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

[Seven Xu]

“I think I’d rather try to knock one of you off the ceiling,” Seven mumbled.

The game had already claimed a silver chain; the crossed daggers of the Braklin family crest flushed orange from the fire, teased the memories of anyone having spent more than a fortnight within the walls of Stormhold Citadel. It was there the halfblood had been changed by a specter, one evening a scholar, the next a fledgling mage, with little more to show for it than a scrap of silver.

Ulric’s unnerving confession was another loss. Clumsy white fingers scrabbled against the buttons of his shirt as he cast an absent stare at a wooden mug that was once his. Eyes like sharpened steel drank of heavy-lidded reds, and Seven offered a slapdash grin to that implacable smirk. “I’m no easterner with a lover’s blood on my hands,” he conceded, shrugging the garment from his shoulders and letting it drop lifeless and body-warm to the floor. The tavern’s stale air wicked away cotton’s comfort, leaving wan gooseflesh in its place. Seven broke the mutual stare and drew his knees to his chest, abruptly ending an under-the-table game of shoes and bare toes. “I guess it’s my turn, then.”

He turned his attentions on the fire, fingers of orange-yellow gripped blackened logs, trembling and struggling against the oncoming chill of winter that leaked in through a locked door. No doubt a window remained open upstairs, the culprit of the persistent draft. Seven’s nostrils flared, and he stifled a shiver.

Then a spark caught in the silence, roared to crimson life, and he swept his upper lip with a pink tongue before turning on his party. “I’ve lived in the glory of a Goddess, only to have Her forsake me.” Seven stretched an arm between his knees to retrieve his mug by the handle, tested its weight with a lofty tip, and pressed the wooden lip to waxen flesh; he took of the swill that remained, more foam than ale, but a half a mouthful more than he expected. He nearly choked. Swallowing, he rasped an afterthought, “Don’t try to draw some deep symbolism from that.”

[Laszlo]

The Ethaefal was helpless to stop this turn of events. He might have blanched at Victor's suggestion were he not already more pallid than Leth himself. What would become of a game like this? What was the point? Even more shocking, Seven agreed to it. It was Victor's idea, sure, but Laszlo had assumed, and probably hoped, that the halfblood would have clung to his dignified modesty. His surrender had been reluctant, but he wasn't running out of the room in protest. Ulric went along with it too, of course, but Laszlo was neither surprised nor eager to argue. He wasn't going to be the only one here to disagree with a human carrying an axe around. If a murderous brute entered an engagement with you, you were damn well going to honor it. With the first question, Laszlo waited for the others to respond. Amethyst rimmed eyes became wide as Seven and Ulric actually complied, meriting another moment's hesitation and then finally a sigh. His long, pointed nails clicked against the buckle of his belt as he unfastened the strip of leather and pulled it from his waist. It was flung onto the wooden table with a rattling skid, and then he crossed his arms in abject disgust. This was mad. Yet there was a curious gleam in his eye as he turned to Ulric. Laszlo's lips parted. He would have blanched again. A boot came free from one of his slender, black-nailed feet, and its heavy sole thudded onto the floor. The ball of his foot pressed onto the wooden planks beneath his chair, quickly becoming matted with soot, dirt, and something cold. He sent a curious glance under the table and moved his toes aside. A coin! Ah, no, wait. Copper rimmed. Barely worth picking up. He'd do it later, if he remembered. His distraction didn't last long. Seven's truth was cutting and poignant. How could one not take that metaphorically? It didn't even occur to him that the halfblood honored any gods. Never having put any thought into it, Laszlo had assumed he'd be faithful to Viratas, but he was more human than Symenestra. Which goddess did he mean? Syna's fallen might have chosen to become offended at the suggestion that Seven was ever close to a god (in reference to Laszlo's lost intimacy), even go on some tirade about whether he had truly been forsaken, but there didn't seem to be a point in doing so, for the moment. Furthermore, Laszlo didn’t to lose anymore clothing. You haven't forsaken me, Sun Goddess, Laszlo prayed silently as he took his drink. Nor have I you. Allow me this dalliance. I'll make it up to you, but I'm not losing this stupidgame. It was his turn. The air in the room became heavier as the attention shifted to him. Laszlo's eyes were cast off to the side in thoughtful avoidance. Seven was beginning to look as though he regretted not choosing modesty. Victor as usual was amused by any game with high stakes. Ulric was positively unreadable, but Laszlo was certain there was still mad and indecipherable prose running through his addled mind. "This is the worst game I have ever played. What is the point? How do we even know who wins?" Laszlo's protests were in vain, but they were worth voicing anyway. Another long sigh escaped him as he mentally plunged an arm into the ether to search for his own contribution. He was fond of Victor's example, nice and vague. The other two had offered personal experiences to the game, which didn't seem like a good idea for him. Laszlo was feeling reluctant about the idea of revealing his divine heritage to Ulric. He might begin to preach about the end of the world. "I once swam naked in the Suvan Sea."

