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tmac attack

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"Victor," she whispered with the softness of feathers.

Through the shadows of the shrine, she could see hints of light play off of his face. "Walk with me. It's a fair sun today, and I would see your face." She loved that. The new times had weighed her lover with many cares, and he had scant opportunity for leisure.

She surrendered her silken hands to his. Their calluses were hard leather, and yet there was no more comforting embrace she could have beckoned for.

"Has my son donned the cloak of pearl?" she asked. The pearl cloak heralded the rank of First Justicator.

"He does."

She had wished to see the coronation, but the praepos guarded custom with his own life, if need be. "Did he smile? Even once?"

He laughed to that. "In that solemn kind of way he has. He's here now, at the Temple. I told him to make time for you, for Scarlite and Julias and Cecilia. Of that, he will. But he commands a Triithien now, Eily. That is no small authority, and paired with authority is responsibility, and the currency is more often than not time."

A Triithien. My own Marcus leads a Triithien now . She recalls holding that little thing that was her son in craddle of arms. A shot of gold, thin hair, big olive eyes staring up at her. He had grown into the hardened young man she saw walk the courtyards atop the Holy Terrace in full suit. Now, he was some giant, as was Brutus and even Julias, and it dawned on her once more that she could never hold her boys again in that same way. At times it mad her a wistful woman.

"When will he leave?" she wanted to know, dreading the months to come, clinging to the final days that remained.

"A fortnight." He labored to make the length sound encouraging, like a fortnight was some a copious due. She was the wiser then to assume she'd get more than a day from him, and that even was a generous prospect.

14-May-2016 20:39:53 - Last edited on 22-Jun-2016 17:35:45 by tmac attack

tmac attack

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Victor saw the sorrow take her face. "He's long a man grown, Eily," he spoke as the Ark Lord he was now, "you know full well what is demanded in the Temple. This is not the solitary life found in your studies at the College, Julias and the girls always in proximity dabbling at their own works. But Brutus and Marcus tread a different path."

She hated inhabiting the role of the overly worrisome mother with Victor. Less often than pleased her, it was not his way always. She brought his weathered hands to her lips and kissed them tenderly. "All too well, I understand darling. But to be sure, I will not play coy with the notion that a lot of sordid jackals armed in senatorial robes seek to mop up their blunders with the sweat and labor of our sons, and gods forbid, their blood."

"Do not mistake me, Eily. You are a mother, and I a father. The taste of shipping two of my sons to an imprudent conflict leaves a foul taste in my mouth. But we who assume to safeguard the sanctity of our Hold must often bite the vile fruit so that the people are spared its venom."

"And this is the proper way to do so? It sickens me, Victor, you know it to be a folly. Had I earned a coin for every instant you came to aid the Legion and saved their skins, I'd have resolved to buy every seat in the State's Senate. Pity they are already purchased. Are they children, that they cannot bare the mantle of culpability for their own doings?"

That jollied him a great deal. Even in tense korero, it turned her chest a hearth to see Victor crack such a grin. "Ah, a wrangle of words with a Stormkrauss is hardly different than debating angry weather. But tell me, do you forget yourself, in the numerous accounts in which the Legion has sought to preserve our skins?

14-May-2016 20:39:53 - Last edited on 22-Jun-2016 08:08:51 by tmac attack

tmac attack

Posts: 444 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

We exist, as a society in whole, upon the delicate balance of reciprocation between the Old Blood and the State. Should the scale tip left, its juxtaposed twin will dedicate all manner of labor and resource to overturn it. Thus, equilibrium. The Lord wills it."

He had the truth of it. Their Lords were akin, and the Brother of Edict had indicated the magnitude of a poise realm. At least as surely as scripture had decreed. She considered the Holy Writ deeply as of late, as her sons trickled from her grasp. Man was the Lord's art, the brood of his Sisters grown from his seed. The Old Blood is their own blood, a benediction woven into the bygone kingdoms of the Antediluvian Era in millennias past.

From there presaged the Bloodied Kingdoms, and the inception of the First Epoch. It was not a pleasant epoch, as she had informed herself.

"But a thousand of us remain," Within the midsts of half a billion humans. Even in the grandeur of the sun, her face turned crestfallen.

And so did his. "One less, I fear," he reached within the depths of his trenched doublet and produced a balanced cross, no larger than his hand. It erupted with silver light as the sunlight wed its element, cobalt blue steel trims outlining its body.

Eily recognized it immediately as a Sepulcher's Sigil. Should the unfortunate event of an Old Blood's passing come, the families across Praeconum would be informed and likened to mourn. Or so the praxis held. But that sigil was of Stormkraus*. The sight twisted her stomach such that she came to the verge of nearly wretching. Father? My brothers? Do not make it so, my Lord.

"Who?" she pained to say.

"Lord Kizer fell ill to a sudden fever, a brutish one. I grieve indefinitely," he looked into her, "I am truly sorry."

14-May-2016 20:39:53 - Last edited on 22-Jun-2016 11:08:52 by tmac attack

tmac attack

Posts: 444 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

She brooded on that for a long time. Her uncle had been the benevolent caretaker when father left for the Dominion, when the Black Phoenix rose. He had carried her from infancy into the Academy of Storm Scribes at Mordaggum, where she was acolyte to Tome Master Trent. It is not natural for an Old Blood to pass in such a manner. Sickness does not come easily to their like.

Striped orioles exchanged honeyed tunes in the swaying branches above. The soft breath of gentle zephyrs beat peacefully against variegated leaves of great bronze oaks and elm woods. They had stopped walking beside a shallow rippling stream that serenaded liquid music off the twists and fissures of smooth stones. A crop of willows dangled their jade kissed spirals over the water, weeping for her.

"Eily? I'm... if it pines you, I--,"

14-May-2016 20:39:54 - Last edited on 22-Jun-2016 11:03:32 by tmac attack