RP:Requiem for the Lost

Part of the The God of Undeath Arc

Part of the Welcome To The End Of Eras Arc

Summary: Valrae confronts Kasyr, assuming that Quintessa’s absence at the last round of the Blood Bowl meant he’d followed through on his violent impulses and brought about her death. This doesn’t go well.

Vailkrin Capitol Foyer

The crumbling castle which stood here has been rebuilt and refurbished and now serves as the Vailkrin state capitol building, despite remaining a formidable fortress. The entrance has been outfitted relatively modestly, a simple red runner leading the way north into the main room while the stone walls are left unadorned but for several flaming sconces, although a series of banners running down the hallway boldly pronounces a patriotic spirit, each flag bearing the black hand of Vailkrin. At the opposite end of the foyer a series of arches invites visitors to continue forward into the great hall or to turn into one of the wings of the castle.

Valrae had waited until nightfall before casting a cloaking spell and stealing away from her balcony to Vailkrin. It was surreal, as she flew through the night on her besom with the wind rushing through her hair and turning her cheeks red, that she might be heading to the darkest place in Lithrydel of her own volition again so shortly after her last visits. She loathed the damned, stinking lot of it. All of her worst memories could be traced there, even the more tame ones from her previous life only beckoned feelings of loss to the surface of her already tumultuous heart.

Still, the path that she followed took her to the realm of endless night. She traded one dark sky for another, a black mirror in a world where the sun had never shown. It was the desolate place it ever was, in her eyes, and she passed over it as quickly as she could manage. The witch followed the silver thread through the night, hoping that Kasyr’s own intuition might warn him of her arrival. She was surprised at where it led her but she continued stubbornly. She was going to speak to him, one way or the other. What was done could not be undone and there was a hopelessness in this. And Valrae was ready to release the anger that ate away at her insides like a poison.

Kasyr's chest was aching again- a steady pulse that had begun to act up since the prior evening, sometimes ebbing, but never fading entirely. He'd done what he could to ignore the sensation, setting up an appointment with the Maharan, fielding some letters from the Ashramites, and even deigning to send a carefully worded threat to house Nasar- but none of it had proven to be an adequate distraction. Because just as that sensation ebbed, so too did it well up again- a mingling of anxiety, and an even more distant sense of animosity, which sought to drag it's hooks into his heart.

And one of these was now drawing nearer, bearing down upon him with a stalwart determination that saw him sighing in exasperation, even as he got on his coat, and began to make his way out from the room he'd occupied for himself. The remaining parcel of letters he'd been working at is tossed on the bed, a partially drained bottle of blood-wine taking the spot they'd once occupied. And it's in this manner that he slips with Castle Vailkrin's hallways, his sour gaze warding off inquisitive souls and servants alike- allowing him to reach the foyer relatively unimpeded.

With a roll of his eyes reserved for noone in particular, the swordsman finds a seat at one of the mahogany benches present- curious if he should perhaps get a headstart on clearing the approaching headache.

She’d landed in front of Vailkrin’s capitol with relative grace, her broom disappearing in her purse after only a moment of juggling with it. The fortress rose up in the blue-black of eternal night like a dark mountain, imposing and minacious, but Valrae let her anger carry her.

She sailed into the foyer with her chin high, haughty and indignant in her self contained way, golden and tangled waves of long hair training her like sunlight. There were doormen and servants, dressed in the dark livery of their home and ready to offer assistance. The witch slipped beyond them as if they were no more visible than a specter floating over the mourning in a graveyard. Her emerald eyes had locked onto Kasyr like a target and never left him as she walked. She’d wrapped herself in shades of ivory and gold, as if she could beat back the darkness by clothing herself in light. Her cloak was shining crushed velvet, her simple gown delicately threaded with gold. Her heeled boots were silent on the thick, crimson carpet as she walked.

Because she’d whipped herself into such cold fury, Valrae left no room inside of herself to follow the threads of their bonds. Selfishly, she pushed her own storm of emotion through them instead, using those feelings like a weapon because words had failed her. There was a moment of hesitation when she stood before the revenant and it crossed her face like a dark cloud. The angry lines of her brow, her rouge brushed lips softening on an exhale. “Kasyr,” His name falls from her mouth as it returns, her voice saccharine and out of place accompanied with her scowl. “I’d have a private word with you.” Her tone was demanding, bordering impolite by her own standards.

