Doomed from the Start

[Urs Wardell]

1st of Frost, 120 AS

The store wasn't anything special. A wooden shack, basically. Snuggled in-between two much larger buildings of the same design (common), the shop would have been easily missed, had it not been flagged by a swinging wooden sign overhanging the cobblestone street. The dreary grey paint had chipped at the window corners and around the door, revealing a wood of an even darker color.

This was the monster's shop.

He'd lost a season searching for her. Worse, he's lost money searching for her. Gold paid to honest guards and silver to mercenaries, everything spent to secure his own safety as he wandered around the city's underbelly and too close to the Warrens. All for nothing. No impressions of the smoke born demon in any of his investigations.

And then, just when he'd given up, he's spied her on the street. Just like magic. Like Fate.

It'd be easy, then, to track her. Urs didn't follow her that day. He cast his magic out, wider than ever before, catching pieces he could use. A piece of hair. A piece of cloth. The impression of a footprint. Three things to strengthen her aura to his sense, to better see all that she left behind.

A small bell, trapped on a string between the door and the rest of the shop, announced him as he entered the store. Urs held his magic close, barely extending it beyond himself, but still - this was it. This place was hers. The store reeked of her, of power, of age.

"Hello?"

[Lyra]

Lyra sighed as she scratched out another line on the ledger she was editing. In the past, before this age when things were so very different, she had not concerned herself with this sort of work. There had always been others to see to the details of the day to day minutial. Someone else ensured the supplies were stocked, the items cataloged, and other services paid for. In all honesty Lyra was beginning to consider the act of holding a shop to be a true hassle.

Artur slithered over her shoulder, and Lyra pet his head affectionately as she almost glared at the page in front of her. She still needed to pick up her next shipment of infused ink from Jacun, and she has an appointment for a fitting in several days that she could not miss. Not to mention the project in her lab. Fletcher had been... rather vague as to the nature of the contractors he was sending to her for the expansion of her lab. Simply grinning with a 'you will get what you pay for' in response to her questions.

"They will need to be made to forget." Lyra said, resting back in her chair and staring up at the ceiling. For a moment she relaxed, closing her eyes and filling Artur slither around her neck and inch his way into her hair. Was this the right path for her?

The thought and others similar had plagued Lyra of late. This world, these people... they were not hers. The world she knew was lost to dust and with it the ancient struggles of which Lyra had been a part. It was as she considered points such as this that Lyra came to realize that she did not know what she was to do any longer. True she had built this shop and done what she had to learn more of her current surroundings. She was also very close to achieving her first major goal, a body that would not decay. She scratched at a piece of skin that had flaked off at her neck. That particular projected would need to be completed soon. And then?

The sound of the door opening made Lyra open her eyes. It seemed a customer had arrived. She pushed aside the papers. Crossing her legs and folding her hands in her lap. She then put on her usual smile, waiting for the person to enter so she could greet them as a proper owner should.

"Lady of Whispers"

[Urs Wardell]

1st of Frost, 120 AS

Ah, yes, there. Urs Saw her before he saw her, a kaleidoscope of impressions, intentions, colors, scents, and textures, all for him to explore. He was bold, braver than he should be, but that's what desperation did. Desperation spurred action, demanded immediacy.

He dived.

There she was, the monster, dark smoke given flesh through dark blessing or arts. Urs felt it, the power that thrummed under her (not hers) skin. It was a concentrated version of what stained the store, neon and sharp and old. Confidence flashed like silver, blinding in the throne of her, more secure than anything else Urs Saw. She knew her power and basked in it, even as she played the part of humble shopkeeper.

This was her, the thing he released, the thing trapped beneath gears and copper forged. An ancient thing, a witch, a hag, and more. He didn't care, he wouldn't care even if she tried to kill him when they first met because she represented an out. An escape from his world and in to a better one. Hers. A place where he could learn and become strong and ensure his own happiness, independent of his family and anyone else.

"I need your help," he said, bluntly, uncaring, the truth unmasking his thin veneer of confidence and showing his desperation plainly. Urs was talented, and sure he'd see her machinations, her manipulations, but he had his own - and further entangling himself with her and her goals was enough that, eventually, he could wear them as a shield, as armor, when he brought down the full attention of the powerful.

