Legend of Ransera

Arvalyn's Bedroom, the Aurecine District
1st of Ash, Year 122 Steel

Far, far away, Aurin was waking up from a dream. It was a lascivious dream and in involved the young man waking up in his apartments next to his latest human lover, the songster who had followed him across the world without a second thought.

"Fuck," Aurin muttered as he cast off his bedding and regarded the stiff blessing that was rather more a curse when he woke up alone. He missed the way Arry sassed him, and he missed the look in golden eyes as he rode him of a morning. He missed him.

He took hold of himself, spinning illusions about the room until his senses were awash. He was lying in Arry's bed, his minstrel smiling and playing music in the corner as the half-elf adored him with his body, words spilling out that he would never say: "I love you, Aurin. You saved me. I will never leave you." They were things he wouldn't admit to himself that he wanted to hear, even as he heard them play out.

He played out the glamour until his seed was spent.

He still wanted Arvine Venasyr.

A part of him reached out for the young actor, the brash bastard that Aurin loved. Something tingled in response. It was in his blood. It was in his Runes. In his afterglow, he didn't question it. He reached out for what he wanted, and he found that he could sense Arry, sense his waking and the breathing of his lover beside him, sense the heat of the desert sun and the softness of his sheets. Thinking it perhaps his imagination, he spun out an illusion of himself standing over the bed.

A ghostly image of Aurin began to manifest over Arry's bed in the Luxium. Perhaps he had been dreaming of Aurin. Perhaps he was still awake. The smirk was certainly familiar.

"Somniam..." Arry whispered aloud as he scrawled the word across a piece of parchment, "Somnias..." He was sat up in bed with the pad in his lap, "Somniat." He brow was furroughed with focus. "Somniamus." He paused a moment, less confident as he wrote out: "Somnia...tis?" He took in a breath, sighing as he finished his homework at last: "Somniant." And with that, he unceremoniously tossed the notepad off toward the nightstand.

"Fæx." He muttered at the pad slid right off the table and onto the floor. He'd taken to employing Vastian curse words on the regular, now. They were easy, universally understood and the locals seemed amused when they were uttered by foreigners.

He rolled onto his side and extended his hand toward the pad, tapping into the Rune at his chest.

"Leva!" He may as well practise his new Craft alongside his new language, he thought, as the pad slowly- quakingly rose from the marble tiled floor. It made a vertical path upward until it was on the same level at the tabletop, "Pausa!" It stopped, "Et accede..." The pad slowly came toward Arry. He grinned and, once it was over the table, he released his Rune and let it fall onto the intended surface.

"Bene, Arvælyn." Satisfied with his efforts on both fronts, he plopped back down onto the mountain of plush pillows piled against the headboard of the large, four-poster bed and shut his eyes. The warmth of the desert sun was beaming through the window directly onto his increasingly tanned skin. For a moment, it felt nice but then he grew uncomfortable with the way it glared so intensely that it wasn't even dark with his eyelids closed. They shot open and he looked to the window.

"Aulæa claudere." He commanded, with a flippant gesture, and the curtains drew themselves together, darkening the room most agreeably. He sighed contentedly, and tipped his head back up so his face was directed toward the ceiling.

"Ah!" He shrieked and scrambled up to a sitting position, all of his Runes flashing toward accessibility before he registered the apparition looming over his bed, but then...

"...Aurin?" His face was still contorted, though it shifted sharply from mortal fear to utter confusion. "What fresh hell is this?!"

Aurin watched, bemused, as Arry studied. His lover wasn't there, but the fox-faced man wasn't sweating the details. It wasn't until the golden boy reacted to him that he blinked and surmised this was more than just his imagination. He blinked, mouthed words that made no sound, then realized and spun out the illusion of words.

"Arry... you can see me? This is really happening?"

He blinked again, looked down, and manifested clothes over his illusory avatar. Looking around, he took in the boy's quarters, even nicer than the place Aurin had hooked him up with in Adira's Promenade. The man was torn between compersion and jealousy; he had wanted to be the one to provide for Arry, even though he was glad he was doing well for himself.

"I got your letter," he said, returning his attention to the boy who would always be his ward. "I sent one back, though I suppose it won't have reached you yet. How...?" He peered at Arry. All things considered, Arry was probably better versed in magic than he was, despite his growing array of 'tricks.' "I shouldn't be able to do this at such a distance. Perhaps marking you... linked us...?"

