"The Shadows on the Wall"

[Arvælyn]

With the illusions of the 'trick' that was Aurin's bequest having been dismissed, Arvælyn presented more of the distinctions that his erstwhile amatus was contemplating. With eyes that glowed and broad wings at his back, he certainly looked more powerful than the skinny starveling Aurin once plucked up in Antiris like some unexpected find at a pawn shop. His clothing was more ornate than that which he'd crafted with his Craft, the illusory tunic having been a simple thing meant to garner no covetous eyes, whereas this was princely regalia tailored and enchanted to suit his particular form and to allow for the unusual appendages protruding from his back.

"Well, yes, I see that..." Arry replied with an incredulous chortle, at Aurin's rather cagey response to his question. He let out a soft sigh when he deigned to answer in earnest that he didn't.

"Forgive me my nature, Aurin. I know you aren't one to hold things sacrosanct, but it is nice to know that there are a few things that were..." He paused, "...that are just ours." He pondered that for a moment, working through his feelings aloud in real time.

"That makes me regret some things less, and other things more..." He trailed off, contemplating that further internally. "I never meant to punish you, I-... No, that is a lie I've told myself as well as you. I did want you to suffer in my absence at first. I think, when I first met Finn, part of me wanted him so you would be jealous... Like some sort of test. It was I who was tested... and learned what I require and, I think, was made better by certain standards. As you pulled me away from my path of poverty and anonymity, he pulled me from a path that tended towards bitterness and wrath." He shook his head,

"I am rambling. All of this is to say, I do not wish for you to be in pain, even if the covetous dragon in me also wanted to be irreplaceable in your heart. To be..." He reached up, tugging at his collar as he unconsciously felt the tightening of his divine collar, "...Supreme."

[Aurin]

"I did," he said softly, possibly forgetting how keen Arry's senses had become. "I have, I do."

The thing was: Arry didn't have to do anything to enact suffering upon him. Aurin had been punishing himself for everything and nothing for as long as he could remember, at least when he allowed himself to acknowledge that fact, which was rarely. He wasn't ignorant, or lacking in self-awareness, but rather he put all of those things in a box and buried them with more wards than anything save that blasted ebberite key that Talon Novalys wouldn't just take off his hands. It was when he was alone that he was more likely to remember that box, to wax masochistic and open it.

He turned to look at Arry finally. He couldn't speak to supreme, but, "of-bloody-course you're irreplaceable, you stupid, beautiful fucking git!"

It came out incredulous, withering, and any number of other things. Perhaps he sounded like a dragon having lost the arkenstone of his hoard. But, of course, whatever he had learned growing up wherever he had grown up, Kalzasern polyphilia had suited him just fine. The human runesmith Arry had blamed for the implosion of their relationship hadn't dampened his desire for Arry, nor his firm desire to get him whatever would make him happy, and Aurin didn't begrudge Torin his sappy romantic friendship as that was not something Aurin was capable of giving him, nor had he begrudged Arry his handsome minstrel; he had only resented that in opening one door, Arry felt he had to slam another in his face.

Aurin had accepted this intellectually, and yet his heart, which he ignored, hadn't healed. He was distracted by work, seeking out secrets, making money, garnering more and more power to keep him safe from all the demons he just knew were waiting for him to grow complacent, fat and happy and ready to be harvested.

He considered sliding off the edge and letting himself fall. It was an occasional, odd pastime. He hadn't yet miscalculated. Mists, Torin had crafted artefacts to make him all but impervious to falling damage—if he chose to wear them.

The impossible man glowered at the view. Sometimes he liked to blame Arry and his trick for outbursts like that, knowing it probably wasn't true.

[Arvælyn]

Arvælyn tipped his head down, chuckling wistfully at Aurin's exasperated, chiding response. The laughter felt like a release, but there was a darkness to it. To the whole circumstance, really.

"I'm glad to know that. Would that irreplaceable had been enough, but I am descended of deities marked for their covetous commandments." He'd done a lot of introspection on this matter, as his jealousy caused more tension in his personal life than probably anything else. He'd first used the excuse of having had so little growing up and clinging that much more ferociously to what and whom he had later. Then, when his draconic side was revealed, it was the allusion of the treasure horde and now this occurred to him as well. His zero sum Faith echoed his zero sum heart. Sacrifices demanded to feed the Emblem at his throat and loosen its grip to let him breathe more easily.

