Legend of Ransera

The platinum lyrist only had so much attention to spare for guests and attempting to unmask them by their behavior and other cues. At least he knew how Arvælyn would present, and he had plenty to occupy his eyes and his mind between entertaining and enthusing the crowds and impressing the tambour-wielding flower girl who followed in his wake.

Finn had maintained his aplomb even when light speared down upon one person who was summarily wrenched from the anonymity to notoriety before the partygoers. He felt a pang for the person, but really, if they had any experience at these sorts of affairs, they should know better.

He felt safer for having the Sentinels and Guards working hand-in-glove. If he couldn't be at Arvælyn's side, at least he could rely upon his brethren among the Vigilia, and now he knew firsthand how well the Luxian warriors acquitted themselves against danger. Even so, his eyes often sought ought the Sun Scion, wondering if Varvara Herself might not fancy tumbling him in the sheets in such splendor. Finn wouldn't mind terribly, assuming he was allowed to wa—

Though his own rune was blocked from full activation, he could sense the ripples in the slipspace. As his gaze swept toward his fiancé, he caught three aberrations, and saw one of them stab His Starlit Highness, saw His Exalted Higness fling another away (with some collateral damage), and saw a mysterious figure in platinum and white observe all this take place.

Finn was already moving. He didn't even notice Lystreia following on whatever impulses drove the woman. He was unarmed and unarmored, but there were powers given unto him that even his fellow Sentinels might have trouble blocking. And so, as his voice boomed out with all the mesmeric power he was allowed for plying his art, but granted further weight as his brow began to glow with a golden halo. It had worked for Phocion against the voidborn; perhaps it would work for Finn against this intruder.

"YIELD," he demanded of the hooded figure.

The Arkænyn whose attempt upon the Sun Scion had been rebuffed, was stricken enough by Palæros sally to be forced backward, but he caught himself as his right foot fell backward and found anchoring purchase.

Meanwhile, gritting his teeth, Arvælyn felt his back slam into another body. His outspread wings, seeming to glitch into view as his concentration upon the Craft of Masquerade faltered as his focus shifted toward different Runes. As he poised himself to strike out at whomever seemed to be grappling him, he was halted at the sense of his Symphony and the sound of his voice.

“Aurin?!” He exclaimed incredulous, but this was no moment for fond overdue reunions. There was still an assailant before him in fine armour of runeforged platinum, sneering toward the Lunar Lad who, while still reeling from the Kinetic burst that unsteadied both of them, would see one of the twin daggers in this Arkænyn’s hands vanish, only to feel it a fraction of a second later as it buried itself in his back.

“Yield, or I’ll pull it the rest of the way through you.” Commanded Arkænyn’s familiar voice but, lacking his Aurisian accent, this doppelgänger spoke his order perfect High Vastian.

As glass shattered overhead, the security team was fully engaged in the response. The shards were caught in the air as they fell and suspended under the eldritch light as beautiful as some æther sculpture of a starry night. Some Golden Guards and other Sentinels revealed themselves to be capable of bypassing the wards against Traversion and others took to the air launching themselves with Kinetics to alight near the threats, as the mysterious assailants were soon surrounded. Kinetic fields were conjured to sequester the three intruders as more and more security forces moved to surround them and fortify their kinetic confinements.

The tall Aværyan Guard who had broadly announced Vyxis’ shame let out a roar as he bounded toward the Arkænyn who’d struck down the Chained Swain, a longsword appearing in his hands.

“This one is mine!” He growled as, on the dance floor below, Finn had begun launching toward the hooded figure in the snowy white cloak. Sensing his hostile intent as he bounded toward her, the Solar Sovereign gazed up from under her hood and looked deep into his Symphony. There she quickly located and latched onto a memory of trauma- a broken lute and a broken face. The taste of blood and the sound of vitriolic epithets. There was one thing missing to make it serviceable and to her purposes and she would add that motif herself- His amatus. Into Finn’s Symphony she altered his trauma to render it empathetic. Rather than befalling Finn himself, Finn would sense this attack befalling Arvælyn as he’d been then: No sturdy Dragonborn, but a wispy elf being battered before his eyes whilst he watched helplessly— able to do no more than access his Symphony to feel the pain as his own; unable to assuage it. She would draw this modified memory to the forefront of his mind even as he uttered his Empyreal command.

Elsewhere as Raithen lay down the wounded body he’d collected from the ballroom, he would find it change before his eyes as Arkænyn pulled an enchanted bracer from his wrist and let it clank to the roof beside him. The Chained Swain had, it seemed, been a more concealing costume than it had initially appeared. In Arkænyn’s place, Raithen would find a Moonborn of some prominence he would recognise as a lordling named Victrian who was a member of Arkænyn’s court. Raithen knew him in passing as a fellow libertine, albeit a devout Sanguinist from a Luxian senatorial family.

“Anywhere…” He rasped, “To anyone who can help…” He begged, wincing and writhing against the pain that wracked his slender body.

Thalya cringed, as the weight of Finn’s command overtook her formidable will. Perhaps she now plied Crafts against which even the potent magi of Solunarium were ill-equipped to offset, but she had no way of defending against an Empyreal commandment. She was only fortunate that the high-sighted human left her so much room for interpretation. Yield she would, glancing to her two comrades, each of them shifted before the eyes of the many onlookers surrounding them. Within their Kinetic cages they went translucent, then transparent as they phased out of this realm into the safety of one of its many mirrors. The dagger in Æros’ back disappeared with its wielder and, as it did, turned the plugged wound into an open one and blood began to gush forth. The onslaught on Finn’s Symphony likewise dissipated, becoming more a memory than an active, present trauma.

