Legend of Ransera

If there was tension in the room, it was unintentional on Aurin's part. To his mind, they were negotiating. He wanted assurances these people, who he still didn't know from Arsoren, did not threaten him or his people again. They wanted the cursed eberrite key that a draegir had bidden him keep secret and safe.

Aurin was a pleasant man as the managing director of the Golden Peacock Theater, but that was because they paid him to be. These people, for all that they had identified Elwes as leverage against him, did not seem to know him at all, and every step they had taken to get him down here for this negotiation seemed designed to alienate him and, to be fair, Aurin wasn't choosing to react well to their poor management of him.

But negotiations ceased suddenly, as did any possibility for a resolution, and it took all his willpower when he realized he couldn't blink, couldn't swallow, couldn't breathe. This was not, as far as he could tell, a glamour, unless Hound or Twitch were grandmasters to fool him. Time magic? That fabled stuff was even scarier than the thought of someone who had his tricks, only more powerful.

That impassive helm gave away nothing, as Hound seemed wont to do. He wondered, briefly, whether Hound was the animated corpse of Jacien Novalys encased in steel. Stranger things had happened.

And then Hound was gone, a chill certainly creeping in.

Aurin cursed under his breath as soon as he was able. Elwes' coils shifted around his shoulders. She too misliked being helpless.

"You're not wrong, Twitch, my rat," he said, shivering despite himself.

"I thought we were—very slowly—making progress toward some sort of resolution, but I guess not. Look. We're still here, so let's figure something out. I'm not going to cross a godling, even a shitty one, without a good enough reason. But I'm going to reach out to him, at least. I'll give him what I know about Hound and this operation, which is next to nothing..." He sighed. "See what he says. Because even if I took a shot, stuck my hand up my death wish's skirt, and said 'fuck Talon Novalys, open the door, let's goooo,' he would find out and there would be divine repercussions, which... I don't want. I'm guessing you don't want. Hound wears full plate armor, visor down, to a negotiation, so maybe he feels invincible and isn't worried about a draegir on his ass...

"So... all right, could you at least talk to Hound or anyone who has more pull than him in whatever outfit you two are a part of... get them to release more intelligence to me. Maybe find someone whose negotiation strategy is more nuanced than a crap dad telling his kids 'because I'm the boss and I told you so'?"

For all that he rubbed elbows with Avialae and the affluent of Kalzasern society, more of his life had been spent in undergrounds, if not always literally an underground sewer, like this. Twitch wasn't the most impressive of partners in crime, but Aurin felt like he had a sense of the rat without even climbing into his aura. Although, that might not be a bad idea in the future if Twitch continued to be his point of contact. That he criticized someone for playing things close to their chest while he hoarded secrets as a matter of course and a matter of pride was hypocritical, but he was not self-aware enough to even consider that.

Hound was gone. Twitch remained. So, Aurin tried to make do with Twitch, knowing negotiations, especially when initial desires seemed so diametrically opposed, took time. He would make a little headway. He would...

Aurin closed his eyes, rubbing his temples, pinching the bridge of his nose. He wasn't unduly worried being momentarily blind before Twitch, whom he didn't exactly trust, but he was working on a working relationship. No, he had survived too much trauma not to have an almost sixth sense that had nothing to do with his conscious mind or his slapdash magic. Anyway, Elwes was still staring at Twitch for him. Impassive, she could be intimidating, sure, but in this shape, she wasn't big enough to consume Twitch, so he really didn't need to be so... twitchy.

In the darkness behind his eyes, he thought about Talon. In the darkness, he found the faintest sliver of light, like a crack in an otherwise seamless wall. He didn't know really what he was doing. For all his power and his skill, Valencia had had to teach him the basics of magical theory when he had already, by some standards, mastered a Rune. Whether this was his imagination or something real, it worked.

He thought perhaps it had to do with Talon scriving a Rune into his soul, even if he hadn't had to cut it into his skin as the misinformed Aurin had initially done when teaching someone one of his tricks. The blood made sense as a connection. 'The blood is the life,' was what that Vampir in Gel'Grandal had said before Masagh ended him. Even if Aurin wasn't a Vampir, he could sense how vitae and its flow mirrored the flow of aether throughout the world, across planes, and such. Perhaps it was because Talon had answered his prayers before, even if they were profane, challenging things rather than any sort of praise or thanksgiving or even a modicum of faith.

Aurin didn't have faith in Talon, or in anyone, not even himself.

In any case, he thought it might have been his soul he was not seeing in that darkness, and that crack in the wall, that sliver of light, was Talon. With his mind's eye, he focused on that. With his mind's hands, he probed at that connection like a child tonguing a loose tooth.

There was a whole lot to say, so instead of rambling fit to put even a diligent draegir into a torpor, he tried to distill down this journey into images, concepts, feelings—an aetheric language, much like sometimes he and Torin twined their auras together like interlacing fingers when holding hands and they could communicate more clearly without words than they could with them.

The abduction of Elwes. The shadowy communication. The rat. The suit of armor. The proposed deal that all revolved around the thrice-damned key. Finally satisfied that he had translated it all, he left an upward inflection as if it were a sentence of words, a question.

Talon should have patted Aurin on the head, thanked him for his service, and given the key to the Dawnmartyrs or something. Instead, for some batshit insane reason, he had given it to Aurin instead. Aurin was no Arcasian paladin. He didn't want the responsibility, but Talon had shirked it and Aurin wasn't willing to pass the buck to someone else. All the same, most of his people were in Kalzasi. He didn't want Talon kidnapping them too, or picking them off one by one to punish him for not fulfilling the holy obligation that he hadn't wanted in the first place.

With a sigh, he blinked his eyes open.

"Yeah. We good for now, Twitch? You need a ride back to Hahseu or something?"

