RP:Unbidden
Part of the Welcome To The End of Eras Arc
Summary: Valrae, newly returned from her capture by a rival coven, appears to confront Kasyr after catching up on current world events.
Kasyr’s Office
When the witch appears in Kasyr’s office, there is no warning. No tug on the bond that connects them, only the flare of potent magic in the air before she forms in a swirl of burning starlight and the inky blackness of the cosmos that yield to her will. She would be unable to hide her emotions once fully formed, not against the Revenant’s empathy, and they were a tempest of deep seeded hurt and confusion wrapped in the shining fire of anger.
The usually polished and bright appearance of Cenril’s Mayor is nowhere to be found today. Her hair is wild, a waterfalling mass of tangled curls thats ends lift in the latent power that surrounds her. Her eyes are dark and guarded, her face unmarked with kohl or glamor but somehow appearing much younger than her years without the lines and magic. Her gown was simple, the crushed velvet the color of a starless sky that wrapped tight around the gaunt shape of her body. There are no visible injuries, yet the witch carries an air akin to that of a wounded and cornered animal. The Weaver’s Athame is strapped to her thigh, glinting like starlight between the high slit of her skirts, and her wand is fisted tightly in her hand.
When she finally speaks, her voice is raw. “King Azakhaer, there seems to be much we need to discuss.”
Kasyr may not have gotten any warning, but when the first signs of a displaced firnament forms within his office- he can feel what's to come. That pained outrage which settles into the office long before her form has finalized, leaving the swordsman to utter an already resigned, "Merde."
And so he steels himself, his elbows placed on the table, and his hands folding together- a falsified image of professionalism, neatly finished off by the suit he was wearing. An unspoken barrier between the two he only retreats further behind, as he passively acknowledges the presence of the Athame, and the wand- already poised to be used at a moment's notice.
He takes all this in, and he feels his blood freeze- not out of fear, but a cold-blooded anger, as yet another person comes to him assuming the worst. It hadn't taken much at all, had it? His tongue traces the inside of his mouth, running against his fangs, before he finally gestures towards a spot near his desk, a chair dragging itself over to provide Valrae a seat. "Baines." And then he's glancing past her, his attention blessedly wrested away from whatever he was saying- this freshly formed chasm, to call out to one of the servants in the hall. "Kindly bring some biscuits. Some tea, coffee et maybe a drink as well. I imagine my guest would prefer the insurance of hospitality." The formality is frigid, as he sits there and waits.
Her power slaps out like the roll of thunder, her free hand moving only a fraction and still the chair he’d offered slams into the nearby wall with a crack. She will not sit, there is too much warring inside of her for stillness. This energy cracks along her skin like fireflies, emotion manifested as power uncontained. It chokes the air and pushes her hair back, the golden curls sliding over her shoulders as she stalks towards his desk. Her wanded hand does not move, but the knuckles are white. “I didn’t come for your hospitality.” She says, narrowing her eyes.
“Have you read the papers lately?” There is no false sweetness in her voice, the venom in her tone was not hidden as her usual habit demanded. No air of poise or diplomacy. This was not a Mayor standing before a King, but only the witch demanding answers from who she considered a friend. There is a vulnerability to this unveiled theatric, perhaps the overplaying of her hand as she came without the formalities while he brandished them like shields and swords. “I have. Not only do I come back to find war on my doorstep but you,” There is emphasis on this word, “My friend, someone I’ve trusted, in bed with the very man who murdered me.” She makes no attempts at hiding the catch in her throat, the painful skip of her heart. “Why?”
Kasyr watches the display, the bleak little mirror of his temper not so long ago. That poignant sense of betrayal that had poisoned everything. His thumb slides down to his palm, his nail pressing into the flesh as words continue to pour forth- already started to drown beneath a roaring at his temple. Not the flesh, but the spirit- grinding away what was left of him. "Tessa seemed to take a great deal of comfort in the safety it provided." There's a pause, and his eye traces from her wand, and then over to her leg and the Athame at her side, "It seemed like the sort of assurance you'd require, at this point." It's hard to keep the bitterness out of his voice, the edge of anger curtailed by a silence that rests between them.
An ire that twists his lips into a smirk, challenging the very words she'd thrown at him, "I've been keeping quite up to date on the atrocities of Xalious, and it's undead genocide, don't you worry." A smirk which ebbs away to something closer to disgust, as his eyes flicker away from her arms- from the unspoken threat. "Doesn't really matter -why- at this point, does it? The rest of the world seems to have long decided the narrative, et Inks did her part to confirm it." He glances back towards her, his head tilted just off to the side, "For your part, you already seem fairly certain, as well." Empty words, almost instinctive parries to every accusation.