Baffled, he looked to Arry for some sort of confirmation for his theory. But already he was wondering whether he couldn't erect wards around him from afar. He had heard that sometimes people developed special little tics with their Runes, things that weren't common across people's experiences. Perhaps this was such a thing. They would have to test it out to find its limitations if they were to turn it to advantage.

"Anyway..." He tried to smirk, but it ended up more of a goofy grin. It was a relief to lay 'eyes' upon Arry once more. "Hullo, princess."

In his endeavours to make sense of the situation, it took Arry an extra moment to make sense or the words uttered by Aurin… or this simulacrum of Aurin. His golden gaze trailed down to once familiar, long abjured parts of his former lover and, in a blink, they were shielded from view. His eyes darted back upward and he settled back a bit.

Was this a trick? A test?

“I see you, yes… I know not whether you are, in sooth, my friend, but… if you are an imposter, you were diligent in studying your subjects anatomy…” He arched an eyebrow, ”From soup to nuts.” He punned, because even in this state of shock he couldn’t help himself.

Was Aurin, too, a secret Re’hyæan? This was not unlike how his mother had appeared to him. It has since been explained that this was a gift visited upon their race by the Founders, but as she described it- the power only worked between parents and children and, well, he may not have yet unearthed the identity of his true pater, but if it were Aurin he was a true Sol’Aværys indeed, for having innately been drawn to his own kin. But no. Aurin’s supposition seemed more likely and less… unsettling.

”That could well be…” He granted, “ [ When I spoke of your Rune carving she said something I didn’t understand at the time… That you’d- how did she put it? Marked me with more than my own magic- a claim staked, a feral thing…” He pursed his lips.

“Well. Whatever the origins of this strange new power, it is very nice to see you. I’d been trying to work out how we might enjoy a more direct form of communication, and here it is… fallen direct into our laps!” He was still getting a feel for the formidable and deeply entrenched magicks of this realm, but being pulled in so many directions he hadn’t been as diligent as he might have in trying to connect with his former life whilst acclimating to the contemporary.

“The princess and the saviour reunited, after a fashion, at last. So… are you planning to just… hover there, or…?”

For all his feigned nonchalance, thsi was strange for Aurin as well. He wasn't hearing so much as sensing with Semblance, but his mind parsed it as language in his ear. If he concentrated, he saw Arry as nothing more than his aetheric patterns, but his mind supplied the context and covered him in the golden skin his hands had roamed so many times.

"Marked?" He supposed he was speaking aloud back in his cottage, but he was also projecting the illusion of his voice. "Oh, I... learned that the cutting was unnecessary. I didn't know." His avatar grimaced, though he didn't apologize. In fact, he was rather proud Arry didn't trust him right away. Paranoia was something he tried to instill. People might call it crazy, but he called it prudent. But this was something to ponder—whether his inexpert initiation had linked them. That might mean he was also linked to Torin. That might mean he was linked to whomever had been hired to mark him all those years ago. That might mean he was linked to Talon even though there had been no blood.

Even his avatar blinked at the possibilities that he would need to explore.

Then he looked down, focused on his avatar being more firmly planted upon the ground rather than floating an inch above it. 'Twas passing strange; he could feel his bedding under his feet, he could feel the floor of Arry's room through his Rune, and he was going to have to be careful he didn't thrash around and hurt himself, but focus on controlling only his avatar and letting his body relax.

"Better?" he asked. "Anyway, ah... do you want to ask me some questions that only I would know the answer to? Best to be careful, eh?" He smirked, and it was as perfect a simulacrum as his cock had been.

Arry shrugged. Cithæra, true to form, had not been particularly direct or forthcoming. Without knowing more about what was going on above him, it was hard for him to guess at what she might have meant by 'marked'. Yes, Aurin had cut his flesh, but the Rune had reshaped itself upon his flesh like its predecessor. The wound healed more quickly than was natural. Blood seemed not atypical to Rune conferment. Cithæra herself had employed blood in her own recent bequeathment, though he hadn't been lacerated and it hadn't been his own.

