Roen

To The End of Love

With the Shadow’s hand released and his own pair unoccupied, the Devil did as was his wont to do whenever he idled: he indulged the tactile fetish. With grace enough to look askance while the beloved soul opposite him offered her whisper-soft wisdoms, the Outsider took up a rag and bent to the task of polishing the dark mahogany bar she perched so prettily on. And because she is beloved, he gave her the courtesy of listening most ardently to what she had to say.

“I am proud of all my girls..,” Roen offers with quiet solemnity, humbled not by the Shadow’s words, but by the simple joy it was to be able to converse in this quiet bookshop with her at the edge of all things. Oh, he was sure he had missed more than his fair share of good days with his family, but there was a rhythm and rhyme to his absence that could not be understated, as well she knew. Still, he was not perturbed, nor did he take umbrage with what she had to say.

The little monster was beloved, and he was learning to respect the insights she offered -- and the memories of their family she decided to share. In this way, he could live vicariously through her eyes when his duties and responsibilities kept him from hearth and home. And so it was that he polished the bar and he listened, the edge of his mouth cocked with the gentle smile of one who was inordinately pleased with the present, but managing with great effort to not look so very smug about it. This persisted well into the Shadow’s observations -- until it didn’t.

Pausing mid-stroke and tilting his head, the Outsider turned his eyes from the dim reflection he saw in the polished surface of the bartop, and leveled scrutiny once more on the girl-child he named love paramount. Just a small look, a heartbeat’s glance heavy with unspoken words, before his dark and melancholic gaze lowers to watch the way her hand descends to the imperceptible swell of a belly just starting to show. It is here that he pangs and here that the Devil grows abashed, prompting him to abandon his polishing and straighten.

Setting the heels of his palms against the edge of the counter and cocking his head, the Devil stares up at his Shadow and gives her his full and undivided attention, feeling that she has a point she is slowly but surely moving towards, and willing to give her the patience to reach it. That she filled the moments before it with memories and reflections of their daughters, well, he could scarce find fault in that with reminders of all that he left behind at home with his efforts to secure it. Unprompted, the Outsider began to hum. It was a soft sound, discordant for all the rhythm it lacked, but undeniably pleased as he thought of Cozette, the littlest of his girls.

Chest rising and falling with the dramatic heave and release of a contented breath, Roen nods slowly, that small smile at the edge of his mouth threatening to grow into something truly incongruous on his hard and weathered face. But it is just a smile, a tiny one at that, and it fades when he realizes just where Zurie has decided to take the conversation. Still, it is difficult to take umbrage with the truth of things, and he can only glance away and nod again, accepting the Shadow’s words. There was enough pregnant silences between them to drive the point home, and prompt the Devil into a self-reflection. There is no impulse to defend himself, no unsubtle outrage to instigate a debate or heated exchange with this beloved soul.

He just listened and accepted, and panged as was proper when she spoke of a son - a son! - not yet born. He frowned to hear the drop in her voice though, the way she edged her words until they scraped across the nape of his neck, raising hairs. Such a generous mouth he had, her Lord and Master. Expressive and animated, too. No steady hand was the Outsider, no solemn and unfathomable creature was he, when joined by those he was comfortable with. No, his emotions were writ clear on his face, and it was then and only then could she begin to see the first whispers of it: a devil’s chagrin. For a lithesome girl so young and so pretty, what an interesting character study it would be for an observer to see how she could make a perfidious duke squirm where he stood. And squirm he did, that wretched fiend.

“Mm.”

He had shifted his weight on his feet; he had furrowed his brows; he had looked the boyish lover rather than the indentured man beneath the weight of Zurie’s commentary, and oh, but to be in love and be susceptible to love’s whims and desires. She could immolate him with her words, this pale and nebulous Shadow, but she did not. This was but a warning and a reminder -- or a goad -- to keep him where she most desired him: present, and enduring. And no one knew the strength of her words better than she, for no sooner where they delivered and understood did she relent, satisfied she had found her mark. He exhaled when she let her full and pouty mouth curl into a smile, and cleared his throat.

No promises, no words of apology and oaths to do better -- just the shared knowledge between them that when one spoke, the other listened and took to heart. He wondered, while she gathered up her skirts and hopped down from the counter, dragging his attention with her -- he wondered if she knew just how masterfully she had him. It was a serious wonder, in all honesty. She was so deft at it, she always had been since their very first encounter, that it often gave him pause. Always those secretive looks thrown his way, always those delicate shifts of brows and twists of mouth that hinted at unspoken insights and --

-- and she was gone, just like that. All girlish exuberance and an energy he could never hope to match, the darling little Shadow was off with clicking heels and fluttering skirts, a revenant of joy and springly wonder. Gods be good, but it did hurt his heart to witness it, whenever she deigned to grace him with a vision of her youth and exuberance. There was a weariness in him, the whisper of an inability to match it, of sins and responsibilities too weighty to pull out from beneath. No, not with that look she shot him, not that smile so fierce and delight so splendid, it did not belong to him, never, not in this lifetime, not in centuries -- but there it was, there she was, eager and willing and wanting..

