Lyr, in his travels, had seen many sigils for many gods. Some took the shape of brands, or tattoos, or arcane and delicate gilding. Tenebrae’s sigils burned with dead light and Lyr imagines, again and again, the expression in a stag’s eye as it dies in a timeless loop. Is that not the same as the brilliant, winking light upon Tenebrae’s shoulders, or at his brow? Is the light he consumes not a beautiful kind of death?
Lyr does not voice his thoughts but thinks, instead, if he were an artist he would take the time to sketch in charcoal the beautiful man in front of him. How long, he nearly asks, until the beauty of the devout becomes the sanctity of pillage? How long, Lyr wonders, but not aloud—no, never aloud—before Caligo’s worshiper turns his beliefs to some violent, dark purpose. The time, Lyr is sure, will come.
What else would we be?
Where Tenebrae’s smile is absent, Lyr’s appears as serene and placid as a still lake. “Many things. A monk may be a philosopher, or a tyrant, or a warrior, a sadist or an idealist or a masochist. To be a monk and a man is, perhaps, the mean of many extremes.” It is the only subject that does not dissolve into embarrassed stuttering, or shameful introversion. It is the only thing that lights his sickly pink eyes with something vibrant, like life. Or the memory of it.
There is no confrontation in his voice. Lyr practices the calm Delumine tone he learned in his youth, the voice and confidence of scholars. This is, perhaps, the only subject he can speak on with such confidence. He remembers his father, a monk, and how monk-hood had cost him the special privilege of being a man, and father. It had cost him everything and transformed him into what he was so devoutly following; the last time Lyr had seen his father, the man was a mere effigy of Oriens.
Lyr watches the shadows of the Disciple with vague curiosity. Magic no longer intrigues him; instead, it fills Lyr with a, expectant kind of dread, the apprehension one may feel when they fear heights. And so you chose to come here?
“Why not? Places of worship are always places of thought.” Lyr says, noncommittally, and listens with the aptness of a man accustomed to listening.
He does not derive pleasure from clever phrases, quick or quitting quips, or intellectual conversation. Truly, he would rather be alone. But Lyr does derive pleasure from the sort of straining of wills that becomes just barely perceptible beneath the surface of their conversation, like a fierce fish in muddied water. Lyr, if he were more honest, more forthright, might have said, it matters because to lack devoutness and become devout means you once saw the way and, like a coward, turned from it. He does not narrow his eyes, but Lyr is no longer smiling.
“Her Stallions?” Lyr asks, curiously.
"Speech." || @Tenebrae
this was the difference between ichor and iron
the universe made you closer to itself than us
