The Fading Embers (open to Victor, Laszlo, Seven)

[Victor Lark]

Victor’s eyes were neither glaring at a risen Seven nor hiding behind drowsy lids. They were trained stiffly on the brute who was also a poet who was also a god, showing perhaps a little more white around the irises than was polite. In his short life, he had not met many men who really knew the world. They were below him in Ravok and above him in Syliras; now there was one beside him, pouring his wizened troubles into the sort of bottomless mug from which Victor drooled to have a drink. There were plenty of things he thought to say. He could fashion opposing words and frivolous twists to challenge the opinions spoken and the men who spoke them; he could continue to water the seed of divulgence he had planted by accident, and see if it would still flourish beneath the weight of increasing regrets.

But he was not alone. The intimacy of investigation was not a game for witnesses.

He had not touched his own mug of ale. As Laszlo spoke, he regarded the thing and lifted a finger to trace the splintery circle where his mouth should have been. At the cue of an irritated and self-righteous tongue, Victor moved his gaze to the flute. His friends seemed so keen on it, but it was only a thing. There was no soul in it, as the offended ethaefal seemed to think. Ulric’s soul was in his words, and on his face. If only to delay the tedium of some slow and presumably mournful melody, a fellow human spoke up.

“Seems to me, the fire’s not the only one.” He looked at the man then, met his eyes with a pair that had never once known pain or guilt or sadness. There was an emptiness in them, though sometimes he managed to make them laugh, to trivialize the deepest of aches. He smirked, shrugged. “I suppose alcohol is as good for the hearth as dead tinder is.”

And with the hollow murmur of wood on wood, he pushed his full pint towards Ulric’s emptying one.

[Ulric]

“I’m just a fisherman,” he grated “I only play when I hear the thunder of waves against the strand, and the milky serpents of mist clasp up against my prow, pleading for a song to herald the lingering solemnity of the dawn.”

Ulric gave a sigh, turning the flute over in his hands, bluntly caressing its worn surface, the scars. “It does not want for playing.” He frowned. He was ready to bang down the mug, shouting for more ale, but then the spider was speaking, traces of doubt and an enduring acidity. Ulric didn’t know what to say, just felt the barbed lash of bitter remorse constricting around his neck, so tightly that he could only glare at the spider. He’d struck a nerve, but even so, what was he but a desolately pretending incarnate, latent powers so far from his aching heart? “I saw another world, once,” he regarded the spider bleakly, “Though in that dimly truncated instant, caught between dreams and reality, I wonder if it was just my imagination. But it wasn’t.” He paused, his face hardening, fingers resuming their drumming. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. He knew what they were doing, but he wasn’t going to leave anything more substantial than cinders in his wake. “If you’d stared into your own eyes, there upon the spine of the highest peaks, with the wind lashing your hair, and the sands of time sloughing around your ankles to drag you back to this fiery crucible, you’d wish that it was a dream, too. I curse the paltry realm of your cloying deity, for she let us die, lankly conspired in our murder by unseen hands, doing nothing to prevent the demise of transcendence. If you’ve truly seen her, go back.” The words were laced with stark cynicism, taunting with a cruel, biting menace. “Go back, spider, and bring her my message. If the gods won’t stand with me against iniquity, then I am going to crush them in my fist, break up their hegemony on power and seed it upon the fields, the waters, the peaks. Go back, if you can.”

Regret was consumed by rage, the shackles released on festering grudges, bursting to the surface. He struck away the mug, casting it viciously away, fragments scattering on the floor. “Not from you,” he snarled, perched again upon the verge of depravity. “Not from you, Victor.” He poked a finger at the dandy’s face, knuckles pale where they grasped the haft of his axe, itching to sully the chamber with a wash of crimson. “I should have taken your forked tongue when I had the chance, kept you from making a mockery of sanctified ground. I see your eyes, and they do not speak. I saw you fight upon the sands, that much I grant you, but even now, you don’t comprehend the wages of war, the bleak consequences. I saw you jape and caper, but what are you, truly? If you see enough wavering souls perish badly, you begin to understand that we are the paltry joke, for in our conceit, we mistakenly regard ourselves as having power over our nether fates, when the scrolls have already been etched.”

“We are but chaff upon the winds,” he growled, “Like worms curling in the embers of a dying fire.” He cast a sidelong, darkly malevolent glance at the spider, shoulders bunching as he shifted in the chair. “But I am just a fisherman.”

