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Location: Well, the Progress Day festival, of course
&&: @xdeimosx
When Ormir at last found Deimos, as he said he would, he had pored over the majority of the festival already in the search for him. Craning over the roiling crowds after a glimpse of golden hair had reminded him of thrashing against the open ocean, and he gained no pleasure from the festive air. Tent after tent of innovation went unappreciated. Ormir’s stomach held a mechanism of its own that would spring inside him at the , or the husky of a laugh. Ormir was woefully out of practice with wrangling such juvenile feelings into submission. Even the simple task of dressing this morning had been a challenge: Everything made him look too polished, or too soft, or too old. He ignored it as best he could.
The display greenhouse was an oasis from the crowds, though the drone of voices and the deep brass tones of the orchestra were merely muffled inside. Every inch beneath the dome of sea-stained glass was brimming with exotic life, so densely that it steeped in the air. Each lungful tasted of dozens of uniquely blooming flora with a musky, eerie, animalistic note coiled beneath. So unlike the silent and frozen forests of Iskaldrik, which did not breathe for ten months of the year. Jewellike insects crawled through the lushness and butterflies flit about on silken wings, making up a trove of living treasures. Deimos stood within it, looking so naturally a part of it he was almost camouflaged from the other fairgoers. The crowning specimen of the ecosystem. Ormir felt a flush of relief to find him, but his nerves quickly wound up again.
“When we agreed to do this, you neglected to tell me where to find you.” Ormir grumbled, the annoyance in him bordering on childish petulance. He minded his posture as he stood beside him. “I waited at the gates for nearly a half-hour.” It was an exaggeration. In truth it was more like twelve minutes, and he bore each torturous second until he was bristling with self-consciousness from the stares and what he took to be the pitying looks from the stationed guards. Still, he hadn't doubted that Deimos would (eventually) show.
How indeed. Emre knew it had taken some conditioning, the mead that he got his hands on wasn't exactly common - but the effects were always fun. "Must be the devil in me." Emre remarked glibly before he brought his flask to his lips again before swallowing a warm mouthful.
A bark of laughter followed as Ormir felt the need to clarify, Emre wouldn't have taken offense even if the slight had been intentional. "None taken." He'd be sure not to get bamboozled into a night like that again, unless, of course, Ormir happened to be in attendance. "Do you Iskarans have bathhouses?" Emre queried, "Eterna can't compare to Hestia's Cove, but nothing takes the edge off like a happy ending." Emre made a lewd gesture to pair with this, working a closed fist back and forth before grinning in typical fashion. Naturally, his thoughts wandered briefly before circling back to the present; his thoughts were perhaps perpetually clouded, but gait and speech aside - Emre remained surprisingly observant.
"I'm eager to get back to making coin," the gladiator emphasized, he enjoyed the glory and celebrity that came with the sands but gold was perpetually at the top of Emre's mind. "getting sick of being strung along as second for someone's guild contract." Emre had his own beef with the Warrior's Guild, while they wouldn't let him in there was no stopping him from accompanying others.
Must be the devil in me. The eggy waft of sulfur still rode on the air, outliving the harsh, quick-burning notes of Emre’s drink. A cambion, too. It would be unwise to humor him any further without evaluating the risk in such an allegiance. There would perhaps be talk of the blight that pulsed through Emre, perhaps the reignitions of old rumors, but Ormir had pressured for Iskarans to make best use of the resources Eterna allowed them. A gladiator of infernal lineage was quite the pull to strengthen their hand, if he could be swayed.
Ormir’s eyes dropped with Emre’s hand, and though his nose wrinkled at the gesture he couldn’t shake his amusement. “Once we’ve reclaimed Iskaldrik, remind me to introduce you to our saunas.” He chuckled. While Sinaria and Ankhuria boasted their perfumed pleasure dens, and Lysara its marble bathhouses, Iskaldrik took covetous pride in its saunas. Iskarans welcomed the heat until it became oppressive. Your thoughts slowed, your muscle dissolved into sluggishness and your inhibitions became even laxer. Saunas were shut tight, places for underhanded deals and luxuriant pleasures. Blood always ran hottest after the shock of a winter plunge in the sea, as nearly every Iskaran knew. “Until then, I’ll stick to wine.” Ormir smiled, the flush thicker beneath his accrued tan.
He made a bitter sound, then. “There’s no gold or recognition to be made in the Guild for those who don’t already have it.” Ormir said, thinking of the men he’d known who appeared for contracts in suits of undented silver, high-born second sons who’d been groomed from infancy to bear the title ‘Blademaster’. The Guild welcomed all skilled and devoted enough, but it took immense privilege to buy the skills of war without having lived through it. Some had even left their weapons intentionally bare to one day carry the heron mark. There was only one such man who proved the exception. “You’re better off butchering cats in your coliseum,” An unconscious flinch, “than performing for their private audience, and for an even smaller pool of recognition.” Ormir’s Guild weapons had been smelted down long ago. Probably to be remade the codpiece on some silver suit.
The conversation snowballed quickly into the proposition he’d meant to pocket for another time. It felt right to ask it then, although in the fragile, pinkish haze of new friendship, the sureness in his skills in persuasion was gone. A boy fumbling cheap pins and jewelry between his hands for the promise of copper. He cleared his throat softly, but it was loud in the silent wood. “I would have work for you, if you were amenable.” Ormir did his best to sound noncommittal, to keep his eyes fixed ahead.
closed starter for @ormir
location: eterna
note: hehehehehe
After going through that entire mystery box, Eldar had been trying to learn Draconic. Eivor was a dragon so he could’ve just passed it off as that, but he couldn’t help but think about that one moment he saw while he was being tested. The Queen, or Alessandra, had called him ‘little dragon’. What that meant was certainly up to interpretation, but he had to find out what it meant. Finding Alessandra would be easier than trying to go to Avalon, but he much preferred the latter option. Would the bard even think about telling him anything if he asked? That was his concern as he made his way towards a place he did not frequent ever.
The Huscarl was not someone he particularly talked to, but he was sure that the man would know him upon hearing his name. There was no sign that the man was in the room so Eldar simply welcomed himself in and sat himself near the fireplace. He remembered seeing Afshin for a brief moment in this exact seat not too long ago. Ankle rested upon his knee, he sat there until the Huscarl decided to show up. His head tilted back upon the chair to close his eyes in the process.
Through trial and much, much error, Ormir learned that he only did well wading into language studies early in the day. He was willing to attribute his mental rigidity to age, or the distraction of casual magic thrown around the study space in the Silverlands, or (privately) to his lack of experience with formal education as the Tower believed in it. Proper schooling was an experience life hadn’t afforded him until recently, and to be the one on the receiving end of tutelage proved a challenge. Information had a better shot of sticking in the morning, before the ambient frustrations of the day could cluster over his synapses.