Bafflement replaces the lines of anger on her face for a moment. “Tessa?” She echoes incredulously. “What does she have to do with this?” The witch looms over his desk and slaps her hand down, the wood of her wand pressed between her open palm and the darker wood of the desk. “I don’t care what games she’s playing with that zealot.” That might not be wholly true, but at this moment it didn’t matter. “Kasyr I want to know why you’ve chosen to attach yourself to the man who murdered me. The man who murdered my people, who still subjects them to inhumane treatment in his twisted, cult of kingdom! The man who by your own admittance would love to see me back on that pyre.”
His smirk stops her, catches her off guard and causes her head to flinch back as if he’d landed a physical blow. “Xalious?” The incredulousness returns. “What does Xalious have to do with any of this?” She doesn’t know of any genocide, doesn’t see how its relevant to the only thing that mattered to her now. “The *why* matters!” She straightens again, leaving the wand between them as she turns on her heel to pace away from him. Her heels spark as her feet land, her uncontained power nearly activating the magic that Inks had embedded within them with. When she twists back again to face him, her hair trails behind her like a golden wip. “No, I’m certain of nothing!” Pain flashes across her face. “I thought, before I was a Mayor and before you were a King we were friends.” Memories of the accusations Kasyr and Lanlan seemed to come to rare agreement rise from the neat box she’d placed them in. Accusations of naivety and soft heartedness.
Suddenly, it’s as if the air is sucked out of the room. The power that rolled off of her in waves and lit across her skin is pulled back with a nearly audible crack. Valrae deflates, “Perhaps I am the ingénue but that makes you the cad.”
Kasyr watches as Valraes' emotions shift and peak- as she sorts through her arsenal of querulous questions. It's only when she finally relinquishes the wand that something akin to guilt begin to work it's way in. At the trust and vulnerability she still afforded him, despite the righteous indignation that had brought her to his door. Embers which now seemed to diminish, replaced instead by simple disappointment. With a sigh, he begins, just as he had before. Again, and again. "There -was- no allegiance. Just a trade agreement, in part brokered over the resources I was certain I could leverage from Trist'oth, due to it's circumstances. An end to Larket's embargo, and unprecedented access to stone at cost and quantity unmatched anywhere else. At a pace needed to repair the city, et expand the necropolis, given the problems Caluss had left behind." Perhaps Valrae takes that moment to try and interject, to vent fury at their friendship being sold to pave Vailkrins streets, but, "I'm not done." There's a sharpness there that broaches little argument, that's foreign to the tone he normally addresses with her. An almost savage undercurrent, though not aimed at her, specifically. "I already told you about the arrangement I had made with Macon before, for your safety. The small trap I'd left. Clearly, he felt that served as an ideal point of leverage to make his announcement, since it's not like I could strike him down."
That smirk crops up again, now mirroring the bitterness in his tone, "Nor contest it, really- because even before those words were spoken, it was safe to say those present were already partially decided. Somewhere between their bored indifference or refutation of treating the undead as anything but a hindrance, Macon happily put me over a barrel. Et those same ineffectual leaders who couldn't figure out how to stop him, lapped it up et left. No small wonder none of them have been able to do a damn thing about him, if they can be led around by the nose that easily." The gaze that's leveled at her is far from a kindness. "Et with Vailkrin posed to collapse on itself, even before he decided to merry make threats- what benefit could be had from denying it? The other regions would think it a ruse, especially after Inks decided to take it upon herself to immediately go behind my back et mail every other leader et -apologize- for an allegiance that didn't exist. Effectively setting it in stone." His voice drops now, the expression far bleaker than it was before, "Et so, I'll play the hand I've been dealt, since there's little other alternative. This conversation has done well enough to prove that."
Valrae had opened her mouth to speak and snapped it shut when he’d cut her off. The anger simmers to the surface again, but she listens with narrowed eyes. Until he’d placed the blame for this mess squarely at her feet. Wrapped in a shining bow, as if it were a gift. So, she throws it back, “I never asked for your protection!” The hurt that deflated her remained but was beaten back by her anger again, she was no more in control of herself now than she had been before she’d come into his office and her power acted out. Usually so tightly wound and hidden by the witch, it manifests now as cold fury. Delicate veins of ice climbed the walls, cracked the glass of the windows that held back Vailkrins endless night. “Have you ever once considered, just for a second, that **I** am the threat. I am a witch of considerable power and will with an entire city of my own at my disposal and that *maybe*, just maybe, Macon has much more to fear from *me* than I might *him*?” She was beyond herself now, lost in the anger and betrayal she felt. Unable to offer him grace in admitting that while his intentions were noble and his actions that of a friend, the road had ended unfavorably. Something that, considering her recent brush with her own failures and near death, would otherwise lend her highly sympathetic. “Are you truly so busy playing the hero that you can’t see how insulting that is? How much of a fool you made me?”
