The Doom That Came To Myrken

[Glenn]

It was a day like any other, a lovely day in late Autumn. Cold, perhaps, but sunny enough, the perfect day to receive a letter. This one would be directed to Darkenhold. It would be held shut by the Governor's seal until it ended up in the hands of Ariane Emory, herself.

Ari,

I've been thinking a lot about you lately. Will you come and see me? You know where to find me, I think.

Glenn

P.S. I have a job in mind for you.

P.P.S. Do not bring the Katars.

And that would be all.

[Carnath-Emory]

There are stories written about moments like these. They would have her approaching under the cover of stormy darkness: an assassin in the night; vengeance made flesh and intent upon a reckoning. They would bring her like quiet counsel to his door, with ready reassurances and a hundred soothing hopes.

Things of which we speak. Things which we have never been.


There is a certain early hour: when the world is still sleepy and fresh and quiet, and the air itself so very still. The first breath of morning, soft and pale and filled with expectation, and in this way a dark horse and its rider have made their way through streets filled with slowly rousing life: flanked by the scents of woodsmoke and winter, the soft grumbles of workmen who'd drunk too deep and woken too soon.

It is the Myrken she'd always most loved.

In her pocket is folded a brief letter, the smallest thing. It is not for display to whoever might work the Meetinghouse at this early hour. For that one there are only words, and just enough to communicate this: that she is expected, and that she will wait. Here, as it happens: by one of the forward windows, where she is already become so quiet a thing, all dark suede and pale linen, a swordswoman absent her sword, pallid features turned towards the remnants of dawn. These are eyes which imagine to catch a glimpse of pale sunlight far overhead, and of an imposing Hrimfax pretending nonetheless that he is only a horse. She could wait like this for hours.

And doesn't imagine it will be that long at all.

[Glenn]

Did she think the paper would be necessary? There were two ways to build up a reputation of someone absent. The first would be to speak of her, to tell stories, whispered or otherwise, to recount tales, true or otherwise, to create files, ones that vilified and ones that lionized. The other? The other would be to say nothing at all, to not mention in passing, to not relate, to simply omit her from all things. For over two years, this was very much Glenn Burnie's approach. Were a member of the Inquisitory or of elsewhere in the Government to bring her up, he would not chastise them, would not punish them, would not reward them in any opposite way, but he, himself, never, ever did. Even though there was no serious consequence, his underlings saw a message where there may not have been one. In an environment where nothing was sacrosanct, where the very idea of something being sacrosanct was profane, she was not to be brought up. Because of that, her reputation only grew.

She would be quickly admitted. There would be hushed glances. This was the Meeting House, however, not the Inquisitory, and because of that there would be daunted smiles as well. Because of that, Hrimfax would not be respected quite as much as he might have been otherwise, but yes, Ariane Emory would be admitted.

What did she expect to see upon entering the room? A gaunt madman, broken as Sylvius Duquesne had once been? A bundled one, Alaistir Savoy with armor under his robes? Bromn at his worst? Or was it not her nature to expect any such thing? She had come. That was an action. A definitive one. What else was there? Of course, there could be such a divide between what she might have claimed and the actual truth.

The truth of the room was rather pleasant, really. Neither the comfortable chair nor the uncomfortable one. Something in the middle. Something with a rigid back but liberal padding. Papers. So many papers, tantalizing things full of words of all sort, piles of them kept in place by books, the sort of haystack that only a mapmaker could find a needle within. Glenn Burnie had so many needles.

And more than that, he had a smile. His youthful features had become only slightly more weather-beaten by his trials. Underdark-beaten, perhaps. His hair was short but not cropped as she had seen it before. Neat. Professional, with his clothes all the more so. Not a uniform, never that that, and did he smile at that very specific thought as she would enter? Nice, though, nice clothes, earth tones, matching the season. How was she to know he had been wearing these colors all year?

Yes, it was a smile for her. He didn't rise from his seat, but if there was a pull of gravity in an upward direction, it was shown primarily at the edges of his lips. "Come in. Sit down." A nod to the bottle of Derry Red on the table, with the two glasses beside it. Was he staring? Apparently so. She had no sword. His own sword rested against the desk, behind it, beside him, it's usual place as he worked. She could just see the hilt, leaning, shining just so. Up on the wall was the sword Malaroth had given him, the ridiculous dress weapon, if it could even be called that. It once was mounted in his room at Darkenhold. Now that room was empty. Had she seen it? Had it been filled by someone else? A minor question amongst dozens of major ones, a minor question that he did not ask.

