<div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/5/57/Monsterpoh02.jpg)</div>OOC: For her moment of extreme intimacy due to the Soul Gaze, I'm taking 2 corruption to ask two follow-up questions.<br/><hr/>Danielle was hoping to do an attempt to peer into this person's soul in a discreet manner, but she didn't think that the red-haired youth would turn and catch her eye. Not only did their eyes meet and she was caught performing some kind of magic without consent from the other party, but there was a hiccup. She intended to peer underneath the facade of this youth, thinking he was older than he appeared, but it sort of peered further than she would like. Also, it seemed this gaze into his soul was a two-way street and she could sense he too could see her not just of her outer appearance, but intimately.<br/><br/>His appearance of a scholar or apprentice, who was also a welcoming barista, was peeled away, revealing someone who invented things, but also researched into various materials. This was evident in his lair, which included ancient tomes with familiar and unfamiliar inscriptions on their covers, some of them runes that she recognized. There were also modern manuals and logs focused on engineering. Although, all this seemed like things you'd see if you were simply an acquaintance of him as the Archivist.<br/><br/>Another layer was uncovered, revealing a series of images that were tied with emotions. There was a heavy parental vibe about it. The hippie commune told Danielle that the time stamp was around the time of the Flower Power movement, around the 60's or 70's. Ryan was leaving with a baby girl in his arms. Why was he leaving?  Did he wish, as a parent, that such an environment around these hippies wouldn't appropriate for her? The perspective changed to a first-person view, looking from afar like Obi-wan Kenobi watching Luke as a youth and then as an adult. Their view was of the very same girl, growing up into adulthood, getting married, having a child... The perspective did not change when they were seemingly pulled back in the woman's life when her husband was killed. The cycle repeated, this time with the child of the woman... grandchild in the case of the beholder? She married, had a child and then the grandchild's husband was killed in a random act of violence. Before Danielle could get any more from the Gaze, like if the cycle continued to repeat or if that was the last of it, she felt like someone was pulling her from the depths.<br/><br/>Back in reality, in the lair of Ryan, the Archivist, she had felt that whatever had pulled her from the depths of her Gaze had thrown her balance to the side. She was about to teeter over to the floor, when Ryan closed the distance and grabbed her arm, pulling her from the pillows and to a nearby chair. When she sat down, the metal balls in her hand fell and clattered to the floor, rolling in opposite directions, their respective chiming drowning in the expanse of the lair. She looked up at Ryan, seeing not the youth from before, but someone else. He was no stranger to her like a minute ago.<br/><br/>It was true what he said. She had never done that before, not even in her spare time. What she had done had zapped half of her energy, more so than when she intently used her grimoire to manifest visions for people. It was foolish and she made a mental note to prepare herself better if she was going to do it another time. She spoke, deep in tone as if her vocal cords had not been used for some time.<strong>”I may now know you like we had met many decades ago rather than just a few moments ago,”</strong>she said, before pausing to breathe in deeply and exhaling the same breath, drawing it out completely and allowing her lungs to expel what she felt was stagnant air. Without any more delay, she asked,<strong>”Your daughter...why did you carry her out of that commune? And what became of her after her own daughter's husband perished in that drive-by?”</strong>They were questions that was born out of curiosity from such an intimate look into Ryan's deep layer. They were questions that no mere acquaintance would dare ask, or else it would corrupt their soul. Yet, Danielle felt that a little corruption was needed considering the supernatural forces that dwelt in the city and those that sought to overtake them. She was reminded of the primary reason she and Fiona were here, though she would wait for Ryan's answers to her intimate questions before asking any more.