Ready, Set, Go! Part II (Stefan & Brenner)

[Brenner Dornkirk]

"Indeed." Brenner replied and, though his response was succinct, the dopey, tipsy grin never fled his face. The Air Commander didn't mind the overly generous assumptions people were wont to make about his virility and practical experience in the bedroom. In fact, he rather encouraged them. Even Stefan, by all accounts his closest friend as well as his brother, was allowed to buy into that mystique as far as Brenner was concerned. In fact, it was a lie he even told himself that was, at this point, baked in so deeply that he believed it himself. After all, he did have enough nights that were sundered into little fragments of memory from copious drinking, and the subsequent days that were overcast in the nebulous mirk of its consequences.

"Mm..." Brenner considered the options presented but, feeling defiant, elected to offer up a third option. "Neither." He declared with his hallmark stridency and certitude, "We should race." He cracked a crooked grin, and looked ahead.

After a quick beat, he took off- extracting himself from his brother's grip with the forward momentum. Stefan had a few extra inches on Brenner, and so the younger Dornkirk felt well within his rights to get a bit of a head start. He got the urge to be active, sometimes, in the midst of a boozy binge and this was such an occasion. It tended to present itself in spirts that resulted in sprints, so it was unlikely the inspiration would last him all the way to their destination, but for the moment he was in good form.

Loping down the sidewalk, sidestepping passersby at the last moment, he glanced over his shoulder just in time to see Stefan overtaking him.

"Scheiße!" He wrinkled his nose and doubled down, accelerating to a speed he surely couldn't maintain at length.

[Stefan Dornkirk]

Stephan knew that Brenner wasn't actually sneaking under the skirts of every fair young thing to cross his path. As much as they shared the younger Dornkirk could never have kept silent about so many liaisons and the bragging rights that went along with them. If asked, Stephan would have lauded his brother's status as a gentleman who would never touch and tell, but he knew better. Not that Brynn wasn't a gentleman, but that they were honest with each other more than they were honest with themselves. The thought was troublesome and not in line with the evening so Stephan tucked it back like an errant strand of hair and concentrated on trying to figure out how to achieve the remaining goals the night held.

His brow furrowed at the rejection of his suggestions, an expression that quickly turned into the rolling of his eyes and his little brother made what Stephan was sure was intentionally the most ridiculous one he could have come up with. With his patented rakish grin Brenner was out from under his arm and off like a (slightly drunken) shot from one of the Searing Victory's canons. Stephan sighed but there was nothing for it really, so he lurched into motion after.

Brenner was an athletic man in many ways, but Stephan had two advantages. The first was his height, he had always been taller and the advent of adulthood had not altered that state. It would have felt sideways if Brenner had ever really caught up. The second advantage was that Stephan ran a lot. He had a running path maintained in the garden of the estate and it was not unusual for him to be seen circling the Windworks, outside in good weather or around the outline of the working floor in inclement. When he couldn't get his ideas down on paper, when he couldn't handle another minute in society, when he missed Brenner or worried about either of their futures, he ran.

So, even with the head start his brother had taken and not knowing exactly where they were heading it didn't take long for Stephan to catch up. Brenner put on a spurt of speed when he heard Steph coming up behind him but that only allowed him to retain the lead for a moment. The older brother, deep in his cups as he was, didn't consider that it would be a poor idea to do as he might have when they were both pre-pubescent and simply bull-rushed up behind his sibling and scooped him into his arms. The maneuver almost has them both tumbling down the moon-washed streets but Stephan managed the footwork to catch himself. He turned Brenner to flipped him over his shoulder and kept running. It had been years since he had started using shoulder weights when just running had stopped proving a full enough workout. Brenner was heavier and less well balanced than the tools Stephan preferred to use but he still kept them going for a good few blocks before he really slowed. They were getting looks from those who remained out on the streets at that hour but none of them would have been movers in the Dornkirk's social circles so it added only amusement to the situation.

Slowing to almost a halt at a major intersection of roads Stephan glanced one way and then the other attempting to recall the best route to a corner that might have coaches waiting. As athletic as he enjoyed being, the idea of actually running the entire way was both uncomfortable and unrealistic. His mind caught up to his feet and he took the right-hand option, loping along with his jostled package.