Kasyr can feel the strain the witch is so intent on leveling at him, that self-righteous indignation which sees the weight of the world worsen for just a moment. It betrays her presence more than the lonely click of heels, or the subtler beat of her pulse in an otherwise stillborn setting. It also sets the Kensai to drinking deeper, leaving him with an empty bottle to contemplate as she ...intrudes. He mulls on the word, even as he endeavors to piece together the message carried by her garb, well-coiffed & coutured as she emanates a sense of displeasure.

A radiant spot of civil outrage in the midst of what was ever his city. The smile she receives in turn is sardonic at best, and lasts only until his gaze drifts off towards a corridor, his mind already drifting back to the mechanical issues presented by local politics. Not, "What es this- if you don't mind the inquiry, madamoiselle? Not official business, I would think- since there was no notice, nor attempt at lobbying some..." Would the chain of communication have allowed her to reach him? Possibly. The recent displays had certainly done wonders for cowing people into abiding his presence. And yet, "And it's not pleasentries- or I imagine tu would have send me some cordial notice to break bread with an old friend et subject moi to Lanlan once more." Still, she'd asked for privacy, and whatever his misgivings, whatever abrasive bit of ill-humour he felt like entertaining, he supposed he owed her that much, in exchange for her recent hospitality.

And so, bottle in hand, he proceeded to meander further into the castle, his footsteps instinctively taking him towards a small meeting room that wasn't too far from the pantry- so he might be able to inquire after some form of sustenance that might prove tolerable to her still-mortal sensibilities. The faint clatter of kitchenwork also served as an adequate distraction from any outbursts that might come about, too. Certainly, it does wonders for masking his own words- for not even moments after he's sunk into a stately looking seat, his attention has slithered back to the witch, some bleak whisper of amusement painting across his features, "If you're asking about Lanlan, I can assure you, I've been leaving him alone, still. He doesn't need any help digging himself a grave."

Kasyr’s calm in the face of her hardly contained fury, something that she might have admired and oftentimes leaned on when they were surrounded by more incendiary company, only served to further annoy her now. She watched him finish whatever he’d been drinking, casting him a look between her dark lashes. Worry and question masked with disapproval. She crossed her arms about herself as she waited for him to stand.

“It’s personal.” She answers cooly, her tone nearly forming ice on the tip of her tongue. Her anger yields to objection as he accuses her of subjecting him to Lanlan’s company, as if it were some form of malicious torture, and the witch nearly huffs as she struggles to verbalize this offence. “Oh, please. It could have hardly been the worst way you’ve spent an evening.” She counters, following close beside him as he stands and leads them away from the publicity of the foyer. Neither of them speak again until they’ve entered the smaller room. She thought it might be awkward. But they passed through the halls, the soft sounds of footfall and a busy kitchen at work filling up the space that words might have occupied, and instead it was surprisingly comfortable. Normal even. She’d spent so much time painting Vailkrin as a place filled with animated shadow and, probably, mournful wailing, that it was a little jarring to experience it in such a mundane way.

Valrae makes herself comfortable by placing her bag on an open seat but doesn’t take one herself. There was too much energy inside of her, too many things she’d like to say running through her busy mind. She paces, even as Kasyr sits. Again, looking as comfortable and sedate as ever. She stops in front of him as he speaks again, the apples of her cheeks blooming a rosy pink that belied the anger she’d been projecting from the moment she’d left Cenril. “This isn’t about Lanlan!” She says, playing up the exasperation in her tone. She doesn’t yell, that would be unbecoming of her, but she might have liked too. “I’m beyond assigning myself the burden of healing whatever truamas you two have forced upon each other,” She crosses her arms again, resting her hip on the table as she tilts her head. Her heart was beating loudly in her own ears, a drum of anger that warred against whatever she might have said next. “I-” The witch stalls, stumbling on herself. “I didn’t know how deep those wounds were.” She admits, something close to apology surfacing in the depths of her eyes. “But I’m not here for him. I’m here because of Quintessa.”

She pushed off of the table again, suddenly animated from her stillness. “You had no right.” Val says, conviction hardening her tone. “I know what you think of me,” The look she gave him now was slanted, uncharacteristically guarded, “You made that abundantly clear. But that doesn’t give you the right to play judge, jury and executioner. Whatever you might have thought about Tessa, or the things she might have done, there are better ways than… This.” She waves her hands about the room wildly, seemingly jestering at nothing and everything all at once. “I won’t pretend to know the laws of Vailkrin,” These were careful words but her tone belied the truth of them; she widely considered the lot of it lawless and far too brutal to be civilized at all, “But I don’t imagine it’s citizens can skulk about murdering one another on a whim.”