It was late morning by the time Ormir returned to his room, brain pulverized and nerves already split at their ends. If he never had to copy another line of runic into a wax tablet again in his life, whatever time was left of it would be a balm. He shifted a clutch of books under his arm, chasing the hard, iron shape of a key in his pocket. When at last he turned it in the door, it opened without resistance. Had he really been in such a rush this morning that he’d forgotten to lock it?
Inside, a man was sitting on the far side of the room, facing the embering fire and toasting his boots. In the seat that Ormir favored. The Huscarl recognized those boots, too. He’d been there when they were gifted on the prince’s nameday, when it was finally safe to assume he wouldn’t grow out of them in a month’s time. Ormir’s shoulders sank slightly in familial company, but the temper stayed. He thought he’d left the door locked.
Crossing the room, he noticed that the figure in the chair was too burly to be Afshin’s, and that the hair poking over the backrest was too straight and short. Ormir closed the distance to regard his visitor properly. The Elve’s face was familiar in the way that the faces in paintings and tapestries were. Fixed, distant, belonging in the liminal space of belief. It discomforted him to have it realized in the flesh. Ormir looked at the Elvhen like he was a nocturnal animal caught out in broad daylight. “Eldar.” The startle was evident in his voice. He wasn’t sure of the last time he’d seen Afshin’s shadow roaming. There was a new firmness to his features Ormir had never noticed before. Maturity, maybe. “If you’re lost, or mean to make a complaint about your lodgings, I would gladly point you in the proper direction.” He offered.
Thanks to the non-heroics of the paved in blood party, wild magic is surging in Eterna's center.
trigger warnings: body horror, death, mentions of grief.
Below the city, the road paved in blood was collapsing. An hour ago, Ormir was anointed by the spray of arterial crimson. He listened as terms traded on the tongue of dragons. He was a part of something branding and cosmic, melded into Taravell’s fate like the red hand blistered into his own chest.
Now, he was vermin. The Hand was scurrying back the way they came with nothing but a ragged life held tightly in his fist. The brick lung of the temple constricted, closing darkness tighter over their heads, raining rubble and rattling the stones under their feet. Each labor of feline muscle moves the earth, pushing the impending catastrophe further behind him. They fight a pull, a single inevitability, a tidal summon dredging them back toward that room, back toward the light, to the ravenous, pulsing amassment of their failure. It grows louder, vacuous, terrifying. Death laps at their heels. Ormir’s hackles rise in a painful, reactive flight.
The gourd is in his teeth. It’s a magical sham of a trinket he’d intended on selling to some unworldy sod, and is somehow now a last resort to survival. He slows his gallop and listens for the closing drum of his comrades’ footsteps around him. He closes his mind to rationality, to skepticism, to panic, and pins his thoughts on the tower courtyard. Behind layered eyelids, he pictures the intricate pattern of brickwork in Eterna’s streets. The smell of imported spice and fig blossom and the tingling presence of permanent magic. He barricades all his mental might behind his imagination, and shakes the gourd. Inside, a single dry pip breaks loose, rattling musically against its dry casing.
Time opens just as the temple tears open with a boom, and everything is swallowed by the jump of space.
A dozen ears pop with the violent change of being teleported above ground. The air is immediately clearer. The panther shakes his great head to alleviate the pressure behind his eyes, and when he opens them, he’s staring down into the shield of his own dirtied – human – palms. They are in the tower courtyard, exactly as he’d imagined. Standing on two legs, level to or shorter than the others, feels almost like standing naked in a crowd. Panicked hands pat over his torso, and he relaxes at the cool hold of leather over his body. That his dignity remained intact was nothing short of miraculous.
The diplomat’s coffers are twenty gold lighter, his flank unguarded, his dignity in tatters. A stale life was the only prize he’d won through their legendary efforts. Some didn’t make it out with that much.
The relief is short-lived. Like a disturbance on a lake’s surface, the cobblestones underfoot begin to roll in jagged ripples. The gourd had uprooted them by miles, but it’d not been far enough. Awkwardly occupying his bipedal form, Ormir wobbles awkwardly to steady himself. What had they done? Or, perhaps more worryingly, how much had they failed to do?
He reaches inside to shrug his second form back on, to feel the weight of muscle and assurance of teeth at his disposal, but finds the spirit evasive. It stays out of reach, coy, almost taunting, like a proper cat would be. Damn it all. Ormir wore the envelope of fur and muscle more, but hadn’t polished just how to domesticate it to his will.
He coughs on something unpleasant. Something that has mass in his nostrils.
Candy-pink tendrils furl out of the sewers, pushing up from the stone to make clouds of glittering, thick fog. The smell on them is pungently sweet, musky and definitively equine. Horse shit, memory supplies. Sugary, magical horse shit. It’s the stinking punchline to the retrieval that spiraled into harrowing misadventure. A stench to stain Eterna’s hapless heroes. The party disperses, presumably to assess the damage and gather up their own loose ends.
For a moment, Ormir feels his relief. If a completed draconic ritual’s implosion only was a handful of lives and a city flooded under a blanket of unicorn flatulence, they were getting off lightly in the cosmic scale of events to date.
Sourness strikes at the memory of the pale woman shedding the Kingsguard’s likeness. Torsten. She had stolen the witcher from somewhere, had incapacitated him or worse. With deepening alarm, the uncertainty of Afshin’s fate burrowed into his brain, laying hard against his panic center. The two were seldom apart. Orin would have had ample opportunity to clear a path for ascension, if she’d been truthful about her motivation with Eivor.
Coughing into his forearm, Ormir squints through the pink haze and braves the upstream push through the crowd into the tower.
Each spiral up the castle stairs is another layer of chaos unfurling, a new strain of wild magic running rampant. Nobles, scholars and stewards alike fumble down the stairs, bracing their hands against the wall to keep from tumbling. Some are newly, shiningly bald, others crying crystalline tears that drop and chime against the stone steps. Ormir crowds against the center column of the stairs, not knowing if their magical ailments might be infectious, until he can muscle out into the Iskarans’ makeshift chamber hall.
The floor was apparently empty, haunted only by the panicked shouts from the stairwell. The man’s own footsteps echo and grow in the silence, until they separate and take on an impossible rhythm. Four distinct beats moving in a gathered set. A gallop. Something else is running these halls, something moving closer, closer. Ormir braces, readying for magical summon could spill around the corner.