"Ah well." He turned his face to regard the view, as well. "Perhaps one of us was more yielding in another universe..." He mused as his thoughts turned to Finn and his expedition through time and space, which had indirectly inspired this strange, unplanned nostalgia tour. He didn't think he would want to countenance the risk of slipping between realities, as Finn was now doing. What if he saw a version of himself that made a different choice which turned out for the better? That would be the hardest thing to reckon with, he thought. He could face the miseries of Arvælyns who'd never left Antiris, or who'd fallen at Talon's Wedding, or any number of other miserables versions of him. But, like the crippling loss of waking from a happy dream into a lesser life, he feared seeing his luckier selves basking in the glow of better choices than those he'd made.

[Aurin]

Aurin snorted. It was a known fact that he held little in the way of piety. He could respect the power Gods and Monsters did wield, but that didn't make him want to fall at their feet and worship them, but rather, know how to hamstring them and take them out should their overweening power threaten lesser bastards such as himself and those he cared about, but pretended not to—which included Arry even if he had proven a bit of a climber in that regard. Aurin couldn't fault him for that.

"I never needed to be supreme in your heart," he said quietly, like as not his words lost to the winds this high up as he looked out over Kalzasi like he imagined the Avialae elite did. "Irreplaceable would have been nice."

There had been a comfort to Arry deigning to quit his storage closet for Aurin's bed, to bitch about whichever workplace drama had become operatic to his mind, playing the role of grumpy old man, going out to eat because neither of them could really cook worth a damn, spoiling where he could without spoiling him rotten. It had worked for Aurin, but clearly not for Arry. The thing they had created without really describing it out loud, they were not on the same page.

But it had felt nice when, at any hour of day or night, Arry leave work or his own four walls and return to Aurin as though he were home.

Even thinking of it as home was problematic, of course, given Aurin's youth, but still... he wished frequently for that. Sometimes, he would wake up in the dark and half imagine Arry was there, though it was only the strange thaumaturgic entanglement of their glamour runes and not Arry coming to seek the warmth of his bed and the circle of his arms.

He glanced at Arry. "Do you want to just go drink in my office until curtain?"

[Arvælyn]

"A clever turn." Arvælyn replied, somewhat darkly, in response to the biting reply. "But you are irreplaceable, you cunt. It's only your cock that's been supplanted and it may surprise you to know: You're more than your manhood. You will always be my saviour, even if you're no longer my lover. I set boundaries to protect myself and others. I like to think I'm at least self-aware enough to know where my soft spots are... the ones that might make me do something rash in a moment that can't be undone." He crossed his legs at the ankle, where they hung from the ledge.

"The rest is uncompromised. I'm sorry if that isn't enough, but I hope it will be someday..." He let that hang in the windy air, as he looked out over the vast vista sprawling before them. It was nostalgia that had brought him on this unscheduled adventure, and nostalgia rolled like an avalanche now that the environs and the company made more and more memories loosen from their moorings to tumble onto him. Even their disagreement was familiar ground, well trodden in person and over preternatural projection born of Aurin's quirk subsequent to marking him with Masquerade.

When Aurin broke the silence that lingered, but for the whooshing winds, Arry was grateful.

"Yes. I suppose I would. It's so early and yet somehow I feel overdue for a drink." Doubtless due to the subject matter toward which their discourse had lately turned. He tipped his head down and whispered: "Dimittere ancoras." To bypass the ward in advance of Aurin's impending Traversion, this time. His guards had already found them and would again when they slipped through the stream. The beacon stones set in his bracers would see to that.

[Aurin]

"It doesn't feel that way," he said, again quiet, but at least meeting those burning eyes when it was said.

Perhaps it never would. Perhaps it was as Arry said and Aurin was just the one too fucked up to adapt. Perhaps Arry and his army of grandmaster everymages had him all tied up as punishments for his failings. He tried not to let that intrusive thought linger when it came.

Aurin didn't like talking about his feelings, and Arry knew that. He stood and offered an unnecessary hand up. This time he opened a proper portal, and once they were through, he moved to the sidebar to prepare something he knew would fit even Arry's changed tastes. There had been drinking after his wedding, after all.

"Are the guards allowed a tipple?" he asked over his shoulder.

The office was much as Arry had seen it before; there were some new posters of shows that he had especially enjoyed. Pride of place was given to anything with Arry's face on it, or even his nom de scène, although it wasn't exactly a shrine, but rather spread out among.

