One Tongue for Two Eyes...A Fair Trade

[Michael Renne]

Michael would find himself hesitant, if only for a moment, to knock upon Ariane's door. Finally smooth knuckles would rap gently upon the wood.

"Ari. Ari if you are there I have urgent need to speak to you. Please, open up."

There was much to tell. So much she needed to understand before too much damage was done. Silence was golden, at least that is what they said. The Golden age was upon them, for a time for silence has arrived. Michael needed to explain it all to her, before it was too late.

[Carnath-Emory]

Renne might prove hesitant in his approach, but in a curious twist of roles, her response to it is remarkably prompt. His voice reaches through that door, of course -- dimmed, but not unrecognisably so. A moment passes, filled by the dull scrape of wooden legs upon old floorboards, by the click and rattle of latches, but when the door opens a crack, it's to reveal frowning grey eyes and features struck through with quiet surprise.

You cannot be in this room, Michael Renne.
You must purchase your entrance to this room, Michael Renne.

Behind her, the dull, warm glow of twin candles, stubby upon her room's sole tabletop; it lends a gentle light to their features. Perhaps this is kinder than the moment warrants, for:

"What is this?" And, helplessly, frowning: "Why would you come here?"

[Michael Renne]

"Ariane...I don't have time for games. Altias be damned, let me in."

And with that, he is shouldering his way into the room. There is an almost hesitatant touch as he moves her away from the door, locking it behind them.

"Ari...listen to me. You have to stop the rumors. Do you hear me? You have to tell them you were wrong. That the threat is gone. Left this place when Thadius went mad. Something. You have to make them stop. If this does not stop the Order will take these eyes."

Orbs of grey, colors shifting like the coming storm, look at her. A step closer then, let her truly see what he stands to lose.

"These eyes, Ari. You know what that means. You know what happens when the Order takes their eyes."

So close, too close for her comfort, he knew. She had to be made to understand that this was the only way. She must fix this. Change the tide. Stop the storm.

[Carnath-Emory]

"This is no ga -- "

And that is all that his urgency will permit, for he's bullying past her the moment after, and leaving a moment of confusion in his wake. Where his touch is hesitant, her refusal is stubborn, so that there comes a brief warring of limbs before she has stepped away from him.

And oh, Michael, this is more than she'd ordinarily have permitted you: this is her room, empty of shelves, empty of ornaments at all, unless a man should turn his eye towards the sole table. It is as littered as the rest of the room is austere, for it is a receptacle for memories -- and there are a great many of those. He will find bamboo chimes and old, raw chains; close to them are set two masks, the one a grotesquerie of vulgarly-carved wood, the other a gleam of featureless silver. Towards the heart of it all, matters grow more literate: there is a poorly-bound book set there, and by its side a sheet of parchment upon which a grand tree grows in exquisite, intricate ink. And there, near an edge, the things she would sooner hide from this man: a single paper swan; a slender feather fashioned cunningly from pale parchment.

But there is no hiding such a clutch of keepsakes, and perhaps there is no need, for the words spill from his lips like an ill-begotten tide, so that she's left frowning where she stands by the door.

"The ... rumours," she echoes him at the first of this.
"Wrong," as it continues unabated. And:
"The Order be damned!" as he closes upon her, "they and you -- "

Which may well be a genuine statement, but one which his advance has certainly exacerbated. Oh, clearly too close for comfort: he will mark this in the spark of colour to her cheeks, in the hard edge her eyes have aquired. Her own eyes, as pale as his own, certainly as grey, and struck through with impatience now, when she thrusts clenched hands at his chest -- to be back from him.

"No. I name this lunacy. Or drunkenness. Or both -- spend it upon ears more trusting than mine."

There is a door here: he will note it by the stretching of her arm, the indicative tilt of his hand. Latches or not, locks or not, he is invited to make good use of the thing.

