Swordplay [Aurin]

[Imogen]

Imogen blinked in surprise as Aurin's hands wrapped around her. Damn, was he really... But she felt none of her Pact weapons draw power to interpose themselves, which meant that they had discerned no aggressive intent. What was he doing?

Her question was answered a moment later as the entire world shifted and warped. The light of the winter sun faded, and with it the fields and forests behind Sharp's Edge Manor. The manor house, too, disappeared, swallowed up by a vast inky blackness.

The Void rushed in, and where there had once been light and color and wonder, there was nothing. Antithesis. The chilly Frost breeze turned to the foul breath of corruption which malingered in that place. Behind her came a mad chattering, and the shadows began to smile, prelude to their chase. The cobblestones were stained red with blood, her blood, flowing freely from the wounds where the Disciple's negatory field had burned away her flesh before she could regenerate it. A horror story made manifest in an instant, ready to plunge her mind back into the terror of that moment-

-but she hadn't been terrified in that moment, had she?

The Sunsinger's iron self-discipline had held throughout her brief tenure in the Void, all the way up to the point where she'd passed out in Aurin's arms. And although her senses were screaming at her now to acknowledge the sudden fact of her new reality, her mind was clear. She had been in a field, just a second ago- so what was happening now?

The first possibility: Aurin was a Railrunner, and she'd shown him the way to the Void. It was fully possible for him to have pushed her through the boundary across worlds, to try to strand her there in another dimension. But it wasn't remotely likely. First, she'd sensed no change in the slipspace; and while she wasn't terribly observant about disruptions to the Veil, she fancied she'd be able to detect someone tearing a portal of that magnitude. Additionally, what were the odds that Aurin would throw her into the fucking Void over a sparring match? Not at all conducive to future business.

The second possibility: mental magic. This was a real risk, and Imogen was well aware that it was her biggest weakness. She'd seen the work of Mesmers a few times in her life, but never been really tested by one, so she could hardly say whether it could do anything like this. But the fact that she could think clearly about her situation was inconsistent with everything she knew of that feared art. Surely her mind should be... a cacophony? A chaos? Or perhaps lead, quieted to nothing?

Finally: the arts of the Myrshalai. Imogen knew Aurin possessed the power of illusion, but to control her surroundings so precisely...? That was the work of a master, and no mistake. But he was a master of one magic, wasn't he? And in her experience, master mages were rare, but mages who had mastered one magic were often quite proficient at another.

So, then she had her likely culprit. What to do about it?

Understanding that you were caught in an illusion didn't actually free you from the illusion, but Nova-fire could. Imogen experimentally swung her blazing sword at the approaching horde of Voidspawn, observing with interest how they split apart and died- but did not cease to be. If this were illusion, the silver fire should have caught upon the weave of aether maintaining the image, running across it like... well, like fire. That's how it worked, it was like fire which burned away changes to the true fabric of the world. So what was happening?

Ah, wait. This is why he'd suddenly hugged her, wasn't it? A Myrshalai didn't need to do that to weave illusions on the world around them, he was warping her aether.

"Oh, you clever little shit." she murmured at the horde of encroaching Voidspawn. With control over someone's senses, they couldn't fight you. Couldn't oppose you. The strongest man in the world was powerless before someone who controlled everything they saw. So what to do about it? The obvious line of thought mirrored Aurin's own- she could burn it out of her head. He might have thought that notion ridiculous, but Imogen knew the secret to filling your own skull with fire and surviving it (a trick which was not generally very helpful, but still). But that would put her on the defensive, give the initiative to Aurin to continue layering illusions on her. Better to circumvent her own senses entirely.

The witch dropped her Pact sword, which clattered to the ground, and then held her right hand up towards the unseen sun above, focusing her gaze pointlessly at the apex of the imagined Void. She spoke:

"The Sun rings out in ancient mode,
One note among her brother spheres,
And marches in her destined circuit,
A march that thunders in our ears."


