Reflections

[Altias_Bromn]

By the time Altias had returned from another early morning at the bakery, Ariane had already left to begin her morning routine. She would go and care for the General's horse...thing, and then she would visit the market. Usually this took several hours.

Her room stood empty, he noticed a blanket covering the window, flapping against the half-hearted wind which had come in with the latest storm. The window behind was broken. There were smears on the sill and frame, something hastily cleaned. The same for the floor nearby. It was something he would have to ask her about.

He then noticed her collection. He had seen in before, of course, but had never taken the time to inspect the things gathered there. They were her things, and if she wished him to know why they mean something to her, she would tell him. She had not, so he did not pry. Today, he thought perhaps he would take a small peek.

A drawing, intricately folded papers, a collection of many strangely varied things. What caught his attentions were the masks. One of silver, one of wood. One plain and beautiful, the other ornate and hideous.

A slight smile crept over his face, as he looked to the mirror nearby. What harm, to see what he might look like in such masks, eh?

Kerrak's was first, since it was beautiful in its simplicity. Altias placed the mask on his face, and looked into the mirror. The shining silver was a strange blank space, showing his queer eyes and bizarre hair off in a stunning fashion. It focused all the attention on the few things one could see. The mask almost seems not to be there at all, save to frame his curious features.

The wooden mask came next. It was a frightful thing, old and worn. It was painted to resemble a haggard old woman, or so he imagined. With a slight shrug of slender shoulders, the mask was donned, and he glanced at his reflection in the mirror.

~"Very good, Altias! Lavender is the perfect choice to assist in soothing a body to rest."

Talia Bromn exhaulted in her son's ability to absorb the lessons on herb lore. Her thin face shone with pride and joy as he answered each question without thinking. Slender hands would brush back her firey curls, her violet eyes shining with hope for the future of the Bromn family.

Altias looked up at his mother with all the wonder and joy of a typical six year old boy. His smile could light a room when she praised him.

"Such a good boy, a clever boy. Time for lunch, then, yes? And perhaps some lavender tea?"

A teasing smile as she drew her son to her breast, holding him tight before scooping him up into her arms to take him to the garden for sandwiches and tea.~

The mask was in his hands when he realized where he was, still trying to understand what had just happened. His heart was filled with joy, with pride in himself that he had not felt since..he did not want to think when it had ended. It was back, and he was filled with joy. He *was* a good man, a clever man.

The smile upon his features was one he had not enjoyed since he was a child. Full, bright, brilliant. And it was this smile he wore as he replaced the mask and moved from the room. A casual glance back, toward the mask, and a promise to himself to come back another time...just to see.

[Altias_Bromn]

Each morning it had been the same, a trip to Ariane's unoccupied room. A session with the mask. Two nights ago he had slipped from her bed while she slumbered, once again donning the mask.

Memories of his childhood were common. Praise from his loving mother. Adoration of his little sister. Joy at his skill with the blade from Nathan. So many who thought him so wonderful. So many things to bring him feelings of pleasure in who and what he was.

Each day had been the same. Hours of pure joy and a sense of self. A pride in his very being he had been sorely lacking of late. Hours later it would begin. The sudden doubt. Thoughts of all his flaws, his short comings, would flood his mind. Joy turned to fear, then despair. It did not take long for Altias to begin to crave the mask. To *need* it's reassurance.

And so it was that this morning found him once again before the mirror in Ariane's room, the mask upon his face. Seeking once more a memory of a time when he was good. When he was all that he knew that he was, and not some shallow man with nothing to offer.

~"Do not underestimate him, Garri. He is much faster then you, more flexible too. Your reach is longer, your strike more powerful. Use these things, not your imagined superiority, to defeat Tias."

Even when they were young, Nathaniel had been an amazing swordsman. He had taught them so much, how to utilize their strengths, minimize their weaknesses. And he had been so very beautiful.