[Seven Xu]

As the fire roared a breath of newfound life, Seven took a staggering step backward.

Thik-thik-thik. A moth fluttered wildly against the inside of a nearby oil lamp. It must have gotten stuck inside when the thing was lit; its tiny wings beat the glass for a breath before it was caught and consumed by yellow flame.

The splintering cry of a rejected mug made his small frame jerk towards its source in surprise. He breathed a sigh when he discerned that no heads had splattered across the tavern floor.

“You’re just a fisherman,” the tepid voice rose a safe distance from the table where the Oaf sat. Seven hugged his arms and bent his chin towards the fire he’d resurrected, bare toes curling against the polished slats of knotted wood beneath them. The wooden remains of a tankard and its contents—that were slowly drawing a frothing lake of amber across the floor—could be cleaned later.

“Forgive me,” he had remained quiet; a modest wraith in the milieu as Laszlo and Victor questioned and probed and pored over the man. The halfblood finally emerged from the obscurity of a room hampered by long-fingered shadows and the hoary glow of a sky beneath a sky with blood in his eyes and the moon in his hair. He’d listened long enough to haughty ramblings and threats against a lover’s tongue. A spout was drawn so that words could spill from that flattened bow of pink lips; a torrent of insolent syllables that thrust aside self-preservation. “What kind of fisherman defiles a woman for the inability to hold her tongue, and speaks in verse befitting of a song with his own?”

That face. How it haunted the backs of his eyelids.

Seven’s heart began to feel like the doomed moth’s wings beating against a tightening chest; the fact that the hearth fire would not be like to reach out and swallow him whole held little consolation when he turned from it, squinting, to assess a pair of deep-set and beaded eyes. As soon as he caught them his head inclined in unspoken and horrified apology. Regret prickled his sweat-cooled skin and hardened a lump in the back of his throat. His nails dug into his palm. His voice cracked. “You’re not like any fisherman I’ve ever met.”

[Laszlo]

He sure was a cheery one. I take it back. You're just mad. Laszlo took a pull of ale from his mug just to keep his tongue still. The man was making interesting points at first, but now he was just droning on unintelligibly. His prose was becoming too cryptic for Laszlo to decipher, and at this point he was fairly certain that Ulric was talking just to hear his own voice. A flutist who wouldn't play flute, a fisherman who defiled beaten corpses—the man was an amalgam of nonsensical tangents. The look that Ulric sent Laszlo made his blood run cold, and soon his tightened amethysts were aimed hard at the frothy pool in his mug. The Ethaefal had already made his attempt at boldness, and now that dark flame in the human's narrow eyes had seared away the last vestiges of his courage. All he could think about now was that last expression on the Symenestra woman's face before Ulric removed it, and the way the word "spider" had come from his mouth coated with bile. Stop calling me that, he wanted to say. Laszlo wasn't a spider, wasn't a Symenestra. He was something so much better, and he wished that the Oaf, or anyone really, was capable of seeing that. This milky white face was a bloody curse. "Seven's got a point," Laszlo mumbled into his mug, daring not to look up again. He was not getting off the bar to go near that man any time soon. If Ulric wanted a refill, one of the other two would have to get it for him. "I can't imagine you with a fishing pole over the still of water, unless you were speaking to the fish."

[Victor Lark]

The mug cracked against the near wall, fresh splinters lapping up its old contents. Victor’s hands flew up in sudden surrender, and so followed a pair of dark eyebrows that spoke a half-hearted complaint at the insult. As soon as he was certain of the extent of Ulric’s outburst, his quicksilver eyes rolled and, under the guise of impatience, he stole a look at each of his associates.

Both had shaped their fear into some other indistinguishable thing, and he would have to ascertain the rest from only their words. Seven tried to calm the man with bitter logic and subsequent retreat, but Victor suspected neither would do much for anyone’s nerves. He turned a smile towards resentful Laszlo as if to approve of the dismissal, though he was in fact more interested than he could tell in their customer’s apparent instability. He chuckled, because those ramblings could not possibly concern him, because one man had made a joke and another required reassurance. He slanted his head at the red-eyed latter, beckoning him from the fire.

Then Victor finally settled his attention on the Ulric, where he secretly wanted it most, despite the acid words that flew at him on the stranger’s angry spittle. Victor was no afraid of him. He was drunk, probably sloppy, and if he really did tip over the edge of fury, he would be one against three, an axe against untold magics... assuming, of course, that his claim to godhood was as unfounded as his perception of honor. Victor leaned back in his chair until its front legs escaped the floor’s hold, perching his knees against the table.