"Don't feel bad, Brynn," He consoled with a grin that his brother could not see, "If I plop you down first, technically, you'll have won." He slapped his brother roundly on his upturned ass, hard, just before reaching the next crossroads and placing him, gently but without dignity, back onto the pavement. Standing under a lamp post he raised his arm in the universal flag for a ride and waited, panting a little, wondering if he was glad they had eaten being drinking or not.

[Brenner Dornkirk]

It occurred to the sprinter that he'd challenged a marathon runner to a marathon. Not his best drunken decision, but far from his worst. He was still considering the matter, when he started to lose his footing- Not because he'd stumbled, but because his feet were no longer alighting on the ground below.

"What the-..." He tilted his head to see that Stefan had adopted an unconventional tactic to achieve dominance in the race- Commandeering his opponent's entire person. When he got over the initial rush of fear at the possibility of being dropped on his head by a brother drunk enough to attempt this maneouvre at all, his next instinct was to laugh. He didn't struggle at all against the grip, instead he just broke into hysterics at the absurdity of the image they must have cut to the bystanders he could see they were passing.

In truth, Brenner was impressed at Stefan's stamina. He kept up a relatively good pace for longer than Brenner would have imagined, given the extra weight he was toting. A thought which was interrupted by a sharp spank to his backside.

"Ach!" He yelped, as he was finally lowered back down onto his feet.

"You're bloody ridiculous." He asserted, shaking his head. "No, no- I yield this one to you, brother mine. You win." He was honestly relieved that his ill-conceived whim to race had ended so promptly and that Stefan had elected to countermand Brenner's choice with one of his own more sound options, namely: a coach.

A few passed by before one stopped to take them on- Likely because the first few had been close enough to see their rough-housing and recognised their state of inebriation might make for unpleasant customers. Ere long, one drew up, and Brenner opened the door for Stefan.

"Winners first." He suggested with a gesture of his hand toward the waiting coach.

[Stefan Dornkirk]

The feel of Brenner's belly tight with laughter pressing into his shoulder was dancing in Stephan's inebriated mind like joy. He was grinning in an entirely undignified way and almost laughing himself. He was a little winded, but nothing bad. He could have probably circled the city block with Brynn aboard and been alright... mostly.

"I am." He sighed out sounding as though he were fighting laughter while also trying to catch his breath, which, he was.

When a coach finally stopped to pick them up he was a bit more put back together and nodded graciously with only a slightly mocking smile as he accepting his brother's invitation and entered first. Sitting facing forward he waited till his brother was beside him before calling instructions to the driver. He had a vague moment of anxiety that this coach might have stopped when several others had passed them by because this was a kidnapping attempt. He subtly tried the opposite door to the one that they had entered, turning the handle without actually opening it. It turned smoothly and he relaxed as the horses picked up their pace. He had these odd moments of fear without any real trigger fairly often. He wasn't sure Brenner had noticed but his brother would know what it meant if he had seen. Kidnapping had never happened to a member of his family that he was aware of, but that didn't stop it from being one of a thousand scenarios of danger that his mind would shove at him, seemingly at random.

He settled back, not quite slumping, and let the stress drain slowly.

"Whatever processed you to try and race? Even as boys only Eitan ever beat me." He murmured a racial slur for the elf under his breath but it sounded affectionately exasperated rather than hateful as he sounded when talking about Avialae. Reaching over he tousled Brenner's already well-tousled hair and then pulled him into a one-armed hug that might have been mistaken for a poorly executed headlock. He rested his own head against his brother's and sighed.

The coach moved through the night, swaying gently, catching slices of light from street lamps or brightly lit buildings, snippets of song rose here and there around them. It almost felt like being on a ship, for a moment.

[Brenner Dornkirk]

Brenner dipped his head as he stepped into the coach behind Stefan, flicking him on the rear as he bent over in front of him (Which was the real reason he let him enter first).

"Sometimes I just get bursts of energy when I drink." He replied with a shrug as he settled into the bench-like seat. "They never last as long as I think they will, nor afford me the superhuman prowess I feel like I'll have." He wrinkled his nose, "But that's probably just as well." It might have been mistaken for magic, after all, if alcohol bore such powers and it would be a shame to have to prohibit booze.

"Hey!" Brenner turned to cast a stern glare to Stefan, "Eitan is one of the good ones. He may not have been born human, but he's earned his humanity. He let them mutilate his ears and he works harder for the State than most humans I know." His chastisement gave way to a playful grin after a moment, "Too bad they can't do anything about those elfy cheekbones of his, though. I keep telling you, you need to invest more in the biology department so they can suss out how to fix that for the poor sprite." He chuckled, and let his head rest against Stefan's when his brother adjusted his position to allow for it.

