Sine Mascerata

[Aurin]

Aurin was quiet for all of that. But a beat or two after the apology, he rose with a faint grunt of annoyance—not at Arry exactly—and joined him by the window, although he was careful to give him plenty of space between them.

"You aren't wrong," he acknowledged quietly, eyes taking in the cityscape, "but that is, as the scholars say, reductive." He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. "I've blamed your... Mesmer... for my feelings before, but that isn't it. Well, perhaps a few nudges here and there, but I could semble a spell slung at me. A part of me will always see you with that hat pulled down to hide your ears, a pretty boy in need, someone to take care of... I'll always want you. Always sort of did, even when you were too young."

Aurin shrugged that admission off. He had always been up-front with people that he was a bad man.

"I'll always feel a little bit of ownership, even when I know you've grown into your own man. And more beside. And you sacrificed your life in Kalzasi... me... that's fine. But you don't have to sacrifice me."

His knuckles hurt a bit where they supported him against the sill on the opposite side of the window from Arry. He drank his wine tetchily.

"I'm not actually demanding anything of you, you know." It felt more like offering, but how things made sense in his mind rarely seemed to translate into words or into Arry's understanding. "What do you reckon? Did Mum let me in so I'd misbehave and show you more of what you aren't missing in your life?" His smirk was tired, self-deprecating somehow. He had come a long way to see pretty Arry, knowing he would find His Exalted Highness instead. Perhaps if they let him help hunt down the bitch queen, he could rally, but right now he just felt tired and irrelevant.

He just wanted to be naked with Arry in his old bed that hadn't been properly big enough for the two of them, complaining about him as code for expressing his affection, the two of them clinging to each other in the dark.

[Arvælyn]

“Heh…” A dry smirk painted Arry’s lips, “Leave it to you to think being compared to an empire is reductive.” His eyes found the Umbrian semblance of sky, as his Craft was addressed. Aurin’s fears had so often been his own. The notion that all of his close relationships were artificial products of his subliminal desires hatching out had long haunted him. It used to devastate him, but here at the Solunarian seat of power he wondered whether it would be so awful if it were true. He was an actor, after all, and knew how to lose himself in a pretty fantasy.

“I didn’t feel like I was too young…” Arry noted, perhaps in consolation to the confession.

“I don’t feel as though I’ve sacrificed you… just a part of our relationship I could not blithely share. Perhaps I am the empire, then… I sought to rule you, but you were too rebellious to serve my strictures. Now that you govern yourself, I hope we can be allies without skirmishing over landscapes once shared.”

He shrugged at the mention of his mother.

“Why shouldn’t she let you in? She knows who you are to me. She would bar you if she thought you a threat, but she knows I’d likely find out and be vexed.

“She is not who we once conjectured. You should try to meet with her whilst you’re here. I fear your intelligence is outdated and your interests are more aligned than you realise.” He paused and considered,

“Interests, though perhaps not your end goals.” There was a selflessness to Cithæra that he’d never have assigned to Aurin born, as it was, in the crucible of zealotry.

[Aurin]

For all the time they had spent together, all the time since for him to consider, for all the sembling, all his keen understanding of how most other people worked, Aurin still couldn't understand Arry's decision to leave him. Solunarium, he understood; he understood wanting to find one's history when one didn't know it, even as he had fled his own and sought to bury it and barricade himself against its return. Chastity, he didn't understand; he didn't understand why Torin had been the one to make Arry spiral, why Arry wanted Finn all to himself and to give himself to no other, especially when a succession would require he make babies or lay eggs or however mixed-race people like him procreated, when Arry was an affluent, powerful man and those were the sort of men the world allowed their dalliances even in realms where strict monogamy was de rigueur.

The sweat from his mask had already evaporated in the arid desert air, even down here underground.

His gaze strafed Arry, and he sipped his wine thoughtfully.