Light filled the field, as bright below as it was above. Sunlight blossomed in Imogen's hands, not the stern silver fire of Arcas, but pure and golden. With an act of will and yet more aether, she materialized Ysandre's Smile, the ancient bow she'd been given by the spirits at the Mountain, carved entirely out of sunlight. For a moment it seemed like little more than an ember in the infinite darkness of the Void- but then the witch Projected herself into the bow. Her own eyes and ears fell dead as her spirit shifted into the Pact Weapon, seeing only through it.

The sights and sounds of the Void disappeared in an instant, and she found herself back in Ransera- albeit, at an awkward angle, being held by herself. Like any good Reaver, she'd practiced fighting with her perception flitting between Pact weapons, but it still felt distinctly unnatural. She was much less certain she could beat another master in a swordfight like this.

Still. If Aurin wanted to figure out how to try that shit with an ancient construct of pure sunlight instead of her eyes and ears, he was welcome to try.

"One key problem," Imogen began again, her voice sounding once more like a lecture, "With fighting another mage is this; a single magic can mean the difference between certain victory and likely defeat. If there were a hundred armed men here, I could kill them with a rain of conjured blades, but it's useless to try to beat a single Railrunner like that. Likewise, a Railrunner's power of Traversion is meaningless against a Myrshalai, who can control their senses completely."

Imogen's face stared blankly as she spoke, eyes totally unresponsive- but her body turned and drew back the bow made of sunlight, a golden arrow materializing on the string. Meanwhile, Imogen's various Pact weapons began slowly moving through the grass, trying to flank Aurin without him noticing.

"But the mark of a good witch is the ability to solve any problem with the skills and power they have." Imogen continued, still looking in entirely the wrong direction even as her arrow trained on Aurin.

► Show Spoiler

Imogen has used Projection to move her senses out of her own body and into her pact bow, which makes it harder to fight because she's got to actively puppeteer her body from the wrong angle entirely. The pact bow is not immune to other external illusions.

[Aurin]

Aurin's greatest handicap here was that he didn't want to harm Imogen. If he wanted to win at all costs, he would have slit her throat as soon as her mind was caught up in the web of his illusions. His illusions were potent enough that he could persuade her mind that she felt no pain, that she felt no weakness as her life ebbed.

If he were going into this with planning and intent, he could, perhaps, work his illusions through Eshar's gift, either easing her slowly into the alternative reality he desired and coming up with contingencies for her ability to apparently live within her pact weapons even as Eshar had taught him to live within his own illusions. No, the way their skills and styles lay, he would need magic or trickery to get past her guard. If he got past her guard, she would need magic to keep his daggers from drinking her blood. If they went fully into a witch's duel in earnest, one might get lucky, one might outwit the other without dying in order to kill the other, Gods help anyone stupid enough not to flee if they saw such a confrontation coming.

But he couldn't think that strategically in the middle of a spar that had no rules and so could too easily become a fight to the death. All he could do was sense that his instinct to survive would too easily turn this into someone's death.

And so he blinked to a bare spot in the grass that would require enough time for one of her weapons to reach him that she could change her mind. He knelt, hands in the air.

"I yield," he said, or snarled as the case might be.

Even so, he murmured the activation word that bade his bracers engage their kinetic shield, and he wove wards around himself to stop—or at least slow—dawnfire. He had been in Talon's presence, had been bequeathed the ability to ward from him. Perhaps that had given him the ability to ward against dawnfire, or perhaps not. But people had yielded to him and still died by his hand. He leave his blades in their sheaths, but he couldn't bare his throat entirely.

It went against his nature.

[Imogen]

As soon as Aurin spoke, all of Imogen's Pact weapons ceased moving, freezing in the air without even a moment of inertia. The witch closed her eyes, exhaling deeply- but where one might have expected to see childish glee, or smug satisfaction, she just looked disappointed. The witch dropped her bow (which remained suspended in the air, totally ignoring all laws of aviation or gravity) and made a dismissive wave with her hand. A moment later, the various floating weapons disintegrated, dissolving into dust and aether, except that the bow remained, floating there.

"No, you don't." The Ork-disguised-as-human said, blowing more air. It felt, to her, like someone had just walked in on foreplay with an important message which could not wait- it wasn't like you could keep going, but the mood was spoilt and there was nothing for it.

