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Xereva

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The night is young. Sunset has come and gone, but there are lamps and torches everywhere, set alight by the Guard, and there is hardly a space on the main avenue which is not lit to brilliance. There is laughter and conversation everywhere, some stilted in the fashion of the highborn, some slurred by those already drunk.

Xen gives a quick glance down Tavern Row, where other haunts of his have faded to obscurity, and then sets out to the main square. It has been a great long while since he ventured out, and the prospect of seeing the city again after many years intrigues him.

But little has changed. There are the same stalls in the market, the same criers of news, the same psychic in her tent. But the people give it life even so, milling about through the walks that cross the fountain's small pool, across the cobblestones, up to the palace which flares like a beacon in the distance. Here more than anywhere else in Varrock it is clear just how many lives there are, how many stories. Xen stretches his hands out to his sides, basking in it, and some small street urchin takes the opportunity to stretch his cloak aside and relieve him of his wallet.

Xen is after the boy before he has fully realized what he's doing, cloak unbound and tossed aside without a second thought. His legs are longer, he has the strength for running. But the boy is quick with youth, and this is his living. He is good at it.

The crowd parts angrily before them, and questioning murmurs follow after. Xen is inches behind the boy's head, but always loses a step on a loose cobblestone or a corner, and remains behind. Then, intent as he is, he runs straight into something that feels roughly like a brick wall.

He bounces back and falls to the ground.

The boy is now struggling in the arms of some stalwart pedestrian, who forces the wallet from his fingers and holds it up.

"Good leatherwork, that. Not Varrock, that's for sure. Falador? Or perhaps Ardougne?"

19-Jun-2013 04:04:09 - Last edited on 19-Jun-2013 05:27:03 by Xereva

Xereva

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"America."

The man tilts his head. "I haven't heard of it."

Xen shrugs. "You wouldn't have."

There is an accent in the man's voice that Xen remembers, and the casual hold he keeps on the boy's neck brings back memories of fights long past. He looks at the man's face, past the beard and the scars, and then rears back in recognition.

"Draken?"

The man lets go of the boy, who bolts into an alley and becomes part of the many shadows. He studies Xen's face for a moment, taking in the wear, the change of age, the many new creases. And then he brightens, though all there is to show it is a thin smile.

"Xen. I thought you'd gone."

"I had, I suppose—but how's this, your body's still in the Refuge! How're you here and there, at once?"

Draken ponders for a moment, and Xen takes the time to take him in fully: dressed in pieces of dragon-leather armor trimmed in gold, with white silk shirts and trousers underneath; a cavalier perched on his head, the feather white and fluffed just so; and at the small of his back a dagger, thin and wicked and, Xen suspected, very sharp. Not a speck of anything to mark him as an outsider.

"There are parts of us that stay, while others leave. Mine split further than most, I suppose. One body of mine might sleep in the Refuge still, but this one walks, and lives in Gielinor alone. I visit sometimes to have a drink, or to drop by to skim the Discussions, but little more." He eyes the street from which he came, and then looks back to Xen. "I visit other places, though, that you may be familiar with. The Incredibly Gifted Authors, for instance."

"I thought that place had fallen ages ago. Gods, I can't believe it's standing." Xen cracks a smile, wide and true. "Is Wolfeh still alive, then? Ippeh, too?"

19-Jun-2013 04:04:13 - Last edited on 20-Jun-2013 03:04:53 by Xereva

Xereva

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"The former, but not the latter. As egotistic as ever, more proud of his old accomplishments than he has any right to be." Draken sniffs. "He lords it over us still."

Xen nods, thinks, and looks up. "Will you take me? I've forgotten the way."

"Of course. I just came from there, at any rate, so I'll let you off and then be on my way. I've got selling to do in Falador, and that's a long way."