Kasyr may be subject to the burden of frustration, but that doesn't mean he can't take some degree of refuge in the simple pleasure that can be had in stoking it. For instance, the careful manner in which he initially abstains from replying to her exasperation, instead tracing his fingers along the empty bottle he'd carried within him- wait for the invocation of Lanlan's name to abruptly crack the top open with a firm application of his thumb. The sharp sound carries nicely in the silence he offers to her indignation, even as she clarifies her intention of leaving the pair to their own destructive devices, "It will pass. It's hard to play the victim, when there's no sympathetic audience. And that leaves only the business at hand."

The business, which Valrae chooses to clarify at that moment, his lips setting into a hard line as she begins her appeal. Perhaps, if he were still mortal, there would be an answer at the bottom of this bottle. Some blissful refuge of silence and solitude to be found, that might deliver him from this... display. But there's nothing, and so he releases it to gravity's lackluster mercy, so that his fingers might find purchase on the table's edge instead, "Right? The right of it, is that your concern?" As she begins to count off her indignities, his expression twists into an almost feral shadow of itself- a sardonic, sharktoothed grin that carried very little of his well-practiced restraint, "Or is it that some part of you was hoping that she could be salvaged. Living flotsam lost to a harsh and uncaring world that failed to notice her suffering, ou-quoi-ce-soit? Is that the narrative you're holding close to your heart? That she was forced into this- that it wasn't poisonous ambition that saw her set us all aside, again, and again?"

He pauses her, allowing her some room to digest his vitriol, to see if it might sate her appetite for a target to feel justifiably angry at. For something -easy- in the midst of all the confusion. "Let me tell you something about Vailkrin. It is -built- on incivility. Et the backs of those willing to -shatter- the dreams of those who harbour poisoned ambitions." Just as she had stood to confront him, so too does he rise to meet her, nails dragging across the otherwise immaculate surface of the table, "I was her teacher. I trained her. Guided her. Helped her establish herself." There's something very close to emotion there, but it's quelled with an onset of frigid rage, as the words keep coming,"And I saw her abandon her friends et family for every fallen god she could -find-. Et the only fault that rests on my actions? Is that it took me so long to deal with her.

If Kasyr had aimed to annoy her further, he’d managed as he weathered her irritation as if she were discussing something as simple as what tea they might share in pleasant tones. It set her off balance. While her conviction in this didn’t waiver, she felt clumsy and childish where he was still and controlled. Even as he opened the bottle and dismissed Lan again, she wanted to push it off of the table as if she were some misbehaved cat seeking attention.

Valrae’s pleasure at finally drawing some other emotion out of the revenant trilled through her like fire, her eyes narrowing as he released the bottle. But she doesn’t back down, instead she tilts her chin higher as he challenges her. “Yes,” She answers haughty, “That is my concern, Kasyr, among other things-” But he hadn’t finished with her. He continued, again dismissing her feelings toward Quintessa and her situation as something far too simple and still somehow too complex. As if she were a hopeless, soft willed woman who thought that loving someone enough might be able to sway a deeply corrupted nature. And what if she did? While that certainly wasn’t a philosophy she would be willing to apply across the board, there was something to be said for the order of things. There were processes, laws, courts. There were fair hearings, juries of peers, evidence and counter evidence. If the world spun around allowing anyone to kill anyone for a perceived crime there would only be chaos. This was what she’d come to argue… Or, that’s what she’d told herself.

“You can’t know that,” She counters, as he speaks of Quintessa’s motivations and her heart. He spoke of her ambition as if she’d never witnessed it herself. Though, in truth she knew she’d seen far less. So, doubt wormed its way into her heart now as he continued. It was clear he’d noticed her disdain for Vailkrin, it was her worst kept secret. The witch doesn’t look sorry for it though. When he stands, dragging his nails across the table, she holds her ground. There was fear, the shadow of it moving cooly through her hotblooded temper. It was primal, a deeply human response to the smile he offered her now. It warred with the bitter grief that followed his words, taking this as confirmation that Quintessa was in fact truly dead and beyond them now. A stillness took her, her dark eyes never leaving his face. “It wasn’t your place.” She answers breathlessly, shaking her head softly. “Do you imagine yourself as one of those fallen gods, Kasyr?” There was a meanness to this question, one she regretted the moment it left her lips. “Do you think you have some divinely appointed authority that allows you to pass this final judgment then?”

Kasyr pauses in front of the witch, his index finger rising and falling against the tabletop as he takes her measure- at the skip of her heartbeat as the space between them ebbs away, the instinctive shift in her pupils as some rational part of her mind grapples with the basic instinct to flee. As she tries to convince herself that he was not as much of a monster as the changeling. "Really? You -honestly- believe that?" Yet he receives no answer, not at first- for Valrae's words move to call upon a higher authority. To the moral truth that would guide the masses to some new age of civility- those hidden truths offered by divinity, and passed on through their chosen.