Instead. "Thank you for coming." And then, in spite, in absolute spite of the entire situation, his smile turned into a near chuckle. "I was going to ask how you were, but even that seems too vast, so we'll start with this instead: Are you well?"

[Carnath-Emory]

If you're Ariane Emory, you enter this room knowing that it will speak to you long before its Governor has uttered a single word.
And knowing that should you discover anything of meaning, even the slightest thing, he will realise this the moment it registers in your eyes.

It is the sort of vulnerability that functions like liberation; if there is nothing to hide because nothing can be hidden, then her eyes are free to look, like a surrender to the inevitable - and oh, how they do. Even from here, framed in the doorway against which her fingertips lightly rest; even here, the colourless gaze turning from one thing to the next; between walls and carpeting and Governor; back towards walls again, and chairs and simple wine, every piece of it as nondescript as the man at its center. It is, perhaps, a carefully-curated geniality. The room. The garments. There is no way to tell, no way to even be certain that it matters -

No. It matters.

It's the papers which hold her, all the same. Papers fit for a scribe, a mapmaker, a very diligent sort of Governor; papers enough to suit an architect, and it was miles from here that she first began to understand this. Miles and nearly an hour's ride, a half-hidden little cabin with its wealth of canvas and very battered furniture; opening its doors to hastily had sent the pages to flying so that she'd ended sitting on these things, lacking hands enough to properly anchor them all. All these pages - here, this room; all these words. It looks like a chaos unless you already know better, and then you understand that it's the piece of the room that is most thoroughly him.

She's smiled, knowing. Despite herself and two years' kindless passage: smiled, helpless not to and not even wanting it otherwise, and it lingers even when her eyes lift back towards Glenn's own. "This." Fingertips lingered, too; a soft tap upon one of these pages, once and then twice. "This is good. It suits you." A tilt of the eyes; a focus which has shifted to some point past his shoulder where an elegant weapon glitters on the wall. Wordless humour; a very old joke between two -

"I'm always well. Yes?" With a lift of the head, even as she eases towards the seat he'd suggested; with the eyes settled steady upon his own again. Always. It was never her that these things, any things, befell. But then he knows that, too. "You, though. How does this suit you."

This.
This is how we begin.

[Glenn]

He knew such things, Glenn Burnie, such things.

He knew the many smiles of Ariane Emory. What did it say about a woman that she had a smile for every emotion? Was it a truly happy thing, in that no matter what she faced, she could face it with some sort of smile on her face? Did it pull up the darkness? Did it make life something to be enjoyed?

Or did it drag down every smile? What happiness could a smile truly bring if it also could be used to represent sadness, shock, horror, hate, pain? What meaning, what significance could it possibly possess if it could mean anything at all?

A woman that any things did not befell? In seeing her so, Glenn Burnie also saw through her. He always had the capability, but before he was always blinded by a student's eyes.

He smiled. She smiled. The meanings could be infinite. How else could they have begun? With blood, steel, and fire? No, that was a different beginning, one that had happened months before. Not theirs, but a beginning nonetheless. With loss and darkness? Another beginning, years before. With truth and trust? With discretion? With an agreement that was meant to be bent but never broken? With the simple, distinct, brave and terrified act of running away from home? With being born in the wrong place at the wrong time?

No, there would be no beginning today for this began long ago. No, this moment, these smiles, they marked something else entirely. Not a beginning.

"It is not what I wanted, not this, never this," and hadn't they talked about just that? His future. The possibilities. The smile remained, a twinkle in his eye. "Maybe a little. Not much. I was content in being anything but this," everything but this. "That's the thing with giving up one's freedom, Ari. Some choices end up made for you. Choices aren't everything though. Attitude. It suits me because I've refused to let it define me. I've defined it instead."

But then, didn't every Myrken Governor try to do that in one way or another? Phuri, Helstone, Bromn, Calomel. None of them were him though. Truly, none of them would even appreciate that fact as he did. Regardless, he was rather quick to move on. Some things could not be danced around, not with her, not here, not now, not like this. "So, let's talk about Giuseppe, then."

[Carnath-Emory]

What does it say about a woman, that she has a smile for every moment?
What does it say of the world, that it has created this?

