Legend of Ransera

"I was pleasantly surprised as well," he admitted.

Not a sentinel today, he was dressed in silver and white, with golden embellishments. Still and all, sentinel blacks or fancy party dress, he responded to his mother-in-law as if she were inhabiting her office within the Vigilia Argenti or her rank as materfamilias of one of the houses he had married into. Much as with Phocion, he left the moments of familiarity to their instigation.

"I have memorized as many historical songs from the past century as I could since this became a possibility, so I hope to have musical answers to his questions."

He didn't mention that her description reminded him a bit of his grandmother as she had aged. She had been the village witch, but died before ever he received any magic of his own. In hindsight, he could guess which runes she might have born, which magical disciplines she might have known. In her last days, she had seemed to become unmoored from the present. One minute, she had asked after his music; the next, she was telling some other man from the past something without any context.

It had been difficult, but he had found that playing whatever role she needed from him from moment to moment had kept her calm rather than confused, conversational rather than combative. He thought this might be somewhat the same. Time would be different for a man with power over it, and so all he could do was try to follow contextual clues to keep up.

"I am ready."

As ready as he could be unless this meeting was postponed, but he didn't want that. He had come up short in his search for Thalya because he didn't have her power over time. Perhaps the Archidux could find her in time and leash her for him, or knew of some artefact hidden away in one of the palaces or armories that would put him on more equal footing with the slippery bitch.

This man was his best lead.

As Cithæra stepped forward to knock, he nodded to the red knights whether they would acknowledge him or not, then stepped through the open doors as she bade him. He did glance back, nodding to the head of his order, though he was continuing on before the doors shut completely.

His ears and more than his ears attuned to the music as he followed the voice on a serpentine path through the records until he stood before many times great-uncle-in-law. Rather than speak a greeting and ruin the euphony, he merely bowed, and would wait to speak until spoken to, enjoying the poetry of the language as well as the mellifluous melodies. He could feel how the body and strings of his instrument vibrated slightly, resonating with the ambient sound, and imagined he could feel it along his skin even if the volume was not so loud as to resound in his chest or his bones.

Whether because Cithæra had mentioned it or because Aværys willed it, his brow added a soft golden glow to the visual splendor as well. He couldn't help it; his soul responded to music.

Though he knew that today he was meant to sing the histories rather than ask questions leading to Thalya, he almost wished rather to hear what the chronomancer had to say about time itself. Time was rhythms and cadences to him, memories and prophecies that existed on a continuum, but not so exactly as he had once imagined.

When he thought he had internalized the song, he began to tentatively pluck strings when the notes would support the music. He didn't want to alter it so much as expand it. He daren't add his voice yet, and was prepared to still his strings at the slightest frown from the man.

Mists, but everyone in Arvælyn's bloodline was beautiful and impressive in strange and different ways...

Whatever he had expected, it wasn't this. Startled, he rolled with it, more from his training as a minstrel than that as a sentinel. The Archidux was warm and welcoming and he had to wonder what had happened to weed those traits from the bloodline, or if he had always been an outlier, or if his chronomancy had unmoored him from more than just the moment. Regardless, he found himself smiling, seated, with a noble elf sitting at his feet. He had expected to be more servile, a mere human, or perhaps begrudgingly accepted as he bore Aværys' own crown.

Perhaps it was his mask.

Finn found himself responding with more music rather than words alone, riffing off of Phædreon's own words.

"We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems."

He found himself making vowel-shifts in his Vallenor to try to match Phædreon's dialect. His own instructor had been a Hytori at Kalzasi's Academy, but that was not something he mentioned in Solunarium.

After ode as prelude, he began to sing his own account of the Mascarata Regia. He intuited that a chronomancer wouldn't be so focused on the linearity of time, so he needn't start from the year Phædreon last left the timestream, and anyway, if it was at Finn's leisure, he would start with the history of which he had been a part. The song was complex, but he had worked to tell the story with all its immediacy, high emotion, and high drama, while including elements that gave context to the intricacies of the politicking.

It was, at the very least, more engaging than dry Sentinel incident reports.

The mimicry was merely how Finn learned—by ear. But he didn't correct, awaiting a clear interrogative before answering. His voice remained only in the faintest resonance in the air, but he plucked a song out of strings and air still, a swaggering sort of thing, some of the fingerwork too intricate to be performed as deftly as he did, as if the timelord had the entirety of his rapt attention. He did, though; Phædreon had all of his attention.

Music just flowed out of him. Sometimes he was just the channel.

His eyes never left the elf, even when the elf turned to confabulate with his spiritual companions. For a moment he was colluding with them, and then he was a child. Certainly, Finn was obsessed with music. He was also obsessed with Arvælyn, and, more recently, with Ambition, Power, and Hunger, and the One who embodied all three. He hungered for Thalya's blood. Sometimes he wondered what it would taste like, and then wondered whether that was Khyan in the back of his head, or some primal aspect of himself being unearthed over time.

Finn didn't think Phædreon's obsession as he understood it was an immoral or distasteful desire so he didn't think he could be pandering to him, attempting, succeeding, or failing. He did hope that Phædreon was the key to unlock the door standing between him and his vengeance, but he had come for a myriad of reasons, learning about history from a chronomancer. It was unlikely he would have another opportunity to do so.

He was patient, though, and hoping to ask for a boon much later. A part of him was no doubt seeking to curry some favor, to make the best first impression that might lead to fulfilling his ambition.

"You are, I think, obsessed with witnessing the fulfillment of the narrative, that of the ascendance of the Divine Twins."

The Halcyon Imperator, he mused to himself. Arvælyn would enjoy that one. He couldn't help but smile a bit at the compliments; it was entirely possible that Phædreon was the one pandering now, but validation rarely came to him in Solunarium in any form other than remaining in the game, earning more responsibilities as if they were accolades. Of course, people were nice to him, but that was just politics.

His attire did share a fair amount of moon-fair skin, though he was hardly so bold as Raithen. His golden halo gained a bit of intensity as it was acknowledged. Aye, Aværys had granted him grace and power. The empyreal lord was resplendent in his own way.

Finn had put some of his love affair to music, though nothing was complete, nothing polished. But he played and he sang, improvising chains of song to connect the more complex, thought out parts like gems every few links or so. Improvisation came easily to him anymore, and he did what he could to provide a fuller version of the story as he had been an audience to Arvælyn's symphony for years as well. He didn't share intimate details, nor political secrets, nothing that would upset his prince.

He was freer with his own truths, and while he did tell the story, it was largely from his perspective. It carried political moments, and it took the timelord to the far star where the platinum dragonflight dwelt in its fullness. There were details he had forgotten that he remembered in the moment and wove into the narrative.

From time to time, he glanced at Ekko and the other spirits, but when he sang of the wedding, he looked curiously at Phædreon. Finn wondered if the elf had ever been to the Twins' realms, if Finn had been given things that more worthy elves had not.