"But, in all seriousness, I had a thought about biology that I've been meaning to mention to you." He glanced to the driver in front of them, and lowered his voice so it would be covered for him by the clopping hooves and other general din of the city. "Somewhere, deep in the Warrens there must be something- some... parasite or virus that devours aether. Perhaps it's trapped down there unable to grow to its full potential.

"Zaichaer needs to find out if such a thing exists, and House Dornkirk must be at the forefront of the discovery. I've been considering submitting a proposal to the office of the Grand Marshal to establish an expedition. If we were able to weaponise such an entity, Stef, we might see the end of magic in our lifetimes."

[Stefan Dornkirk]

The revenge to his backside had made Stephan grin until Brenner had been in a position to see, at which point it had retreated into a judgmental frown.

Now they were tucked close with the city moving around them and it felt a bit like being in a bubble. Creating little bubbles of peace with his brother had been one of Steph's main goals throughout their childhoods. Now he wasn't so sure they needed that level of isolation to be safe but it was still nice. The previous evening had been one such incident, this evening was an amalgamation of them in public and them in private. Their destination would bring an even greater combination of the two.

The teasing gave way to Brenner's more serious tone, the one he used when he'd been mulling something over in his head for a long time and was ready to say it out loud. Steph glanced down , all he could see was the curl of dark blond hair, but he was listening.

He shifted the alcohol awash in his brain to one side to allow him access to his biological studies information. The Warrens were a chaotic swirl of the impossible meeting the real, things came into being there to live and disappear and then reappear later in a new form. The dangers were impossible to calculate even for one seasoned in traversing its horrors.

But what Brenner said made sense, if anywhere there would develop a creature that could subsist on the essence of magic, it would be there. The problem was the waste product. Such a creature existing seemed statistically probable, but what came out when it was done digesting aether? The sprites that Summoners called consumed their aether but they used it to sustain their own inherently magical forms. Magic became magic. If there was a creature that turned it into something else, say, heat (it would make the most sense chemically)... The implications were enormous.

His drunken brain tried to push in the thought that he could fuel the flying-packs with such a creature but he shoved that aside for later.

"Brynn..." He sighed out in what sounded like awe, "The implications of such a thing would be enormous. If we found a creature whose waste product was some form of non-magical energy we could..." He faltered as the ideas flooded into his mind as a starving man's mouth floods at the scent of food. "We could fuel the city. The whole city. We could stop relying on dragonshards, well, some of them. We could fuel an armada large enough to patrol all the Free Cities."

[Brenner Dornkirk]

The grin that answered Stefan's realisation might have been called impish if the matters the broached were some sort of boyish, mischievous prank, and not the genocide of an entire way of life, so we shall call Brenner's smile a wicked one.

"If we could propagate such creatures, Stefan, it wouldn't just be the end of magic in Zaichaer. But in all of Ransera." He smiled, "Kalzasi would be free of its eldritch yoke, and even the Imperium would be forced to reckon with its selective tolerance of the arcane arts. Can you even imagine what the end of magic would mean for the one place in all of Ransera that has ascended not only despite of, but because of our outright rejection of Witchcraft?" The wicked smile, broadened into an even more devilish expression,

"And, if we are able to fuel the engines of industry with some sort of byproduct? That's the icing on the cake. But what is most important, Stefan, is that we might bring about the complete extinction of mages. We might usher in a new epoch, where man reigns supreme, and normalcy is no longer something to be looked down upon, but revered across all Ransera as it is in Zaichaer." He placed his hand on Stefan's leg and looked him in the eye,

"I've begun to research my theory, but I'm waiting on the library to get me Gereon's writings on the history of the Sundering. Something tells me the answer will be tied in some way to that watershed event. If not, it's at least a place to start. In the meanwhile, I suggest you start brushing up on your biology. I'm an ideas guy, but I don't have the expertise to think up things like what you just observed... I'll need a team, and I want you on it."

[Stefan Dornkirk]

Listening to Brenner, Stephan's thoughts flowed around the words, became one with them as he sometimes did when their minds were in concert. He did not feel the need to speak, merely processed through the myriad ideas that crashed and swirled like tidal waves through his consciousness.