Fool or not, the Devil paused to wonder if he did have it in him, if he did have an ember of that young and indomitable fervor for life, the same verve that she did. He could wait, he supposed. He could wait until she realized he was too old for these games, too dragged down by history and expectation and all the things in life that invariably and irrevocably bit and chipped away at a soul until all that was left was a tired but indomitable will. But there was something about the way her teeth flashed in the twilight, in how her pale pinks glittered and how pale and lovely she looked, happiness becoming her in ways grief and fury never, ever could.

And he remembered for a heartbeat what it was like, being so joyful. Just a touch of it, a taste, which was enough to drag him out from behind the bar in pursuit, as if yoked by the finest of threads. He was pulled from reverie, from second-guessing and doubts, and tugged out the door by something he knew to be hope, but would never speak of aloud. He was too old for that sort of sentiment, too wise to believe in anything but what he had always known, but he was looking for her, seeking, watching -- then finding, finding her, seeing her beneath twilight and God-angry stars. And when she smiled, oh, how she smiled. It wasn’t a smile for the world, for the Heavens or Earth, but for him. That was his smile on her face, a smile for him and him alone.

I am going to die of love, he thought. I am dying of love. That’s how it is. I loved her so, and I love her still, and I am dying of love..

She yelled for him from afar then, the first time in a long time he had heard her voice raised so loud. He could have flinched for how unexpected it was, her willful and joyous obstinacy. Like a clarion call, like -- like -- like nothing he had heard before. It was shocking and thrilling and it touched parts of him he thought long since atrophied, parts that stirred and roused and sprung forth as if they had always been in use, just waiting to be brought to the fore again. Uncharacteristically, miraculously, the Devil raised his voice in kind. “You've got a headstart, you cheat. Come back here!”

For a man that had sworn once to never do so again, by all that was unholy, the Devil gave chase to his Shadow. Like she knew he would.

Like he always did. Paradise or ruin, he chased.

To The End of Love

_{Yet in his eyes, all the sadness of the world..
Those pleading eyes that both threaten and adore..}

---

In the mien, the Outsider was not an evil spirit. There was cruelty in him, yes, for war could not countenance a man without a vein within for it, but there was no joy in him for the suffering of others, no satisfaction or contempt for their foibles and short-comings. He wasn't evil, no, never that. There was just the cold vein, that hard vein of cruelty and a measure of vindicta which he carried in life, which made itself known in the knit of his brow and the set of his jaw, and which cast the patrician's aspect of this Devil in the unfavourable light of unintended malice.

It was that sense of that inadvertent malice that coloured him now in his tasks of the mundane, painting his countenance unjustly while he polished the old mahogany counter and cleaned the last of the glasses. That preternatural focus, that slow and studious regard of a man that knew too many things, the intensity, the choler --

-- until his deep-set eyes lifted and alighted upon the Shadow. A misnomer for such a brightness in his life, but the world was a curious thing of ironies and idiosyncrasies. No, this beloved soul was anything but penumbra and blight, and it was she, not his brief pleasures in the mundane, that eased the vindicta from his brow and the hateful lines at the edges of his mouth. There was no true absolution from spite, no revelatory and binary inversion that turned vile into sweet - but there was a softening at the hard edges of his being, where the sight of this precocious girl-child was enough to drive warmth into an otherwise hard, unyielding heart.

He breathed, the Devil. A slow exhalation, a quiet release tension, and a smile. He reserved these smiles for her, the dreaded Outsider. Little half-measures of kindness that she alone was privy to, passed between them like secrets between erstwhile lovers. His gaze and that smile persisted when she drew near and flitted past, a ghost in skirts as light as the steps that carried her within and out of reach, with her soft and lilting voice. It was only when she spoke that the spell was finally broken, allowing the Devil to lower his eyes and return his attention back to the tending of a glass in no more need of cleaning.

"He is young..," he demurred with quiet aplomb, accepting his companion's critique with mustered dignity and without challenge. "He doesn't understand yet the impermanence of things."

Another glance, more heed to the Shadow that climbed the counter with girlish exuberance and without any hint of propriety. No, she was right, this coquettish youth of thin limbs and great spirit: no eyes watched her more intently than the dark and haunted hues that fixed her now. They glittered where they were set, bright beneath a heavy brow and weighted with expectations. They held secrets, those iniquitous eyes; the secrets of life, of death, of time and entropy. This, too, will pass they said with all their indelicate intensity, though the warming heart below whispered hopes to the contrary. The joys, these delights, the lilt of her voice and the cast of her noble face, these things would be lost, eventually. Lost to time, to distance, to..

