Run together, like birds of a feather
We howl like wild beasts
Erd awoke to the sound of muffled laughter and the sweet scent of jasmine incense. Turquoise eyes blinked open slowly as he gradually lifted his head, looking around at the room that he very specifically remembered not falling asleep in. Where was he?
The four walls of the moderate room were just that; average in size. There was no discernable factor as to explain where he was or why he was there, but… This was not the Dusk Court. That much he knew. Silks and tapestries hung against the walls as though in decoration. A few various trinkets decorated the sparsely placed table tops, lavish cushions meant for lounging spread throughout the room.
Pulling his legs closer to his chest, the pale warlock took a moment to collect himself and try to stop the frantic beating of his heart, the rising fear that slowly crawled its way up his throat. He couldn’t panic. Panicking would do nothing but potentially get him hurt, and then… His eyes closed, his breath stalling.
Ard.
Gods, how long has it been? Was Ard alright? Was he safe? The thought of his younger brother terrified and frantic, left all alone in Terratella twisted his heart in the worst way. He needed to get out of here and get back to him before Ard did something drastic.
Outside of the walls, the faint laughter continued. Whoever found something so very funny was a distance away, but still hearing it caused his pulse to race. Erd thought back to the woman he had encountered in Terrastella, and realized that he had been played like a fool. She had batted her pretty eyes at him and played the innocent victim card, asking if he would be so kind as to take him back to Denocte only to… To what? What had happened? He recalled pulling the little boat up onto shore, moving to assist the red woman, and then… Nothing.
“You really did it now, Erd,” he grumbled to himself, trying to shake off the last of the cloudiness that plagued his mind and proceeded to ever so slowly unfurl his thin legs, pushing himself up to his full height. “Focus. C’mon. Ard needs you.” His legs wobbled unsteadily for a moment, his vision swimming with an intense bout of vertigo, but eventually it passed.
He took one unsteady step towards the door on the far end of the room, then another, until the dizziness faded and he could move with lithe silence. It was a good thing he was so small and nimble, his lack of size allowing him to move around the room with catlike grace… With his heart pounding in his throat he tried the door, cursing softly to find it locked. Why? Why was he locked in this room? Where the hell was he?!
Backing up from the door, the grey warlock gave a soft, muffled scream between his very teeth. He spun, frantically searching for some means of escaping, the panic beginning to take hold. No, no, no… He needed to get to Ard! Why was he here?!
well any man with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most
Funny how no matter what’s going on in the outside world, it is always business as usual at the Scarab.
It’s early evening and the gambling hall is just beginning to fill up - soon it will be warm with bodies who are in turn warm with wine. Nothing seemed to make the people want to gamble and drink to foolishness like the threat of disaster, and a continent’s unease; bad news turned to good in the dark and hallowed hallways of the den. Or even if it didn’t, at least it was easy to find company.
August does not share in the frenzied mood. With Raum due to appear in days, with tensions building as high as they’d been at the Pass Incident, the golden man has plenty on his mind. Tonight he’s making the rounds, his saber at his side, unhurried as a lion on the veldt - but his thoughts are a knot becoming too tangled to tug apart. Somewhere, he knows, there is a thread to pull that will free the whole snarl, but he hasn’t found it yet. If only the guests in the Lavender room would stop their damn laughing —
He pauses when he hears the jiggling of a handle from the door he’s passing. For a moment he only listens, ears pricked forward, picking up what scents he can over the floral-and-incense that fills the Scarab. A brow lifts when he hears what sounds very much like a scream, and August resists the temptation to sigh. Maybe it was only someone playing a game - there were lots of games to play in the Scarab, some of which had very flexible rules - but he has an inkling this has more to do with a red girl with a wicked smile. It isn’t the first time.
But with Isra’s kidnapping, and Raum’s usurping, and the whole world turning topsy turvy, it was probably not the best idea to go poking at any other nests that might hold vipers.
Manon, Manon, he thinks, don’t go getting careless, and the palomino unlocks the door.
He has schooled his expression into genial neutrality, but his other brow goes up at the sight of the small boy in front of him. Judging by the looks of him, it ruled out the possibility of his being here by his own volition. He certainly wasn’t Manon’s usual type, and his distress is written across every line of his body. August makes a mental note (another thread to the damn knot of his problems) to talk with the mare later, and maybe Aghavni too.
To the boy he smiles, and offers a dip of his muzzle in the slightest of nods. When he leans against the doorway with his sword at his hip, it’s as much to present a picture of languid calm as it is to block the exit - at least until he knows what’s going on.