Imogen bent over and reached for her own shadow, which obligingly welled up to meet her hand, yielding the hat she'd thrown away a moment ago. She pushed it firmly back onto her head and turned to observe Aurin. She couldn't see the wardings, didn't sense them at all, but she was positive that Aurin was simply trying to discontinue a fight he saw as pointless and dangerous.

"Aurin Kavafis, if you leave here knowing nothing else about the Sunsingers and about Ecith and about me, I want you to understand this: there are only three reasons to have a duel."

The witch held out an arm, sticking one finger into the air. "One, you're trying to settle who is the 'strongest'. That kind of duel is stupid and pointless in the extreme- it's nothing but a way for young men to measure their own junk in public. It doesn't prove anything to anyone who knows how anything actually gets done. If that's what you think I'm after, then I'm sorry you have such a low opinion of me."

A second finger. "Two, of course, are the duels fought because each person wants to kill the other. Those are also stupid- if you want to kill someone, you should just do it, in a way they can't fight back. Anyway, that would have been a pretty poor repayment for someone to whom I owe quite a bit."

Finally, the number three. "The last purpose is expressive. Raxen is god of Swords and Truth both, and it is precisely because of the way that a fight--a real fight, for your very life--winnows away all of your illusions and exposes the raw essence of the self. This is why Reavers must duel, to understand the thing they are trying to control; themselves. The Reaver must break down the barriers which separate them from their swords; themselves from their foes; their will from the world. Then the sword becomes capable of anything at all."

Imogen's voice rose as her speech went on, red rising in her cheeks- a phenomenon which Orkish skin usually helped to hide. Clearly she thought this matter was deeply important, that it was something Aurin needed to know, and she looked intensely frustrated that she couldn't think of a better way to illustrate her point.

[Aurin]

Aurin remained on his knees, hands raised, even as she scolded him.

One. No, he didn't care who was strongest. The closest to that sentiment was wanting to know whether he could put her down if she became a danger to the covens or to people he cared about. A part of him wanted to know how to take out Talon Novalys for similar reasons.

Two. No, he didn't want to kill her. He liked her more than he wanted to admit, and hid it in sexual innuendoes and doing her favors like dragging her bleeding ass out of the void and bringing her food while she recovered.

Three.

"I'm no devotee of Raxen," he said, voice a little rough. "I hear you. I understand... Well, I sort of understand. You were pushing me to the point where I was either going to vault away, kill you, or falter trying not to kill you and not to be killed, and get killed. I meant no disrespect."

He swallowed.

"I'm an assassin, not a warrior. I can fight. I can fight damn well. But I'm not like you. I kill quickly, cleanly, without fanfare and preferably before they know they're in danger." As for a witches' duel, this was his first and he didn't really know how they worked, whether there were rules or ways to mitigate mortal danger. He could make bold moves that exposed him to danger, but they were calculated risks. Perhaps she couldn't initiate him, after all. He understood that a duel was involved to seal the deal, and while it probably wasn't kill-or-be-killed—there would be far fewer Sunsingers and Dawnmartyrs if so—it was entirely possible he couldn't jump through the proper hoops.

Aurin waited, just breathing and watching. She seemed more upset than she ought to be, or perhaps the dirty trick with the Void had well and truly pissed her off. He had made a faux pas, but wasn't sure exactly how, so didn't know how to rectify his mistake.

[Imogen]

"No, this is on me." Imogen admitted, "Sunsingers are trained for years before they're initiated, and even then a first duel can go badly. And in Ecith, every child learns from Raxen's devotees. It was a mistake to spring this on a-" Imogen almost said 'a Kalzasaern', but realized that she actually had no idea where Aurin was from, and awkwardly pivoted, "Northerner."

It was disappointing, of course, but it would be foolhardy to press Aurin. He didn't have the mindset for that kind of duel, it seemed, and trying to force him--even with his consent, for you couldn't really force a master of Traversion to duel if they didn't want to--was only likely to lead to more disappointment, or even worse. No, there would be no more dueling today.