The dark mind, the unhappy thoughts, these things, like the choler and vindicta that coloured his face, were banished with the girl-child's demands. What strange and ephemeral power she possessed, all but lording it over the monster who would be a man, though he didn't seem to mind. He just cocked his head with a cant quite uncharacteristic to his disposition, and then his small smile, a miracle on his otherwise lined and weathered face, broadened to a degree that couldn't be considered anything less than boyish. Oh, it was a brief thing, that boyish little smile. It barely breathed for a span of heartbeats while he dipped his chin with simple acquiescence, before both it and he were gone and about the business of shadows and fiends.

A return to the mundane, to the quiet task he was set upon by girlish whim and imperious demand, though there was no rancor to it. She demanded and he obeyed, a servant to desires beyond his own, all for the sake for a sentiment he had allowed to take hold and bloom. Oh, but he wouldn't speak it aloud, at least not now, not with walls that listened and twilight with waxing bright in the sky above. But he could feel it, the Devil. He could feel and nurture it with the quiet intensity he was known for, while he set a kettle to boil and prepared a clay mug for a beverage that scented of pomegranates and spice. He let it suffuse him in the way he let other, more vulgar emotions suffuse him, though this particular sentiment did not bring agitation to his movements or humours. Indeed, it brought a measure of joy to his otherwise bleak and morbid existence, which prompted more uncharacteristic expressions from him.

Why, the Devil began to hum a soft tune under his breath. He prepared tea and boiled water and hummed, and when the formers were finished and he was left with nothing but the latter and a steaming mug in hand, he returned to the Shadow's side with her demand at the ready, steaming and fragrant between calloused thumb and forefinger. He set it on the counter beside the lithesome beauty without preamble, and took his place by the counter in likewise fashion: close, at hand, near enough to feel and scent in the air. A scion of perfidy, this one, a thing never more abundantly clear than when the Quill was quiet and still, and all the remained was them. The peat and spice, the citrus and quenching iron.. the blood and the smoke. These things clung to him, subtle at first, but profound.

Yet she never seemed to mind it, he was gladdened to know. Not when it clung to her clothes or her skin or the bed that they shared --

"Mm?"

He was listening, yes, of course he was. He wasn't lost in her noble profile, nor were his thoughts straying towards eloquence and rhapsody with regards to her beauty and his sentiments. There was just the two of them and the quiet conversation after a day spent in commerce, and he was present and ready for it, and not simply just admiring the Shadow where she sat on her perch, committing her countenance and voice to memory, lest one day he find her gone without anything to remember her by. Impermanence, as he had said before. It was the why and wherefore concerning his intense scrutiny. He wanted to savour her, this Shadow, this haunting beauty of pale eyes and tussled hair. This was just a dream, just a lovely, wonderful dream..

"There are markets."

For a pair of souls caught in a gossamer dream, there was nothing insubstantial to the sound of the Devil's voice. No deep baritone to rattle the bones or strike sensation in the pit of a belly, but the refined tenor of a practiced orator; quiet with its clipped pronunciations, and delicate with the aristocratic flare. This was not to say his was a feminine voice, no, never that, but rather it belonged to a herald, or a storyteller. Indeed, he had already told stories to the Shadow he currently observed, and she had ever seemed to delight in the way he could spin them with thrilling highs and epic lows. Would that they could spend an eternity together, where her delights were ever his to inspire and exult in.

"We could take a carriage to the District of Silk, and window shop pretty dresses for you and the girls. From there, it is just a brief walk to the Market Square..," he trails off. She has turned from noble profile to outright glance, and has quite pressed the voice from the Devil. There was always a shock, whenever she leveled those pale pinks on him. To be sure the shock has lessened over the years of their involvement, but there remains a thrill that never quite wanes, no matter how many times she looks back at him. It was if he never truly expects the certainty of her attention, forever caught off-guard by the weight behind her eyes that she settles atop him. Connection, yes, that was part of the sentiment; connection to her, to the mind that turned behind those eyes, to the heart that beat beneath her chest for him.

He swipes his tongue across the generous curve of his mouth, persisting. There was hardly anything so undoing as the attraction of a beautiful girl, some distant part of his mind chatters, and he struggles albeit briefly to reconnect the threads of conversation. Why were her cheeks so rosy? She was becoming too pretty, by far. "The scones were lovely, little monster. Muse was very sore about the theft, though." And here he chuckles low and deep, unabashed by the memory of stealing confections from a child. That she was his daughter was irrelevant; the Devil was a cad and a monster, and there were very few crimes beneath him. Loose ethics and morals, this one. But that does not stop him from moving down the bar to stand closer to the Shadow, who soon finds one of her hands taken up by the Devil she blushed so prettily before.