"It was always waiting for you." Some small motion of the shoulder concedes that this is such an old conversation; this is ground thoroughly explored. And all the same, it does not entirely dismiss; she is incapable of that, this woman who's arranged herself into a seat of his choosing, and whose eyes continue yet to wander. Warm earthy tones; something other than the vivid russet she's become so used to - was he staring, a moment ago? It seems neither impossible nor very likely. It has the feel of some misplaced artifact, some fragment of something else, like the hush with which they'd met her arrival out - there, in the room where she'd waited so very briefly. Look too closely at everything, absolutely everything, and the smallest things gain a gravity they don't quite deserve.

And yet. And still -

"If you wanted it. Or," a tilt of her gaze towards pages and desk and mounted sword, "if you simply couldn't stand to watch it fester." He is far from the first to reckon it that way. And there the likeness ends; Myrken has never known anything like this. But: "The papers suit you," with another light tap of her fingertip to the edge of some of these, and it's almost laughter, then; it's some tiny breath of sound, and this time the motion is a shrug; it dismisses nothing more complicated than her self. "Research. Records. In whatever capacity.

"Giuseppe." The name which Dulcie had supplied, an answer to one of the only questions revolving around the man that she will ever speak aloud. "Still lives - yes?" In this moment there should follow some very dramatic lift of her head, some motion which allows the dark hair to fall back and reveal the way flesh will corrugate when sliced clear through and only crudely stitched closed again. Storytelling demands this, and in its place sits simply a woman whose pale eyes haven't much swerved from what they watch now: his darker own, as she speaks these words wearing a scar she hadn't much bothered to disguise, and a shoulder which is so recently become to feel useful again. "If he does, then he's surely told you this but I think you should have it from me as well: that he made very clear his intent but also its origins. That this," some errant wave of the fingers, "was very much his idea. His - goal.

"Not yours."

[Glenn]

The papers: his companions, his currency, his lifeline to history, the past and the future both. "The papers are necessary." Something, the tip of something, the first hint of it. Necessity. Why? He was about to expound. The spark of it was there, upon his tongue, in his eyes, but no, the moment passed. There were other matters more pressing, matters that he would get to with immediacy.

"I pieced it together later." Oh, neither have them had gone for the wine yet? That was fine. He would do so now, would pour two glasses as he spoke. "There was reason for Giuseppe to chase down the un-late Marshall to Thessilane. He did so, helped prevent an... incident. On the way back, he, tired, unprepared, was ambushed by two magical beings, he and Marshall Sundance both. She came back ten years younger a few days later." Matter-of-fact, but it helped get across just what the two of them had encountered, perhaps. "He did not come back at all."

There, a glass for her. Derry Red, just like old times. He sipped first, and quickly at that. "I say that I pieced it together, because all I had to go off of, weeks later, was a letter, a rough letter: Giuseppe explaining bits of all that. From what I've been able to surmise since, he was taken captive for weeks, violated in strange and oblique ways. When he finally was released, finally crawled out of the woods, he returned to find you, that very day, through sources we never discussed and which bother me immensely, on your way back to Myrken. You know the rest."

Giuseppe said what he had to her and that made things endlessly easier now. "The last I spoke with him was when I posted him to Thessilane. Upon his.. eventual delivery to the Remedium, after meeting you," and how nicely Burnie put that, "he was in no condition to speak. By all means, he was to have died from those wounds. He did not. Only a few days ago, he wounded the ex-late-Marshall. So, he is up, and he is about, and this should not be. There were some.. complications with a demoness at some point and she may be involved, but I do assure you that I will ..." a nod to the papers, "do what I do, get some answers, and deal with this, whatever it is." Finally he would drink again and there was almost a smile to go along with it, and not one for a dark emotion either. Yes, the facts, the content, of what he said was rather dire, but to run through a narrative to her, it brought back such memories. "Does this suffice? If you wish to deal with him more directly, you have my leave, but I'd rather you let me see to it for reasons that we'll get to shortly."

[Carnath-Emory]

We know this moment.

We have visited it a hundred times and more, a hundred cold mornings in a room all grey stone and stern angles. Sometimes to the tune of ringing metal and hasty breath; sometimes to the sound of our own anticipation and nothing else at all. We know this moment inside and out: the way that breath will hang upon an unspoken word, the way that eyes will brighten with some new impulse - already discarded, or already postponed. And how, for a single, blinding instant, everything balances upon silent choices -

Instead of anything else that she might have said, what the swordswoman murmurs is a gratitude for the wine. Innoccuous. Unnecessary. And nothing more than a way to defer to his timing, to the manner in which he wants to approach the things of which they'll speak; a choice she'd made long before reaching the Meetinghouse doors, a position she will retain until is no longer possible; until it is no longer of benefit. And this, just like the way in which his mouth had hesitated, is richly familiar...