“Baaahhh!” The creature bleats. A white sheep trots awkwardly, at a limping pace, trailing slips of cloth that Ormir recognizes belong to the servants’ dress. A stained apron sags under the sheep’s stomach, and the dress squeezes around wool that is pushed to bulge out of the collar. Ormir doesn’t stop the polymorph as it clatters by. Helping her is far beyond his abilities.
This was exactly the peril of pickling a city in raw magic. It only solidified his avoidance, his distaste for its usage, even in moderation. Likely the suspended charge in Olympia’s air only fed the spark, like dry kindling for a wildfire. Without anti-magic, chaos climbed Olympia like embers up an open chimney. All the more reason to find the witcher. Quickly.
There was no armor-clad post outside the prince’s door. Ormir grabs the knocker and bashes it, pushing fruitlessly at the handle. No noise or movement inside answer him, and neither name evokes any response from within. They weren’t here.
It’s then he notices the neighboring door to his own quarters is ajar. Moving to close it, he stills at a soft fluttering sound coming from within. Alarm trills in his system again. Tuning his ears, he hears accompanying it, what he can only process as a hushed peal of inhuman laughter.
Gripping his axe in his dominant hand, the Iskaran softens his step and leans his shoulder against the door. Assassin, thief, bugbear, dragon, whatever waits inside will taste steel before it sees him.
Ormir flings the door open, axe raised. After the sheep servant, he thought he’d seen the wildest this surge had to offer. But it was snowing in his room, and there was a gaggle of pixies trashing his belongings.
Indeed, there were about a half-dozen rat sized, winged fae creatures ransacking what remained of his earthly comforts. The bannisters over his bed lay in splintered diagonal slants, his heavy, light-blotting drapes slashed to ribbons. Instead of snow, though, it was soft, white down raining from his disemboweled pillows. The vintage that had survived and was being saved for a special occasion was bleeding into the bearskin rug, where one creature was bent to lap it off the floor.
A loud rip calls his attention to a bedpost, where a fae varmint is tearing the pages of his journal roughly from the spine, giggling like a child plucking leaves from a tree.
There are precious memos tucked inside that journal. Last scraps of correspondence before the fall of Iskaldrik. Important documentation. Personal letters. Ormir’s ears burn red-hot with built rage.
Before he can fashion a better approach, the hatchet is already airbound. It skewers the bedpost pixie and pins its tiny, scaly body to the wall, where it gurgles and expires. The others are undeterred in their ruckus, though the closest two hiss and take flight at him.
The flutter of opalescent wings is an assault on his ears, and Ormir grits his teeth as a tuft of hair is ripped from his scalp. He stumbles back for the door, just for a wrinkle in the rug catches on his ankle. He swings as he goes down.
Through some feat of catlike reflex, he closes one of the creatures in his fist. Wriggling, it flashes sharp, yellow teeth in a grinning hiss, and bites into the soft bridge between Ormir’s thumb and forefinger. The pain is needles, snake venom against the blunt throb from his fall, but he clenches tighter. Ormir squeezes to feed instinct, wanting to see those mischievous eyes pop out of their thimble-sized skull. That would curb this bitterness, this utter lack of control, this impotence he felt in and out of every day.
Instead, a blight of pustules raise horrifically over the pixie’s skin. He feels the lesions form under his grip, turning wet and sticky. The creature gurgles a sickly laugh, sticks a green tongue between its lips, and blows a fat raspberry at him. Then it explodes. Right in Ormir’s grimacing mouth. The others go off in similar gusto, blistering, giggling morbidly, and popping, splattering bright gore onto his walls.
Ormir can only huff in the newfound silence, spit, and wipe a smear of cleanness onto his face. The drip-drip of pixie goo is the only ambience outside of the clamor below. He is utterly exhausted. Defeated. Humiliated.
He stands only to fall back onto his broken bed, haloed by a puff of feathers. A single, bug-like wing twitches on his ceiling. He giggles at the absurdity of it, at the turn a promising night had made.
Aged parchment crunches under his head. One of the pixie’s torn papers, no doubt. Ormir lifts his head and retrieves the page. He recognizes the handwriting instantly, even if he doesn’t have the courage to read the words in the voice that penned them.
It’s a jagged stab to a scabbed wound. Through the crisis underground, in traversing the magic-ravaged city above, even as he scoured the castle for the King’s son, Ormir hadn’t put a single thought into wishing Orhan was here, too. It was a new variety of guilt. The shame of enduring a life without. Of persevering.
Ormir held the shredded paper over his heart, thumbing its torn edge. The chunky wetness on his face was cooling, and somewhere far in the tower’s bowels he could hear a sheep bleating for help. If Orhan could see him now, he’d think his Hand had gone fully mad. Perhaps he had.
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"You're good at it." It's a compliment even if he still sounds a bit sour but the only thing that's hurt is whatever bit of pride he's managed to muster. They'd been at it a while and wolf stamina aside, he couldn't say it wasn't starting to get to him, Ormir himself sounded winded even as he tried to chastise him. Goose sits at the edge of where they are, just a mere few feet away and pacing, clearly wanting to be tagged in. Etienne hadn't called for him though, this was about not relying on the direwolf to do damage. The other part of keeping the wolf at bay had to do with a courtesy to The Hand, it wouldn't feel fair to bring Goose into it when Ormir seemed to react to him so strongly. "I can't imagine I'm the only one who's asked you." He takes a second to walk off falling on his ass, shoulders rolling back and fingers of the free hand that's not clutching his dagger flexing.
With a tightened jaw, Ormir pulled a full quiver of forest air deep into his lungs and sighed it audibly out through his nose. The prince’s new collegiate endeavor with the bards was, regrettably, no ringing endorsement of his tutelage in martial weapons or battle tact. The princess had likewise wasted the talents they’d sharpened in favor of offering her sword to the keep of sleepless death, never to spill blood for their country or join the great halls of Valhalla for their years of toil. “You’re not.” Ormir admitted, bitterly.
Goose’s fervent panting and pacing was fraying a well-worn nerve. The fine hair of Ormir's arms needled painfully against the weave of his clothing, but they were not raised by the cold. An uneasy glance leveled at the wolf, before fixing again on its master. “If it’s a bedtime story you want from me, you’ll have to earn it.” Ormir challenged. Laxing his dueling hand, he opened his stance and stacked his spine to a full height, considerably broadening himself as a target. “Your move.”
@ormir
location: feywilds, nearing the silverlands
notes: post 'return the jar.'
Smoke billowed from behind grit teeth before Emre took in a breath, with a great sigh the gladiator exhaled a cone of draconic flames - burning through the trees, foliage, and whatever tricksters might have been lurking in wait for them within. He grinned in typical form as some indigestion rumbled in his gut, quickly quelled by a sharp strike of his fist to his gut, a loud belch followed.