"I helped you, I saw you," Urs said, searching her for any sort of recognition. "I could have ignored you and left you there to rot. I could have tossed you deeper into the Warrens, ensuring that artifact would hold you for centuries longer. I didn't - because I need help. I need to learn what you can teach because I need to escape."

[Lyra]

Lyra blinked, her smile slipping somewhat as she felt surprised, and then confused. This was not expected. From in her hair Artur hissed as he pushed his head out between her dark locks, large golden eyes staring unblinkingly at Urs with interest.

For several long moments, Lyra did not move. In her mind, she played over her recall of time since her freedom. She saw the people she had met, spoken with, and interacted with. She remembered the Warrens and the times that came before her escape. Much of what was between though was... fuzzy. Her smile returned, and she casually pet Artur on the head, letting him curl around her wrist and arm as she did.

"You seem the excitable sort." Lyra said softly, looking down at the serpent as she did, "Be'fior... I welcome you to this shop, and I offer you my services as I do any other. Though think you not that you can claim recompense for some imagined service."

Looking up she raised an eyebrow, "Who are you?"

[Urs Wardell]

There, nothing. Where recognition was expected, Urs saw nothing. Absence marked him as unfamiliar to her.

Irritating. "I am Urs Zauber," he clipped, his name wielded against her like a dagger, to be stabbed, to be left, to be remembered. He was clearly frustrated, pink stained his face in uncomfortable blotches. "I was once told to never run from something immortal; it attracts their attention," he says, recalling a story his mother used to tell him. "More the fool, me, to have stood before you, still as stone. I should have run, I should have fought, I should have screamed, but I did nothing."

His magic barely acknowledges the snake. It dances along the skin, dry and scaled, boring. He feels her, on it, but that wasn't unusual for a pet. Animals were simple things, of hunger, of fear, of pleasure. This one reeked of obedience. Domesticity. Once upon a time, he would have been curious at that, and ask how she had turned something so wild so tame.

But he already had the answer, he had tasted the raw iron of her power, and could smell it again, here. There was nothing imagined about what had happened. There was nothing confusing her for someone else. The monster playing at shopkeeper would find no success at deterring him.

"Well done little human. I will not forget this," he echoed, her own words thrown like needles, adding to his own. Urs was upset she didn't remember him but he could remedy that. "You spent ages trapped in copper and glyph. If not me, if not your own promise, surely you remember your prison?" Even now, he could still recall every detail, every picture, the exact moment he'd saved her. Hope, he'd thought as he'd broken through the puzzle. "It was a story, wasn't it? Or a warning, etched in pictographs."

He watched her, allowing for a moment of silence, his spell coiling and squeezing. "Tell me, do you truly not know who I am?" Urs could see any lie. He had no plans to let her go, not this time.

[Lyra]

She smiled. Through the symphonies Lyra could hear the man's frustration, which sang like a clear treble above his other melodies, rapid and demanding attention. It had not been intentional, and yet Lyra enjoyed the reaction just the same.

This one is precious. Lyra thought to Artur, rubbing his scales with a thumb as she did. After a few seconds though a moment of recognition clicked in her mind.

Ah, the one from that day... Deep in the warrens, when she was newly freed. A boy, filled with longing for something beyond what he had. She never had gotten a name, and even if she had Lyra would likely have forgotten it.

Did she really say those words? Perhaps. Not that it truly mattered. She did not respond to Urs at first. Instead she turned her head, looking down into the shop as if in thought. There were no other customers today. They were alone. Perhaps she could convince him to leave her be, perhaps she could feign ignorance. Lyra even briefly considered stripping his memories, but finally she simply sighed. With one hand she pushed a small stand with a dragonshard on top of it just slightly to the side, aligning it with a glyph etched into the surface of her desk. A series of glyphs lit in sequence then, spreading out down the desk and along the walls, and in the direction of the shop door there was a distinct 'click' sound as the door locked itself.

"You, child, give yourself far too much credit." She said at last, sitting back in her chair and letting Artur slither back up onto her shoulders.

"You, weak as you are, freed me?" the woman scoffed, "My magics had weakened the seals to the point mortal hands could tamper with their mechanisms. Had you not come along I would have eventually freed myself, be you certain of that."

There was little point in hiding herself, Lyra supposed. She waved at Urs, contempt in her voice, "I remember you, Be'fior. What is it you seek from me?"