Lowering his gaze to delicate fingers and allowing himself the indignity of a wider, more affectionate smile, the Outsider brings Zurie's delicate fingers to his lips to scratch and mark them with beard and ardor both. ""We could certainly find some strawberries for a venture into jam," he breathes against her hand, withdrawing it just enough to inspect the ring finger with an expression that look dangerous close to muted satisfaction. "The Threshold City is the town that never sleeps. Once we're finished up here, we'll make our way over. There are a few other items I'd like to purchase before we return home. Some few ingredients for dinner. Our girls have appetites, and my pantry is starting to run low."

A hum; a contented little sound as he thought of the sounds of pattering feet and girlish giggles echoing through the halls. In so many brief years, he had exchanged solitude and peace for the chaos of a household, and though he may never say so aloud, there was a savage joy in him for it all. That joy was never more abundant than when he was with the beloved soul that gave it to him, and so it was to she that it was shown in his dark, glittering eyes. Just a flit of attention, just a hint of that sentiment expressed with the way he looked at her and the way he squeezed her hand, then muted, withdrawn. His was not a bold affection, the Devil's ardor. Subtle, discrete, especially in public places such as these. He was not cold with it, he did not deny the Shadow the knowledge of his love, and truly, this was love, but there was no showmanship to it, no spectacle. He was her quiet creature, but her creature all the same.

"You'll have to get used to wandering this city on your own, one of these days. I'd send you with a chaperone, but little Lotte seems to have run off with my champion." A wrinkle of his nose; a playful expression, though not without a little worry for the pair. "We pray for Isk, yes, we pray for that man. Perhaps you'll just have to make due with a devil at your heels for now. What do you say, mm? I'll take you away from here on a little adventure, find some strawberries for you to try and kill me with." And here he grins, the Devil, as if sharing some private and esoteric joke while he releases her hand and encourages her with a nod. "Drink you tea before it gets cold. Where else would you like to go?"

To The End of Love

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.

Deep within the Threshold City and beneath the shadow of its Lore-Spire, there existed a bookshop that had should not exist. It stood alone at the heart of a cobblestone village within the Prince's Quarter, one of the more reputable districts within the ever expanding and ever contracting borders of the Tattered King's realm. The bookshop, a quaint affair of brownstone and windowpanes illuminated by distant candlelights and hearths within, had not been here when the city was first cultivated, nor had it been erected in the many long years since. But it stood now as if it had always been here, or as if it had always been meant to be here. It stood lonely and proud beneath shadow, with an oak sign that read, 'The Quilt & Quill..

Within, as was without, was a degree of poise and modesty. There were bookshelves, yes, but also cozy alcoves and nooks where a soul could linger and read. This was no repository of the foreign and esoteric, no sepulcher of forbidden writ or perfidious text. It was simply a bookshop filled with poetry, prose, fantasy and imagination and not a little learning, and a clientèle keen on enjoying the atmosphere and scent of parchment and history. And at the heart of this modest establishment of learning and quiet verve lay a dark mahogany bar, where contented customers sat with quills and inkwells and papers and books, sipping mulled wines and chatting discretely with one another. They were scholars, enthusiasts, students and faculty; they were men and women and children, respecting the hush of a place meant for whispers.

And beyond them all, beyond books and gentry and those quiet souls that sought reflection in words, was the staff. Just the proprietors of this strange and wonderful place, wandering hither and to to make sure all remained undisturbed with needs met and desires tended to. Just a man and a woman, who were both more than just a man and a woman, but who were nonetheless content to play pretense so long as they sheltered here. They were no obtrusive in their wanderings as they tended the shop, nor loud with their transactions or interruptible in how they straightened and cleaned and worked. They were just there, as solid and as baffling as the bookshop itself, and quiet with their peaceful reserve.

The man was a broad thing, dressed in britches and clean linen with soft-soled boots that made nary a sound when he glided past with a drink for one man and a much-sought after book for another. He had long, dark hair tied back from his face with a leather thong, a deeply lined face that bespoke of advancing years, and gray in an otherwise dark and ruddy beard in much need of maintenance. And though he tried to be an inconspicuous dandy, there was something terribly unnerving in his posture and gait; a way of moving that, though subtle, spoke to a history of violence. But he smiled charming smiles with his generous mouth, and his eyes, though deep-set and glittering could unsettle even the most stalwart soul, could grow kind when he was a mind to present so. He presented so now, and assumed, at least beneath this roof, the guise of a gentleman and a sage.

