Entering the Great Hall, Dagan was a little disheartened that Attis didn't seem to actually be present in the building (and the fact that the Hall was the only place Dagan knew to look for Attis,) but that feeling of disappointment was soon replaced as he picked up on the New Arrival's presence, curious though he may have been acting.

Ahem!

He cleared his throat and broke the silence of the room, bringing attention to himself; it was impossible for Dagan to know whether or not the New Arrival was actually responsive now, but ... he seemed to have made an improvement, at the very least.

“What’re you doing,” he asked. “Is there something on the wall?”

He had stopped about mid-way to the new arrival; his arms were folded across his chest, but his face gave a warm, friendly smile.

The New Arrival whipped around quickly, though not at all guiltily. He stood with his hands behind his back and his head cocked curiously to one side.

"Ah?" he made a curious sound.

He then turned around to face the wall again. He pointed his finger at the wall until the tip of his finger pressed into once splintered, now smooth grooves.

"Nike," he pronounced as he trailed his finger across the wall, "Seras," he continued, and then finally: "Dagan."

Dagan would only have to stand by the New Arrival's side to see what he was staring at and reading from. It appeared as if three names were carved into the wall just above this bench, all by different hands. It was a wall in the Great Hall that Dagan hadn't investigated-- but then again, who really looked into these walls for their details?

"Eh?" he almost mirrored the New Arrival's exclamation while closing the distance between each other, "our name's are written on the wall," he peered in over the New Arrival's shoulder, “seriously?”

“Wonder what the story is behind that,” he sighed and leaned in a bit closer to the wall, nearly climbing over the new arrival, but not quite; he was not forceful so much as casual about moving the other man to get a better look at the wall.

Dagan’s index finger touched Nike’s name, first; his finger then slid to Seras’, the digit traced the ebb and flow of the name’s carving; and finally stopped at his, pushing into the wall with a bit of pressure.

“You have a pretty good eye,” he said. “I would never’ve found that in a million years, you know? Thanks,” he smiled wide.

“Have you seen Attis or Nike?” his finger moved back to Nike’s name and tapped it once or twice, as though that would have helped the New Arrival in figuring out who Dagan was asking about.

The New Arrival smiled up at Dagan brightly. He was a lot different from the last time Dagan saw him. First and foremost, he was upright and could stand and (obviously) walk on his own. He knew how to speak. He knew how to feel, too-- or at least knew how to mimic the emotions of contentment and curiosity to a convincing level, at least. Compared to how he was some times ago, the New Arrival almost seemed human.

"Nike . . .?" An expression of recognition crossed the New Arrival's face. He looked behind him once, then back up at Dagan, and shook his head.

He grew silent as he thought about the latter half of Dagan's question.

"Attis . . . is," he had an unnatural pacing between his words as if he wasn't quite confident in their use and meaning just yet. "Home?"

Dagan was almost frighteningly taller than the New Arrival. Upon realizing this, all thoughts of Nike and Attis fell into a horrid pit of easily distracted oblivion. The New Arrival backpedaled until he stood perfectly by Dagan's side, and with the utmost curiosity, lifted one hand to touch the top of Dagan's head. He tried to measure the distance in a metric he'd no qualifying knowledge of-- but if he did, suffice it to say that Dagan was almost a full foot taller than the New Arrival.

"Home--?"

Curiously, Dagan quirked his head a bit and allowed the New Arrival to measure their heights. Spontaneously random as it was, he couldn't do anything but look on and wait for the other man to finish, and most of all, he, too, was suddenly put into the mind of how much taller he was than the New Arrival, and not only that... But some of the others he had met here recently; it was perhaps the first time he had even considered his height and the relative height of anybody else.

“H-uh,” his eyes stared blankly for a moment and he felt the strong urge to wipe them, as though that would somehow help him to refocus on the task at hand.

Completely aware of the height difference now, Dagan’s neck felt as though it were strained, and he quickly admitted to himself that having to constantly look down at others was probably going to get increasingly disorienting.

“--Weird,” he snapped himself back to reality.

“Do you know where Attis’ home is?”

Now that he'd concluded that Dagan was quite taller than he, the New Arrival became increasingly aware of how strained his neck was going to become with all the work of looking up to this man. He and Attis both, in fact. Now that he thought about it, they were probably the same height.

Speaking of Attis . . .