"Oh."

Aurin was a poet.

His whole body had tensed when he sensed the aether shifting, but he also trusted his intuition, which said he wasn't in danger. He was able to observe multiple high-level enchantments playing out at once, the threads of aether seeming to glow with that cast to it that made him think dawnfire. A pretty trick, but Imogen wouldn't share it—not yet. And while Aurin's ethical code didn't make sense to anyone but himself, he wouldn't filch the stone out of Sivan's garden just to get his hands on some of the stuff to see if he didn't know anyone smart enough to reverse engineer it for him.

Talon appeared even as Twitch disappeared, and Elwes from around Aurin's own shoulders without him feeling even a hint of the lines of the slipspace trying to adhere to him. Well done, he admitted grudgingly, even if only to himself.

While Aurin still hadn't mastered the trick Talon had taught him, he was a Railrunner and knew the slipspace intimately. He was going to have to try some of that to see how much of it was possible without a seed of divinity within him.

"Quick service," he said. "Five stars, would recommend." As for the title, he nodded. "Suits you. Oh. Right, no foreplay; straight to the dirty deed. The key is, you know, as safe as anything can be in this world. You're welcome. But the rat... and a walking suit of armor who left not long before you arrived, they're a part of some outfit who kidnapped my friend in order to get my attention. Let her go, but still. I've investigated them some, but don't know enough about them to predict their behavior reliably. But there's a non-zero chance they will go after other of my people, and that I can't allow.

"I told them you have me a holy quest or whatever. That they could ask you for access to the key. I think they thought I was joking..." He shrugged. "Anyway, negotiations had barely started and Hound—the walking suit of armor—gave up. The rat is a bit easier to talk to, not that I trust him. But last I checked, we don't want the door open. You tell me if that's changed. The ranting I heard about it back in the day made it sound like someone was resurrecting your uncle for some unenjoyable shenanigans, or maybe they're just copying his nickname. I don't know.

"Before Hound left, though, he intimated someone else was looking for the key too. No idea how any of them found out. I was circumspect as fuck and it's been quiet for years. So... I'll open the door if that's what you want." He was dubious about that, of course. "Or you can bury it under the Dawnmartyr citadel. Or... I dunno, man. If this is still some cosmic test you've laid on me, I can keep it, but I'd have to pull up any Kalzasern roots I've put down and make my interests more mobile to keep them away from any Kalzasern friends I have who might be in danger.

"I know, I know. How does Aurin have any friends? You know about miracles, though, hey?"

Once More Unto the Breach

Aurin shook his head, reeling.

Negation, he could sense. He had it from Talon, after all. Masquerade, he was quite familiar with. That and a proper assassination had been required to get him into the Myshalarai's good graces and then their ranks. He could Semble with the best of them, too. But Talon was, in fact, a godling and his power amplified everything. Multiple iterations of the meeting slammed into his memory, a particular and particularly disconcerting feeling, making him unsure what had just happened even though he had been there. He had been there several times, perhaps. He had heard whispers about time magic when he had been skulking through Aur'arnis trying to drum up respectable enough intelligence to prove himself still, in some small way, useful to Arry now that he was a dragonborn prince of the desert.

They had one in Solunarium now, and people said the Senators of Ecith might manipulate time, as well. This had all been rumor and relatively far from anything Aurin was prepared to deal with. It sent him back so many years to tumbling weightless through the Aetherial Sea, part of a story arc he tried not to think about.

And these were just some of the terrible things going on inside him as Talon calmly explained while the person who could flout a godling was someone Aurin, who was not a godling, should be forced to contend with. The ginger was seriously considering sicking up right there; not a horrible contribution to the Midden as those things went. But Talon was waving him through a portal where Twitch was cowering and caterwauling.

Confused, he couldn't remember if Hound had struck his murine compatriot or if Talon had. Aurin had his issues with the Lord of Light, but wanton cruelty wasn't really his style. Then again, he boned down with serial murderers, so perhaps Aurin didn't know anything after all. He hated the idea of that.

But if he had learned anything surviving as long as he had, it was that one couldn't let weakness show. So, despite being nauseated and unsure of himself, despite the urge to just vault to one of his safe houses, he walked through the portal wondering what happened it one vomited in the slipspace.

"Oh, good. He didn't annihilate you." He walked past Twitch, ducked carefully down and picked Elwes up to coil her back around his shoulders.

Then he tried to grok how a godling's Traversion was different from his own, looking about the junction.

Aurin felt a bit better with Elwes once more mantled about his shoulders. As there wasn't a seat for him, he remained where he was, corbie-crouched, to observe. He hadn't missed the tightening of Talon's features when he greeted Elwes. On the one hand, he wasn't sure how he hadn't known that was a joke for Elwes; on the other, it was good to know a mere mortal could get under a godling's skin. It hadn't been enough to effect the changes he wanted, but baby steps.

Perhaps he could persuade Talon to end him. But no, even that would be complicated.

Aurin was curious about the answers to Talon's questions as well. There had been people seeking out the key, but he had killed them three years ago when they threatened him and his. Nearly three years of the key carefully hidden and warded and no problems, and then the Myriad sent their melodramatic missives and a walking suit of armor expects Aurin to do what he was told.

There was no logic he could parse, but perhaps Twitch could supply some context that would prove the missing puzzle pieces.

Letting Talon do the interrogation was different for him, but at least he could observe them and perhaps intuit things based on reactions, what wasn't said as much as what was. Elwes, of course, was no help. He could sense her thoughts, and they were mostly along the lines of How much longer until I can devour the rat?

Apparently she liked being kidnapped and coerced no better than Aurin liked those things for her. Twitch was rather lucky she had enough self control not to have just bit him as soon as she saw him. Her venom was pretty, but the effects of it were not.

Once More Unto the Breach