His opposite was all that he was not, and more. He watched her from afar, that man of mass and shadow that aped at gentleness. As he served drinks and found forgotten books and manuscripts to return to their proper places on shelves, he observed the way she tended to guests and moved through the small world around her with a poise he could imitate, but never quite actualize. She was a lithesome thing, no more than a slip of a girl-child in a white dress and white heels that clicked with her passing. All delicate limbs and unconscious decorum, she flitted like a bright shadow through aisles, behind the bar, through doors and among others, but never without the weight of her other's scrutiny. The waifish girl, an albino, had a tousled mane of long white hair that reached well below her narrow bottom, coltish legs and thin arms, and a thin and noble beauty to her narrow face.

He caught her eye every now and then, her scrutinizer and protector. He would find the pale pinks that were the windows to her soul, lock gazes with the beauty from some distant part of the room, and favour her with a brief but sincere smile that was smaller than the one he wore for others, but substantially warmer when it reached the edges of his creased eyes. And then she would smile back, a flash of teeth on her pretty face, and they would go back to revolving around one another in a well-practiced dance, never quite joining, but with steps that always brought them up to the threshold before they spun away again with their services. And so it was that the spent the late afternoon and evening together, until the scholars and the students started filing out, and there were fewer and fewer cups to rinse and books to find to return him.

Full evening was upon them, and soon, very soon indeed, one of them would have to turn the sign over to indicate an end to their hours of operation.

To The End of Love

Hi, I'm Roen

TNT - The Nameless Tavern. (Always Open)

Lifting his prow-fronted helm and looking beyond Severina, the Outsider considers the wisdom and mercy of resisting the call to violence that was the Commissar’s continued obstinacy. He has spent too long in isolation, some distant part of him breathes. Too long having every whim obeyed and desired fulfilled. This was not the Threshold City, and this woman was not one of his subjects.

He did his best to bear these facts in mind in the face of waning patience, and cast his mind instead to the practical considerations that Gabriela, for whatever her flight had meant, remained within. He did not hear the sound of raised voices, nor did his hackles raise at some sense of danger most metas invoked when channeling their misbegotten abilities.

Roen sensed nothing untoward at all, and felt within his armour only the distasteful sense that he was wasting time and running the risk of losing his prey. He exhaled, the sound filtering out of his helmet with vague electronic distortion that was unable to mask his impatience. But for whatever it was worth, he did not lunge headlong into a fit of violence that so marked his typically choleric disposition. He chose instead the path of the sage, and lowered the menacing threat of his lightning-wreathed claws.

They snarled and spat while he flexed his fingers and shut down their power fields, rendering each scything blade nothing more sinister than wickedly sharp talons. They rasped again when he scissored them at his side, excising some measure of his disquiet and unhappiness in the sound and movement of an idle fidget. If this woman wanted discourse, then he would oblige her - so long as he was sure Gabriela remained within, and was not rallying support from those souls inside. It would not be the first time he has walked into ambushes laid so clumsily.

Tilting his head back down to pay the Commissar the virtue of his only slightly divided attention, the Outsider frowns within his devil’s helm. ”She is my ward,” he says, in complete and utter honesty. But the inflection in his words carry other meanings, some more terrible than others. He may as well have called her property, an unruly daughter, or his wife. In truth, the runaway princess was all of these things, and more. Shifting his weight and the muted growl of active warplate, the Outsider sets his free hand on a cocked hip, an incongruous pose if there ever was one for such an armoured monstrosity.

”And she is more dangerous than I could ever hope to be.” Raising his right hand and sweeping his talons in an all-encompassing gesture, the Outsider indicates the tavern, the lands around them, even the world itself. ”She is the worst degree of monster: she will take your life, and you will love her for it. She has brought Gods and Kings to their knees; she has brought nations to ruin; she destroyed our world, and she has killed uncounted millions.” Curling his talons into a loose fist, the Outsider points one substantial claw at the Commissar. ”She means everything to me, and I would see her spirited away before calamity strikes.” A pause; a question hanging in the air.

”You fear me because I am in the warshape,” he comments, softening his words. ”But evil does not come up to you with claws and horns. It comes with a pretty face and shadows at her heels.”

Leaning away and withdrawing with a sweep of his mantle, the Outsider turns his profile towards the Commissar and gestures flippantly with his talons, indicating the tavern and all those within. ”Five minutes. You have five minutes to bring her to me, unharmed and intact. I see now that if I chase, I will doubtless be confronted by yet more gentle hearts. And she becomes so intractable when she sees me fight to kill. Bring her here, and we will leave in peace.”

TNT - The Nameless Tavern. (Always Open)

“Am I not family?”

His fingers close, but it is only air that he is grasping. She is slipping away, a lithesome shadow turning her back on him as nature had always intended. He smiles to see it, the lines of his mouth crinkling with an artisan’s pride and a craftsman’s joy. She is perfect in word and deed; no mere facsimile of the creature she had been before, but a genuine article of faith brought back from the depths of history and neglect. To be party to her thinly-veiled subterfuge was a reminder of lives they have long since been dispossessed of, and to watch her flee felt more sublime than it should have. She was playing her role to a degree of perfection he could help but be delighted by, so much so that he nearly forgot his part role to play. He sighed with a love for it all, and love for her.