But perhaps there other ways to communicate?

"Tell you what, no more fighting, but give me one more chance to teach you something. Come with me to An- to my study, have a glass of brandy, and I'll show you a little trick. Just hold this while we walk."

The witch withdrew yet another sword from the air next to her, this time without singing or fanfare. It was a plain sword in the style of Kalzasi, thin and swift-swung. It appeared to be mundane steel, but the hilt was inset with a thumb-sized orb of Memnosyte, and little circuits of the translucent crystal ran down the grip and into the body of the sword. The crossguard was decorated with a stylized eye, pupil slit in the manner of a snake, or a dragon. Imogen flipped the sword in one hand, catching it by the blade, and presented it to Aurin, hilt-first.

► Show Spoiler

To Aurin's magical senses, the sword was just another Pact weapon; there was no particular spell or clear reason that Imogen had decided to install a recording-stone onto it, and it certainly didn't appear to be set up to do anything at all to the person holding it. Bizarrely, however, the sword blade itself was completely immaterial- literally, it was just the image of steel, not the substance.

"Try poking something with this- it won't leave a scratch, I promise you. I just want to confirm that the spell works like it should."

The walk back to the manor featured relatively little of substantial interest- there was the field, short and mostly-brown in preparation for the chill of Frost, there were a couple of boundary-stones, a weathered road sign pointing towards Sharp's Edge manor, and, of course, a handful of Zaichaer's innumerable trees.

[Aurin]

Aurin scoffed. Northerner, indeed.

When he was more certain none of her hovering pact weapons were likely to home in on him and exsanguinate him, he rose from his knees and let his hands fall to his sides. He was going to be hungry tonight, he knew, after expending so much magical energy in such a short amount of time. The expenditures were always less elegant, less efficient when pressed to be quick and in quick succession.

Glancing askance at the sword, he eventually reached out to take it carefully by the hilt. It didn't scream of any sort of danger to his arcane senses, and he kept his aura inverted against invasion even in the safest of conditions.

It didn't leave a divot in the ground when he tried to drive it there. It wasn't an illusion, not exactly, but it wasn't fully present either, rather like when he projected his consciousness through one of his glamours or via a window. He was there, but not there, a paradox sort of thing.

He held it up so the stylized eye covered his own.

"All right, but I've got my eye on you."

Smirking at his own lame joke, he walked along with her, attempting to lop the sign off the top of its post with the sword, content in knowing he could not. While he considered spinning out illusions to confuse her, he thought better on it. For all the jokes and smirks, he was considering what she had said.

It reminded him of something he had been told and taken to heart: "In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."

Of course, when he had heard it, he had cracked a joke about fucking his enemies, but that had been obfuscation as well.

[Imogen]

When Aurin swung the blade at the signpost, it passed through harmlessly as he expected- except that it caught on something. As the man tugged at the blade, a wave of some unfamiliar power ran through it, seeping into the air around him. The shadows deepened, and the light from the sun above grew wan, distant, and somehow harsh. There was an impression in the air around him, a bizarrely specific feeling like:

The signpost had been hewed from timber of a local tree and cut to precise specification, to replace the decaying sign which had come before. It was a sort of epicycle atop the one established by nature- trees sprouted, grew and died, but their dead lumber was cut into signs and wagons and so forth, until even those fell to entropy and had to be replaced and renewed. The signpost had no opinion on the matter; it was not the tree and was not alive and had no qualm about the changes to come.

But some time ago--many turnings of the season, but not so many turnings of the season--men had come and changed the signpost, adjusted it. Where once it had three shingles pointing towards the manor, now only one remained.

Then the feeling passed, and the blade slid easily from the signpost, leaving not a single nick in the surface of the wood. Imogen regarded the sword, and Aurin, with obvious curiosity.

"Did you see that? It looked like you saw that." the witch clapped her hands together, looking satisfied, "That's good! Figuring out how to show someone else the shadows was the hardest part."