[Urs Wardell]

There, there it was. The missing link, a connection flared. There, were recognition wasn't it now was. It felt like him, then, the vague memory that bloomed there. It felt young, it felt naive, it felt like prey. Periwinkle blue was strongest, a distortion, not a reflection. There, he saw himself, as she saw him.

Magic flared and his struck back, hungry. Pictographs, hot with sudden power, glowed in succession, on the desk, on the walls, to the door. He strained himself, following the light. He heard the click of the lock, he felt it shut, and then he smiled.

Urs was desperate. His options were narrowed and narrowing, even as he dealt with the witch. The recognition was good, the lock was better; she would deal with him, in one way or another.

"I see flaws," he started, still standing, "Even then, I could notice what others would have missed. The damaged gears, the rusted hatch, the cracks in the copper." Even now, he could remember it perfectly. The orb, under his eye, was a dingy thing, smeared with mud. Under his Sight, it was marvelous trap of power, broken just enough for him to undo. "I know you would have freed yourself. I felt your power overwhelm what remained of the wards. Still, I and my children's children would have lived long lives before you ever saw the sun."

He was due credit. But more importantly, he needed to be seen as someone worth her time. His Semblance is what had won his grandmother a connection to House Dahshida. It had won him an arranged marriage. Perhaps, finally, it would win him something he wanted.

"Power," Urs said, bluntly, "Power enough to keep myself free. I know you could teach me something. Anything, I -," his voice broke; so close, he was so close now. "I learn faster than most."

[Lyra]

As Urs went on Lyra stared at the boy impassively, stroking Artur's scales from time to time. Despite herself, she gave the boy some small amount of respect. It was true, in part, that without him she would have been stuck in that prison for decades more, but more than that was his eyes. She stared at those then, understanding settling in her mind as she listened to his symphonies.

He has eyes that can see more than the physical. Lyra thought, a faint wiggle of interest passing her through before it was extinguished. Yet despite what she may have thought, the fact was this boy, this child had come to her demanding what was owed him. He also knew who she used to be, a dangerous combination when added to the clear ambition in his eyes.

"Power?" She asked, bemused when he had finished. Her face twisted into a grimace, and disappointment flared heavily in her soul as she stared at Urs. After a moment she relaxed again, her aura settling once more.

"You free me, of your own accord. You waited until nearly a season past to seek me out once again, and when you do you come to me and demand something as ephemeral as 'power'? The question was direct and her words clipped. It was Lyra's turn to be frustrated, for it spoke of how little this one knew.

"Let us say, Be'fior, that I can grant you what you deem to be 'power'. You said it yourself that I would have escaped without your hand, and to one such as I time is simply a passing fancy, unlike the absolute force your kind are subject to." Her eyes narrowed in turn at Urs, "You are a fast learner? What good is that to me? What use have I of one such as you who seems so desperate, and yet unfocused? In times past I would have ended your life to spare you the suffering your life would inevitably cause yourself and others."

Falling silent Lyra simply looked at Urs. Some things he said, in a way, resonated with her, but she would not be there or roped into anything. She was Binder of Fates, not one whom fate binded.

[Urs Wardell]

He watched her aura clear and structure a void, an Urs-shaped space, the color stripped away to reveal transparency. Something about him, realized. His magic, probably. Or maybe something personal. Disappointment filled the gap, bitter and liquid, like cod oil. Something flashed, something reflective, a mirror snapshot. His spell lingered there, trying to taste understanding.

"I am desperate," Urs acknowledged, sighing. There wasn't any use in hiding it. He'd been promised a year, at least, to bargain, to earn money, paving the way to his freedom. He should have known better than to trust his family. "I won't lie to you, there were other opportunities before I came to you. Other paths I could have taken. No offense, but I don't think anyone who can see like I do would risk dealing with someone so dangerous."

There was no pretending, between them. In the old stories, the prince never approached the witch for help until the very end. Not until they exhausted every other resource. Not until their day was spent and the clock ticked ever closer to midnight.

"Let me be more specific then," he said, pulling from what he knew, what he'd seen, what he could guess. "I want to learn magic from before - I've seen things older than the Sundering. I could recognize that much, about your prison." This was true. That's what he wanted - the Circle could only provide so much, and besides, if he sought lessons there, his grandmother would hear about it. "I know my talents. I could provide help where you own senses lack, or where you'd appreciate a second glance. I don't need to understand what I'm seeing to spy the flaws. I sense those first, before anything else."