At the news that the cutting hadn't been necessary at all, Arry's expression remained cavalier. It had been painful, but so had many things in his life. And many of those had pertained to Aurin. Even their introduction had stung, in its way. It had been born of Arry's failure. It had led to many painful things, though none for which he blamed Aurin. Aurin had caused him pain, but spared him worse. He might have been anguished and pitiful. Instead, because of Aurin, he was anguished and increasingly grand. As it didn't occur to Aurin to apologise for cutting him, it didn't occur to Arry that he might want for an apology.

"Better." He acknowledged, as the form of the phantasm found more favourable purchase. He got out of bed and knelt to collect a robe he'd discarded the night before, slipping his arms through it and closing it in front of him. If this careful replication of Aurin was to display modesty, so would he. He fastened the belt and considered the prompt.

"That seems a futile exercise, in faith..." Arry wrinkled his nose. "You are proportioned with an almost alarming level of exacting detail and for all I know you are being projected directly into my mind. Why should I assume whoever is doing the projecting didn't derive you directly from my thoughts? Any question I might ask is compromised by my own knowledge of the answer..." But, he bit the corner of his smirking lip, considering.

"However..." It was odd and somewhat amusing, but it was actually spontaneity that would be most helpful here. Aurin's personality was, to him, predictably unpredictable. Poking the bear would help him to divine veracity.

"How is our Torin? Does he ask after me?"

The corner of his mouth tugged down as Arry covered up. He supposed modesty was rather a joke considering how intimate they had been, and how intimate they were now, bound by their Runes of Masquerade across countless leagues of sea and sand. At the mention of Torin, he rolled his eyes.

His avatar drifted upward, ignoring gravity, and his clothes melted away as he seemed to somersault with a dancer's grace rather than an assassin's, only to land invitingly upon Arry's bed. The goods were on display and his self-image didn't seem to be overly generous or critical, but rather realistic. It occurred to him that he could get up to no good like this, but while he was confident in his bedroom panache, he didn't think that would be enough to bring Arry home, and so...

"Oh, I think he's about as well as your Fallon. Thanks for asking." He smirked, then rolled his eyes and rolled onto his back, tucking illusory hands behind his head. It was funny; he could feel the sheets and his body back in Kalzasi twitched, trying not to enact the acrobatics his avatar was doing.

"Anyway, I can sort of... feel you in my Rune. Does that track? Eh, perhaps even that could be feigned. I've learned a thing or two since you left from the Myshalarai of Zaichaer. So, even though my trick's all powerful now, I'm still, well, you know, you can teach an old dog new tricks. The Mists right fucked Zaichaer up. I suppose that means Kalzasi is safe for the nonce, though there's been not hide nor hair of the prince. But I made contact with the covens before that. Helped get some of them out as I'd planned to before things went upside down."

Aurin wasn't usually the one to share, but rather demand stories from others. Apparently, he missed Arry.

Arry laughed and heartily at Aurin's eyeroll and subsequent taunt. Perhaps his guffaws would have exceeded the want of the moment, except that the moment was so strange and tense. It begged for the release that only humour could afford, and so this little hint of the jocular was enough to bounce his belly with deep laughter.

"I'm satisfied." His chuckles were waning now, "It's you." He cast a downward glance toward Aurin's spectral goodies, and shook his head. "Well and truly you." Now it was his turn to roll his eyes, but when they descended they regarded Aurin's face with a warm, welcoming smile. Gods how he'd missed him.

"Oh yes, the fate of Zaichaer was dramatic enough to be found remarkable even here." He sighed, "It's a grisly thing, I think... All those people, and for what? Absolutely senseless... Almost by definition, if I have any handle on what Dread Mists really represent..." He trailed off. "There was even a flicker of a storm here on that day, you know. The dragons flew to protect the city and mages on wyvern back ensorcelled the dread away..." He thought back to that bizarre day, and his unlikely hero.

"Would you believe an Avialæ came to my rescue? To this day he's the only one I've seen here." He sighed, "Anyway... I'm glad you were able to help your covens." He felt a bit like he'd abandoned Aurin's enterprise by embarking on this trek, but the human had never openly begrudged him his choice.

"I do hope Portions for Foxes is getting on all right in my absence... It turns out my mum is essentially the Solunarian spymistress, which certainly contributes to her cageyness, but... Well, if your endeavours ever have want of intelligence about Ecith, I'm your man on the ground... Mummy dearest willing." He pursed his lips,

"I've really missed you, you know. Do you think we can hug through this medium? And, if so, would you, um... mind conjuring some clothes in case 'Fallon' walks in and you're visible to bystanders?"