“There is nothing inside worth taking home with us,” he demures at her backside.

She glances over his shoulder at him like a nymph on an escapade, showing him her fret and worry in the sharp contractions of perfect brows and full, sweetly plump lips. She is perfect in form and shape, just like every incarnation before. It gives him hope that this would be her last, bereft of the faults he had forever found in the incarnations he devised previously. Some had been too willful, others too submissive. Some had possessed none of the charm and guile memory spoke of, while the rest veered so far off temperament, it could scarce be said they were Gabriela at all. He had killed them all, over the centuries. Indeed, like any true craftsman, he destroyed defective products. He hoped this one would not meet so similar a fate.

But she is gone, and he is left outside in the cold of night with only his choler for company. Taking the gauntlets hanging off his harness and sinking his hands into them again, the Outsider seals the articulate plates in place and flexes his hands. There is a brief moment given to testing the haptic feedback of the armour’s sensorium, but he quickly grows bored of it when he reflects that Gabriela did not intend on coming back out at all, at least not to him and perhaps not alone. This is a displeasing prospect, but not entirely unheard of. There was a magnetism to his beloved that attracted all kinds of ne’er-do-wells and overeager sycophants, and while he may have preferred it not to be the case, he had long ago since come to accept that she will forever have souls willing to intercede on her behalf.

There was one such soul now, barring entry into the tavern. Worse, she seemed intent on keeping him out through violence. An errant bouncer if there ever was one, he wonders why these things continue to bother him no matter how many times they happen. But he supposes everyone has their own roles to play, no matter the circumstance. He can respect such dogged determination, even if he somewhat pitied it. Reaching to his hip and unclamping his helmet, the Outsider lowers the piece of armour over his head and rights it until neck seals engage and the armour pressurizes. Then he starts to walk, reaching behind him to unclamp an archeotech lightning claw from the small of his back to fit it over his right hand. The movement is both deft and precise, speaking volumes towards habit and ritual.

”You’re in my way.”

Amplified by the speaker ports in the devil’s helm, the Outsider’s soft tenor comes out with a tinny electronic feedback that does little and less to diminish the smooth quality of his voice. No booming baritone, no overstated rumble to jar the bones and frighten the nerves, just a voice from behind the narrow slit of a visor backlit by a perfidious red. Faceless, the armoured knight raises his right hand and waves it dismissively with a snarl of servos while activating the ancient (perhaps futuristic) generators of the claw, each curving scythe spitting to life with crack and shower of sparks. He tests the talons with murderous theater while his shadow passes over Raine, scissoring two curving blades with a rasp and pop of conflicting powerfields.

”Think carefully on your choice. If you choose to fight, if you choose war, it is a path you will not be able to turn from once the first step is taken. It carries with it a terrible price."

A pause; patience beyond measure.

"Move aside. I won’t ask you again.”

[X]

TNT - The Nameless Tavern. (Always Open)

Thank you, friend. I am flattered.

TNT - The Nameless Tavern. (Always Open)

You are my beloved, said the dark knight, the wind carrying his words. There was more there, though. My beloved rhymed with my conquest and rhymed with my only and rhymed with other concepts that could scarce be parsed for the core of the thing’s meaning. A lifetime of perspective was bound up in the naming of her, and there only a gulf between what she could understand and what he meant. But there was no threat in the wind or the words within it, no untoward malice or significant threat. There was impatience, perhaps. Love. Caution. The need to possess and consume. But her life and her health was her own, as it ever was within the cage of his control. She was beloved, after all. Beloved first, and beloved foremost.

Exhaling breath through thinly parting lips, Roen let the mercurial wind go its own way with its gulfs and half-heard meanings. He was ever fond of his theater and cantrips, but it grew difficult indeed when beloved stood before him with her upturned chin and pretty albeit reddening eyes. She was on the verge of tears, and while he might never admit it to her and least of all to himself, this was a particular weakness when it came to the weeping of his woman. He simply could not abide by it. He softened in mien and aspect both, the grimness of his expression melted away before her sadness and beauty.

“Tsk-tsk-tsk.”

Clicking his tongue with fatherly disapproval, the Outsider unlocks the gauntlets off his hands with quiet snaps and hisses of releasing air pressure, and hangs them off his harness before moving to draw the vampyre into his embrace. His limbs and his chestplate whirr and hum with the motive force active warplate, but he hopes they are tiny inconveniences to Gabriela when compared to the warmth and comfort he sought to provide. He wasn’t soft, no, never that, not even out of his battleplate, but the black and gold alloy of his carapace is sympathetic with the heat of him, and his hands, his hard, heavy hands, they are gentle when he runs his fingers through her hair.