[Victor Lark]

Victor’s eyes tossed at Ulric, but still he set his mug on the sad confession. True, it was too easy to hurt a lover, but at least there were stories in acknowledging it. He pretended to wait, to watch and see whether his friends knew anything of canals, before his fingers found the buttons of his shirt. He could only assume their guest spoke of Ravok’s canals, which meant that he and Ulric had at least that in common. As the begrudging murmur of his living lover sang another round, Victor contemplated how to use such a fact.

He kicked a shoe from one foot with the other, molting the last of soiled red cotton from his back and tossing it in a bundle at Seven’s head. There were ten long scars on his chest, painted dark and vain on a soft canvas of otherwise flawless flesh. Perched atop the violent arc was a silver pendant on a silver chain, a bird with its wings spread around a pearl. Victor clutched it habitually as it swayed from him; when he could feel it on his skin again, his hand dropped as if he did not know it was there.

Laughing at Laszlo’s turn, Victor pulled a satisfied smile over his faltering mask of mock-exasperation. In reply, he turned his eyes to the other two. “You’re all selfish,” he mentioned, carving a sock from his foot and leaving it a naked cousin to the shoe he wore beside it. “If you won’t give the rest of us a fighting chance to keep warm, at least explain the specific secret you’ve bothered to share.

“What was her name?” He intruded on Ulric and Seven alike, dousing false incredulity on unrelenting curiosity. He did not doubt that the so-called Oaf was capable of killing or that the half-blood could bear to turn his back on a god, but neither would he excuse such claims without proper elucidation. Before they could give it, he offered an example. Hands that hung on his lap rose to fall against the table, palms up. The faint brown mark that crossed each from thumb to heel was hard to detect, until he pointed them out.

“Aggravated a reimancer,” he admitted. It was only mostly a lie. “And I didn’t even get any powers from her.” Satisfying an itch on his palm, he gave a knowing look to Seven, then took a peek at Ulric’s hands. He knew Laszlo did not have any to match, but what of this stranger? Victor lifted his drink, spoke his turn. “I have scars on my hands.”

[Ulric]

Ulric forced a snort, his mug clacking on the timber. “Can’t say I’ve ever cared for the gods,” he growled, “Even if they’ve got a pair of heavy tits, and a cunt that’s like honey.” He’d been waiting for this instant, barely hiding a grin as he yanked the jerkin over his head, hugely corded muscles bunching. Though he was missing half an ear, had a crooked nose, and tracery of scars over his face, his chest was far, far worse than any of them could’ve thought. They snaked everywhere, pale whorls of pink and angry purple, winding like a constrictor. There were gouges, gashes, wedges where he’d been partly impaled, the angry red of burn scars. That’s right, feast your eyes on this.

But even then, he bored easily. He was weary of scaring, fed up with his own, vague chatter. He just wanted to drink the rest of them under the table, which wasn’t very tricky if you considered how much larger he was, and bounce without leaving so much as a dented, dirty copper. That was hardly fair, but then again, they owned something, at least. They were doing well enough.

Laszlo’s turn came, and went, with a sucking of dregs, an untidy belch. “Done,” he grunted. That was easy. This game was easy. He didn’t even need to be an arsehole, though he wouldn’t have given up the opportunity. There were a couple of shoes on the sticky floor, a pair of tunics already flung away, lankly hanging. That left bare, scrawny chests, a shiver. Turning to the smaller spider, he probed the pink tip of tongue around cracked lips, forcing the sliver of a wink. Victor just had to spoil it, though. The way he’d wrecked everything before. Your mother, he wanted to say, vaguely imagining himself pounding the hag, just to get a rise out of her nasty excuse for progeny. The thought didn’t last very long. The unfurling fingers caught his regard. The palms, smeared by brown, like the crusty blemish of a young girl’s virtue on starched linen, sullenly leering up at the coals of his eyes. Those hands were exactly the type you’d see on a dandy.