"You are the better of the brothers, Tais. Garri is too angry, it will always be his greatest weakness, his own worst enemy. You are fast, by the Goddess, almost too fast for me most times. Since you began training with the Shamshir even your reach has improved."

"You say the sweetest things, Nathan. I'd almost believe them if I didn't Think it was just more pillow talk"~

Once more he mask was in his hands, their trembling subsided for a time. He placed it carefully back among Ariane's precious things. Exactly where it had been before. She could not know. She could not have the knowledge of his use of the mask. There was enough between them already. One more secret might be too much.

And with a renewed spring in his step, the darkness banished from beneath his eyes, his hands steady once more, he returned to the commons, to enjoy his life again, for a time.

[Carnath-Emory]

Each morning it had been the same, Ariane leaving early to begin her morning routine. The Usurper's stables would occupy her for the most of it, for Hrimfax would heed no other touch; the Market generally stole the rest of her time.

Each morning, it had been the same: a trip to Ariane's unoccupied room, hours of simple joy beneath the grip of a crude, wooden shell. So many gentle things. So many secret joys.

Each morning, excepting that Altias could not possibly have known of the conversation sparked between Ariane, Deost and Cinnabar the night before. Simple questions had sparked it; by the evening's end there was nothing simple left at all. Neither could he have known of the clash of schiavona and bracers which followed it, back and forth across the tavern's porch, for Deost had meant to put the iron back into her eyes; as ever, he'd succeeded admirably. Neither of these events had been exhausting, but instead so challenging that she'd slept very little, during the hours which followed. No, for contemplation had been in order, and resolve had been discovered --

And one other thing. A thing so small that it might have gone unnoticed, but that it is sat upon the table that holds her most precious posessions. It had been nudged only slightly out of place, that vulgar mask --

But not by Ariane's hands.

Each morning, Altias slipped into her unoccupied room, but this morning, he encounters her in the hallway just outside of it. Each morning, he finds solace beneath its ugly leer, but this time he finds it gripped in her hand, rather than his own. Gripped, and brandished in wry resignation, as she explains:

"You reckon me naive, yes? Rightly so, perhaps; I should never have kept such a thing in my room. Excuse me. I must find something better for it."

And she is moving to pass the man then, all rumpled shirt and bedraggled scarves, with some small, warm touch of the fingertips for his shoulder.

[Altias_Bromn]

A shoulder brushed, a gentle touch, and then she is moving. Moving Away with the mask.

"You reckon me naive, yes? Rightly so, perhaps; I should never have kept such a thing in my room. Excuse me. I must find something better for it."

Such simple words had rarely held such horror for Altias. Something better? Somewhere better.

There was very little about this man at this moment that was anything more than pure reaction. As she moved past him, that mask in hand, shaking hands reached for her. Fingers that trembled so violently that they took long moments to find purchase upon her shoulder.

"No. You cannot."

A voice that near fails him, so seeped in desperation. Beneath those disparate eyes were half-moons of blue-black which gave the impression someone had recently tried to break his nose again. However, such was not the case. Long tresses of scarlet and ebony were unwashed, unbrushed. They hung in dark tangles about his damp face. The sweat upon his brow moistening even the long tendrils which framed it.

"You cannot"

He repeats, before making a desperate grab for the hideous wooden relic.

[Carnath-Emory]

Moving Away indeed, and with neither spite nor any particular haste; this is simply a matter of resolve, and every line of her narrow body speaks of resignation. This task should have been done months ago, after all, when she'd first realised the mask's nature. Oh, it should particularly have been done following the ghastly Chimera, and it is a testament to her state of mind at the time that it hadn't been.

No longer, and Ariane is pressing past the taller Bromn when his fingers begin to scrabble at her shoulders, and the firmness of his grip sparks a tiny, reflexive flinch from her. This is flesh which remembers hurt, after all. This is flesh which had learned to expect nothing else. It's this flinch which works so well in his favour, leaving him an opening to lunge after that crude mask, and for an instant he almost has it; for an instant, he's gripped its very edge.