“I would not dream of denying the gods their right to play around with my life, if they ever bothered,” he answered, sighing facetiously. Ulric hated the frivolity and the conceit, so he would feed him more and see what came of it. “But if one ever did decide to show me all those miseries that you’ve seen, it would not warm my loins to complain about it so incessantly. If you think you have to play the gods’ game, play it. But if you don’t like to see wavering souls perish, then donnot take your axe to them. If you would not drink to forget, then drink to sing, or play your flute. Drink to befriend, and in the morning, take your fishing-pole to the sea.

“It’s simple,” he shrugged, even though it wasn’t.

[Ulric]

Ulric cuffed the back of his wrist over his crackled lips, brushing away a bead of tasty amber. And so, they begin to wonder. Joints creaked as he leaned back in the chair, responding to the display of temerity with a daring of his own, though it was concealed by torpor. The legs rasped back like hinges, but he didn’t speak right away, just sat there observing.

Had he cowed the spiders? He’d always found fear a cloying sort of thing. He suffered the cruel of shackles of dread just as they did, but he was used to the sickly clasp of his guts, the pounding of his pulse like a foul poison. He knew what it was to fear, and to be feared. The first element was the unknown. They didn’t know how the cogs and gears of his mind were screwed into the vast wheels, and insidiously lurked the chance that he’d just descend under a cloud of red, berserk lust and flay them to broken remnants of flesh and bone that splayed mockingly. The second element, he’d always known, was how far you could tread into iniquity before turning back. Don’t you see? There was an ominous crack of knuckles as he glanced first at Seven, and then Laszlo. I felt no rage for her. I barely even cared that she was a spider. I told her what would happen, but she didn’t take heed of my threat, wasn’t canny enough to feel the lash of fear. I could’ve ignored her. I could’ve just left her breathing in a puddle of her of own blood, or delved into her fiery eyes and seen a spark of promise, reason enough to let her endure.

If you want honesty, just ask. I did it for the simplest of reasons, and that’s because I could.

Every man is my slave unless he proves otherwise.

The embers flared and began to fade away again. The hush was broken by a terse grunt, drunken murmuring. Blunt fingers harshly interposed to yank up the head, bleary eyes shut despite the wrench on those greasy locks. “Be quiet,” Ulric growled, let the ruddy cheek slap against the table with no retort apart from a clinging serpent of drool against the back of his hand. “You know, fish aren’t so bad,” he glanced at the spider, “They don’t ask many questions, and they certainly don’t expect you to care about their feelings after you poke a thumb in their eyes.” The shadow of a grin spread over his face. “It’s a lot harder than you’d think.”

They were holding back from him, of that much he was certain, but wasn’t that typical of everybody? Except for the dandy. Victor. That was the dangerous one, he knew that instinctively. The spiders were partly cowed, but the dandy was doing something more insidious, the whisper keeping him in the edge of his chair. He’s just toying with me, probing away at the confines of my thoughts, trying to take my measure, to conquer the ramparts of my heart and twist me to his devious, selfish ends.

Cunt, I was born in Ravok.

Don’t.

Just don't.

Ulric leaned over, elbows folding as his fingers joined to a steeple, and winkled slyly at Victor. “Unfortunate, isn’t it, that we’re just carved tokens in a game of bones? Every cast is just an act in the evoking. The jangle of shaved knuckles is music to our ears. The vagaries are crazy in their myriad. The unknowing errancy of consequence is the poison that flows through your fangs,” he mockingly regarding both of the spiders, “The lust that engorges your cocks. The whisper that urges you not to falter. And yet, what’s the point?”

“No, don’t answer that.” Ulric frowned. “Let’s drink, and then we can play a game.” There was a vague sense of defiance as he stared intently at Victor. Go on, entertain us.

[Seven Xu]

The methodic slap of barefoot on aged wood followed by a chair’s groaning objection heralded Seven’s return to his seat. A knee straightened, a clammy set of toes shot out to grip at the wedge of Victor’s chair that his thighs did not occupy. He pressed against the balanced weight with the ball of his foot; the chair jerked backward, but the threat only lasted a heartbeat before strong toes snagged the edge and forced the chair—and his human—back to the earth.