“Well,” he says lightly, “I don’t think you’re on the guest list. How did you wind up here?”
Run together, like birds of a feather
We howl like wild beasts
There was an audible ’click’ as the door unlocked, followed immediately by the handle twisting and the door swinging open. Erd immediately moved back as far from the door as he could manage, his hip bumping against one of the small tables on the opposite side of the room. He held his breath, watching as a gold and flaxen male lingered in the doorway, seeming momentarily surprised to see him there before an odd look overtook the stranger’s face.
Erd’s eyes narrowed, his lips pulling back into a deep frown. Every breath left him in a rapid rush, the feverish depths of his vivid blue eyes not leaving the golden stranger for a single moment. Who was he? What did he want? Yet the man spoke, his voice all smooth velvet and casual confidence, but it did not soothe the warlock’s fears.
There was a moment of hesitation, a physical manifestation of his indecision that stole across his face. Erd didn’t know how to respond. Oh, he wanted to lash out angrily and demand answers for whatever injustice had been committed against him, but without his magic what source of serious threat would he be? None. His heart racing in his chest, his pulse pounding, the silver youth slowly opened his mouth to speak.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly with a delicate softness, glancing feverishly around the room before focusing on the golden man, keen turquoise eyes spotting the flash of a blade at the stranger’s hip, “I don’t even know where ’here’ is. A w-woman brought me here, pretending like she was hurt.” … But she hadn’t been hurt. She had been fine, and once more Erd’s bleeding heart had gotten him into a terrible, no good situation.
What a horrible woman she must be to take advantage of such heartfelt concern and manipulate him in such a way. Erd hoped that he never saw her again.
Feeling very much like a frightened fawn standing before a hungry wolf, Erd tried to be brave. His legs shook, giving away everything. “There’s been a misunderstanding, sir. I don’t think I’m supposed to be here…”
A hand of ice gripped his heart and Erd felt as though he had been submerged in freezing water. Brave and serious as he had been trying to be, nothing could stop the look of realization, the feeling of profound terror and heartstopping dread that swept over him. His expression changed, mouth parting, eyes widening, heart racing almost painfully within his chest. A sheen of sweat immediately broke out across his skin, and as he held the stranger’s icy gaze, Erd unknowingly began to shake his head. “D-did… Did V-Vreis send you?”
No. No, please no. They were safe here from him. Vreis could not get them, not here, not in Novus. They were safe. Marisol and Theodosia had promised that they would be safe here and that Vreis would never find them. He couldn’t get here. This was a different world... But what if he had?
Aghavni's sharp, disbelieving laugh scraped a cloud of white sugar off the crust of a custard tart hovering two tantalizing breaths shy of her awaiting mouth. Crowned with a melting swirl of lemon cream, the tart was surely the finest creation Talan — the local baker's son, who'd recently forayed into the decadent world of sugar-trimmed confectionary and cakes prettier than her jewelry box — had conjured that morning.
Briefly, she wondered what the boy would think of her if she shoved the whole delectable thing into her mouth like a heathen, invoking the blithe ignorance she’d learned to wear like an extra ruby pin in her hair, frivolous and disgustingly aristocratic —
Until the impulse shattered at the feet of the eternally fatalistic question of: what would Father think?
Father would think me incapable. Her smile cooled into a mild grimace. Slowly, with what seemed like great effort, the tart eased back down to its little porcelain plate. “You saw her carrying a child - an unconscious child - into her room.”
Her gaze stayed stubbornly fixed on the loose thread fraying off the edge of the embroidered tablecloth. She wasn't good at controlling her eyes; they always gleamed a feverish green after bouts of frustration or anger or distress, no matter how smooth she kept her brow, or how aloof she curled her lips. A fault she attributed entirely to the whims of the Weaver. He never did like his creations too... created.
To her statement (which was really a question, hoping to be denied), Talan only nodded, albeit hesitantly. The hesitation was for the young director's sake than from any real doubt. He knew what he'd seen, even when he'd been balancing two stacks of cake boxes on his shoulders and appeared, to any who'd passed by the Scarab's back entrance, otherwise occupied. That was the secret of the laboring class. Your shoulders, your strength — talent, too, if you had it — might be theirs to command, but your mind never was. It belonged solely to you; did your bidding, saw what you made it see, and the high-born, the well-endowed, were always quick (or eager) to forget it.
And what Talan had seen, was the Red Rose dragging a child's unconscious body into her red rose room.
“When did you see this?” The red fan at Aghavni's side unfurled with a snap, and closed again with an even louder snap. Open, close. Open, close. It reminded the baker of a cat's twitching tail, counting down the seconds until it was time to pounce.