"Aye, don't mind having a drink with Mum," he said finally. "Going to set up a little something in Tertium, at least. Portions for... hm, jackals. I've infiltrated the covens of Zaichaer. Travelers. Face-dancing assassins. Now that I've mapped the route through the web, having an office on the continent will give me more excuse to stop by and check on you." He reached out to ruffle the royal hair, testing how far his affection would be accepted.

"Dunno what it'll be like... Do you talk politics all the time? Do you see theater? Fuck, guess I could do an exchange with the Golden Peacock even. More reasons to come and... hmm..."

They used to talk about Arry's career. They would talk about Cabaret gossip, then Peacock drama. Aurin would let Arry "teach" him about art, aesthetic, and all that. Aurin would wine and dine his little prince. They would fuck, they would fight. Now Arry had his own spy network so Aurin couldn't even bring that to the table.

[Arvælyn]

Arry sensed the unvoiced confusion at the line he’d drawn in the proverbial sand before he left for the literal. He was more in control of his Craft at this point than when they’d first arrived, but he still felt that familiar refrain. It had been a motif ever since the edict was first mandated. Let Aurin know he’d heard it, there were worse incursions to be brooked and it was better off addressed

“If I’d chosen to stay, I’d have closed your world around you like a vice. I would have burned everything you loved that wasn’t me. You’d have grown to despise me for it, but in time you would come to see that I was your only anchor left in this world. You’d either resign yourself to this and mute your light suit me or you’d kill me to cut the tether and blaze once more over my grave.” He grimaced,

“Even that wouldn’t be possible anymore. A vengeful people would demand vengeance of you. This way, it’s only one door I’m closing. You keep the rest of the manse. Just one, meagre little boudoir is locked up and denied you. You have the run of the world and all my burns are of the verbal variety.” He pursed his lips.

“I would be lying if I said your vexation didn’t please some subtle, vindictive part of me. It was a punishment, at first… or might have been an ultimatum if you’d treated as such. Fortunately, you made the hard choice that made mine the easier. Only in hindsight do I recognise how miserable I’d have made you if we kept on as we were.” He downed the wine in his cup, and quietly urged a servus to refill it.

“There’s a lot of politicking, aye… I do see theatre and I’m still doing a great deal of acting even if it isn’t on the stage. How about you? Is the new Shokaze wrapped around your little finger? Or perhaps your cock?” He smirked, and sipped from his freshly filled goblet.

[Aurin]

At the time, no doubt Aurin would have accepted the challenge. Even now, he wasn't sure what he would say if, after that monologue, Arry offered his heart and his body. So much of Aurin's life had been the thrum of a single string—the tension between his intense, primal desire to survive, and his self-destructive, self-loathing death wish. A cavalier smirk hovered on the edge of manifestation as he considered.

The ultimatum had resulted in, perhaps, true altruism. The part of him that knew Arry would be better off without him outweighed his need for Arry's adulation, that had forced his hand. Certainly, there was the petty desire not to be controlled, not to have his whims and fancies fulfilled, but there were other ways to fulfill those. Perhaps a part of him had recognized that secret fire in Arry and been drawn like a moth to a flame. Perhaps that part of him had recognized the greatness wilting inside of Torin, as well.

Aurin did want to possess and not be possessed. He did want to play a terrible game of chicken against this royal draconic new Arry. Perhaps he had seen too many poetic dramas at the Golden Peacock, but it seemed almost romantic to go down in passionate flames together, loving and killing each other as one final act of... Whatever that was.

"To fight a fire with fire will make the darkness depart," he said, quoting a song he had heard Finn sing before the minstrel had fled Kalzasi with his golden boy. "So come a little closer and end my melody."

Rather than sigh, he shotgunned more than half a glass of wine and held it out for the slave to refill. He wasn't sure if he respected Finn or pitied him, or perhaps both and more besides.