Which, by her own accounting would no doubt leave him some tyrant, a vestigial wreck of a poisonous past- a 'thing' to be navigated towards their common cause, as though he were some creature. Except, there's something fundamental that she's missing, even as she evokes divine virtue. "Yes." There's a certainty there. A cool knowledge which warms his heart with the simple miserable irony of it, "Haven't you ever -wondered- how a vampire could so adeptly play the part of a Paladin? How they could carry the title of Daedria's chosen, her -champion- and not be spurned for all those actions which abhor you?" He waits until she's ready to reply, when she's fished together some rhetoric to ward off his wards, and only then cuts in with, "Requiem. That was the title -Daedria- gave me when she walked the earth, and appointed me her divine blade. Her -sword- on this continent to purge the evils that walk it." The satisfaction that he's feeling in that moment is palpable, his eyes flickering across her face as he waits for her to process this- to see if she might briefly look heavensward for some sign that he might be smited for blasphemous, or some dawning horror. "A task that has no end- which es why, despite the occasional mortal reminder, I am both blessed et cursed to carry forward to the next day. To clean up all -your- messes."The smirk that plays upon his lips is toxic. "You're welcome."

Valrae couldn’t bring herself to answer his question. She was already bitterly sorry and ashamed she’d uttered the words that had led to him asking it. There was regret in her eyes, though she refused to voice it out of the same impossible and foolhardy stubbornness that kept her rooted in front of him when everything inside of her was begging her to flee. It was the same impulse that had gotten her killed in Larket, the same unwillingness to move or bend.

Her head moves back a fraction, as if he’d landed a physical blow when he answers her with such conviction that it almost sends the room spinning. “Kasyr-” But he continues. “I don’t abhor you-” The witch placed careful emphasis there, but he was cutting her off again. She can feel his eyes searching her as she speaks, but she isn’t certain what he might see there. Her fury had faded to background music to her wonder. “Requiem,” She tests the word on her lips, returning the intensity of his eyes now as she listens.

There was a healthy bit of skepticism within the witch, but there was a profound sense of truth in the way he spoke now that suspended her disbelief. If he had been waiting for her to argue, it was lucky for him that he’d been cursed with immortality. There was a saddeness there, in the way he spoke of his own continued existence, and it confirmed her own assumptions on how he perceived himself. She might have spoken again, but for the hurt that flashed through her as he placed the burden of how tangled things had become at her feet. “Well, pardon my manners,” She says in a way that doesn’t sound sorry at all, “Allow me to thank you for the admirable and long suffering sacrifice.”

They’d reached an impasse. Rather, they'd started there and she’d railed against it like a child fighting sleep. It was inevitable and consuming. So there they stood, on either side of a divide too wide to bridge and it began to open up at her feet like an endless chasm of hopelessness. The same feeling that lingered like a poor guest for every quiet moment she’d spent awake and alone in unfamiliar and too empty rooms. She’d known before she’d taken flight on her broom that she had been searching for a fight she could not win. That it was a convenient and pretty lie, wrapped in the shining bow of self righteousness, to hide her own weakness. The fight that had carried the witch through until this moment leaves her now, her shoulders heavy underneath the weight of reality again. She’d hoped she might feel better, having taken all of her fury and aiming it at someone she’d known would accept it, but instead she felt frayed and exhausted.

“Quintessa wasn’t evil.” She challenges softly, her tone no longer carrying the bite of her anger. “If it brings you peace to assign me the role of the fool for thinking that violence isn’t the only solution to a problem, so be it.”

Kasyr may have snorted at the witch's wit, at the weaponized politeness to his own facetious generosity. "It's a pleasure to serve.", comes the automatic response, his lips curled up in a hint of wry humour. And yet, the fight is leaving her. Those long days of indignation, and worry forcibly pushed onto him are slipping away- giving him room to breathe again, to regain the composure she'd denied him so far. Only. She isn't quite done, is she. There's one last denial she has to offer- though whether it was truly aimed at him, or at the circumstances they found themselves in, he couldn't be certain.