Auburn eyebrows rose like Avialae wings at the mention of the race.

"It seems we are both managing despite distances," he agreed. "Any information out of Ecith would be interesting, but most especially whatever Solunarium intends to do about Karnor. I heard they might be seeking footholds in the region. Colonies. With Zaichaer still hemorrhaging refugees... Well..." He shrugged. "And everything to do with you. I know the Railrunners now. I can get to you faster than you got there, and if you need me, all you have to do is ask. Perhaps later... see if you can reach back toward me the way I'm reaching to you now? Anyway, I have a contact in Tertium... I had them keep an eye out for you, so they saw you march away with an honor guard to a royal villa. I could set up some things in the capital, as well, so you have some network that is independent of your... blood family."

Finally, he registered the question and instead of smirking, instead of cracking a joke, there was a bit of a war upon his face, not hidden by his illusions. The image of him rippled and then was still.

"Now only you can see me." From where he lay upon Arry's bed, he didn't reach out with his avatar, but brushed a hand over Arry's cheek. He could feel the skin, and Arry could feel his callused hand. "Do you still want me to cover up? Perhaps I'm a coward for waiting until you're so far away and we're speaking in the privacy of our own minds, but... I miss you. In my life, in my bed... I don't suppose it'll matter to you so long as you're on another continent with a sea between us, but I love you. I wish you could find space for me and for Fallon in your heart... and in your body."

The desire was plain upon his face, and though his illusory body wasn't doing anything pornographic, his body back in Kalzasi was reacting. He wished Arry could have been happy on Finn's arm and still sometimes in Aurin's bed. They had fit together so well.

"Well," Arry considered, "The only thing perhaps worthy of note pertaining to Ailizane that I can think to mention at the moment is that my sister-... Oh, I have a sister. Anyway, my sister has been in Auris the entire time we've been here. She's some sort of diplomat and is apparently working on some very furtive mission with the other Elven desert kingdom. I didn't realise this prior to being here, but it seems Solunarium is aligned with them in some regard. Theirs is the only embassy I've seen in the capital, and it's quite lavish...." He arched an eyebrow and grinned,

"You've set spies on me? I suppose I'm flattered..." He would consider the notion of taking Aurin up on the offer of further support. It might indeed be wise to retain resources of his own that weren't under the purview of his mother or her minions. She seemed to have expanded the breadth and entrenchment of her order significantly since taking over- A point of contention between their gens and the Unbroken Line, apparently.

He leaned his cheek into Aurin's touch and a wan, wistful smile painted his lips, though it was not long lived. He shut his eyes as Aurin spoke on. It was difficult to hear what he had to say.

"I..." There was a war within Arry, as well. How easy it would be to fall into comfortable old patterns. He hadn't forgotten the steps to their old dances, and he knew they would be that much more rewarding for the length of the intermission... and for their forbidden nature. He lifted a hand to the lapel of his robe, and traced it with his finger... considering pulling it open as he ran his tongue over his teeth. His eyes opened to regard the handsome human... His saviour of bygone days. Would he have survived Antiris to seek out this new life if not for the botched theft that brought them together?

He drew his robe back enough that it fell from his shoulders, though it bunched over his lap so only his golden torso was bare, but already it was a betrayal.

"Finn..." He now corrected, "...is too good for me already." He took in a shivering breath, "I strive to be worthy of his love. If he were to do what you ask of me with another, I would..." He hissed through clenched teeth, eyes narrowing, "...buuuuurn with rage. For me to betray his trust, would be to admit that I will never deserve him. I am avaricious, I know..." His voice quaked with the moment of what he was declining apparent. "But I would not be hypocritical withal." He sighed,

"We are alike and we are not, you and I. I was built for one lover at a time. You have Torin, and... presumably others. I hope that they satisfy you sufficiently, as Finn satisfies me. I hope that you have the kind of love for which one must strive to be better and to fight off the easy urges of familiar affection... This is not a light matter for me. Please know that I... remember fondly and frequently what we once shared of a night. Sometimes your face is in my mind when he is in me, but that is as much of betrayal as I am able to brook." He lowered his head and raised his robe to cover his torso once more, "I am sorry."