The Aværyan Guard who’d been loping toward the one trapped Arkænyn with his pact longsword brandished let out a feral shriek as his quarry vanished before his eyes. Tearing his helmet off, the guard would reveal the face of yet another Arkænyn, witchmarks in all the right spots for the Prince Regent of the Luxium.

“MATER!” Crazed by fiery, consummate rage his voice cracked all the way through the irate Aurisian-accented screams. “I WILL KILL THE BITCH FOR THIS! I’LL FUCKING KILL HER!!!” He roared as tears streamed down his reddened face as he crumpled to the floor, and one of his courtiers doffed a mask to kneel beside him.

“Come, Your Starlit Highness…” It was Seværys Princeps, Heir to the martial House of Astræon, who helped the weeping Platinum Prince to his feet and urged him off the ballroom floor with an escort of Aværyan Guardsmen.

Cithæra, who’d attended as a veiled Sentinel rather than a costumed guest, stepped up to Arvælyn and Aurin, nodding to the latter as she raised her voice for all to hear.

“All guests are to evacuate the ballroom at once. Return to your homes. If you are required for questioning or assessment, the authorities will find you.” She glanced to Palæmon and wordlessly ordered one of her Sentinels to attend to his wound. At another gesture, a portal appeared beside her.

“Come.” She said to Aurin and Arvælyn, “Phocion is collecting Finn. We’ll rendezvous with him at the Palatium Umbrarum.”

"In the flesh," he muttered, and Arry could certainly imagine the smirk under his mirror that matched his tone. His hands may or may not have fallen upon flesh that would have gotten another man's hands removed at the wrist; perhaps he would lose his too as the sands of time had sent his boy into the sands of Atraxia, changing everything.

But he couldn't enjoy the shock in Arry's voice for more than a moment. They were, of course, in the middle of an attempted coup, or at least multiple assassinations. Whoever the woman in white was, or whomever she worked for, had a sense of style, a panache, that he could appreciate, but they were at odds. At least, he wasn't going to let anyone harm a golden hair on his golden boy's head, nor bruise his perfect golden arse.

The jackal-headed Aurin was a bit awkward getting around the wings, but he managed to step around Arry as he pulled blades from under the gorget of his mask.

"Don't worry - daddy's here." But he needn't have bothered. In the chaos, one victim was evacuated through the fucking ceiling by who he assumed was Arry's Avialae brother. One assassin was stabbing someone else, which was of no moment to the jackal. And some silvery bed slave-looking person bellowed at the hooded woman and - persuaded her to leave? After the failures quit the scene, he straightened, and began flipping one of his razor-sharp daggers and catching it between deft, if scarred, fingers.

"Anticlimactic, as they say in the theatre," he noted, turning back toward Arry, though the onyx eyes and ebon snout of his mask was the last to turn, wanting to be sure the danger had passed. "Well, it was fun while it lasted, but they didn't really bring it with the catastrophic lack of security like a royal Kalzasern event. Oh... convenient." Had he been given a key through the wards, he would have taken Arry somewhere himself, but it seemed his waif had a Sentinel for that.

He indicated the portal with an elegant sweep of his arm, dagger pointing to their destination. "Shall we?"

What counted for mastery elsewhere was mere competence in Solunarium. Even as he made his righteous command of the white-robed figure, he felt her - it was Thalya herself - make some unknowably complex reaction and vivisect his mind to change it - change his memory, change his reality - with an attack expertly tailored for him and for him alone. As she enervated him as though he were a fly, his forward momentum gave way to gravity and he began to stumble and crawl.

Fortunately, Lystreia cared more for his safety than her tambours, dropping them as she caught him and bore his weight down to the ground. She was an elf, and stronger than she looked, but he had put on quite a deal of muscle over the past couple of years, and so the best she could do was mitigate the damage.

That was all she could do magically, as well. When she managed to take his face in her hands, calling his name, she looked into eyes gone golden as his halo only slowly began to fade. His commandment was being fulfilled, but he was slipping into madness. She was no mind-healer, but she knew a thing or two; she knew enough to know that the best she could do was throw him a lifeline until someone better equipped could unravel what Her Divine Radiance had done.

Had Her Radiance truly attempted to assassinate her own heir and the heir of the Umbrium? Lystreia didn't know - couldn't know - but found that she wanted to, and found that this heroic peregrinus might just be a person she ought to hitch her star to, his race be damned.

"Arry, no..." he whispered brokenly, unmanned. "Your flesh, all your skin, and all your bones carry all our generations with futures still unknown..." The sing-song lyrics might sound mad, but she could feel him struggling against the enchantment, as his doughty spirit and magical defenses had somewhat blunted the felling blow.

"Come back, Farstrider," she Commanded softly. "Follow my voice."

She was less aware of the goings-on, trusting to the Silver Sentinels and Golden Guard to reinstate order as the royal assassins fled. Vaguely aware of the order to disperse, she focused on Finn and was rewarded for her efforts. She brought him back from some Kalzasern alley where Zaichaeri thugs pinioned his arms behind him and slowly beat his amatus to death, and her symphony remained entwined with his when she looked up slowly from black boots to the starkly beautiful face of Finn's soon-to-be brother-in-law.

"Your Serene Highness," she said, her voice euphonious as any instrument, "he requires a mind-healer." She would have risen to bow, but thought he would not stand on formality while she was holding up his fellow Vigil.

Finn looked up to see Phocion, the gold now bled out of his eyes, his halo extinguished. Somehow, even the platinum paint couldn't hide how ragged he looked, eyes bloodshot, jaw slack. There was recognition, though. His scars had ripped open and it felt as though his soul was bleeding, but he was present and he knew his priorities.

"Where is he?"

He couldn't hear Arvælyn's song among those around him.