“Do not cry, lovely one.”

His fingers thread through inky-black hair so vibrant and crisp, each strand clings to a digit with lives of their own. But she is a cold thing, as cold as he remembered and always loved, and he warms her with pads and palms as he cradles the back of her head and draws her up and in. She is a small thing, lithe and possessed of a delicateness so sweet she demanded deference when touched, but she is made to lift up onto the tips of her toes to meet his descent. He seeks to suffuse her senses; to be all that she feels and sees and smells and tastes. But most of all, he seeks to quiet her. And to that effect, he claims her whispering mouth the way all lovers do: with a kiss. Was there artistry in it? Romance? The deft press and subtle tilt? Oh, he could be a master of kisses, this thing of Perdition; he could send the lover to her knees with a draw of his mouth and the capture of her breath.

But he feels little and less the artist tonight, and more the lord he was affected to be. So where there’s supposed to be art, there is savagery; where she might have wished for romance, only need. There was no deftness in the press of his mouth, except in the absolute pressure of it, and there was no subtlety in how he tilted his head - he was wickedly forward in his attempt to part her lips and seek out the coolness of her mouth. There was an audience, he knew. There always was and would be. But he is sidling close and clutching her head in his hands, and he coaxes Gabriela to turn so that it is his back that is facing all who would watch and appreciate a Don Juan Triumphant. He gives all his rear aspect, all broad shoulders and flowing mantle, all but subsuming his prize within the shadow of his shape. And he devours her. Ill-suited for the bite and draw of a vampyre, his only means of taking Gabriela into himself is to part her hesitant lips and pull the cold air from her lungs, which he does.

It doesn’t matter if she disobeys and cries anyway, so long as she has sense enough to not struggle with her captor. And he is not wholly cruel, at least not where eyes can see. He takes the breath from her lungs and breathes smoke and spice back into her, warming the cold woman from without and within. Yet for it all he is a clumsy lover in his warplate and need, and an errant swipe of tongue finds a sharpened fang with carmine results. He winces, and it isn’t just sweet cold that he tastes, but ichor, too. He has cut himself on her, his own prickly flower, and it makes his brows contract and his aspect returns to grimness when pain is spliced into his pleasure. She is no longer kissed, and Roen withdraws to briefly inspect his handiwork, and how he marvels at it! She is flushed, her lips are plumper and redder, and she is beautiful. Just beautiful. More beautiful, perhaps, than memory could say..

“What have I done?” He asks, swiping a bloody tongue across his mouth and wrinkling his nose at the taste of his own vitae. “You’re the one that cut me.” Soft, accusatory, even almost amused, he flashes her for one brief and startling a boyish twist to his sensual mouth. “How dare you?” Taking his hands from their cradling of her head, he lets her down with becoming gentility, now that he has taken the least of his desires from her. He had to, or there would be no end to the kissing. There were too many ways to kiss, too many deviations and variations, they could spend an eternity standing in the cold, willing to find them all. But they were being watched, and there were other things to do and places to be with her. Setting his hands on Gabriela’s shoulders and lowering his gaze, Roen smoothes out the fabric of her clothes, primping and preening her with his customary fastidiousness. She was absolutely filthy.

“Mmm, you’ve led me on a bit of a chase. Even I don’t know where we are, or how to get home. You must have been very afraid indeed if the Threshold City sent you here.” A furrow of brows; a wrinkling at the edges of his mouth and eyes. “I take a very dim view of mothers abandoning their family, Gabriela.” He says, serious. Menace crept into his low tone. He did not want to keep this beloved soul under lock and key, but by his power, she was forever testing the limits of his forbearance. And those two that were outside, watching them. He turns his head, throwing a cruel look over his shoulder at the giant and the woman. “Another tavern, another pair of friends..,” he trails off, looking back at Gabriela.

And in looking, his rising outrage peeters off grudgingly. She was afraid. She was still afraid. Willfully, unhappily, he softens himself to her.

“Are you okay?” He moves to place a comforting hand on her throat, hesitates, then brushes her cheek with his knuckles. “Don’t be scared.”

He is unfair, the wind whispers. And unfair. He is a black magician. Black arts he makes in black labs of the heart. The fair are fare and deathly white. The day will not save you. And he owns the night.

TNT - The Nameless Tavern. (Always Open)

Where he walked, the scent of Perdition and all its horror followed. This was not to say his was an entirely odious aroma. Indeed, the peat and quenching-iron taste his being spiced the air with was, to some, a charming bouquet that piqued the olfactory senses, and not entirely unpleasant. It had to do with the dichotomy of it all, if one bothered at all to articulate whatever was being breathed on the downcurrent. There was peat and iron, yes, but spice and citrus, too. There was smoke and there was flame, but there was also a subtle sweetness as well. One could be repulsed by such fragrances, but curious, too. And that unto itself was the nature of the Outsider for most: a repulsive thing that drew the curious and fascinated unto itself, wherever it wandered.