"The scriptures of the Arbiters go on for thousands of pages about how the world and the self are the same, and the sword-which-is-self is the key to understanding the relationships between all things. I've been studying the scriptures hard the last two years, trying to make them work in practice, but... well, all due respect to Lord Raxen, but His holy books read like somebody involved in the transcription was high off their dome. But I've been making progress."

Imogen led Aurin into Sharp's Edge manor. It was far from the most opulent home which Aurin had ever seen--a high bar, to be sure--but it was large and stately, in a classic sort of style which had once been very popular in Zaichaer. It was heavy on painted and stained wood and small quantities of brass decoratives, with gilt scrollwork on the walls and dark wood, polished to a sheen. There were no taxidermy heads on the walls, as were sometimes popular in this style of lodge, but that lack was compensated for by portraiture; dozens of men and women whose faces Aurin had never seen before sneered downward from every angle.

The witch, of course, had not participated in decorating or re-decorating any of these walls. She was the manse's caretaker now, certainly, and its legal owner, but it felt... wrong, to her, to change it from how Ansel had kept it for decades. Even she didn't know who all these noble-looking Zaichaeri folk were supposed to be, but she trusted her old master would not have let their pictures hang without good reason. It would be an insult to their memories to strip them down, presumably!

Their path through the manor led from the foyer into a main hallway, then through a large interior great hall, suitable for hosting several dozen people on some cold Frost night in front of a roaring fire, into a smaller hallway and thereon to Imogen's office.

The office was also in a fairly expensive style, and filled to the brim with books; but not, unfortunately, books of magic or witchcraft. No, these were mostly ledgers, accounts, and many years' worth of dairies and histories written back in the days before historians had realized how to write for an audience. The witch, driven by a sense of a duty, had spent several fruitless weeks picking out random volumes and trying to make sense of their contents, but it was not going... well.

There were a few more interesting things in the study, though. A few of the implements of real witchcraft were visible. In one cabinet, Imogen had laid aside a small box of what looked like sorcerer's sand, as well as inks in exotic crystal phials, presumably for Scrivening. A safe in the corner had been replaced with a bed for Kitty, a soft leather affair lined with leaves Aurin didn't recognize, as well as a handful of unprocessed Dawnstone for some unknown reason; additionally, the safe itself was open, and stuffed full of what appeared to be shed snakeskin made of bronze. A stand in the corner of the room held a journey book, a magical item linked to some other book elsewhere in the world, through which messages could be securely exchanged.

On another wall, opposite the window, Imogen had hung a bizarre map of Ecith and the Ataraxian Expanse... but had added more parchment to the bottom, expanding it by hand to include a rough sketch of Southern Ecith, along with small scrawled notes and points of interest such as "cat legislature", "base camp", "the rock that hates", "crystal butterflies" and "naked women cave (evil)". Finally, on the desk was a heavy-set aquarium, full of water but no fish, featuring instead a fist-sized fragment of rock, glowing with a light which made the watcher uneasy.

Imogen gestured towards a chair, then went to the inevitable drinks cabinet located under the study's window. She poured brandy into two lead crystal glasses, offering one of the heavy cups to Aurin before seating herself behind the desk, grinning.

"So anyway, here's my game. You pick the thing in this room you find most interesting and touch it with that sword. Get a little show instead of listening to me ramble on about it. What d'you say?"

[Aurin]

"Huh."

Aurin looked at her, nodded acknowledgment. Witchcraft! He wanted to ask 'who the fuck are the Arbiters?' but he figured it out by context as she continued in her excited chatter.

"All religious texts read like trips to me," he said with a shrug. Curious about her past, he didn't want to ask. He wanted to know, but he didn't want to reciprocate. Even his nearest and dearest only knew fragments of his fractured past, and thankfully, some of them hated each other so they would never get together, compare notes, and actually have a fuller picture of how fucked up he was.

But he listened and looked around as they went. Old habits died hard, and he wanted to case the place for points of egress, and mark those things that would be easiest to steal and yield the greatest payoff either in coin or power. He probably wouldn't actually steal anything, but one never knew. It was important to keep one's skills shiny, even if he didn't live like he had in the Midden any longer.