“Games need rules.” Crimson dipped into the crooks of Seven’s almond-shaped eyes as he cast a languid gaze in the Oaf’s direction. United with Victor, Seven could easily slip into his cohort’s shadow and be as insufferable and sardonic as he was, but the halfblood’s sense of fear was healthy, his grasp on compassion was sharp, his conscience strident; all advantages as much as they were hindrances. His blonde brows had flared at the deliberate suggestion in a game. His toes curled along the cusp of a chair where a bold foot lingered. He sucked his lower lip beneath a line of teeth. “You don’t seem the sort that would adhere to rules.”

No, he’s more likely to drain one’s mouth of their teeth. Seven’s insipid pink lips closed and pursed. He lifted his heel onto the seat of Victor’s chair and let the pale foot droop sideways against a linen-covered mural of old scars. “If you have your own rules, I’m sure we can learn. We’re all smart, here.” He stole a glance at his closest associate, and then ventured over his shoulder to wordlessly question Laszlo’s distant perch. The Ethaefal could very well have been the smartest of their little band, had he not clouded his head with his own self-importance. At least he remained a healthy distance from the Oaf, and the Oaf’s axe, still draining the ever-dying fire of its orange light.

Their eyes met. Seven’s reds darted away in reflex, before settling on Laszlo’s deep-set gaze again. “You can’t play the game from over there.” A sideward plea wrapped itself in sardonic tenor. Seven straightened again and reached for his mug of ale, warmed by the stale air but as refreshing on a set of dried lips as anything. He pressed the wooden rim to his chin thoughtfully, before it swallowed up his bottom lip and he took a short drink.

“So what is this game?” He wiped glistening bitter from his mouth with the back of his thumb. “Cards? Dice? More divine rhetoric?”

[Laszlo]

Laszlo turned his head and regarded Seven with a restrained sigh. A game of dice? That didn't seem likely. Whatever it was, Laszlo wanted no part of any of it. Still, he got Seven's message, and despite the fear building up in the back of his throat, he wouldn't leave his two compatriots to deal with the Oaf alone. The Ethaefal wasn't a coward. Past the bitter tone in Seven's voice, Laszlo was certain they were both justifiably edgy about this character, though Victor seemed as interested in Ulric as he was in any other thing that gained his attention. Victor didn't ever seem cautious. Laszlo was becoming positive that this would one day kill him. "I doubt Ned would have much to offer, in any case." Sliding from the bar, Laszlo planted both boot soles back on the wooden floor, looping his clawed fingers through his mug's handle as he began to cross the room. As he passed Seven's table, the mug came loose and settled next to the halfblood. He took the opportunity to give a look to those crimson eyes, silently communicating his apprehension with a deceptively blank expression. An amethyst gaze then drifted casually over Victor before the false Symenestra focused solely on the sleeping drunk. "He's old, drunk, and he's starting to smell. We're closing up soon and he needs to leave, anyway. Come on, Ned." Though he was certain 'Ned' wasn't really his name, Laszlo set a spindly hand on the vagrant's shoulder. The flavor of djed tingled his tongue and hummed through the palm of his hand as he beckoned the man to sit up straight. Compelled by Hypnotic suggestion, Ned obeyed, leaning back his chair and glancing drearily up at Laszlo. A cold stare was given back to him as he gestured his silver tressed head toward the door. Time to go, Laszlo thought at him, inserting the words into Ned's head in his own, mumbling voice. Not to be too overt with his magic, Laszlo helped the man up by pulling on his arm, and then walked him toward the door with a slender hand upon his back. It wasn't a perfect disguise for his talent, but he was convinced it looked subtle enough. Whatever Ulric was planning, Laszlo didn't want to be responsible if some homeless dreg lost his life here. There was a modicum of true sympathy somewhere in his frightened, tense heart, but at this point his main concern was his own life as well as Seven's and Victor's. Secondary was collateral damage. After Ned was ushered through the door, so clueless that he came to a complete halt on the other side, Laszlo immediately shut it again to prevent him from forming a coherent thought and turning around. One of two bolts fastened the door shut; if Ulric raised hell, it would be easy enough to loosen the first lock if there was any need for escape. "There's a game Symenestra children play in Kalinor," Laszlo remarked casually, returning to his drink next to Seven and holding it in both hands. His black claws dug idly into the stein's wood, holding it close enough to his face to inhale the smell of amber. "We could try to knock each other off the ceiling." He took a drink.