There used to be a lot of bad talk about the Iskarans, about this man and the Prince in particular, but the nation had garnered some sympathy for the Iskarans in recent months. Emre didn't attend bardic plays, but it used to be that they'd dress up prisoners in Iskaran regalia so that gladiators like him could cut off their heads for the crowd. The arena had been closed since Aventia was attacked, but in the weeks before that practice had come to an end. Truthfully, that was the only means Emre used for attuning toward which way the wind was blowing. Popularity was a gladiator's livelihood.
"What are your plans when we get back to the city?" He'd decided without really thinking that he'd escort the Hand to the Silverlands where travel back to the Eterna would be simpler and less prone to unexpected obstacles and interruptions. Much like his association with Praxis, there was an underlying attachment to being pointed in any given direction. Emre was always at his best when he didn't need to think.
A flight of birds lifted from the trees ahead, triggering a fit of terrified squawks that dissolved into a silence thickened by the trees and snow. If not for the crunching footsteps to break up the emptiness, they’d feel the quiet deep in their ears. Ormir watched as ashen bark embered and peeled away from the wood, leaving a bone-like trunk behind to hold up the canopy. He thought about how a less skeptical man would’ve found the vision oddly prophetic; the char climbing an endless row of burnished marble pillars, like the ruin of a great empire. He reminded himself that he was a skeptical man, and to leave such interpretations to the preachers and carnival swindlers. Ormir didn’t bother to look behind them. If he did, there would be only a blackened trail of soot, skeletal trees, and two tracks of silver footprints.
In most circumstances, drawing any degree of attention in the middle of an unfamiliar and darkening wood would’ve put Ormir well over the boundary of comfort. But travelling with an utterly unphased human torch had its reassurances. Here was a capable, self-assured man who had stared death in the eye more times than Ormir’s career as a soldier had ever warranted, very likely with more confounding elements reeling in his system, and still stood and taunted the next. It was clear that, unlike Ormir, luck had not yet pulled its favor from Emre. There was no reason to believe that proximity to a gladiator would restore any of the grandeur or social capital lost to time and circumstance, rather that he sensed there would be no hesitation from Emre to soak up a blade or two on his behalf.
The handkerchief Ormir smothered over his nose was of little help. The burn of Emre’s acrid burp had eaten through the fabric, crawled past his body’s natural defenses, and reached his eyes. He stifled a cough, even as each individual node and fibre in his lungs screamed for relief. “How is there still a cell of functioning liver left in you?” Ormir exclaimed.
There was the question he’d been considering himself. He cleared his throat, blinking the pained moisture from his eyes. “Nonexistent.“ A layer of propriety was shed somewhere along the way. Ormir felt naked without it, but simultaneously liberated from the weight. Problems were piling higher, the threat of Aetheron drawing nearer, and there was a chiding voice gnawing at him for being steered so far off-course from what mattered. He and Afshin had not yet had any real conversation about their failed diplomacy. About their prospects. “A start would be to draw a hot bath. Decant a decent vintage, something imported, full-bodied. Try to forget the last forty-eight hours ever happened.” The thought of pouring most of a coveted Lysaran red over the balcony was an oddly seductive thought. Above the handkerchief and below a set brow, Ormir gave Emre a shaded look. “Not intended as a slight on present company.” He said, as flatly as he could with his nerves still sizzling.
“I imagine you’re eager to get back to your deathsport?"
Deimos gave a wry grin, watching as Ormir seemingly lost himself in perhaps another old wives tale that Iskaldrik was meant to be reinstated. He remembered the other's disbelief that the druid couldn't have cared less, but still – his avoidance of water once again spoke volumes. "Dare I say it, Ormir, but if it's your time to drown..." he trailed off, unable to lie. Yet the words remained unspoken. If it was his time to drown, Deimos would watch.
Ormir's answer didn't exactly interest Deimos, trade and politics never did. Still, the druid was rooted to the spot. Trade imports, everything was material within the cities. It's why he didn't enjoy it, and why he avoided them. Dúnedain lived off the land, and while Deimos didn't always hate all the benefits of a city, including a pastry shop he found himself entering more often than not, Ormir's presence was still...confusing.
"You sit in this city, that you loathe isn't your own comfortable icicle of the north, and you are observing trade regulations?" Deimos' words were not kind, but they weren't as malicious as they perhaps could have been taken as. "Has your life become just one miserable political agenda, Ormir? I thought we spoke of this last time. You know, the fall of Iskaldrik, the fall of the prince from his tower, and finally...the hand, free from the shackles of another. The woods whisper, and you instead...stand here instead of taking a dive into something new."
A shudder passed over him, and Ormir could imagine the cold, black waters closing over his head, the square-jawed druid smiling down through the warp of the waves as he sunk into oblivion. The spark of interest he felt at the thought should have been alarming, but there was only thick, bleeding warmth. Ormir’s creased brow raised in mock-surprise. “Aren’t you the altruist.” The Hand deadpanned. “As… compelling of an argument you’re making for me to provide you with the spectacle of my drowning in these disease-infested waters, I’ll have to decline. You’ll have to be a voyeur to my death another day.” He said, as if that was incentive enough for staying close.
Though Ormir’s ruse was false, every one of Deimos’ points needled at a sore truth. He’d once been the man who would’ve answered that call in a heartbeat, one who slept rough under the stars, laughed loudly and felt his life overflowing. It was the lack of complexities that made him romanticize that time, and ignore all its blisters. Ormir pulled the empty clutch closer to his body, like it was a battered shield found in the heat of battle.
“And I expect you would rather I forsake my title, erase my life’s work, abandon the child I’ve raised, and leave my people to be smothered here in the next wave of the incursion, all so that I can run away and play house in the wilderness with you?” Stringing out the list of woes, he hated how appealing a prize it sounded, after the hell these months had been. Still, he refused to let such adolescent impulses gain ground over common sense. “There are responsibilities I can’t just abandon.” Ormir stated. One miserable political agenda was what he knew best. It was the last bastion of his control in the world. “Where I come from, if you started listening to the whispers through the trees, the madness would take you before you had a chance to fight it.”
A thought jumped to the fore of the Iskaran’s mind, dumping fuel over his stifled excitement. It was irrational, dangerous, yet… it dared to match the thrill and spontaneity of Deimos’ suggestion. Silver eyes scanned the docks to be sure of their privacy. The gravelly timbre of his voice lowered as he drew closer. “But you could come with me.” He offered, eyes dipping to the druid’s lips before he met his gaze again. “It’s a short diplomatic errand in Astoria. Leaving at dawn. Hostile shores for the both of us.” A smirk flavored the words.