“You do?” The mocking grin spread over his face, slowly creeping under spiky whiskers. He drank, barely even moving his own hands, the sprawl of his own scars. “That’s a pity for you.”

Turgidly, he placed his heavy elbows on table’s edge, hunching over so he was gazing into amethyst eyes. There was something he wanted to say. The words eluded him, though. The proper phrasing, the deft wisps of a ploy, dredging up through a bog of disregard. “I hate ponies,” he snarled.

[Seven Xu]

Their mug was empty.

Seven stood, one hand groping across the table for a shared wooden tankard, the other clumsily thumbing at the brass buckle beneath his navel. Ale’s warm fingers had worked their way through his chest; it teased his balance and threatened candid flippancy in the place of careful sourness.

The halfblood stole a sideward glance at Laszlo, and mumbled a laugh. He crossed the brackish expanse twice over, though neither trip had he ever thought to shed his clothing and jump in. The belt was pitched to the floor, and leather and brass rang across hardwood gummed with blackened wax as it skidded towards his chair. Victor was complaining at his back; Seven thought to counter. The Ravokian’s ponderous shedding of a single boot, a sock; for all his efforts, it hardly seemed fair. Fighting chance, my ass. Prudent lips only twitched in response.

The mug returned, followed by a flash of untarnished white skin, and Seven claimed his seat at the table again. The Oaf had sloughed off his jerkin; the tilt of his mouth made him look almost proud of the tapestry of scratches and pockmarks that littered his frame. That skin had long since lost its original tincture; it was hard to tell where one scar ended, and another began. Seven was lost in silent inspection, until those burning coals of eyes crinkled an unspoken jape, and a pink tongue wound suggestion that made his face run hot.

Seven scowled, and hastily broke the short mutual gaze in favor of the simpering Ravokian at his opposite. “It’s true, we match.” He willed pink from his cheeks, or at least, tried to hide it beneath a smile. Two hands clapped upturned olive palms, and bitterness washed away with spirited laughter. “She thought to mark him, the cunt; thought it meant something, like anything she did could mean something.” Seven’s left hand flipped, revealing a similar brown line across perfectly pale flesh. “I made a mockery of that.”

He snagged the mug with his right, drank, and then pushed it to Victor.

The Oaf’s dare nearly brought snorting laughter past a mouthful of amber. He convulsed; heat rushed back to his face, and he managed to swallow before letting out a surprised cough. “Ponies,” he echoed, “I—guess, I was thrown off of a horse in Syliras, it’s a wonder I didn’t break anything; the great stupid beast was afraid of a rodent.” Seven took a breath, adding calmly, “I suppose I hate them too.”

The mug exchanged hands.

Again, Seven’s attentions settled on Laszlo. His partner, associate, or whatever impersonal title one or the other imposed on their rocky relationship. More than once, their conversations had descended into pissing contests and hurling insults. It was a task, to set aside enmity forged in matching scars on perfect palms, even when he knew the man in the Widow’s mask had done him no wrong. Tonight, Seven offered an acquiescent smile as he leaned back in his chair. “My father squirted his seed into the womb of some half-Widow that left me with him when I was born.” Seven kept the mug, fingers tracing circles along its handle thoughtfully, before lifting it to his lips. “I have a parent I’ve never met.”

[Laszlo]