“This morning when I was delivering the cakes to the Lounge. Which was,” Talan frowned as he looked towards the small wooden clock hanging above the bread oven. “About three hours ago.”
“Three hours. I see.” She wished she didn't. “Well, I suppose I'll have to go check if the kid is still alive.” She hoped he was.
She glanced mournfully at the tray of pastries. There were plenty more still waiting to be glazed, and a heaping tray of pudding browning in the oven. She could sample them all later, piping hot, when the Scarab's nightly schedule of incidents brought her a scandal less outrageous than the one Manon had served up on a golden platter.
The infamous Red Rose never did anything unless she knew she would be the unquestionable best at it. And though her father might've appreciated the woman's talents, Aghavni was beginning to find roses, quite simply, falling out of fashion.
Manon was going to pay.
- - -
“D-did… Did V-Vreis send you?” Aghavni paused at the rose insignia door, sighed, and pushed it open. The plate of still-steaming custard trailing besides her (topped with fresh cream — Talan had insisted on her taking it, to "ease the poor child's heart") wobbled as she slipped into the dimly lit room.
“No.” She glanced curiously over at August, before shoving the custard towards the small pale boy. “Whoever this Vreis is, would he offer you such a treat? I assumed you'd be hungry.” Hesitantly, she added: “It's custard. And it's not poisoned — I'll have a piece of it if you're worried.” Wouldn't blame you for suspecting, after what you've been through.
Aghavni knew, painfully well, how it felt to wake in a dark room, with not a clue how you'd gotten there. Greeted only by the inquisitive frowns of men you'd never seen, wondering more and more, heartbeat by heartbeat, if waking had been a mercy or a curse.
“You're in Denocte. In the White Scarab.”
@Erd @August // so sorry for how late this is ;__;
well any man with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most
It’s not until the stranger - kidnappee? - speaks that August realizes his mistake. That the pegasus is no boy, as he’d seemed at first, but a man his own age. This makes him feel slightly less irritated by Manon (at least she wasn’t stealing children) but leaves him just as confused. Was this one of the Red Rose’s games? Gods knew she didn’t view romance they way normal horses did, though none of them at the Scarab could be accused of that.
At any rate, if this was some sort of seduction, the poor fellow didn’t seem to be in on it. His panicked expression is genuine (August has seen enough to know) and his own mouth furrows at the corners like a ditch being dug as the gray speaks. There was no question of Manon’s work - but what could she have wanted?
“Hmmm,” he says, unwilling to give anything away - not that the stranger seems dangerous, but he might have information that is. If possible, August would like to release him back into the streets of Denocte without him being any the wiser of where he’d been. “A misunderstanding is right,” he adds, pitching his voice into something more soothing, something suggesting this could all be worked out amicably. Which, he is sure, it would be - as soon as he found Manon. The woman possessed a rare gift for making herself scarce.
His thoughts stopped idling when the pegasus’ gaze caught his, the terror there pinning him to the present. Oh, and now his own heartbeat bounds forward in sympathetic response, a traitor to his memory; the expression the youth wears is one he knows, one he’s worn too. “No, no,” he assures him, struck by the dread ice of that look, but before he can say anything else the door swings again and Aghavni is at his side. To her look he only shrugs, raises his brows in a way that says you know as much as me.
The palomino steps back, then, glad to give his companion a go at the mystery, gladder yet to give his heart a chance to resume its normal pace. For an instant there, in some weird contagion, he had been back in that barred wagon in the desert, the sun baking him in tiger-stripes, his captors outside and looking in. It is not a place he likes to revisit.
It’s to settle himself as much as the stranger that he snatches a crescent of custard from the plate, half in show - no poison here! - and half because they look incredible. “That boy is outdoing himself,” he says, offhand, but when his gaze lifts to the unicorn’s again it conveys a host of questions. In two quick bites the treat is gone - enough time for the woman he serves to name their location. Honesty it is, then - at least for now.
“Yes, and we generally give our guests a much warmer welcome.” For the moment he holds in his long-suffering sigh; there would be time for that later, as he an Aghavni discussed what to do about their resident Rose, who seemed to be growing wilder by the week. “I’m August, and this is my associate, Aghavni.” He almost winces at that word, associate, which does not at all encompass what they are (what are they? a hundred things, whatever they need to be for each other). Instead he smiles, like a man who holds all the answers, and every one is it’s going to be okay.“What’s your name, and where, ah, should you be? I’m sure your friends must be worried for you.” And here, another glance at the unicorn, one that wonders just how much of a mess Manon has made for them.