A thin smile crossed her expression as Ormir begrudged the heat. She didn’t mind it quite as much as she did, though it wasn’t her preference. It was with a double-sided fondness that Freydis considered how his assessing eye could find a fault in even an almost near-perfect image. There was always something that barbed him, that missed his mark, or offended his senses. She recalled the hushed whispers she shared with the princess in her later teens as the two of them placed bets with one another about just what Ormir might find issue with in any given setting. Each was correct as often as the other–and a third of the time neither was correct. “The harshest Iskaran summers couldn’t hold a handle to this, could they?” she asked lightly, “And I hear this is relatively temperate for the region.”
Freydis blinked at him, surprised he had such a harsh appraisal of his new companion. Lásval hadn’t seemed to falter from her mission earlier that morning–small as it was. She wondered for a moment if the cold judgment he followed up with were really centered on the raven or perhaps something spawned more from a projection of how he felt about Freydis now. She watched as the joyless smile faded from his features and did not realize how her grip tightened and her knuckles whitened on the chair before her. She tracked his movements, her eyes carefully calculating the small signs of tension he carried. Freydis had considered smiling to try and lighten the mood, to slip into the role of his vapid mentee that she had played so well for the last decade and some, but she was afraid that if she bared her teeth–proverbial or otherwise–at him in any manner he would lunge across the table and remove them.
She chose to sit, deferring the high ground to Ormir. It was an act of submission whether either of them wanted to admit it or not–that was what their relationship was today; a lock step of push and pull. She would hear him out today, but she may not listen. She might not heed. Freydis was silent at first, and though she was wary of his smile, this one read slightly more genuine than the one moments before and some rigidity in her posture softened slightly. And then, when he vocalized a word she yearned for–worry–the tempered steel behind her expression fell away.
Ormir would be able to see it easily, even without years of strategy and diplomacy–Freydis as the prey at the center of the snare he’d laid just before it activated, two legs swung over the side of the grave as she precariously settled on its earthen edge. It was not so hard to draw her back in if one knew the few words she wished to hear. “I appreciate the concern,” she began carefully, “but I wouldn’t consider this a new endeavor… Reports from the barrier have been consistent, I just want to spend this time somewhere… quiet. There is no place or purpose for me in Lysara, except perhaps to be a source of shame. They’re not so proper in the Wildlands–if anything I thought you’d worry less.”
A pleasant, spicy aroma characterized Freydis’ lodgings in Lysara. Today the smell was as thick and syrupy as spiced wine, which was especially odd considering the apartment was stripped of the rest of her effects. The heat hadn’t sloughed off his shoulders just yet. Ormir muted an anguished sound, imagining the sizzling crescendo at the end of a summer. Their kingdom for an ice bath. “I can hardly blame your move North.” He said to the empty walls as he studied them, then turned back to his host.
Freydis had taken a seat first. Reducing her presence, or perhaps shoring her defenses to become impenetrable. His window was closing, her tether fraying on its sharp sill. Ormir sat in the chair opposite, evening the ground. He wasn’t used to being the one chasing after her lead, mirroring the tone she set. There were few things in this world he would debase himself to chase after. Getting comfortable, Ormir sat slightly forward in his chair, though not far enough to be intrusive. The intended posturing was direct, that of the merchant, but he softened the hard angles he would emphasize for negotiations. His hands clasped loosely in front of his stomach. Still guarded.
“I understand the desire to seek out familiarity. Better than most.” Ormir spoke softly, keeping his gaze sincere and trained on the Jarl, even though his eyes already itched to escape the intimacy and burrow in the furthest corners of the room. “This city, the pageantry, the games, this is the arena I know best. If I were still a soldier from Skjald, if I’d never been forced into politics the way I erroneously tried to thrust them upon you, and if I still possessed a fraction of your constitution, I would likely do the same.” It was the full truth, and each syllable of it came with more and more difficulty. The pulse in his ears grew faster, louder. “It gladdens me that you are finding the peace you are deserving of, and I have faith that you will answer Iskaldrik’s call when you’re needed. But do not give in to any temptations to recluse yourself. You will only dig those sorrows deeper in isolation.” The lesson was laden with experience. His heart didn’t shake with lectures, so he wouldn’t consider this a moment of teaching.
This was no bid for authority, no last-ditch to regain control over what he felt pulling away. The instinct that inspired his openness was far more primal. One that wanted only to wrap the quilt of his experience over her shoulders, to keep her from feeling life’s icy gusts too sharply. Emotion bristled unpleasantly in his stomach as he studied her face, still surprised by the lines that time had carved into her features. “You’ve worn the shame for my actions long enough, Freydis.” Ormir said, around the knot forming in his throat.
"Schuester! Yeah, I'll need to see that set list for Sectionals after all, and I want it on my desk, warm from the laminator at 5:00 p.m. And if it is one minute late, I will go to the animal shelter and get you a kitty cat. I will let you fall in love with that kitty cat. And then, on some dark, cold night, I will steal away into your home and punch you in the face!"
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Location: Mercury's Bazaar
&&: @froyofthe-ironwood
Notes: hi did your dad ever mention me
Another Iskaran was the market, recognizable by the round-mouthed accent rolling through the crowd like a dropped platter. The tone, the inflection, the trained manner of speech spoke of status. Nobility. Ormir followed the voice, snipping through the crowd until he found the face it belonged to. He blanched. The resemblance was uncanny, like the man had been thawed straight out of a memory forty years frozen.
Ormir was then a child of seven years, standing in a raised hall crafted from ironwood and stone. He hadn’t known ceilings could even arch so high, nor that houses could stand mightier than the trees themselves. The boy did as he was expected and remained silent. He cast a shadow over the bent shape of his father’s body as the man groveled, palm-up, before the elder Jarl of the Skjaldwood. Elifr would’ve dried his own bloodline if it earned him a sliver of the Instads’ power, if it installed his name among the great houses of Iskaldrik. Instead, his consuming ego only earned condemnation for himself and his family, and stained the name that was Ormir’s only inheritance. The disdain he was worthy of was there even then, set into Jarl Instad’s features. It was Ormir’s first brush with power, and it had left a burn in his memory.
In the wake of the incursion, there had been a wealth of rumors spread about the noble lines lost in the fire. The credibility of most were impossible to vet until they found sanctuary, and even then, taking a census of the survivors in every direction they’d scattered to was nearly impossible. Among the rumors that Ormir did not dismiss outright was that of an estranged son crawling back from exile. An Instad who appeared just in time to claim the woodland seat before the embers began to snow. If this were truly the Jarl of the Skjald, he had a knack for timing… or he had known something they didn’t.