"I know the rest," she's answered him after a time, and nevermind that it wasn't quite what he'd asked about at all. "Some of this hardly surprises." The plight of a severely compromised Marshall does, clearly. And the involvement of a demoness - although it shouldn't, given Dulcie's request of just a fortnight ago. But: "His eyes," she's explained. With a glance for her wineglass, for the contours of a governor's desk; for Glenn Burnie's own, a moment after. "His eyes were - desperate," but even that's not quite right. No: "Wounded." And two years ago this alone might have been a subject for conversation that stretched into hours. Two years ago they might have forgotten swords altogether, too deeply entrenched in the idea of what insupportable strain will do to the human soul.

Two years ago, his question would have been so different.

"But does this suffice," she's echoing him now; it is a slow shake of her head, some subtle motion at her mouth's corners. "I'm no petitioner, come to your door with a problem that's in need of solutions." These papers. This man who was a boy who lent so much of himself to the solving of one cause and then the next. And he had smiled just moments ago, really almost smiled and how closely she'd watched; how closely, and with so much want, so very little hope. "Not even to question you on your Giuseppe," although perhaps the circumstances... "I had intended him to live, and that is - " No. A small lift of her hand: the pause with which he is too familiar. "Not 'jobs'. Not katars, Glenn Burnie," and this time it's a smile after all; this time there's no resisting it.

"I'm here because my interest is you."

[Glenn]

It did not take long. One subject, one half subject and she is deferring no longer.

Her hand rises. His hand rises as well. Look at that. His had a bit more force, yet exactly the same intent. A pause. Not just any pause, however, but the sort that halts conversation, that controls it. Generally, it's so he can get a breath. He's been doing this for the last two years and all without any idea why. Without any care. There it was, and how can he not smile a little? Even here, even now, even in the face of this. "Tell me, Ariane," a question of importance obviously, for he had already allowed her to move past Giuseppe. Really, they just had to get that out of the way. The issue wasn't that he lived, it was how, but she ceded the matter to him and absolved him of responsibility. He would deal with it. That would suffice.

"When you're counting off things to people, one, two, three, do you raise your fingers up, as so:" And he would, in fact, put one finger up, "One," then another, "two," then a third, "three. I just started doing that. Normally, I'd say something after each, obviously. Biting points. Deadly things. Lunges but not ripostes. That sort of thing. No idea where I got it from." Oh and there was the hand again. "No matter. More pressing things, yes?" Ah, but he was doubling back already, the smile fading. "It's not to say I didn't pay attention to you, Ariane. I paid so much attention, but there was also so much I didn't realize in the moment. There's so much going on." He did not clarify that statement in the least "There's just so much to miss." Nor that, but it prompted a return of the smile, but with a slight twist in the corner. "We'll get to that shortly as well I think."

Giuseppe was a man of impasses. Glenn Burnie, however? Of Compromise, of anticipation, of flanking and yes, of traps. But Compromise most of all, mutual benefit and the convincing that such a thing can exist, even in a harsh, cold world. "Well, then, you wish to speak of me, I wish to speak of you. I suppose we'll just have to make a conversation of it." But here, at this desk, Glenn Burnie simply wasn't one to allow deferrals. His hand had never quite fallen and three fingers became five quickly. "I do have a job for you Ariane. I think, often, broadly. I cannot shut it off, cannot dam that river. You know that as well as anyone." Almost anyone. There was a certain veiled girl who shared his thoughts. Ariane Emory only ever got them the old fashioned way. "There is no one else for this job and there is no other job for you."

Brazen, familiar, fond. He was always two of these things, but the third? Never so consistently. His smile belied it all though, all too youthful. Glenn Burnie's timing was Glenn Burnie's timing. Would that river sweep her away or would she stand against the tide?

[Carnath-Emory]

Look at that.

And she does. Her hand. His. Because for a thinker like Ariane Emory there is all the difference in the world between knowing a thing and seeing it demonstrated right before her eyes. The moment stills her in a way that the gesture couldn't hope to, leaving Myrken's youngest Governor with a quiet thing sat at his table, with a subtle tilt for its head and a mindful of tumbling implications.