He was looking at the map and wondering if 'cat legislature' was code for lesbian things when she handed him his drink. "Thanks," he said, though he would, of course, wait to drink until she did. Habit. Even if he had only been watching her pour out of the corner of his eye and didn't actually think she would poison him.

"Very well," he said, coming toward the desk, though he didn't sit down. Instead, he swung the sword around slowly so as not to excite her survival instincts—though he wondered if a Sunsinger's pact weapon could be used against them—and booped her on the nose.

"Boop."

[Imogen]

"You sure about that one?" the witch asked, quirking an eyebrow, not at all reacting to the sword held to her face, "That can be less enlightening than confusing- here, watch."

The shadows in the room darkened, lengthened, casting every source of light into stark relief. They seemed to press inward through Aurin's eyes and ears, every sense growing dull as memory welled up through the transparent blade. Before his eyes, colors and movement rippled through the ghostly blade, passing through the flimsy barriers of flesh and skin and suffusing his spirit.

Imogen sat within the Temple of Raxen, a grand marble structure crowning the mountain of Drathera, sitting across a stone table from another orkhan woman. The woman--the Arbiter--looked at her curiously as the witch leaned forward, bringing her hands together. Earnestly, she explained:

"A singular weakness it bears by design; a heart that is humble before the divine."

The words rippled in the sacred space within the temple, not quite music. The Arbiter pondered them for a moment. She reached for the sword lying on the table between them. It was a black and beautiful thing, formed by no mortal hand- the Arbiter's nomine, the sword-which-was-not-a-sword. There was a brief moment of awe in Imogen as she looked at it, the feeling behind her eyes approximating something like hunger.

"And therefore... you want me to beat you up?"

Memory clung to objects like cobwebs; it built up in predictable and translucent layers. Easily torn, lacking in substance, sure, but also easy to comprehend. Even the most intricate and beautiful spiderweb was knowable at a glance. In people, it swelled like the tide, droplets could form upon the sand in one moment and then drain away into something totally different in the next.

Ansel Gerhard stood above the girl, holding a branding iron to her exposed breast. She was on the ground, her hands clutching the two-handed sword which her uncle had given her. As the brand took to her flesh, she felt the Rune tear into her soul, burning away the thin meniscus of aether which separated self from the sword. Her hand burned as her soul and the metal were admixed at the point of meeting, but she only gripped it all the harder; if she let it go now, she would die.

Confusion, triumph, fear, joy- all of these things filled her at once as she understood what had happened, why she was here, and what she had to do.

"If you won't accept my judgment, then the talking is over. It doesn't matter if you are ready; we will begin now."

The tide of memory gathered speed, the shadows deepening and strengthening until there was hardly anything else which could be seen in Imogen's study. Books and rocks and maps and magic cat- none of these meant anything in the face of such a profusion of thought and remembrance. It was like being battered by driving rain, like being driven in a storm. It wasn't that you couldn't stand, but it was damned hard to stay still.

The witch stood in the great theater of the Pfenning, gawking openly.

She should have been moving, of course. The lights were low, the orchestra was alive, and there were tasks to be done. She was garbed in the red jacket and hat of a janitor, the uniform looking almost comical on her tall and stocky Orkish frame, standing athwart the janitorial trolley, frozen as she went to reach for the mop.

Instead, all her attention was consumed by the spectacle on the stage. Almost two dozen young women were there, clad in gossamer and lace, in stark pastels against the black background of the curtain, every one wearing the famous shoes of the ballerina. They moved in a way which Imogen had never seen before, like the flowing water of the river. And there, near the center, was the smallest, most beautiful woman which young Imogen had ever seen- pale as the ice of the northern plains, but with gloaming-dark hair and crystal eyes. She moved not like a person, like something bound to earth, but like a thought- like a spark- like a shadow- like love itself-

Now the memories were coming and going so quickly that Aurin could hardly make out more than snatches of detail, here and there.

When Imogen Ward came to her senses, she found herself barrelling through the tunnels of Koidhouo’uv, moving with all of the instinctive, desperate speed her lemur body would afford her.