And tonight it wandered here, walking a nameless land before a nameless tavern. Side-face with his noble profile presented to the front of the establishment, the Outsider moved with the steady stride of the recently arrived and inordinately occupied, his bold eyebrows furrowed and his grossly sensual mouth compressed into one thin, hard line of introspective worry. He might have been handsome once, the creature, but time had a way of eroding the cleaner, gentler parts of a man’s face over the years, and his was no exception. Lines of fret and anger creased the edges of his eyes and the corners of his mouth, his temples graying with the hard-won wisdom of a life lived overtly long and only too poorly.

He looked unhappy, possessed of a melancholia that had long since soured into an ungovernable choler that lurked beneath the surface of fraught equanimity. Unhappy, but resolute, like a man set about a task he found particularly distasteful. And if his mien was not enough to make this observation an abundantly apparent one, then the motive force of his attire spoke volumes of his intent, for it was no dapper gentleman that tore through sodden ground, but an armoured warrior wrought in pitch and gold. He all but gleamed from beneath his fantastic gorget, fully encased within a suit of alloyed metals that hummed and snarled with both power and motion. It was not the sage that prowled, ready with a stock of easy albeit crooked smiles and off-the-cuff words that few understood came from everywhere but the heart.

Tonight, he was just himself. His beauty revealed as it has always truly been: as cruel and merciless brutalism, his noble legend set aside so that he could be unashamed, the way he was wrought. No false myth of noble devils, that guise gone so that he, though unchanged in great aspect, could become the truest, oldest meaning of terrible. A truth that should have been obvious all along, but was now unmasked, unslipped. A being of awe, when awe was a weapon of itself. An eater of worlds and taker of lives, he walked the earth within the dark majesty of his role, and looked more comfortable with the horned-helm tucked beneath his arm than he ever had bare handed and unarmed.

And oh, how he was armed. Hair oiled and spilling across gorget and breastplate with a dynamism caught between barbarity and nobility, his free hand lay heavy on the lathed hilt of his wicked sword, it’s dark-gray edge hidden by a common scabbard hung from a belt looped twice about his hips. He could have hidden the weapon, could have turned it into some harmless bauble to withhold its nature and so conceal himself, but no, there was no subtlety in him tonight, nor was there restraint. He was himself, or near enough that it made no difference. And besides, if all was going to be true to the tale, he remembered very bitterly indeed the last time he reached a heavy hand out towards his prized possession, without being armed with hate and armoured by contempt. So if there was going to be war, he felt, then it was best to reach with the aspect of the warlord, and not the sage.

It was nighttime. It was cold. He walked beneath a vaulted sky of uncommon stars and wondered, briefly, if he should have come with a more deliberate showing of force. He could see her, of course. He could see his possession, his prize and his doom. He had his profile to her, but she had the full of his attention. He could have turned, could have laid the full weight of his scrutiny and make her flee deeper still into the oblivion of this universe, but he withheld himself and that need to dominate. The orphan runaway was a skittish thing, after all, and his was the patience of stars. So he could afford strolling through the courtyard, flaunting himself, flaunting his power and flaunting his being, to terrorize her with the truth that to run was to be chased, and that there could be no hiding.

He showed his arms, he showed his armour; he walked with a purpose that made the red of his cape billow and the glossy pauldrons of his armour gleam. He showed her how he so lovingly wore her colours, as if she were some fair maiden and he her stalwart subject. And he supposed he was that, this thing of callous brutality and bloodthirsty bearing. He was her devoted as much as her gaelor. Not that she ever made such distinctions in her forced captivity. Clicking, whirring and humming, his armour made a muted snarl when at last he turned, his torso twisting and his head tilting so that, at last, he laid his ruby-gaze on her. Just a flick of his gaze, but how it landed on her. Hard, heavy, just the way his hands might strike when she was being particularly obstinate, he might have consumed her then and there were eyes able to devour.

But they were not, and there was not enough poetry in the world to wax over the sheer depravity of his attentions. There was no compromise in his stare, no room to maneuver or breadth to barter with. Perfidy, perfidy hitherto unknown and the promise of recrimination for her flight, that was his stare. But all was not sulfur and flame, not for the orphan. He could be kind when the chase was over and the prize was found. And it is that kindness that has his hand lifting from the hilt of his weapon to curl his fingers at her, first in greeting, then in entreaty. He did not want to approach and risk an altercation with her newest companion, and preferred if she came to him willing, as was his due. So he beckoned, metal digits gesturing for her to obey and retake her proper place by his side.

Ariande, the wind murmurs. Persephone. Come home.