Laszlo's head swiveled quietly toward Seven and Victor, his silvery eyebrows slanted over his petulant, glittering amethysts, still bewildered and annoyed by the profane nature of this game he'd been pulled into. The black of his pupils reflected some of the nearby lanternlight, and took on a slight yellow glow—a bit like a cat. They were talking about Runas; Laszlo remembered Seven's description of the crazed Ethaefal he'd before encountered. Naturally, he thought of Siofra, a troubled Dhani Ethaefal he'd gotten… "acquainted" with several weeks ago. She didn't seem all that insane, though like him she was forlorn and lost in an endless bad dream. He himself was not so unhinged, but circumstances beyond his control had forced him to keep his wits together. Easily, Laszlo might have ended up as miserable as Siofra was, or even Runas. It bothered him, just a little, that while the earthly races had their fraternal idea of kinship, Laszlo's "kin" all seemed prone to emotional and mental instability. Seven and Victor had survived together, and that was fascinating. Laszlo wondered what that must have felt like. Then, as Seven and Ulric both took their required drinks, Laszlo remembered his obligation. With a moody sigh, made more breathy to be obvious and scornful, his clawed fingers unlaced and removed his second boot. One ashen foot then curled atop the other to preserve warmth in the cool tavern. The indignation in Laszlo's violet stare grew more sour as he turned back to Ulric. His brow creased. "What? Why would you hate ponies?" It was a fair enough question (why would anyone hate ponies?), though Laszlo wouldn't be surprised if the Oaf simply hated everything. Courtney Fenwick had loved ponies (and birdies, and kitties, and puppies, and the little buzzy bugs with red shells and black spots). Given, she was only about six, so she wasn't aware of the work and care ponies required, or the ungodly amounts of shyke they left for their owners to clean up. They had the attention span of gnats, too, and they weren't as hardy as horses, mules, or oxen. On the trek through Kalea's Unforgiving Mountains, the traders who'd strapped their goods and small wagons to ponies had often fallen behind, especially on the rockier terrain. Often the caravan had had to wait, sometimes for hours, for the stragglers to catch up. Sometimes Laszlo wondered why they weren't simply left to the wolves. They were such useless animals. Laszlo turned back to Seven as he gave his account. "Actually, you have a point. Ponies were my least favorite animal when I was traveling through the Unforgiving. I would have been happy if bears or wolves had attacked and eaten them. I suppose wishing death on another being is hatred." He took a drink, though part of him felt like he was cheating. Petch that, Laszlo wanted to keep his shirt. Then Seven brought up parents. Of course, Laszlo immediately thought of Seven's dead father. He suppressed a shudder and tried not to think of it. "That isn't even fair," he whined, even as his sharp nails were flicking open the buttons down his chest. Under the humiliation, however, was an undeniable tingle that might have been described as "fun". The thin shirt slid away to reveal his narrow, pale shoulders. Possessing the body of a full Symenestra, Laszlo was much thinner without clothing. His proportions were just enough to convince an onlooker that he was indeed not human. Everything about him, his spindly arms, his lissome torso, his slender neck, looked just a little too long. The cold air elicited a shiver, and then he bundled his shirt on the table and leaned onto it with both arms. At least it was his turn now. Laszlo mulled over his short list of unique experiences. He had once gouged out a man's eyes with his own fingers, but Ulric had probably done that. He'd also seen countless women die undeserved deaths, but Ulric had probably done that. Laszlo had also petched a woman a mere twenty minutes after meeting her, and if Ulric had done that too, he didn't want to hear about it. "The Suvan Sea is where I was… born. One of my first memories is treading water and trying very hard not to drown. I saw a city and swam toward it. I don't remember reaching the shore, but I was told that's where I was found. I woke up several hours later in a bed." Laszlo scooped up his mug and watched the liquid churn around inside it. His broken reflection stared back. An idea sprang to life as he reviewed the memories of his first days. Perhaps Seven would appreciate it. "I once poisoned a girl with my own venom." He set the drink back down. "It was an accident. She kissed me, and I wasn't expecting it. Her tongue grazed my fang."

[Victor Lark]

Victor pulled off his second shoe for all the ponies he had never cared for (but hardly hated), and stole a long gulp from the lukewarm cup Seven had refilled, the bastard’s mug. “My mother was a slut and my father was a man,” he explained, without bitterness. Half-socked feet curled around the white toes under the table, relishing the cold contrast and subsequent shiver that moved from his feet to his fingertips. He was nearly as naked as Seven then, and all the better. The fatigue of the night was catching up to him, and he had plans for the game’s end.

But it was not over yet. Knocking a foot between Seven’s bony ankles, he lifted it to his knee so that he could remove the sock. “I’ve poisoned a girl with his,” he mentioned, nodding toward the quarter-blood symenestra and his less than lethal fangs. Then he added smugly, “And you could say I’ve poisoned plenty of others with my own. But I’ll take you literally because I like you.” An acidic smile flaked at Laszlo, and his feet were stripped bare.