"I beg to disagree, madamoiselle, which is why I -should- have killed her." He's not even looking at her, his hands trailing down the side of his coat to search for the crumpled remnants of a cigarette, his fingers casually sparking it to lift so he can avoid answering her immediate questions. In fact, he's more than willing to simply pull on a few long drags in case some vestige of frustrated indignation starts to rear up at why he hadn't corrected her. "I crippled her, to buy us all time. Made sure she'd survive the process, too." A decision that he was still questioning- given that it would have deprived Caluss of both it's key emissary -and- an item of import. And yet, for just a moment, she'd seemed herself. Or perhaps he'd simply fooled himself into seeing it, to justify how his hand failing to pierce her heart, "Though she admitted to following it willingly at first, her current situation seems..less so. Enforced more from it's hold on her, and that it es watching her at all times." There's a pause here, as he waits for some small spark of satisfaction to creep into Valrae's express, or a sign of hope towards her redemption, "Don't doubt for a second she would kill you if it suited her ambition. Corpse god, or not." Whether or not she denies this fact, he still begins to move towards the doorway, seemingly poised to adjourn the meeting. And yet, he still owed her some semblance of courtesy for her ill-fated hospitality from before, "If you need anything to eat, I'm sure the Kitchen will help you, if you state you're my guest. Et there's guest rooms about, though you might prefer one closer to where I am, to avoid any issue." He pauses here, before finally offering a weary, "Unless there's anything else?"

Valrae found herself rolling her eyes as he quipped back, her lips moving into a demure and pouting frown as she crossed her arms again. While she was considerably more calm now, annoyance and off balance still rolled off of her in waves. It wasn’t for him now, and in truth only the smallest fraction of it had ever been, but it remained nevertheless.

The witch watched him closely for a moment. He’d evoked Daedria’s name and with it a shift in her perspective. Perhaps it was the careful measure he’d often cloaked himself in, the easy and oftentimes bored airs he’d worn acting as veil that was momentarily lifted. Kasyr was a revenant, a man who had walked among the Ascendi and come closer to divinity than she’d ever dreamed. She’d always known, even respected, the power that he might wield when the pretense of restraint was dropped but had perhaps let it slip further into the recesses of her mind as familiarity and even fondness bloomed between them. Much like his vampirism, it was something that she’d neatly compartmentalized and locked away until it was opened up again with bloodwine or the flash of what lurked beneath those masks as she’d pushed him toward anger.

This contemplation of him was abruptly halted as he spoke again. “Should have?” She echoes, her voice pitched high in surprise as he looks away from her to fish in his coat for a cigarette. She should have been angry but instead she only felt embarrassment creeping over her throat and cheeks. “Kasyr, why didn’t you-” She started to speak without knowing where the thought would end. It was just as well, he continued on as if he hadn’t the slightest notion that he’d just buried the lede in a sadistic, verbal sucker punch. Valrae felt no satisfaction when he revealed what she’d desperately hoped, that Quintessa might have been forced into this role she played now at the whims of an evil and corrupt god. She was silent as he moved away from her and offered her a warning. Would Tessa kill her if presented the opportunity? Her threadbare belief was that the answer was no, despite the doubt Kasyr had managed to instill in her heart. She hoped that this, at least, was something she never had to test.

“Wait,” She says, taking a careful step forward as he moves to leave. His hospitality in the face of her poor company was surprising and only further served to embarrass her. There was a deep sense of shame clawing between her ribs. His words had stung when he’d asked her if she’d ever contemplated how the gods might favor a vampire. Not because of the spirit of them, but because he’d seemed to have descried her aversion to his… Condition so easily. This fear and disdain had been passed to her through generations of close held belief that they were deeply unnatural and totally removed from the order of things. Even as Kasyr wielded power and magic of his own, there was a very real part of Valrae that believed that the curse would sever a witch’s connection to her heritage and birthrights. She wanted to apologize for her transparency, for comparing him to Caluss, but struggled to vocalize her regret. “I don’t think of you as if… You’re not like-” Her heartbeat quickened, frustration returning but this time for only herself. “I’m sorry.”

Kasyrs' release from the strain upon their bond, and the relief that accompanied it, allowed him to address her final plea to wait with a certain degree of grace. Not the sadistic serenity that had been reserved for Lanlan, but a sincere curiosity- which sees him turning towards her, even as she struggles with the words. With herself. Though their bond does not allow him to be privy to the details, the broad strokes remain, clarified within her fragmented attempts at closing the gap with her words. Her entreaties, with a heartfelt apology, he was not even sure he deserved.

No doubt, he'd disappoint her again, and so he offers her a simple, jagged reassurance, "But I am. I just happen to be a more considerate monster than most, mademoiselle. One whose interests align with yours." Her apology lingers in the air between him, before he carefully takes a step back and into the hallway, "I bid you a good evening. Et if you feel inclined to extending your stay, I'll see if I can provide some proper sport in the days to come." And then he's gone, as simple as that.