When Brenner paused for breath between speaking of how the world would change and acknowledging Stephan's suggestion the older man murmured, half unconscious of doing so,

"We would be the fathers of a new age. The Age of Man."

His brother expounded on the idea in eloquence, grinning the rapture of the moment while Stephan's expression reflected its solemnity. There would be several weeks of low activity as the city-state celebrated and the work year wound back up to full gear. Such elongated holidays were important to the health and wellbeing of the hard-working people and, in this case, it would allow the elder of the Dornkirk brothers to dive deeper into research than his work would normally allow. His fascination with the biological, the chemical processes that created life was a hobby that he tried to indulge in whenever he was allowed. He hadn't had much time this last season due to his extended social calendar, but prior to his mother stealing all his time in an attempt to get him fianced he had spent time at least once a week in his office at home with his microscope and chemistry set-up tinkering with the building blocks of life.

"It's a good time for it, I'll have the freedom to go down the rabbit hole, as it were. So, expect me to come to you at all hours talking about chemical formulae you won't understand in the least."

The hand on his leg, being able to look at his brother properly, settled both his excitement and his fear that he might not be up to the monumental task they were proposing. The intensity receded, tucked itself back for later, made room for other feelings. He was filled with the sight, scent, feel of Brenner. It felt safe to unfurl tiny tendrils of the things he felt, that he feared and needed in equal measure. No thoughts accompanied the things he let himself feel so rarely, kept under rigid control, because thoughts would mean acknowledgment and he couldn't do that.

Leaning in till his forehead was pressed to his brother's and their lips almost touched he said, "You will remake the world, Brynn. It was always going to be you."

[Brenner Dornkirk]

Stefan's response was, in Brenner's mind, consummately appropriate to answer the weight of what he was proposing. The immensity of the potential paradigm shift could not be overstated. Age old playing fields would be leveled for the first time in recorded history, and people like them would no longer be regarded as less-than. There were so many ifs, still, and it was entirely possible that his theory would turn out to be wrong. But for now, as the idea had barely even germinated, he would allow himself to dive headfirst into the fantasy of a world where ingenuity would reign supreme. Where men like Stefan would be the new philosopher kings, utilising their knowledge of science to rule with pragmatism. In his mind, such a world looked like a brighter place and a more just one.

"I'm so pleased." Brenner whispered, closing his fingers more tightly about the muscle of Stefan's thigh as his brother drew their faces so close that a hair's breadth might have been a mile. "You understand." He sighed, his body tensing in places as it relaxed in others.

"We will remake the world." He amended in Kathar "It is always us from here to the end of this world and the rebirth of a better one." He froze there for a moment, before the coach jolted to a stop and he remembered himself.

"Ah." He returned to the Common tongue to proclaim, "It looks like we've arrived." And not a moment too soon for Brenner. All of this talk of a glorious future with his adored brother had riled a tension in him that wanted for the kind of a release in which this house of iniquity trafficked. He pushed the cab door open, and melted out onto the sidewalk, leaning his shoulder against the nearest streetlamp as Stefan made his way out.

[Stefan Dornkirk]

They were in concert, an amalgamation. Brenner breathed out and Stephan breathed in. These were the moments that he lived for, that were worth their childhood and their separation and all the other things they'd had to endure and accept to support their family and each other. Something rose, a need in his chest and he was about to say something, or do something with it when the coach pulled to a halt.

Right. The world still existed, and just as it was, not as they wished it to be.

Clearing his throat Stephan pulled back into himself and sat up, straightened his vest and coat as Brenner also seemed to diminish before opening the door to let himself out. Following wasn't hard, the small space had only been special for holding them both inside it.

Stepping out he cleared his throat and took several long pulls at the cool night air to clear his head of alcohol and other intoxicating chemicals.

Looking up at the large, subtly decorated building before them he stepped forward to the doorway and rang the bell. Turning back to smile at where Brenner leaned rakishly against the street lamp lighting the area while he waited.

After a moment the door was opened by a timid-looking woman in a very proper maid's uniform. Stephan wouldn't have been surprised to see such a uniform on the maids in his own house. The Madam was circumspect about such things, understanding that having all expected social niceties performed would make her guests more comfortable. She was right.

"Come Brenner," Stephan said, sounding like the heir to their house again, "We have business to tend to."

He did not hold out his hand for his brother to take as he wanted to, simply stood and waited till he had joined him and they could step into the house together.