He paused before he took his turn, stealing a voluntary drink for his boredom’s thirst. His gaze fell on Ulric’s hands. He wanted to smile at that collection of scars, to ask for their stories and see if he could match them, but he was not in the business of making that jaded frown turn upward. Glinting like polished silver, his eyes danced over the soldier’s roughened shoulders, chest, abdomen before they turned awkwardly to his own, comparably pathetic, scars. Mine are prettier, his eyes said as they rolled again, thumb pressing white against the single brown line on his palm. Ulric seemed to wear his irritation surprisingly well, given the ale in his belly and his wrath’s reputation, but that did not mean Victor would not still try to irritate him, to push him close and discover the line.

East of Sylira was what they shared; forsaken by a Goddess was what they did not. Victor dug his nail under the scab of those confessions and made his best attempt at ripping it open. “I’ve lived in the shadow of a God, and forsaken Him,” he admitted, turning a glance to Seven that was supposed to be an apology. He took his obligatory draught and left the cup half empty, then offered the explanation as an afterthought. “Rhysol.”

[Ulric]

Ulric’s eyes were transfixed by the candle, as if he could spy a swirl of invisible motes of dust breaching the bluish curling of smoke, so tiny, so tenuous in its climb to the ceiling that every blink forced him to wildly seek out its vanishing track. There was veracity in smoke, if not mirrors. The hazy ropes that bathed splintery rafters, seeing all yet saying nothing. Their relevance fled to paltry eaves in the sight of mortals. Departing in an untidy hush, through cracks in the shingles, chinks in mortar. There’s no way to capture it, he frowned. The cup of his hand, held so near to the wick’s flame, just delayed its insidious departure. The tapering gaps by his knuckles balked his purpose, vainly allowing them to slide by. Sooner or later, everything slips through your fingers.

Partly diverted, the tug of a grin sprung from the perplexity of reception to his equine prejudice. “They bit my ear off,” he grunted. That was reason enough, he felt. There was a dour, callous joy in finding that he wasn’t forlorn in his disgust. Those dark eyes rose, slid over pale skin, eyes like bolts of fine cloth tumbling from square, ovular, and angular faces. Infused by the harsh scales of appraisal, the hungry whisper in his head urged them on, hoping the infrequent spurts of ale would give him a clearer view of elusive visages. The spiders’ skins just hindered his subjugating heart. The rejoinders, no longer confined by ganging skepticism, spoke to a layering of scars. The sordid discord of the internal. That was like honeyed wine to his lips, and he lapped at it eagerly.

Their partner, the dandy, just revoked his joy in the whole air, made him clam up with the uneasy thought of their maneuvering. This was a game, but it also wasn’t. Even worse, the whispers were cloyed by a vapidity of insinuation, ever insisting that he’d already lost. Every word was taken from him, it seemed.

“Huh, I knew each of them, for however brief a span.” Ulric lifted a brow, leaning back as he bungled with the laces of a boot. “Drying scales on his fingers, drying seed caked on her thighs, and none of it his. That’s what I recall, anyway.” The cords were stiff, caked by brine, so that he just kept fretting at them, jerking until the boot tumbled with a thud.

Thing was, before it’d even fallen, the gavel had rung. His fingers slid over, began on the laces of his other. “There’s a metaphor in there, surely,” he grunted, hoping to divest the larger spider of a facetious retort. “But even then, there’s venom enough bubbling from lips that aren’t quite so pallid, seeping around incisors that are truncated, not elongated.”

Ulric flung away the other boot, the legs of his chair scraping as he jerked it forward. His fingers swept over the table’s timbers, as if trying to scour away a residue of grime. There was a calculating instant, set to the vague creaking of gears, the infernal buzz of wasps in their nests. That face, like a sprawl of blank canvas, turned to him, anchored by knobs of gray.

Eagerly, his grin took on a fevered gleam. “Rhysol,” he hushed, and reached for his mug.

[Seven Xu]

“Stupid game,” Seven concluded under his breath, all but glaring across the table at a smooth face and storm grey eyes. He was hopeful, once; his human could so easily unravel the thread that bound secrets to people with a sweet whisper, a brief touch, and Seven was left with the victories of those efforts. This was different. He’d been roped into a game, and he was losing.