The office was Aurin, but performative Aurin. It was all focused entirely upon his work with the theater. There were a few photographs as the theater did own a mnemosyte-powered 'camera'. There was a picture of Lord Yserloo, Elric, and him in front of the Golden Peacock for a promotion put into the largest broadsheets in the city. Then there was the hint of shock jock Aurin: a photograph of him with renowned terrorists, the Dornkirk brothers, raising tumblers of Gelerian schnapps. Hidden away was a little gem: something artistic snapped by a co-worker at the Velvet Cabaret, a pool of light only bright in comparison to the shadows surrounding, Aurin smoking something wearily at the end of the bar, smiling at Arry, who was clearly complaining about some infraction from client or co-worker in a high passion.

Aurin's mask never fell away completely, but someone had caught a bit of it. The smile was amused, bemused, but not a smirk. Anyone who knew him better would see the quiet adoration in his eyes, alas.

Of course, Aurin didn't have that where an easy glance would show it. Someone would have to find the breadcrumbs he had left in his wake.

"I suppose they won't even enjoy the show," he continued as he showed what he had learned of mixology from years at the Cabaret and whatever else he had experienced before Kalzasi, "I am working to have proper wards put into place. Weapons aren't allowed, though, of course, we can make an exception for your hangers-on. But wards against magical intrusion and such, we could assure scared nobles that their rivals won't be able to give them the old gom jabbar while the lights are low..."

[Arvælyn]

Arry took a pause, considering Aurin's feelings. The man's avoidance of the subject, paired with his apparent preference toward the humorous over the heartfelt, made it easy to think him numb. Cynicism often read that way and, though Arry was no stranger to his share of that, it didn't make it any easier for him to notice in others. Perhaps it made it harder. Whatever the case, he sighed and softened his tone as he replied:

"Well, of course things aren't going to be the same now that I'm living on another continent and, arguably, ruling a third of it. I'm busier and farther than I've ever been since you've known me. Even this whim I'm indulging today, I'll pay for during the rest of the week. Things will never be the same as they were, but we can be closer than we are now..." He trailed off and accepted the offered hand, rising from the ledge.

"They won't accept one unless I manipulate their minds, and I'm not supposed to be so cavalier with my Mesmer." That was more Finn's influence than Solunarium's to be sure. Stepping into the office, his gaze scanned the walls and, vainglorious thespian that he was, he found his own face first. Initially it was the bombast of intentionally eye-catching posters that caught his eye- His turn as his own ancestor was hard to miss, as the adverts had attempted to imitate Solunarian spectacle. Eventually he found the subtler, smoky candid from the cabaret. His lip twitched a bit, he took a deep inhalation and turned to face Aurin directly, watching him mixologise.

"They're still people, Aurin..." Arry chuckled, "I can't account for their taste, but they may find something to enjoy in the piece. What are we drinking?" He shrugged as he rounded a chair and took a seat.

[Aurin]

"Something smoky for my fire-breathing boy," he said jauntily.

Of course, he had heard every word, intuited many more, and perhaps even caught a few words left unspoken if any thoughts leaked out from behind his royal protections. It was existentially terrifying to know that the fragile, broken boy who had shipwrecked on his doorstep not so very many years ago was now functionally unassailable.

But that didn't show in his eyes, nor even likely in his symphony. No Mesmer himself, he could still masterfully mask his mind with a different Rune. Perhaps his omnipotent ex could pound through that, but things seemed unlikely to go volcanic today.

His rough hand touched Arry's as he put the tumbler in it, but it didn't linger at all. Aurin was only cognizant of it because he wanted more of it and was frustrated in that regard. He sat on the edge of his desk, not quite slouching, but not showing a great deal of care with regard to the furniture finer than he could have afforded not that long ago. But Arry had seen the conservative improvement of his little home. It had been true what Aurin said back when he was poor just as it was now he was not, 'A cot with Arry in it was a finer bed than the Shokaze's.'

"I'm going to read between the lines and decide that you are telling me you want me to visit Solunarium more often. All right, fine, I suppose. Someone has to keep you fun."

Finn gave him joy. His throne gave him purpose. His gods and his people gave him directors and audience. Arry existed on his opulent stage while Aurin smoked in the ghost light of this humbler stage for all the gilt in the peacock's feathers.

Aurin raised his glass and said in Vastian, "To the health of His Exalted Highness, Phædryn Sol'Zalkyrion Arvælyn Prince of Dragons."