"I don't suppose you think of old Aurin every once in a while when you're... or, ah... one of your slaves is rubbing one out for you?" His smirk was brittle, and he took the bait of an unrelated topic with gusto. "Oh, haven't even spoken more than a handful of polite words to Karam Senue. You know how Yserloo is at a party." He shook his head. "There's something big, dark, and dangerous that's going to come out of the Midden... or the Warrens... eventually. Warned the old Shinsei. I've been hoarding a dark artefact under ward and key for some time now... like a dragon. I think it's a something that requires a baby god more than it requires a Kalzasern king, but what do I know? Perhaps the deep dark terror will rise up and tear Kalzasi to shreds and then I'll be here in your capital begging for bread on the streets."

He sneered, but it was aimed at the powers that talked their big game but didn't act on it. Still and all, he was careful not to think unkindly thoughts about Talon Novalys with too much fervor, lest he think Aurin was praying.

[Arvælyn]

"If we're to lock horns, Aurin, you'll want to choose another weapon than fire..." Arry said, a churning purr low in his throat causing ribbons of smoke to waft through his narrow nostrils, floating up and dissipating in a faint halo over his horned head.

"But it is a beautiful sentiment, all the same, and an enticing one. I always did favour the tragedies, but I would not end your melody as you share it with new realms. That said, I hope there isn't too much darkness daunting your days. Surely you're much too busy for that with your international network and whatever web of lovers you're amassing in every port on Ransera." He shook his head with a chuckle.

"I'm not so posh that I'm above manipulating my own member, Aurin... And what I think about when I do, is between me and the Founders. But, if it comforts you: Know that my thoughts are my own province." As the talk shifted to Kalzasern affairs, his shoulders relaxed somewhat.

"I thought to ask you about Yserloo, but I rather assumed you'd have made him obsolete and sent him packing by now. I suppose that would be fickle even for Kazasi's standards, though..." He paused, wincing. "Kalzasi. They drop the L in Vastian and it seems my tongue has gotten used to that." He arched a brow at the talk of some dark and powerful entity threatening his whilom home.

"That fucking place." He said, shaking his head grimly. He'd left for fear of Zaichaer and the Imperium, but Kalzasi seemed to have no dearth of existential threats beyond the obvious ones.

"If I hear anything particularly foreboding from our embassy there, you'll be the first to know."

[Aurin]

"You used to like the way we burned," he protested, his smirk gone back to those of yore. The games protected the true vulnerabilities sometimes. "I know I did. Anyway, lovers? Pshaw. Not all of us are of such golden blood. Some of us have to use sex as a weapon and a tool."

Of course, he had taught Arry how to do that as well.

"I wonder if our erstwhile host would fancy a bit of foreign trade," he mused over his wine. "At least then I could go back to Karnor with my dignity intact, having tumbled a foreign prince." He seemed to think about it for a moment, then dismissed it with a gesture.

"Yserloo and Elric are right where I want them. They have the ideas I want them to have, and dance on my little strings. I outsource the accounting, and the theater provides me with a reputable cover for my own activities. Helped me suss out the Zaichaeri covens, helps me network using my own face." He shrugged. "I don't love the place anymore, though. I loved it when it elevated you, made you happy, or at least fed your ambitions. It was a tool to help you, and to help myself. It's still useful, but... eh..." He shrugged again.

"Perhaps I can invest in some local talent to immortalize your dramatic story and bring it back to the Kalzasern stage. You could even come back and see some slip of an elf try to do for you what you did for Aværys. Would that be enough to bring you to Kazasi for a spell?" He opted into the Vastian joke.

And he supposed that it wouldn't be too far a stretch to assume by Arry's inferences that he still rubbed them out thinking about his first love.

[Arvælyn]

“And now we know why I so favoured the fire…” Arry replied, trailing off from that thought as he took a sip. He was drinking faster that usual. He could chalk that up to his brush with death, rather than the company if he worked at it.

He arched a brow, smirking as he scooted closer to Aurin where they both perched on the sill. Leaning close enough that the human could smell the smoke on his breath, he whispered.

“Is it mine to teach you, then, that greater power lies in the withholding?” His teeth were slightly clenched, but he was near enough Aurin’s ear that he would hear the sound of his tongue rolling along the back of them.