"Ummmm," the New Arrival bit his lower lip and thoughtfully stared up at the ceiling as if to search for his answer somewhere within blurred and distant rafters.

He lived somewhere. Right. And Dagan was searching for him. Right. Okay. Where did this leave the New Arrival? He was a middle man of some sort.

"Ummm . . . . this . . . . ummm . . ."

Lacking linguistic confidence in himself, the New Arrival pointed straight ahead in a cardinal direction that oddly began with an N, a direction in which he began to stroll without warning. He was probably going to lead Dagan to Attis's home. Probably.

Although Dagan was following rather close to the New Arrival (no more than an inch behind, really), he would be pretty quiet, but it wasn't as though he didn't want to speak to the comparatively more outlandish fellow; rather, he had temporarily retreated into his head for a bit, and was going over a mental checklist of what he had done and still had to do:

¬He met the Legionnaire, firstly.
¬The legionnaire asked him to go to the real world and to take the New Arrival with him.
¬It was recommended that he speak to Sera and Nike about the location of the entrance to the real world and any details and tips they could provide, too.
¬He had met with Suri, a new(er) arrival, and even spoke to Sera; she had told him where the entrance was and more importantly, what to do.
¬But he still needed details, details that he couldn't ask Sera for because she would have probably-maybe-more-than-likely yelled at him or something. He didn't know why he felt this way.
¬To get information on the real world he needed to speak to Nike.
¬To find Nike he needed to speak to Attis.
¬And he also needed to ask Attis about the New Arrival.
¬Incidentally, the New Arrival was now taking him to Attis' home.

Sigh, his shoulders slumped and he seemed to haunch forwards, though still maintaining his speed, just below the New Arrival’s, and even stayed ‘in-line.’

"Glad you're doing better, at least. Huge improvement," he said out-loud.

The New Arrival seemed to walk just fine, too-- a huge improvement in and of itself. Though, he did have a boyish whimsy about the way he walked. It was almost like he wanted to skip, but somehow in the far reaches of his mind knew that it was probably ill advised. So instead he walked with a childlike kick in his step, as if he hadn't a care in the world and was just enjoying the sights and sounds, even if all the sounds were muted and all the sights were dull, dreary, damp, and gray.

He led Dagan out from the north entrance of the Great Hall and started on down the road in a vaguely aimless manner. It looked almost like he was wandering, just strolling along and every so often glancing up from structure to structure in a lackadaisical and contented way.

Regardless of whether it seemed intentional or not, the New Arrival soon started to lead Dagan towards the center of the Unreal City.

As with most structures near the center of the Unreal City, these all seemed to be larger and more . . . important looking. It was weird how they had that aura about them-- that though they were all unused and uninhabited, they all felt as if they had purpose. Houses of ideals, not peoples. A house of lawmaking, a house of representation, a house of decisions . . .

The house of justice was where the New Arrival stopped. It was a tall building of three stories, and it had a wide set of stone stairs that climbed up to the front doors. In the forefront of it all stood a series of wide columns. It bore the markings of ancient judiciary. The New Arrival pointed up the stairs, and with smiled across his lips, hummed in affirmation.

"H-uh, so this is it?" he asked without expecting an answer. As usual, Dagan found his eyes drawn to the architecture as he silently appraised the building; it was just something he always had to do, it was almost a guilty pleasure: he enjoyed looking at and appreciating architecture.

“Thanks, N.” he said, shortening “New Arrival” due to how weird it would have sounded to say the full thing out loud.

Dagan started to ascend the stairs leading up to the doors, but stopped just short; he leaned towards the side, turning his head back towards the New Arrival, and asked: “You coming too? Or are you heading back to the Hall?” he didn’t really mind either answer, but it would have been rude to not ask. After all, the New Arrival was being a great help and all.

The New Arrival tilted his head at the letter N. He was unsure what Dagan meant by that, but he was bound to hurt himself if he tried to figure it out too hard. No matter! Dagan was inviting the New Arrival to come along with him, and the New Arrival was not about to just tell him no! He smiled brightly, nodded up at Dagan, and promptly climbed the stairs up to the tall double doors that marked the entryway into this house of justice.