The halfblood had never known the lips of a woman, nor did his venom do more than startle and burn; it took too long to wear a mouth down to raw soreness, and the mouth he so often felt, begged for it. Stupid, stupid game. A hand dropped beneath the table and loosed the leather cord that cinched the front of his trousers, ripped it through a gathering of eyeholes, and set it wordlessly on the growing pile of losses. “I’d hardly say you poisoned her,” he added, hard crimson never leaving the simpering bird joined to him by unseen toes and unspoken exchanges. “But, I’ve never been more eager to leave work.”

He managed to slough off near-black roughspun from his legs without leaving his seat. There may have been a place or time his words would run together and his face would turn all shades of pink, but in the company of his bird, and an ethaefal that had chanced upon them in more abasing circumstances, Seven was more cold and irritated, than anything. He still could not manage to look upon the scarred Oaf at his side. Soft-padded and dirtied white feet met the tops of darker ones, and he reached for a lump of faded red that had, not long ago, occupied another’s shoulders.

It wasn’t cheating, if it wasn’t his.

The fabric was still warm and smelled of sweet everything, of fragrances he had grown used to; sweat and tangy soot clung to his nostrils when he dipped his chin to finger buttons through their holes. You aren’t supposed to match clothing to your eyes, but with you, I think we can make an exception. Seven’s unequivocal laughter washed the sourness from his countenance.

The half-empty bastard’s mug changed greedy hands. Their tiled sky was bleeding into a sickening grey, warnings of fog and a not so distant dawn. Between the Oaf and the Son of the Sun, Seven’s sleep-impoverished mind floundered in inane symbolism; if he had gathered anything tonight, it was a stinking pile of evidence against the stability of Ulric’s wits. He was relieved, when the man forgot their game to grunt allegiance to Chaos.

“So we’re all blasphemers, then,” he took a mouthful of amber, looked over his shoulder. “I wonder what Ned thinks of the gods, or of four men grown drinking and stripping for each other.” See? It sounds absurd when you say it out loud. Seven’s nose wrinkled over a queer half-smile, and he surrendered his wooden mug to waiting olive hands.

[Laszlo]

They bit my ear off. Laszlo winced, his violet eyes flicking involuntarily to the misshapen point of Ulric's broken ear. It was a relief whenever a stranger proffered explanation of obvious, disfiguring scars. There was a certain ache in restraining them out of politeness and courtesy. Not that the Oaf would likely know what those were, if he were faced with it. So there it was: a horse ate it. Grim. The cold air pricked Laszlo's bare skin, making him grit his teeth. Despite his earlier protests, he understood the point of the game. Victor's love of games had a purpose, which became more obvious now. The sort of environment they created did away with the need for pretenses and assumptions, or silly things like fear and mild contempt. Ulric was a murderer, but only as much as Seven was, and yet Laszlo seemed to make an exception for the Dra. To the Oaf, Laszlo and Seven were a Widow and a mongrel, and he didn't seem to have much love for Victor, either. A game like this one stripped away more than clothing, it bared character. Perhaps it was character that the Ravokian most enjoyed. Ulric was beginning to take on new lights. Even his riddling speech began to form sense, and Laszlo wondered if it was the ale, or his growing patience. It had been reflex to slip the killer into the same mental category as men like Ned. Still, Laszlo didn't like the idea that he was shirtless and sitting not six feet away from the biting edge of an axe. Seven's remark pulled a sudden laugh from the Ethaefal. Quickly afterward, he snatched up his mug and downed whatever was left in it, then cleaned his chin on the back of his arm. "I honestly don't care what Ned thinks," Laszlo mumbled, sinking his black claws further into the bundle of his shirt. "Are we done with the game? Did someone win?" He turned to Ulric, who still had most of his clothing attached to him. "You do, I think." There was a pause as he looked down, pinning down stray ideas chasing through his head and trying to form a complete thought out of them. "Gods, what is your story, anyway?" Ale had made Laszlo bold. "I can't put it together; this story you have is so fraught with man-eating horses and women's used corpses. Are you a raider, or something?" That didn't seem likely. As far as Laszlo knew, raiders came in sets of dozens. There only seemed to be one Ulric in Alvadas. "Where are you from, anyway? I can't place your accent, but you must have come from somewhere. And your name is… what did Victor call you… Ulric?" And why did you kill her?