Ormir approached, trying not to stare too overtly at the anachronism he’d found. The table to their right was laid with simple wood tools and boxes, each piece engraved or embellished with semi-precious metal to imitate value for a more… pedestrian palette. All novelties compared to the masterwork ironwood carpenters were capable of. Ormir skimmed the table’s edge with two fingers, feeling the rough edges of the sun-faded upholstery.
“It’s not comparable to home, is it?” Ormir spoke to the stranger, in their mother tongue.
Person: @ormir
Location: The Woods closest to Eterna
Every time he's knocked on his ass he thinks of his father. It's all rather counterproductive to getting his head in the game. Ormir's being nice enough to help him and here he is losing focus trying to remember everything that's been taught to him and getting hung up on who taught it to him. Ormir and his father are two vastly different men and The Hand doesn't go easier on him for the sake of teaching. He's a quick study and his feet remember where to move but the issue is the newfound strength and the anxiety that comes from exerting too much of it. It's not something he'd voice out loud for fear of offense, but he knows he's overthinking it.
It's with a huff of breath that he gets back to his feet and rolls his shoulders back. "You ever taught anyone before?" There's the faintest hint of petulance to it that's misguided, he's frustrated with himself, not Ormir.
The chime of dulled blades was eaten up by the woods, providing uninterrupted privacy. Etienne’s agility rivaled a younger, sprier version of himself - a high compliment Ormir would never pay him out loud. Compliments only encouraged pupils to grow lax, to coast along to a mediocre life built on dusty laurels. Spitting an average student out into the world was the cull of an instructor’s reputation. Ormir needed Etienne as tuned and well-filed as a harp string.
Behind every clash of metal Ormir saw fragments of a former trainee; her long hair billowing, her visible eye burning with grace and viciousness that was wholly her own. Aytaç would fade as soon as Etienne faltered, and Ormir’s frustration would return. The boy was holding back. That gentle disposition was dampening his talent, and was wasting the boon that Ormir had given him. He was hiding his windedness by the end of the fourth round, after a sharp parry provided a window to shove Etienne to the ground. He put his back to the boy to wipe the sweat collecting at his brow. “I’ll warn you once not to waste my time, boy.” The warning, meant to be stone-solid, came out winded.
As Etienne scraped himself up, the elder Iskaran tossed his shortsword into his left hand, fighting the fatigue in his right. It was not his preferred weapon, but he quickly found its balance. “Are you doubting my credentials?” Ormir questioned, dry and unhospitable as cracked earth.
closed starter for @ormir
location: eterna
note: oi mista you me dad?
An amount of time had passed since he had last seen Ormir. There was a part of him that didn't even think he was going to go see the elder man for an even longer time. As he had sat in that cage, he had thought about things for far too long. He'd thought about every single time he tried to impress a man that simply didn't want to be impressed. He was not his sister or Freydis. Afshin was nobody important to Ormir. He didn't know why he still tried. Torsten had told him not to think about it, but how could he not? How could he not think about the fact that the man he looked up to wanted nothing to do with him? Everything happened for a reason though. Everything had its purpose and everything would always make itself clear to people when the time was right. He just wished it hadn't taken so long for him to realize it.
However, he'd still talk to the man. Ormir was important to him even if he wasn't important to his father's right hand. It was almost funny. Both of them gave him that same look. Orhan tried to hide it, but he didn't think Ormir ever did. Respect given was respect earned though, wasn't it? His thought had always been that he would grow to be respected. Not just be Ormir, but by every Iskaran. Easier said than done to accomplish considering everyone though he was just a sniveling little bastard. Which, maybe he was, but he was fucking trying here. Why was that so difficult for people to understand?
A hand lifted to knock on the door he was stood in front of. Ormir's door. "It's me." He paused as his gaze fell to the floor. "You don't have to open the door. Or even talk to me. But...I'm going to talk to you." He shook his head. "Give me some sign that you're listening."
Things were grim. Without action made toward allyship with Astoria, and with the evidence of any former good will between the two kingdoms swallowed by the sea, the Iskarans’ claim to a political seat grew more and more brittle. The heir would need to be married, and soon. As far as marriage prospects went, Afshin had but empty coffers, a song in his heart, and a few thousand sickly refugees to offer in exchange for a competent military. Gods help them. There was no-one coming to save them from their Kingdom’s collapse, that much Ormir had always understood.
Then there was the other hairy matter. The pulse at Ormir’s temple bulged beneath his fingertips, beating in tempo with the aching band around his crown. Every heightened sense was now beaten raw. He could hear the tower staff’s hushed conversations with ringing clarity, even when they were separated by closed doors and layers of stone walls. Every so often, he would still feel the grit of sand in his hair and in his mouth as he chewed. He’d observe his teeth in the water basin, wondering if his canines had always been so long and sharp as they were now. The unseemly hair in his ears grew thicker and at an unreasonable pace.
There was a thunderous knock at the door, shocking the Iskaran back to alertness. “No.” Ormir boomed in kind, even though the volume rattled his teeth. He froze and listened for the dying scuttle of an attendant’s footsteps down the hallway. Instead, Afshin’s voice answered. He sounded insistent. Ormir stood, preparing himself for what could be angst of theatric proportions. Orhan had, historically, humored it better than he had. There was no use in hiding from the Prince now.
From the other side of the door, one could hear an extended shuffle of locks and switches before it cracked open, just enough to cast light over three-quarters of Ormir’s face. His eyes toted puffy, purplish bags beneath them, and his fastidiously maintained beard was now creeping in a dark shadow down his neck. A flat stare swept Afshin up and down before the door opened fully. “Come in.”
Inside Ormir’s quarters it was cold and near pitch-black. It was easiest on his eyes, which adjusted well to the dark. He wondered if Afshin could smell the dander and dust-stink that saturated every surface, or the eight-and-twenty types of soil that had tracked in on the boots of the room’s former occupants. Could he hear the scratches and squeaks of vermin in the walls, as he did?
Ormir waved a hand toward the pair of sitting chairs by the cold fireplace. “Sit.” He instructed, walking toward the makeshift bar on his dresser. “Brandy?” He asked Afshin over his shoulder, already pinching two glasses out of the cabinet.
Deimos did not always wander towards the shores of Eterna. The city was tightly packed, too much so for someone such as himself. The wild would always call to him. The shapes that he could mimic; the power that he could use to help those who deserved it. And how few deserved it. The Dúnedain had impressed upon Ormir the first time they'd met that the Iskaran was definitely not one of those few. It was not done with ill nature, but druids spoke only the truth – the truth they believed, at least.