[The Baie]

Lunacy? Drunkenness? Nay. Some might say the former, but certainly not the latter. He had misjudged what Ariane's reaction would be to Michael's plight. And so he felt it necessary to make things...clearer.

Michael's face began to wrinkle and wither as if Ariane was watching him age before her very eyes. Then, his jaw stretched and thinned slightly, growing angular. His cheek bones rose and sharpened. Then the skin pulled tight and his eyes changed from a stormy gray to a gem stone violet. His long black hair instantly turned to red.

And all of this in the blink of an eye.

The man who was Michael Renne was now Altias Bromn, but, in fact, he was neither at all. And it became exceeding clear that this man could be but only one thing...the beast known as The Baie.

The Baie immediately changed back to the form of Michael Renne and stared at Ariane. His eyes the color of storm clouds once again. His face a mask of rage.

"Perhaps I should be clearer with you, Ariane Carnath-Emory. You will cease all talk of the Order or Renne dies. You will cease all rumors of me or Renne dies. You will tell everyone that you were wrong and that there is no danger or Renne dies. And if his death is not enough to sway you, then Altias Bromn will follow. Then Quincy Randall and everyone else that you hold dear. One by one.

"Fix it, Ariane, or they will all die. Every last one of them."

In a flash, the beast, who looked like Michael Renne, pulled the knife from his belt and slashed his own throat, giving a glimpse of what it would look like watching Michael die. Blood squirted from the wound, drenching the front of his shirt and gushing toward her. But as quickly as the wound was inflicted, it began to knit itself together, scabbing, and healing so that the blood ceased to flow and eventually, save for the crusted blood on his skin, the wound disappeared. Clearly Michael himself would not be so lucky.

The Baie then ran for the window. And, ducking his shoulder, he ran right through it. His body began to change before he even hit the glass. So that the animal that hit the snow in a shower of glass and splintered wood was not a man at all, but a large predatory cat, black as the night, like a panther. And it bolted off into the woods, disappearing in the trees.

[Carnath-Emory]

Clearly not the latter. Clearly not any such thing at all, for she has seen this once before: such hasty transformation, so complete an alteration that a woman must question her eyes. She has witnessed such magicking only once, this very mundane woman, so that there is no mistaking what she sees; there is no questioning. It is clearly Baie, and she stands before him for a second time. And that door is locked. And this fear has frozen her rigid.

And all of this in the blink of an eye.

There is thunder in this simulcrum's eyes, and it echoes in his voice when he speaks; it distorts his features until they are a mask of ugly rage, and perhaps that is what stirs her from shock. Perhaps that's what thaws the blood in her veins, and stirs it to more useful pursuits instead; it begins cautiously, a glitter of silver that rushes to fill the flesh that her garments conceal, so that even as she trembles, her body armours itself.

And then he speaks her lover's name.
And then he speaks her sister's name.
And then he has that knife in his hand, and with such speed that she can't think to flinch from it, he's gutted his own throat with it.

That is when she knows that this has gone utterly out of control.

There's no armour for her skin, if the mind is too shocked to summon it. There's no weapon for her hands, if they don't move to seize one -- and they don't, for Michael's blood is a hot, gouting spray across her face, and that sword-hand is clasped across nothing more useful than her own trembling mouth. She does not blink during this murder, during this recovery, for there is no opportunity for that; her eyes are staring, colourless blots in a mask of crimson, and her body drawn taut to trembling, and --

Baie shatters the window, and her terror as well.

Give a woman threats, and she will defy them or she will cower. Give her an opportunity to act, and you will have this of her: a body that stumbles only once, as it staggers in blind pursuit of the fleeing beast; flesh that's awash with blood and iron alike, as it collides against the windowsilly. Glass is crushed heedlessly beneath her boots, and her palms are leaving bloody prints against the wood that they clutch, and there are no words left in her at all -- but she watches, staring; watches as the dark cat he's become speeds into the treeline. And then, only then, with an iron-gloved hand and an impotent sword, does she sink retching to the floor.