To no avail. He is the stronger of the two, but she has a thumb thrust through the thing's broad eye-hole, and it's all the leverage necessary at this juncture of things. Even caught against a corridor wall, she can tug the thing from his fingers, and with her other hand lifted between them to demand space, as she draws the crone-faced mask well back.

His grip does not permit her to backstep, but neither does it permit her to look away from him. Nor does she wish to, for already she's realised the sheer extent of Altias' disrepair, the hurt depths towards which he's flung himself.

Or been flung. In the case of Altias Bromn, the distinction is not always clear.

"Altias," she insists then -- quietly. Firmly. "This is not for meddling. It is not kind. It is not safe. I must set it away."

Please. Clear my path.

[Altias_Bromn]

Almost there...fingertips upon the wood, feeling it's coarse grain against his skin, and there is hope, for an instant. Shattered, in the next as Ariane tugs it free from his desperate grasp.

"Ari...you don't understand. You cannot...please...please. Just leave it in your room. I will leave it alone. I swear, just don't take it, please, for the love of the Mother, don't take it."

And in those words there clings a desperation that can not be avoided. His queer eyes pleading with every word. His hands quaking like a man in a fit of palsy. Those fingers atop her shoulder twitch and lose their grip upon the tender flesh there.

"Ari...don't do this."

The sentence seems somehow incomplete. If she would look into his eyes, she might decode the answer there. The dissimilar eyes sparkled with a near darkness, as he looked upon her the words unspoken written within...

Don't make me hurt you...

[Carnath-Emory]

Almost there, almost there, as if Ariane intended to taunt him with the thing; as if she meant to willfully goad. But 'almost' counts for nothing, in the game they play. The mask is lost, held at awkward arm's-length behind her, and in time his fingers have lost their hold upon the woman, as well. It affords her two sharp steps backwards, and hasty ones at that, for he's begun to speak words that even a dullard can understand, and they begin to give meaning to this chance encounter.

Awful, impossible meaning.

"I do not take," she answers him, in defiance of this trembling man and her own burgeoning suspicions. "It is not even rightly mine, but it has been given to me -- do you see? It must simply have a better ..."

And Bromn pleads with her. In such naked need, in such outright, hopeless despair that it speaks to the woman, rather than to the iron that is her lifeblood. It makes her want to give Altias precisely what he asks for, immediately and without thought, and consequences be damned --

Except that having experienced the consequences of this artifact, she knows them to be very damning indeed.

"... place." So that instead she measures another step away from him, but with a palm touched light and lingering to his cheek, and eyes that see nothing suspicious in his mismatched own. Anger, perhaps. Desperation, certainly. This is not a woman who can read a threat there. Not even today.

"We will speak of this when I return, yes? This and many things. I will listen, you've my word."

And the hand falls away, as the woman turns to depart.

[Altias_Bromn]

OOC: Actions taken on the part of Altias were okayed in advance with the Player of Ariane Emory.

There is a flash in that gaze that fairly shrieks of agony, and then rage. She is turning. Turning to leave, and she has the mask! There is an instant in which all of his strength surges into his limbs, allows him to cross those few steps which seperate them. It is a quaking, but strong, hand that grasps her shoulder now, spinning her around to face him.

"You will not do this!"

There is no gentleness in his voice. There is no care for anything but that mask in those eyes. He barks his demand like a rabid dog. Oh if she understands what is happening to him, she may one day forgive him. If not...

And without another thought, without allowing himself another moment to consider the result of such an action, his hand is rising and it is with a well aimed backhand that he strikes her, stumbling her.

The strike was never something she would have seen coming. This was not Altias playing at anger to get her attention. No. This was sheer, utter...desperation. Her fingers would loose the mask, the shock of such a blow staggering. It would fly free from her hands, bouncing once, and attempting to roll from the balcony, to the commons below.