Should a country fall, perhaps it was fate, and to leave it as such. If it is fate for someone to return to it, then Ormir would be the first to know. The entire challenge and meeting had ensured that Deimos would get his point across, whether or not Ormir was ready to hear it.
Tiber Bay was no place for silence. The sounds of the wild, of the sea, were drowned out by the squabbling men and women of the city, of hagglers and fishermen who shouted over one another to get their point across. But as fate had it so, it'd brought his steps to the dock anyway, as if propelled by an unseen force. That unseen force did not have a name, and Deimos wouldn't deign Ormir as it, either. Out of pure stubbornness, of course.
"I prefer to swim within the sea than stand here and watch it. But don't tell me you've come to the Bay for the day's best catch?" Deimos' answer was as plain and truthful as the druid normally was, though his gaze held a hint of amusement as he turned to face Ormir. "Care to go for a swim? I wouldn't let you drown right away."
“New trade regulations,” Ormir lied, fluidly. “Went to observe for myself if the importers were adapting to them.” The answer fell flat to him. Should he have invented something more dramatic? Told the truth, that he was setting sail after a dangerous political prospect? Would either have left a greater impression on the druid? He thought not.
It wasn’t hostility but… a bitterness that lingered, like the kiss of ginger. Early into their first conversation Deimos had, in so many words, called the fall of Iskaldrik inevitable, and branded the Hand’s lofty accomplishments negligible. This lazy, undermining take inflamed Ormir, even by philosophical standards. Nature herself forged the ladder he climbed, he argued. In every biome, hierarchies formed through conflict, and whatever could not sustain its place either evolved or was cemented in limestone. It had been like arguing with the tide itself.
Later, he’d mulled on the security Deimos had shown in this belief. Ormir had spent his entire life learning to play the hand he was dealt, never leaving a detail to chance. But these last months… it was an easy out to say that fate had its own plans for Iskaldrik. That another, indomitable force beyond jealousy or corruption had driven his hand in loosening the Kingdom’s screws before an Aetheron incursion. That it all would’ve happened regardless.
I wouldn’t let you drown right away. The sentiment toed the line of being off-putting, coming from such a staunch neutralist. Right away. That was slighty more comforting. Oddly enough, Ormir was reminded of an old fable he’d imparted a young prince and princess, snug in their beds in Yggdrasildal:
The fox and the adder met on a riverbank, each with their intent set on reaching the other side. I cannot swim, the adder said. You must carry me. The fox, naturally wary of the adder’s venom, went against his intuition and agreed, on the single condition that the adder would keep its fangs to itself. Of course I won’t bite you! I’ll doom us both if I do. So the adder slithered up the fox’s leg, nestled into the forest of furs on its back, and the fox stepped into the river. Its paws paddled as the waters grew deeper and wilder, but the adder was good company. Patient. Kind. Not at all the predator the fox had assumed it to be. They were halfway across when the adder spoke again. I’m sorry, it said. There was a lance of pain as a pair of fangs sunk into the fox’s back. Why? The fox cried, bewildered. Already its limbs were locking, its muzzle bobbing under the rushing water. I know no other way, the adder said, before the venom and the river took them.
Anyway, the heirs’ sleep was fitful for days after.
“You’d find me poor company for it.” Ormir promised, looking past Deimos to the shimmer on the water’s surface. The thought of diving into the red-green scum that ringed the bottoms of boats and crusted on the dock pillars was not especially attractive. “I’ve not swam in…” Air hissed through his teeth. The thought trailed off, and Ormir realized there was no way to complete the silence that wouldn’t further his embarrassment. “I do better with boards beneath me.” He corrected.
Nero took a second to just look at Ormir and it's apparent he's bothered. He'd gone to the border with Eridani when the barrier had come down but he hadn't really seen the full extent of the fall of Iskaldrik, he had no family, no friends over that way. That didn't mean he didn't hold sympathy for those that had been displaced from their homes, their country. He'd watched Eridani agonize over the loss of her family and he'd been helpless to comfort her. Seeing the play, hell, acting in it, he had a better understanding of the events and he hoped everyone in attendance did now, too. He'd thought The Hand of the King was an interesting fellow, one he thought kind of sad and he loved hanging around those that found company and with misery, it was an old friend of his.
"If you're trying to insult me, you might want to try something I haven't heard before." He's an incubus, a fairly young one, hedonistic and yet he didn't think his own body count rivaled the older cubi he knew. He's a romantic at heart, whether anyone wanted to believe it was up to them. "Rather generic, don't you think? I'd like to think you're fairly creative."
“Why? Don’t you think you’ve wasted enough of my time already?” The last of the champagne went down tastelessly. Ormir wet his lips and released the valve that had been building pressure in silence all evening. His gaze fanned through the party as he spoke, channeling nothing but calm, conversational clarity. “I’m not here to give you the public flogging you’re pleading for. You don’t deserve the orgasmic satisfaction I can see that would give you, and you’ll not insult me further by pretending that we’re sympathetic with one another. You don’t know me, but I’ve known plenty of people like you. People with equal penchant for destruction and humiliation. People who crawl through this world on their knees, sweeping up broken pieces of others because they believe, however consciously, that if they can spackle someone else together from brokenness then maybe there’s hope that they themselves might one day feel whole. Let me be the first to tell you that the savior act is gauche, it’s pathetic, and it’s uninteresting. I don’t desire your parasitic pity and you don’t deserve to know the face of my scorn to masturbate over later.” It was like he could breathe with his lungs’ full capacity once more. The steam had vented, the anger receded. If it wouldn’t have undermined the point of his dissection, Ormir might have thanked him for it.
Instead, the diplomat absently placed his empty flute on a service tray as it passed, eyeing the remaining hors d'oeuvres floating around the afterparty. “No more tapenades? That is disappointing.” He sighed. Pulling an excessively polite smile, Ormir slipped from the cornered confines of their conversation, giving a congenial touch to Nero's shoulder as he left. “If you’ll excuse me."
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Her waking hour came later than usual that day, the thick blanket of atmosphere obscuring the full force of the sun until the morning fog cleared. Normally, Freydis tried to wake with the sun–a habit learned from growing up at the mill where there was more work to be done than daylight to be had–but she didn’t lecture herself. Instead, she decided she must have needed the sleep rather than lecturing herself. She had barely begun moving when she heard the sudden, startling sound of Làsval pecking at the pane of glass of her private room. She was gathering a small offering for the bird–some seed and water–when it croaked out two syllables that gave her all the context she needed. By the time Freydis had even begun to open a nearly-empty cabinet, the raven was gone. No matter, she thought to herself, dispensing a small handful of seed on the center of the empty table of her living quarters–Làsvel would be with Ormir later, she could enjoy her treat then.