[Victor Lark]

The little beads of Victor’s eyes rolled at Ulric’s reply, dismissing the wisdom and derogation which he might have otherwise been curious to question. Alas, he was more driven to know the extent of his fellow human’s patience than anything else. Some other offensive quip hung on his tongue, but then he was distracted suddenly by the chair beneath him; a rush of adrenaline heated Victor’s chest for an instant, left to cool in quickly fading embarrassment as he realized where Seven’s foot had both startled and saved him. A happy glare pored over the table as his chair knocked onto all four legs again. Words were exchanged, a loyal patron dismissed, but for a few moments he had only eyes for Seven, only attentions for the toes that embraced his thigh. His eyebrows rose like a laugh, and he traced a teasing line down the middle of a cold white sole.

Then Laszlo suggested a game, and Victor remembered the fisherman’s dare. He hastily offered up another. “A drinking game,” he agreed with Ulric, releasing Seven. “Back home we played a game of secrets: when it’s your turn, you make a statement about yourself. Everyone else, if they think it applies to them, drinks. If it doesn’t apply to you, you take off a piece of clothing.” Grinning, he glanced at the bar and then at Laszlo, their designated bartender. Victor was without a drink, unless he was expected to drink it off the ground.

He went on, turning his gaze lazily between the three of them. As his hands opened like an extra explanation, his shoes tried blindly to pin Seven’s toes to the ground. “The point is to learn about each other. Like... Ulric here would only say ‘I’ve got a beard’ if he was an asshole. Or if he wanted to see the rest of us take our shirts off.” He winked, then added, “If you’re asked to explain yourself, you do. I’ll start.” He leaned forward and grabbed the mug in front of Seven, because he was an asshole and he knew the halfblood would not need it, this round.

“I’ve been east of Syliras.”

As he lifted his drink to his lips, Victor eyed Ulric, both curious of his response and inviting him to take a turn at the game. He did not stop to consider that any of them might not want to play; he took the suggestion as a personal challenge, and was glad to rise to the task so long as it made someone blush.

[Ulric]

Ulric whirled a finger around the stump of a squat, thick candle, clumps of wax gathering under his nail. He stared intently at the duplicity of the starry rafters, as though he was trying to bore a hole to the fiery chimera of sky, slowly forging down, over the amethysts, reds, and jaded grays. He wasn’t sure he wanted to play, even though he’d made the rejoinder. He’d never been good at playing. But he’d nothing finer to do. So there he sat, empty. Not drunk, not really caring. Not meaning to probe into the myriad. The tongues of flame, fumes of liquor were making his skin hot, yet clammy. These are the dregs, he thought, The last changes, the lonely nights come together. The whisper. He was adrift, and these spiders, and that man, were the straws he clutched at, ever so fervently. They broke his torpor.

They made him whole.

“Very well, then,” he growled, taking a deep, hasty gulp, and thinking of Ravok. His city. His people. His delusion.

Leaning back, he held a finger over the candle, vainly pinching at the ruddy, wavering tongue of flame, roving over the grays. The eyes were ever a mirror. The tawdry gates of a city, the clay jar of cinders, the pole of a ferryman. The jingle of a tarnished coin. That he saw was ever enough. They bore witness. The inky cast of his own was drowned by the candle, caught up by a vapid longing. The sway of sultry hips, the ugly snout of a horse. The trundle of a cart. The wriggle of a fish, and the way the dark scales clung to his fingers, like the horrid suck of mud around bare, splaying toes. The stony hunch of a gargoyle, crusted by purple lichen, ever cursing the warble of a pigeon.

He drew a shaky breath.

And for what, he didn’t know. The boards crowded him, the quiet like a vise over his chest. The gum of leaked beer clung glumly to a boot. “I’ve hurt a lover,” he grunted, thinking of the fiery cascade of her hair, the warm press of her soft, milky flesh. “No wait,” he frowned. “That’s too easy. The vagaries of that bear no end.” Again, he clamped his fingers around the candle, slid them up, then down, cringing at the sting of molten, cooling wax. And then he swept them through his spiky hair. “I’ve given my lover a red grin, flayed her into tiny scraps, and hurled them in a canal.” He drank again, unsparingly.

Vaguely, he thought of bundles of twigs, tightly bound by rasps of hemp, the clink of rings in a hauberk. Here, wisps of wheat in a field, undulating as far as his eyes could probe. There, just the creak of firs, the low prickle of heather. The snaking enormity of tumbled rocks. The crash of breakers, darker than sour wine. The dry, swaying tufts of bone grass, poking up from salt flats.

“Go.”