#ooooohhhhhh

He shut his eyes tightly, pinched the bridge of his nose, and rapped the solid, dark oak door. The sound rang out through the inside, where stone met wood, met metal, met enchantments underneath. There was, for a moment, the muffled sound of movement within—though, Martyn knew, the person inside had long since sensed his presence and made himself aware of it within the confines of his tower. After the moment of silence passed, the door cracked open. A single, dark eye peered at him. Then the door shut again. It was another moment entirely before the door opened wide enough to cast a glance over the shoulder of the figure inside, catching an unkept downstairs and a winding staircase, natural light pouring in through colored glass windows. Martyn raised one speculative eyebrow.

“Ren,” he said flatly. The smile on Ren’s face drooped slightly.

“Martyn,” he said, still not losing the cheerful edge to his tone. A little furrow appeared between his eyebrows as Martyn stared him down. There was an anxious beat between them, as if Ren was waiting for an explanation that Martyn couldn’t figure out how to force his mouth to make. Ren looked past him, eyes scanning the horizon. Then, he gestured inside and Martyn followed at his elbow instinctually. No matter the knot in Martyn’s stomach or the frustration in his voice, he couldn’t seem to resist the pull of the damn High Mage. Nobody could, he reassured himself, but for him it was a particularly nasty predicament to be in. “Is something the matter?”

Martyn wrinkled his nose, letting out a sharp sigh. “Yes something’s the—” he stopped abruptly, squeezing his eyes shut for a brief moment. “D’you want to explain to me why there’re posters of you? On boards for the mercenary’s guild? They’re not requests, Ren. I know what those look like, ‘cause I take them. Why’s this up, hm?”

He held out a slightly crinkled, edge-torn piece of parchment, vaguely sketched with Ren’s likeness. It was wrong on the important details: his nose, his round ears, his time-narrowed eyes, making him seem younger, angrier, more dangerous on paper. It made Martyn’s stomach clench and recoil—which maybe explained, despite all his better judgements, why he was standing here. Putting himself in abject danger. Ren’s eyes flicked down to the page, then back up to Martyn, wide and sheepish.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “Maybe best over a cup’ve tea, yeah?”

“This is serious,” Martyn urged. He let out another frustrated sigh. “You realize how serious this is, right?”

“Yes,” Ren said. His tone sharpened in that instance, wide eyes and concerned eyebrows coming to a forced and focused point. “I do—I-I realize that. I’m going to explain it, just… it’s not so easy to explain. I want you to believe me. I need to tell the story of it in full.”

“There’s more to a story about you supposedly killing a king and leaving a salt statue of him in your wake?”

Ren’s jaw worked. He turned back to the room around him in a flourish of silk and velvet, long hair tumbling back over his shoulder. It was such an instinctive movement, so evocative in its motion, that Martyn blinked, almost expecting to see someone else in front of him. He frowned, scrunching up his face again as Ren moved about the room, unbothered by Martyn’s standing there. It felt like a dream—the memory he was seeking just out of reach, or just that obfuscated by something else. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. Ren was facing him again, loosely holding out a seal-stamped letter. He waited until Martyn took it from him before he reached out, setting a warm, heavy hand on his shoulder. Ren sighed. This close, his grim expression was outlined in smile lines and crow’s feet, his dark hair silvering at the temples. He looked so familiar—-so much more familiar than Martyn had ever known him as a friend, as a practitioner, as the man who saved his life, one time, that long ago. He looked—he almost looked like—

Martyn couldn’t place it. The words evaded his searching. Ren’s voice cut through the jumble of his thoughts.

“Tea,” he said, mellow and commanding. “Then we’ll talk.”

Martyn nodded. His thumb found the seal of the letter in his hands as if on instinct, feeling out a familiar rise and fall of a crest in his fingers. Dutifully, he followed Ren up the stairs.