He gave her no moment to pause though. Instead, now she was grappling with the bitterness in his tone as he spoke of how ill received Macon was amongst other leaders of the realm. There is a stab of empathy to her wildly beating heart. It was like water being tossed to her flames. She resented it, for a moment. She didn’t want to understand him, she wanted to be angry. If she were in her right mind, she might recognize this in herself. News of Iintahquohae’s actions surprised her. It fluttered across her guarded face softly. There is a pregnant pause, one filled with tension and cold air. She pushes away the small voice in her head that begs her to offer him an olive branch, a white flag, anything to move them away from opponents and back toward friendly ground. “Yes, I suppose if this is all a game you have left me no choice but to do the same.” There was no attempt at hiding the hurt in her tone.
“I came to ask you why.” That was only partially true, “And I came to offer to release you from our bonds…” Her hand brushes against the hilt of her Athame. “But if all that can be done now is to act our roles, I’ll keep them.” Her hand falls away, her chin rising a fraction in pride. “And you’ll have to hope I’m not the helpless creature you take me for.”
Kasyrs' expression doesn't so much as twitch during Valrae's display, as the frigid calamity begins to consume his office, ravaging it in a mirror of his own actions when he was in the full throes of a dark rage. He watches her breath puff out, heated words contrasting to the chill of the room- as she layered each indignity, new and old. "I suppose I'd best hope you play well, then- because you certainly don't need any help playing the fool, if your intent was to kill Macon by this point." Perhaps it would be better if she severed that bond. A safeguard from being pulled under with him. Pushed to the point where she had little choice but to save herself, rather then to hold onto that lingering thread, and the salvation it provided, "Speaking of hero's- How many do -you- need to fail to save? Because it occurs to me, with Macon's willingness to shelter even your friends, that the only reason he acts es to hurt you."
There's no smile there, nor even really judgment- merely a frost to match that which surrounds them. An empty attention that means to hold her hostage, "I became weary of losing the few people I care about, hence why I do what I do. But what about you?"
Any hope either of them had of bridging the gap between them shattered around them as he aimed at the softest part of her, the darkest and deepest wound, and that aim proved true. This was no small burning bridge, rather despite the ice both real and figurative that surrounded each of them now, it was nothing short of lighting an inferno and watching it all burn. And he would have known. Wasn’t it Kasyr that had tried to mend this old injury before the night Lanlan had torn it open just as surely? He would have tasted her pain on his tongue, would have felt the ache that went deeper than bone. There was no one who blamed herself more for the deaths that mounted in Larket than Valrae herself, no one who doubted that her existence in the wretched world did far more harm than she could ever do good. No one who looked down at her own hands and only saw blood. And he knew.
She is still for the first time since appearing. Painfully still, frozen in front of him in all of her pain. Her eyes are wide on her face, the pain there so obvious she might be screaming it at him. There was an unspoken accusation too, indignant words that would never pass her lips asking him, ‘How could you?’. But she won't speak them now. Instead, she stalks forward to collect her wand. “You’re right Kasyr,” Her words are cold and clipped, like the ice that steadily creeps over his office as her power rolls around them. “I don’t need help playing the part of the fool. My mistake was thinking enough of myself that I had started to believe I was one of those people you claim to care about.” She tucks the wand away in its sheath. “Thank you, King Azakhaer, for ridding me of such girlish fancies.” Valrae dips into a curtsey so low it was mocking. “Enjoy your throne, may your halls be filled with all the company you deserve,” Her next word was that of the cornered and injured thing she’d become, one she would no doubt regret the moment she spoke it and still, it left her lips with all the accusation, venom and rage she could muster. “Vampire.”
With that, she departs in the same snap of magic that she’d appeared.
Kasyr succeeds. With a few choice words, he can feel her fondness for him give way - can feel the grip of something bitter and fierce fill the void it left. Her agony is palpable, gnawing away at him just as fiercely as her, and still he stays the course- even as it all slips away. He has no words to offer her as the floodgates are broken, as her warranted words pour forward. Not until she's done, until her final judgment is laid bare, does he speak, "And proudly."
The image of a monster made, he watches her slip away, unhindered. Safer for her suffering. And leaving him alone, once more. "What now, hero?"