[P] Face to Face, Blood to Blood

[Emersyn]

It is difficulties that show what we are.

The war room is a place of grim grandeur and an ever-present testimony to the rather dulcet history of Delumine.  Other courts have seen heads on pikes, bodies of the innocent frozen into statues of stone, stolen queens, murdered kings, beaten and abused children, famine and plague .. the list goes on.  Emersyn often wonders what the war rooms of other surrounding kingdoms look like, certainly nothing like her own.  Tapestries of silk hang against silent walls.  There are no vibrations of war or strife to bring life to the quiet, crypt-like air.  What terrible things has Delumine seen?  What terrible things will it see? 

Emersyn's work is meticulously laid out before her like a master builder about to begin her work.  Every document lists a victim, a crime, and with it several other leaves of information vein out around it.  The round table is painted in monochromatic gore in the form of words, numbers, diagrams, dog-eared journals, statistics, historical reports, magical findings. Reasons why, suspicions as to who, theories of where - where the poachers go when they are through with Viride, with Delumine, sources-sources-sources.   Her reach extends from coast to coast but so far it means nothing, absolutely nothing.

A young aid slips in and delivers a fresh pot of hot grog that, by smell alone, arouses the Emissary's senses.  Behind the aid, a familiar form appears at the doors.  "Never thought we would be using this room." She says in a tone that cannot be interpreted for impolite or friendly.  Emersyn's winter-blue eyes shine like twin stars as they glance up from the paperwork to see Andras.  "I take it you are not here to tell me that the patrols have turned anything else up?"  She knows the answer, at least she thinks she does, but even still she does not let on to anything.  The woman is a closed book and maintains best that way.  

"I found number fourteen.  Right outside my front door on my way home from the meeting.  I couldn't sleep so I brought my work here."  Rucha, her wings (and a part of her other work), clamber around on the ceiling like a shapeless bat, the straps of the harness move like arms as they hang upside down and wait for a command.  Their sentience is something to be wary of, for they can be quite meddlesome when they have nothing to do.  For now, they rest and they wait.  But a singular buckle reaches down in an attempt to touch the wings on warden's back.  Emersyn flexes her own control over it and sends the wings out of the way like a troublesome child.  They obey, for now.

The latest detailed report draws the shape of what looks like another horse - but is not upon further inspection.  It could be mistaken as a kelpie, but Emersyn has identified it as something far more horrible than a water horse, a Uisge.  Vicious, always.  Wild, always.  Untameable, naturally.  And far too savage to be considered a citizen.  She suspects it lived within the enchanted waters of Viride, and, like all the sorry beasts to have been slain on Dawn soil, it too was timeless.  Just like all of the others, it is not a complete autopsy, the heart is missing and so are its eyes.

"What would anybody want with a Uisge?  Besides to kill it for sport."

She doesn't mention that the heart is a powerful component in alchemy, and that it can powers spells meant to raise the dead.  Or that the eyes can be useful in scrying on enemies.  All of it necromancy, but she doesn't breathe a word about it, she wonders how smart her peers are.  She'd rather see Andras come up with his own theories, just so she knows what kind of a mind she is working with.

"Please, help yourself to some grog and tell me, what do you make of all this?"


~~~

@Andras  Uh...