The scream which would be torn from Altias' mouth would rival that of a man who has just been shot through the stomach with a crossbow. It is a combination of shock, horror and fear. A fear so great that he is on his knees at once, not to rescue his beloved Ariane from the hurt he has done, but to get to the mask before it is out of his reach completely.

[Carnath-Emory]

Agony and rage, and all of it blazing upon her, when Bromn's furious grasp twists her about. He is upon her like vengeance, and his mismatched gaze pierces her eyes as if meant to blister her soul. This is precisely the sort of violence to which Vargan Chernevog had introduced her, as a very young girl; it is nothing that she had thought to encounter a second time -- for this is a woman who learns from such things, this is a woman who takes precautions against them.

But here they are, and such was the force of his grip that he's pulled her off-balance. With fingers driven like claws into the meat and muscle of her shoulder, he has roared this demand down at her, and she means to contradict it, she means to snap her shock at it --

His fist ends all of that.

It is a more forceful variant of the blow she'd spared him, several days before, and it strikes Ariane like sudden thunder. There's more than enough strength in this to stagger her, small creature that she is; her shoulder collides with the corridor wall, narrow body rebounding in reflex, rather than actual intent. There's dizziness enough that she must blink her vision clear. There is shock enough that she doesn't think to move at all, until she realises that he's not done.

That the mask is clearly his intent.

That it is tumbling over... there.

These three realisations in one single, furious instant, and they're enough that she's striding unsteadily in Bromn wake, that she's lunging near the end of it to advance past him.

Resolve trumps desperation ... this time. When she catches the thing, it's to twist back about with the railing at her spine, and the mask gripped tightly in a hand that slightly trembles, and: "Ty'pizdoi nakryt'sja!" she cries. "Does this really mean so much to you!"

And it is a voice gone hoarse with shock, that speaks words from another, long-ago time. It is a voice made thick with outrage, with the defiance that flows like blood in her veins. On that night, many years ago, Johan Vornheim had burned a thing which Ariane had very much -- and very selfishly -- wanted. This morning, the circumstances are far more urgent, but her response is no less final than Vornheim's had been. The hand lifts this precious, awful artifact. The hand dashes it down upon the railing's edge, with all her heart's strength.

The mask shatters with a very satisfying *crack* of sound.

"There. You may have it."

[Kylerryth]

(An OOC note: All actions in this post were approved beforehand by all the players involved.)

But the mask did not fall.

Instead it flew from Ariane's hand; it hit the floor, bounced once, and then slid on its face toward the balcony's edge; and it came to a sudden halt against the toes of the man standing by the carved wooden railing, standing just before the exact spot from which the mask would have fallen. A man who had not been there a moment or even a minute ago; a man who was now bending at the knees to retrieve the thing at his feet. Turning the mask over to inspect its visage, one of this man's long-fingered hands grasped its chin as another man might grasp a woman's to tilt her lips up for a kiss; and the lacquered nails of his other hand gleamed in the flickering light of the hallway as they traced the painted lines on the mask's age-worn surface.

"An ugly thing," said he; and the words, although disparaging, were bejeweled notes glittering in the air, suspended on sheets of liquid music. "I do not like ugly things, Altias. Nor do you, hm?"

The man's gaze drifted from the mask's face to Altias', looked down at the former Governor -- the Governor who had once been a proud, heroic man; who in the here and now was a slave of a past buried beneath time and the dust of memory, and the sweetness, the goodness therein. He craved it like an addict, would do anything, anything for it: just another heartwarming vision of boyhood, please; another taste of mother's praise, please; oh, Gods, Nathaniel--

"Look at me."

And when Altias' gaze shifted from the object of his desire -- the precious, hideous mask, still held fast by those slender fingers -- to the man, that sublime, terrible man...