Without bothering to knock, the New Arrival pulled the doors open and stepped inside. There was one main room that branched off into two corridors; the main room was massive, carpeted, and lined with comfortable chairs. There were an even larger set of double doors at the far end of the main room, but these doors were locked. The New Arrival didn't seem to be interested in them, anyways. Rather, he turned down the right corridor, followed it to the end where it twisted into another right turn, and followed that, too, to the end.

There, he stopped before a door not quite so ornate as the rest of the house of justice. It had an empty nameplate drilled into the front of it.

The New Arrival pointed at the door and said, "Attis."

Being inside the building was definitely more intimidating than being outside of it, Dagan thought to himself; he was glad that he invited the New Arrival to come along, because, thankfully, he seemed to know exactly where to go. Although, that wasn't to say that Dagan would have taken forever to find Attis, but he would have probably gotten side tracked along the way.

“So it is,” he said from beside the New Arrival; he placed his knuckles onto the door, hesitating for only a second, but this hesitation was immediately followed by a soft rapping sound. Most likely an unneeded gesture, but a gesture that Dagan felt almost compelled to do; it was almost instinctual, in fact. Something inside of him told him that this was what you did when you wanted to gain entrance into another’s home.

“It’s Dagan!” he half-shouted over the knock.

"Hmn?" a distance voice could be heard. There was a second of silence before it was heard again. "Oh! Dagan! Come on in, the door's open!"

Once the door was open, Dagan would be able to see Attis's house. Or his room, at least. It was a massive office. Bookcases lined each and every wall and a wide desk sat at the far end of the room. It was there that Attis currently sat, leaned over sheets of paper with a quill pen in one hand. He was scribbling down lines that neither Dagan nor the New Arrival would recognize even in the slightest, but Attis at least seemed to know what he was doing. The second he looked up to them, he smiled and decided to take a break.

"Hello," Attis said smilingly once he was in the door. He saw the New Arrival behind Dagan shortly thereafter and revised his statement. "To both of you."

Although this room was highly furnished and borderline judicial in quality, it was obvious where Attis lived and worked. There was a mattress on the floor in the far left corner of the room and sets of clothes, all suits and casual wear, folded up nearby. Many books were set off their shelves and on the floor, all with bookmarks in place, and Attis' desk was littered with stacks of paper, all written on in that strange black ink.

With permission to enter granted, Dagan wasted no time in opening the door and shuffling himself and the New Arrival inside. For whatever reason, Attis’ place looked pretty much like how Dagan would have assumed it to look; in fact, he was not surprised at all.

“How’ve you been? he asked with a cheerful smile and a wandering eye; he couldn’t help but look around the room and marvel at some of the things, though he did well enough to not touch anything. “Now that I think about it, it’s been some time since we spoke, h-uh?”

"Yeah," Attis smiled apologetically. "I apologize for that. All of this keeps me busy. Ledgers, reports, notes to myself, even a bit of research . . ."

Attis really kept himself busy, whether he wanted to or not. Sometimes having something to do around here was ideal, though. The Unreal city lacked much of a purpose or even a social gathering point. They were here to protect themselves from the outside, but nothing from the outside touched this city. Unless one made excitement for oneself, life could quickly fall into a dull pit of repetition-- or in Dagan's case, periods of blanks; entirely thoughtless moments and lengthy periods of time where one could barely acknowledge one's own existence, let alone purpose or consciousness.

"But . . ." Attis dabbed his quill feather into the inkwell and left it there, before sitting up and folding his hands upon his desk. ". . . I've been good. I mean, it's been busy-- you can even ask our friend over there--"

The New Arrival, as if on cue, nodded his head.

"--but I kind of like keeping myself busy. What about you? How've you been?"

"Ha, much of the same, actually," Dagan said after Attis had finished speaking. “Being busy, that is. The Seeker came to, uh, get me a few weeks ago, and the Legionnaire wanted to speak to me.”

For a moment, Dagan briefly considered whether or not Attis even knew what he was talking about, but he ultimately doubted that Attis would not at least know who the Legionnaire was. Plus, now that Dagan thought about it, wasn’t the Seeker and Attis arguing not too long ago about sending the New Arrival off to somewhere? H-uh, he thought: it was kind of obvious; he was surprised it hadn't crossed his mind before now.

Really, though, if Dagan thought Attis would take offense to The Seeker and The Legionnaire approaching him, then he definitely did a good job in hiding it: he was as sincere and genuine as ever.

“Speaking of, do you know where Nike is? I need to ask him some things.”