--
Everything was packed, and there was little for Freydis to do but count down the hours until she departed for the cabin prepared for her outside of Haven. She had made a point to try and study as much as she could at The Tower to support her objective of destroying Nintra Siotta. She had spoken to most in her inner circle to ensure they would be able to find her if they needed her. Finally, she had packed all of the earthly possessions she had left–barely enough to fill half of a steamer trunk. In any other circumstance, this might have troubled her, but presently she was just glad it would make her relocation easier.
Ormir had been the only one who seemed to be resistant to her decision to move away from the city of Eterna. Freydis suspected this was because he preferred to keep her close by as much as it had to do with his long standing fear of canines. More than once she had reminded him she would return at least every full moon and likely more often than this yet. Certainly Haven and Eterna were not a short ride, but they were manageable distances. There was little in Eterna that appealed to her–the stares of Lysarans who recognized her and the political games played by their nobles left her exhausted and feeling hollowed out. It was more than she could stomach, even if Ormir had found a way to become accustomed to such pageantry and politics. That was a core difference between the two of them; born of low station, only one of them truly assimilated to their rise in power. Freydis merely hoped Ormir was not coming to try to talk her out of her decision to accept Aurea’s hospitality.
Perhaps if a handful of prior interactions between the mentor and his mentee had gone different, Freydis might have remained as pliable to his will as she once was.
Even so, when she opened the door she looked glad to see him. “Ormir,” she greeted brightly when she opened the door for him, a rush of warm, humid air meeting her at the threshold. She moved aside to let him into the cool, dim reprieve of her room at the inn, and despite the fraying of their relationship the smile she offered him was warm; but even dying embers retained some heat before they extinguished entirely. “I think you may be working Làsvel too hard, she didn’t even stay for a treat this morning.” She drummed a few fingers on the table where the seeds were as she walked past it while she fetched some chilled water and a small plate of fruits, meats, cheese, and a bit of bread that would need to be finished off before she left. She had figured she and Ormir might share.
Freydis placed the humble refreshments on the table and stood behind it as her fingers settled on the back of the chair before her. It had not been her intention to place a physical barrier between them–it was what felt instinctual and comfortable now. “I suspect there was something you wanted to discuss before I go?” She tilted her head to the side slightly and set her hazel eyes on him waiting for him to speak his mind.
Ormir’s smile was fixed on by the time Freydis opened the door. The mirrored plasticine-ness of hers was obvious. “Thank you. I’ll never adjust to this heat.” He lamented, pocketing his handkerchief and stepping inside.
A wall of glacial indifference buffeted him. It took a moment for him to identify how intuition had found it, and what made the cold sting so viciously. Then he placed it: Touch had always been the trademark of Freydis’ attachment, to the point of annoyance and impropriety at times. In her youth she was almost magnetically drawn into his space. She’d insisted on always sitting beside him, on walking close in-stride, in sharing physical proximity whenever afforded it. She was a moon locked in ritual orbit. But she offered no touch now. She all but flattened herself in the entryway to avoid him. It was… chilling. Had she somehow escaped his gravity? Or had his fumblings over the last weeks weakened the pull? All signs pointed to the latter.
“I'm surprised. I can hardly get her to work at all.” Ormir chuckled, without amusement. “She’s been,” He inhaled, spying the small pile of birdseed on the table. “Unruly of late. Petulant.” Frustration stained his speech. Even the indentured soul he purchased was rebelling. Testing its wings, so to speak. The unbid thought occurred to him that there wasn’t a creature alive or dead that wasn’t looking to break free of his influence. That it was a self-mutilating thought didn't make it any less true.
Ormir watched as she found new barriers to construct between them. He was on the offensive. That didn’t have to mean he was her adversary. The persona that had won her childlike naivete over had likely lost its shine, but it was hard not to slip into the old role again. The giving hand. The parent. “I wanted to impart my blessing on your new endeavors. Not that you need it.” He smiled. The suffocating, black fog in the room needed acknowledgement if they were to properly clear the air. He cleared his throat of it before he spoke again. “Although, I must admit, my motivations for this visit are more selfish than simply wishing you well. It’s in my nature to worry. About you.”
Aventia was under siege, and the Vanguard would answer it. While the order from Astoria was used to fighting against the dark, pledged against it in the name of the One God, Eivor didn't share in the feelings that others did in reverence to such a thing. The Elvhen gods remained the only ones he knew, but he could do the Chant of Light, he could cleave someone from their magic, and that was power he held onto.
For now, though, he decided to be...nosey. The Tower itself had a multitude of money, of items, of magic – it seemed obscene to have more. The Vanguard decided to take a look for himself, to see the arcana for himself, and decide whether or not it was worth his time.
A very shrill voice ruined Eivor's perusing of the goods, and it wasn't like he was very stealthy – but his hand dropped from the sword he'd picked up. It clanged against the armor within the crate, but the Elvhen didn't care what happened to it. He looked Ormir up and down, very obviously, as if trying to sus out if he was of the Tower or perhaps the hired city guard to protect the important crates outside. "Exclusive? Does the Queen refrain from helping out anyone who doesn't hold a cute little ring on their finger from the Tower she sits on?"
Ormir’s worn brow tightened in a way that made sense of the wrinkles on his face. He looked over the cart of weapons he did not command, branded with a foreign sigil, headed away from the thousands of Iskarans in the city in need of aid. In need of protection. This was not their fight and Ormir was not glorified enough to be Arethusa’s personal flyswatter, so what did it matter to him if a few unattended carts were picked over by the locals? Anger answered: Everything. In that moment, this stranger’s hop on a Lysaran cart of ironwork was the sole grossest overstep of boundaries he’d witnessed to date. The attitude the elve parried with only fed his argumentative mood.
Ormir dug his heels in, finding footholds deep in the bottomless, marshy resentment he carried everywhere. He cupped his bare left hand, attuned to the vulnerability that pulsed without the signet on it. “I cannot speak on the Queen’s intentions in Aventia, but you should be aware that one thing she unwaveringly stands for is order.” He said, firmly. “Her conviction holds in crisis, as do her laws.” It was the one assurance he had.
“They took the hand of a thief posing as a civil steward in the Upper City, and those magistar coffers weren’t imperial property, and it wasn’t a punishment compounded by the needs of a Queendom at war.” Sometimes a tasteful embellishment carried the point through. He moved closer, cocking his head. “What do you think they’ll take from you?”
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