The man's eyes were green, a beautiful, mesmerizing emerald green flecked with black and gold; and their irises swirled and churned as vast turbulent oceans of molten lava: slow and depthless and dangerous, burning eerie bright and endlessly pouring into the black pinpoint of each pupil. Anger, however, was not in those eyes: it was disappointment that shone piercing and clear. Perhaps that would sting more than any fury, would shock the former Governor into cognizance; but it mattered not to the man standing before Altias -- Altias the former Governor; Altias the town hero; Altias the desperate fool, then and now like any other man save for what little the enigma, his master, had recently changed.

All this and more was conveyed by the man's eyes; and the knowledge slithered across Altias' brain like an invisible forked tongue, exciting and revolting all at once.

"I would not have thought you so weak," the man went on in a conversational tone. He moved forward -- but not toward Altias. No, the man's bare feet, silent on the floorboards and seeming to barely touch them, they bore him to the recovering swordswoman, to Ariane...

Ariane ... to whom he offered the mask with a ghost of a smile, a faint thing that was cold and calculating.

"You dropped this, my dear."

[Carnath-Emory]

Agony and rage, and all of it blazing upon her, when Bromn's furious grasp twists her about. He is upon her like vengeance, and his mismatched gaze pierces her eyes as if meant to blister her soul. This is precisely the sort of violence to which Vargan Chernevog had introduced her, as a very young girl; it is nothing that she had thought to encounter a second time -- for this is a woman who learns from such things, this is a woman who takes precautions against them.

But here they are, and such was the force of his grip that he's pulled her off-balance. With fingers driven like claws into the meat and muscle of her shoulder, he has roared this demand down at her, and she means to contradict it, she means to snap her shock at it --

His fist ends all of that.

It is a more forceful variant of the blow she'd spared him, several days before, and it strikes Ariane like sudden thunder. There's more than enough strength in this to stagger her, small creature that she is; her shoulder collides with the corridor wall, narrow body rebounding in reflex, rather than actual intent. There's dizziness enough that she must blink her vision clear. There is shock enough that she doesn't think to move at all, until she realises that he's not done.

That the mask is clearly his intent.

That it is tumbling over... there.

These three realisations in one single, furious instant, and they're enough that she's striding unsteadily in Bromn's wake, that she's lunging near the end of it to advance past him. But it's not Altias who will be her rival in this attempt, but the exquisitely awful Kylerryth: her gaze climbs him from ankles to knees, from ribs to the tender cruelty of his mouth, and it's only then that she's recoiling from him with a thin hiss of breath.

It's as well that his focus is ravaged Altias, for the horror must surely anticipate the tide of silver that's begun to well from her pores, but perhaps not what preceeds it. Iron twines its waterweed tendrils about her limbs, but not before her flesh has confessed to what lies beneath its surface: the intricate delicacy of dark ink, engraved through her skin in scrolling, arcane patterns as if it had once pentrated to the very bone beneath. It had begun as a subtle shadow, had slowly darkened into focus as Kylerryth addressed fallen Bromn, and now--

Now, when the monster speaks, it's to a woman recognisable only to eyes that will pierce deceptive surfaces: the face is still hers, but so patterned by ink, so lively with obedient iron! The hand which accepts that mask is slick with the stuff, and the dark patterns which run beneath its sleeve have a complexity to rival Syl Duquesne's, and these eyes... Ah, to Kylerryth, the iron of this gaze communicates a holocaust yet to come.

But not this morning. This morning is for masks and monsters and damaged men. One such creature has crawled this floor on his hands and knees, has struck and roared and fought for the awful thing she holds in her hand this very moment; on his knees he has strained for it, and that is much of what horrifies this woman most. This morning, resolve will trumph desperation: for when she turns upon Bromn once more, it's to lift this mask in a grip that slightly trembles, and breathe: "Ty'pizdoi nakryt'sja! Does this really mean so much to you!"

Altias is spared from answering this. None stand here who don't realise what his reply would have been. Instead, with no pause for speech at all, her hand lifts this precious, awful artifact. Her hand dashes it down upon the railing's edge, with all her heart's strength.

The mask shatters with a very satisfying *crack* of sound.

"There. You may have it."