddle of water in the Meadow that never evaporated. The Dhael was so hideous that even seeing its face instantly killed the viewer, and whose blood burnt the skin like hot iron and left a mark that glowed bright gold in the sunshine. Lazarus knew that eventually he would have to come back and make a pact with the Dhael, in a necromancy-specific pilgrimage requirement, but pushed that off until later.

Then he prepared to leave for the Laevetainne River and its temple - which is the exact point he’s being pulled from.

Character History: The boy that would eventually become Lazarus was born in the Docellian city of Nai, located in a small country that was sorcerer-friendly. In fact, it was known for producing children of the sorcerous inclination. When children first show the ability to harness the magic around them, they are immediately shipped to the heart of Docelle (the booming metropolis of Gattoe) to learn the studies of witches and wizards, no matter their age. The moment they show magical inclination is known as the "Manifestation" and is signaled as the beginning of the rigorous and difficult training to become a journeyman sorcerer. Lazarus’ Manifestation was at the age of ten, and he was sent away from his family with another child (of twelve) that quickly became one of his closest boyhood companions, a boy whose true name only Lazarus knows - now he is only Siva.

The schooling to control his magic sapped all of Lazarus’ boyhood in years of hard studying, and for good reason - sorcerers are ticking time bombs and every single one of them goes some measure of mentally unstable, no matter who they are or what their mental state was beforehand. The stronger a sorcerer, the less sane they seem to be. It's a reason why sorcerers are both revered in some circles and loathed in others; most of them are unstable and there have been stories of sorcerers losing themselves completely to the flow and ebb of magic. Some lose their minds, others are able to function in society but still show signs of being unstable; Lazarus functions, but is moderately nervous and occasionally violent without being able to control it. His mood swings are sudden when provoked, and he attempts to hide his neuroses through force of personality. Siva, on the other hand, went completely, giddily insane sometime near the conclusion of his training, though it had been a slow decay over the years - he laughs and sings and dances and cavorts, even as he’s raising the dead and burning men alive.

After their training in Gattoe was complete (an arduous task in and of itself, considering most lose their minds or commit suicide in the ten year course), Lazarus (now twenty) and Siva (of twenty-two) had their hands branded with the traditional markings of sorcery, and were sent back to Nai to prepare for and then begin their Pilgrimage. At their branding, they lost their original names and chose their own; Lazarus had always been incredibly lucky and had cheated death twice in his school years (once was merely a very close brush; the second time, he was believed dead for a day and should rightly have died), and all the other students had nicknamed him Lazarus. So he chose that name. Siva's reasoning is unknown to anyone but Lazarus, his closest childhood friend - and Lazarus isn't talking.

Almost every land, both those that were natural to Docelle and those dragged in from another reality, had one temple that needed to be visited by a sorcerer - and the grandest goal of every sorcerer was to visit all of these and become a Magus, the most respected of people in all of the lands, grizzled and powerful and revered above all others. Magi live in great comfort and are assured whatever they may need in their chosen profession, whether that be the sorcerer's politics, attending a temple, forging spells, or exploring the far reaches of the planet to learn all they can. Sorcerers are not required by law (in some areas) to complete their pilgrimage, and can idle out in relative normalcy. Lazarus himself had been contemplating this very course of action until he and Siva had, after their marking, been sent back to Nai.

Lazarus goes on his journey not because he wants to, but in pursuit of his childhood friend Siva, who went insane at the eve of his graduation from the sorcerer’s academy and when sent back to Nai with Lazarus, slaughtered the entire town with his considerable sorcerous skill. he then brought them all back to life as fully conscious, sobbing and screaming human beings driven completely insane from seeing the other side of death and being forced back to life without the proper amnesia, and then directed them at Lazarus for relief from their torment. If one is to bring a living creature back from death, their memories must be completely erased or else the truths on the other side of death will drive them mad upon returning to life. Siva left Lazarus to kill them all, family and friends he hadn't seen in nearly a decade, and when he had done so, laughed as if they had never left Nai in boyhood and comforted his oldest friend with a cheery and enigmatic “I’ll see you on the other side, brother!”. He then raised the shredded remains once more and had them attack Lazarus while Siva himself made his exit - they were not as powerful due to Siva being attuned to Life magic, and only served to distract the Death-aligned Lazarus long enough for an escape. Lazarus is set solely on capturing Siva and chases after him on the same pilgrimage path, desperately attempting to catch up and never quite being able to.

Lazarus, at the point from which he’s brought, has just visited the Propecian shrine, located in the centre of Rappaccini's Meadow. He’ll still be weak, but being away from the toxic environment will help him recover and eventually he’ll be almost back to normal.

5. Samples
First-Person: No, I'm not a magician. Magicians do card tricks and pull small animals from trick doors; they're con artists and sleights of hand that rely on smoke and mirrors and confusing the senses.

I am a sorcerer.

Sorcerers put work into their... well, their works. Of art, really. And they are works of art. I can't do card tricks to save my life, but I can raise the dead. I can't pull a rabbit from a hat, of course (and that's a rather stupid trick anyway; who wants a rabbit out of their hat? They're smelly creatures with claws. Things are lovely hell to hunt, too.), but I can make a broth that could kill you or save you or maybe one and then the other, if I really felt like it.