“I can’t promise you a prince, but I’ve little doubt there’s a Duke amongst my kin who’d need little coaxing to couple…” Though he did frown at the notion. Even with no claim over Aurin’s cock, he didn’t much fancy the image of other people worshiping it. Least of all kinsmen.

At the elaboration on the state of things with Yserloo, he nodded.

“So, I wasn’t far off after all.” He drew back a bit and rested his back, between the wings, against the window frame.

“Well, if you’re interested in commissioning an opera, I happen to know a superlative bard who is intimately familiar with my story and like to portray me with all due reverence…” He grinned blithely, though well he knew what he was doing in posing the suggestion.

“Regardless of whom pens my tale, though, that’s more than enough reason for me to pay the realm a visit. Just try to time out the performances so they take place before or after whatever doom beast is threatening the realm these days, won’t you?”

[Aurin]

It was enough to know that he was once the fire, that Arry feared that fire might devour. Well, it wasn't enough. Aurin was like to taunt him forever, dancing the knife's edge because he had long been high strung between competing desires: survival instinct and death-wish. Rutting amongst Arry's new family seemed less likely as an outlet than the platinum princeling. Of course, these calculations were hardly conscious; the mind that dissected others shied from self-examination. He had declared his love, but it wasn't enough. He wasn't enough unless he gave himself over entire, and that was a thing he couldn't do. Too many had taken pieces from the heart he claimed he didn't have.

Ah, well.

Arry's piece of him would continue to burn.

The compliments were ashes, though. Arry hadn't been there to watch his slow, calculated battle against the Avialæ dilettante and the grand artiste that they hadn't even known they were fighting. The humble money man ran the show and they didn't even know it, but Arry would have known it. Arry would have been the star that he thrust into the firmament by sheer will and cunning. No, he was not proud of how he hid his portions for foxes behind peacock feathers. It had been his performance, but the intended audience was here, long lands and seas apart from where he should have been, treading those boards and warming his bed—a dragon for a songbird.

"An opera it will be, then," he declared. "What else does one get the boy who has everything?"

He smirked. He might even have inched slightly closer, mirroring Arry's own body language.

"Perhaps we can arrange it so opening night lands on your arrival as the doom beast bent on colonization...?"

[Arvælyn]

"Ha!" Arvælyn clucked his tongue and shook his head.

"Kalzasi..." He overemphasised the 'L' this time, as if to reinforce in his own mind that it was part of the city's name, "...should be so lucky as to find itself under Umbrian management. But you, I think, would be unhappy if the Jewel of the Northlands was cut into something beautiful, yet symmetrical." He puffed up his chest,

"For love of thee, Aurin, I shall scratch Kalzasi from our ledger of conquest... at least until the rest of your continent is claimed. If I might use my privilege to grant you some small bastion in this winding world, then I shall." He smirked as he bowed his head slightly- perhaps a bit of his portrayal of his erstwhile leading role and present liege god showed through this playful performance.

"At any rate, it is good to see you. I'm sorry the circumstances of my attempted assassination muddied the waters at the beginning there, but now that I can see clearly I know it wasn't easy to come. And it is different in the end, isn't it? To spend time in person rather than via arcane projections and the like? Close enough to feel your warmth and hear your heartbeat, it reminds me that you're alive and real..." He trailed off and perked slightly as a servant approached. He held up his hand to halt him, smiling.

"It would seem mine amatus is returned."

The servus grimaces slightly and rested on their back heel, seemingly disappointed that he didn't have the opportunity to actually give voice to his message before the Princeps Coronam exploited his eldritch Craft to mine it out before it was given voice.

"I should go to him. You're welcome to come, but I know you won't..." Arry rose to his feet, stretching arms and wings wide as he rolled his neck. "We'll have rooms set up for you here if you haven't already arranged lodging." This was spoken loudly and pointedly enough that the servi would hear it for the instruction it was.