"I do." The question might have been rhetorical. And he'd have spoken it knowing just how likely it was to remain so. "One: that a man yet lives." The gesture mirrors. "Two: that I hope he will continue to." And see? "Three: his circumstances." It is all so similar, and it is all completely lost when the hand flattens; moves just so as if to sweep aside the comparison completely. "In order of importance - by my reckoning. The lunges I leave to you. Better at it than I, mn? But this, though, I could find you a hundred men who do this as easily as they wave a Hello or shake their heads when they moan over the weather. It isn't all - "

This small smile. It does not quite mirror his own. But still, the fingers have folded over their palm; the hand has set itself down gently enough onto her knee. Young Glenn Burnie with his biting points, his deadly lunges. Glenn Burnie, who crowds her on every side with a dozen morsel-sized thoughts; it would dizzy, if she allowed it to. If it were anyone else at all; if her focus weren't so acute and the need so absolute. And she would give so very much to know if there is substance to any of this, but what dangerous ground it would become were she to allow her thoughts to wander in that direction; how absolutely lethal...

"There's so much going on," she echoes, there into the midst of it all. "We - "

We'll get to that shortly.
Be sure of it.

"Explain, then." And it is not like a challenge, it is not nearly a demand. It is perhaps only the question of a woman who with a frown that's nothing but thoughtful and a glass that has gone untouched, found it possible to defer to Burnie's timing after all.

[Glenn]

Look at that. Look, indeed.

The smile almost becomes a laugh, almost. Instead, it is a reach for that glass of wine and a long sip. For three years, Glenn Burnie has learned so very little about himself. And why? Because there was so little need. Everything was before him. When something like this occurs, it is a special occasion. Does she see? Likely not. Of course not. Anything but, for all she knew of him. Still, he would smile as the glass left his lips, for his sake and for hers. Must he learn anything at all, this was far preferable than most. "A hundred men are not you, Ariane." Alas, but to move on.

"Alright," the young Governor would begin. "What I, no, what we need, above ..."

Oh, and look at that as well, the hand, the pause, another sip, another smile. And a long, slow shake of his head. "You're right, of course," which was an exceptionally tricky thing as she hadn't said anything. She had frowned however. "I'm just excited. You returned at almost exactly the right time, and you're here now, and it has been so long. So long. And ..." now both hands, no arms, outstretched, as to indicate the room, to indicate her, himself, everything. "and how did it come to this?" Arms would fall. His gaze would hold firmly upon his teacher. "You had adventures, then?"

[Carnath-Emory]

For three years - but no, more than that, more by far - Ariane Emory had learned far less about herself than she'd intended to. The things they'd left unspoken were so very few, but that was foremost: a thing glanced against but gently avoided, a thing deferred - over and again, and not because almost any other matter at all was more important, although this was certainly so, but because the question was so intimately, excruciatingly personal that even Syl Duquesne received only the tiniest explanation of it. Small things. Passing things. Ways to skirt the essential fact of it: that a slow, slow death ultimately had little to do with her flesh - although the flesh had certainly suffered; that an abolition of the essential self had left the woman with so very little self at all. A series of gaping holes; a set of piecemeal measures by which to fill them. A condition to be circled over and again, as if she need only find the right angle of approach and then -

"We might be glad for that," she's answered, to words that her not a question at all, and it is a moment's quiet placed into the center of a young man's sudden exuberance. Magnanimous. This is one word for it. Largesse: another word which she might choose to use, very much in mind of her visit to Kerrak al'Nerun's home not weeks ago, in the wake of that man's madness and abrupt demise and a thousand horrors of which she could hardly stand to ask. Cowardice then, and she knew it even as she waved the questions aside; cowardice to set all of that aside and only in hopes of lighting a precious friend's eyes with something other than grief, something other than fractured hurt. Just this once, in memory of how those eyes had once twinkled with hidden laughter.

A young man spreads his arms like delight, like undiluted excitement.
How easy it would be to succumb to that want a second time.

"How," she begins slowly, "but in the worst possible ways." It is exactly what Calomel had said: this fierce good cheer, these small, casual questions. 'Adventures', he's said, and this time there is no smile at all; not the smile for bitter, hard things; not the easier expression she'd set on him a hundred precious times in a training room miles from here. There is only this: the even gaze of colourless eyes, and a voice which quietly insists.

"I think, Glenn Burnie, we begin with yours."

[Glenn]

"We might. We're not." Ah, the royal We. One of the pure perks of being Governor, one that was so rarely used. This suited though. What was she going to do about it? The thought almost brought about another smile, but really, the amount so far has been more than sufficient and entirely earnest.