Now you tell me: does it damn well matter, if instead of making you think you see something, I can legitimatey do it?

Third-Person: Rappaccini's Meadow had been a hellish trial within a hellish trial, and though Lazarus had been semi-prepared for it he had no idea of knowing exactly what he was in for. In the end, when his feet began to scream in pain, he'd just ran - if he died he would die, and that was it. If he would live, then he'd live.

He lived.

The other sorcerers had dragged him in and began treating his injuries, and his life had become a quiet and rather boring cycle: in the beginning he would sleep fitfully, in terrible pain until they drugged him, and doing much of anything was a struggle. Slowly he recovered, until it was merely uneventful, spending his days in bed and resting, reading, whatever he could do to occupy his mind. He'd been raring to go for a while, but his colleagues refused to let him leave until they had given him the go-ahead. And when they did, it had been a damn glorious day. He'd gotten up immediately to get dressed (feet sore and aching but useable again), grabbed his cloak, grabbed his personal effects, had a hot meal and then had prepared to leave. Next was the Laevetainne River temple in the desert land of Sala'Kharo, and if he were to find the goddamned river he'd have to do it on foot. A hellish trip across the desert to find a grand river in the middle of nowhere, and forced to rely on his scrying abilities to find it.

He really... really wasn't looking forward to that trip. He had no money and would have to do some odd jobs to make some, in order to purchase supplies for the grand desert crossing. The idea that he'd find and stop Siva there was a distant ideal; he stopped hoping a long time ago, and would only think of it as a distant possibility. Maybe so, probably not. He would keep moving either way.

Once luxurious and thick cloak, now ratty and hole-eaten from the acidic touch of Rappaccini's Meadow, was slung around his shoulders and he prepared himself for the trip into safer territories. His trial was done; the temple attendants, incredibly versed in the local fauna and in combating the land's dangers, would accompany and protect him on his path to the edge of the Meadow and back into Propecia. There they would leave him to find his own way to the border between Propecia and into Sala'Kharo.

He glanced aside to both attendants and nodded, new boots on his feet and freshly-marked hand still burning from the Dhael's blood, and they began. The Meadow could no longer harm Lazarus, though it certainly frightened him, as did the wide berth the attendants gave a single puddle in their path - he swore he could see the reflection of precious gold in the water, a well-known lure to men's greed by the creature meant to net it a victim - and he was glad to finally enter the forest that separated the edge of the Meadow and natural Propecian land. It wasn't thick, but they seemed to get lost anyway; he had gotten turned around and had either lost his attendants or they had chosen that moment to leave him. He shrugged it off and continued through the forest, warily - and when he walked out on the other side, he was no longer in his world.

Third-Person #2: He didn't know her name, and she didn't care. He thought hers was something like "Sandria" but he couldn't be sure.

"I hope you're not after money," Lazarus murmured against her collarbone, feeling nails scate across his arm and another set in his hair, "because I don't have any." She mumbled something that sounded like a negative and jerked his head back, quickly pressing in with a kiss that left a smear of lipstick across his mouth.

Lazarus chewed another bite of the blackened bits, gristle really, and realized that a waitress was staring at him. He'd been staying a rainy week in a no-name little tavern's wet and cold basement, and seen the woman around. She winked at him, and he smiled back at her. Later, she'd slip him a bit of bacon with a coy look.

He was careful about the cloak, taking it off carefully (the momentary pause in their passions irritated her, but he didn't care) and letting her pull everything else off herself. He nudged her dress up over her hips, impatient, and she 'humph'ed into a kiss and pushed him away long enough to take it all off herself. Then she pressed him against the small supplies desk in the corner, its edge biting into his back, and kissed him again. Then his neck, then his chest, then down his stomach, and then -

He'd gone out to wash his clothes in the basin of cold water out behind the bar, and hadn't realized she was following him until she jerked him back in the doorway and dragged him into a closet. "What are you-" he'd started, before she cut that off with a kiss. "Don't ask stupid questions, sorcerer," she'd chided him, and then popped the first couple of buttons on her top. Lazarus gotten the message soon enough.

- a sharp intake of breath, his hand going right into her hair. She was good - whether that was legitimately good or worrying wasn't on his mind. Things moved quickly, he had her against the wall and her face was in his neck, in an attempt to muffle any noise. This is really what I've come to, then, slipped in one of his few coherent and complicated thinking moments before it was gone. It was quick and dirty, and he didn't feel all that guilty about it. She'd propositioned him, after all.

"What's your name, sorcerer? she'd asked him. He'd said it, completely uninterested in his name at the moment. She didn't seem all that interested either, to tell the truth.

It wasn't long before he was washing his clothes and they were ignoring one another's existences. She'd gotten what she wanted and he'd leave her alone, of course; no reason in making an issue of it. He didn't exactly like such an impartial and impersonal fuck, but it happens.

Lazarus left that night, once again on his path. In the future, he would barely think about the encounter at all.