There was a heat–a tremendous, blistering heat–at her back, but she refused to slow long enough to glance backwards. As she regained control of herself, she threw every thought into the forward impulse, running as fast as she possibly could. The heat grew more intense with every second, and she wondered for a moment if her tail had already been incinerated, gone only days after she first grew it.

Then, just as she felt that the fire must be about to claim her, Imogen burst into the open air, grasping, coughing. She tumbled senselessly down the rocks

The Ork spread her hands to her sides as she fell, tearing two more rifts into Slipspace on either side. As the Kegumu Rekaka descended above, intent on spearing her, it failed to notice the twinned portals- or what emerged therefrom.

“Attack!” screamed Halftail, tumbling out of the middle of space. A hundred golden sifaka lemurs followed, their tiny, furry bodies plummeting out of Imogen’s spell and taking hold of The Silent Fisher.

Imogen squawked and squealed as birds attacked her--but she was also a bird, and so the threat was more serious than comical. She wheeled and dove, trying to escape their pointed beaks, her mind momentarily distracted from the crab-fishing expedition. Far below, beneath the waves, Destyn began to choke, reflexively breathing in the cold seawater-

The Great Witch stood inside the gigantic, opulent chamber of the Senate of Ecith, surrounded by a hundred distinguished Orkhan senators, all applauding ferociously. Color rose in her cheeks as a cheer went up, and a knot formed in her stomach. How could they cheer when Norani was still-

The Sunsinger lay inside a cold, granite mausoleum, just outside of Gel'Grandal. She let out an involuntary gasp as she felt the weight of someone climbing atop her, resting small, delicate palms upon her naked back.

"Hold still." Carina whispered, and Imogen felt the sudden slickness of her lipstick on the small of her back, which burned like-

"Well, I think that's enough of that game for today."

Imogen's spell died as the witch withdrew her aether from the strange lacework of power within her sword, the transparent blade darkening as memory faded back into metal. She was still sitting, relaxed, behind her desk, but there was a furious blush in her cheeks. She reached up and brushed the sword aside, at which point it simply ceased existing altogether, fading away into air, the weight of it leaving Aurin's hand with remarkable alacrity. The witch reached for her cup of brandy and downed the whole thing at once, grimacing as the burn spread down her throat.

"So..." she said, after a moment, "That's what being a Sunsinger is like.""

[Aurin]

The worst witch was taking in as many details as he could, even to the point that the sword's innate power didn't react immediately upon the boop as it had when he had held it to other things; instead, it bided its time until Imogen allowed him to scour her memories with her own pact blade. But he didn't answer her rhetorical question; of course she was more interesting than any mere artefact, magical or sentimental.

A grand illusionist himself, even if he called it a mere trick, his mind knew these were visions and yet his pupils dilated and constricted in response to things they weren't actually seeing. It was quite a lot for a mind to process, especially given the memories weren't even his own, but he had experienced enough with high magics and demigods that he was mostly able to keep up, take note, and recall what he had seen, even the bits that didn't connect to context he already knew, although those would be stronger memories that he kept.

Nomine, he mouthed, wondering why a Vastian word was in the Orkhan idiom, but not having enough time to ponder it as the shared experiences continued.

Ansel branding her; well, so he wasn't the only one who had been brought into magical with physical pain.

Destyn. Carina...

He blinked as she snatched her memories back. There were parts that made sense: initiation, etc. There were parts that didn't connect logically to being a Sunsinger without more connective tissue to the story.

As for Carina, well, he glanced down at his empty hand, considering for a moment the nature of being, albeit in words and half-formed concepts no true philosopher would use. When he looked up, Imogen was blushing. Instead of making a comment, though, he smirked, picked up the brandy bottle, and refilled her glass.

Then he took a seat as well, and got comfortable.

"One shit show is much like another..." he offered, though he didn't offer his own remembrances. Those were for him, and that was one reason he hadn't attempted to worm his way into the Kindred and their Grove. Too much sharing from what he gathered.

He raised his glass.

"To being a shit show."

fin.