Her smile fades. Compromise with Ariane Emory was a fool's errand? Was this the message she presented with every iota of her being? His smile went wry but stayed upon his face. Perhaps some fatigue was beginning to sneak in, but only a tiny bit and easily battered down. "Your death, as we call it, was not that long before we met, you and I, not long before I broke all your rules and asked questions." Wry or coy? He knew what he wanted, after all. It was an unfair advantage and drifted in and around everything he said. "All but one, of course." Discretion, always. Perhaps that's why Giuseppe acted as he did; it wasn't about having too much information but too little. "Less than a year, Ariane? I think it had to be. Picture then that death, the events leading up to it, the blood and doubt and belief, coming almost three years before we stared instead. It shaped everything to come, Ariane, but what came afterwards, what came from it, all of that is ultimately more important."

Now he danced around it, so with a shrug, he leaned back in his chair, admitting as such. "Ariane. The beginning is terribly unpleasant and it happened very long ago. If you really want to hear it, I will tell you it, but I'd rather talk about today than yesterday. My yesterday at least. I know mine. Yours is more interesting to me, adventures or no."

[Carnath-Emory]

Picture, then, that death.

And oh, how she hates to. What a thing it is, to have lost so much while retaining this, in exquisite and panicked detail. What a thing to wake from deep in the night, stunned and gasping. And to return to it here, in the office of the boy who was her student, the man who has crowned himself Governor, requires a particular quietness of her; requires the schooling of her features into this easy, impassive calm and that the eyes do not wave, do not even marginally flinch. This is how we meet a thing which is beyond contemplation. There is no acceptable alternative.

And to think that just moments ago, he'd overruled her insistence with his own and the pride had been so fierce that she'd laughed, delighted.

"A year."

And was it? Sometimes we do not count the days. Sometimes we only say: Here is a thing which has happened, and let that be the end of it.

"Very nearly that."

But there is never an end to this. That is its nature. It is even its purpose.

"I understand," and she reaches for that glass at last, not even to drink but simply to hold. "I even agree. But you with your questions, Glenn Burnie," and here it can be laughter again, laughter for memories too warm to allow anything less. "Can it surprise you that I have mine? We'll talk of everything you wish to discuss. The good, the bad," the things we suddenly offer, knowing well that the risk is breathtaking. "All of it. Because it is context. Because it is essential. But mostly," and it is a smile with the memory of storms, of colliding steel and so much laughter.

"Mostly, Glenn Burnie, because it is you."

[Glenn]

Concessions. He had overruled her insistence, and as the victor, he had given it back to her, on his terms. That was one reading of what happened. She had often done the same for him when it was swords instead. So it was that, or perhaps not. Perhaps he was simply over-exuberant, as if there was a gift he could not wait for her to unwrap. Perhaps he realized that they were rushing past what was initially important because of it. Context, she says.

"For you," the Governor began, leaning back in his chair still, his hand swishing the glass in his hand slightly, not enough for the wine to flow over but enough to bring into this world the risk of such a thing. The smile on his face was fond and youthful, a deep oasis in the midst of a desert. "I will dredge through the most unpleasant thing of which we can speak, then. The second most," he admitted, the left side of his lips making an almost sheepish turn, "as we have already raised the matter of my misguided former bodyguard trying to kill you.

"So through the mud and dirt it is, and then we'll move on to what I feel is a more pressing matter." He was missing a bodyguard after all. He just said so. There were all manner of things that one could perceive as pressing. "Remember, Ariane. No matter how you and Cinnabar chose to do it, you and I did not cover your tumble through the darkness and fall towards the light in but one day." That may have not been entirely accurate, as much of it was on one day, but the structure for it, the context, as she said, was built over a year. Regardless of the actual facts, he imagined she would see the unveiling of that episode much the way he did. It felt a certain way, after all.

There was some manner of impatience. He had given back the spoils of insistence, for her, well and good in theory, but in practice, it chafed, doubly so considering that practice meant not just reliving but retelling a litany of pain. This was a story that was simply not heard from his lips. "It begins, like any tale worth telling, with an ending. Six months of training with whoever I could find, after nine months training with Jirai, after two years with you, of course, a dark alley, a drowess with breasts larger than her brain and all manner of dread magic. Gutted." Some satisfaction in that word, even three years later. "But then life is rarely fair," satisfaction gave way to something else, something along the lines of that insistence, but darker, as if that statement was missing a word. "and vengeance, never so. You never get back what you lost. You only can hope to cause equal harm in return, and most of the time even less than that, but then.." a lazy smile returned, ever so slight, barely perceptible. "you know that as well as anyone."