They make their way along the streets that are narrower than Xen remembers. Sootstained and missing stones, the walls lean in on them, unsteady. Here and there a gutter leaks and carves a stream through the grime, revealing the white brick that the places are built of. There are few torches, but starlight leaks through and between rotted roofs, the moon having made its way elsewhere.

They pass doors and windows long ago boarded over, houses and apartments that have outright collapsed. They are deep into an old quarter of the city now, one that is the refuge of thieves and other undesirables. There are lights in some of the windows, guttering candleflames that burn a rough orange, and Xen thinks he can see eyes looking down at them. Then he starts and turns all in a moment, remembering.

"This was Guilder Street."

He points up at a three-story building that still shows remnants of gilded pillars, now scorched to ruin and broken. "That was The Golden Pen. And there—" he points to another husk, smaller; "—the… Gods, you know I can't even remember the name of it any more?"

"Neither do I. It has been a long time." Draken bows his head, and Xen turns to him.

"What happened here?"

19-Jun-2013 04:04:18 - Last edited on 20-Jun-2013 03:05:10 by Xereva

Xereva

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Draken looks up to him, and his face is tight with the memory. "The flame wars. They took the old district near entire, burnt it black and dead. There are ghosts that still linger, though most of them have fled by now. I would walk here, nights, and listen…"

He stretches an arm out to The Golden Pen, and for a moment Xen swears he can hear something like the echo of laughter, the clink of mugs jammed together in a toast, the sound of grunts and wooden knocking together in a mock battle. But there is nothing. Only the wind, which carries old soot across the streetstones and makes his eyes sting and water.

"...but there is nothing, now."

"I remember it. In glory, before the attacks, the wars, the infighting. When it was recently built, not only resurrected in testament to the old. It did mean so much to us."

"It did." Draken nods again. "There's relics inside, still. If you want to see."

"I would."

They clamber over the ruined timbers, mindful of the many splinters, the shattered windows. Even in ruin the building still holds a sense of elegance and power: here a wrought-iron inkwell that served dozens, there a marble column laced with golden veins. There were desks aplenty, though charred, and across some there were dark stains that laced the wood like veins. Ink, blown from closed inkwells by the heat.

"Any of the writing left, do you think?"

"I've looked." Draken gestures downward, to where the archives had been. "There's still some bits and scraps there, but I had another place in mind. Character Biographies."

"Your den, you mean." Xen grins. "Show me."

They make their way through the structure, passing a room marked 'The Psychiatrist,' a billboard as large as the wall leaning across a passageway, and a hall hung with blackened frames of old certificates, testaments to rank and title.

"That was mine." Draken points to one not far from the end." I was a Pen Master after you, I remember that."

19-Jun-2013 04:04:23 - Last edited on 20-Jun-2013 03:22:27 by Xereva

Xereva

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"Not by much. So that would mean..."

Xen moves along and finds another frame, and sure enough under the years of decay there is his name, inscribed in full into a tiny golden plate. He takes in the wall in full for a moment, all the names, the histories. It is a sad sight.

"Which way to Biographies, then?"

"This door."

He opens it.

The change is startling. There is no soot here, no evidence of fire. The floors are clean wood, scrubbed recently, the walls stone. But they are hardly visible through the many paintings hung across them, so many that they are stacked in corners, stuffed into cabinets, put any place that they will fit. And on the far wall, across from the door, there are perhaps ten that dominate the rest. Gilt-framed, they are ten feet by four, vertical portraits of men and women with vivid eyes and strange features, done in oils. Spotlessly clean behind spellworked glass.

"Your sylians."

Xen is in awe. Draken watches from behind as Xen walks tentatively forward, laying a hand on the painting at the center, a humanoid wolf with bone-white claws and blood on his teeth. He turns.

"Ranis?"

Draken nods. "He was for you, you remember."

"I never used him." Xen looks back up to the mix of insanity and nobility in the creature's eyes. "I was gratified that you made him, but he was too strong a force." He turns suddenly. "Do you have Tramis?"

"On the left, next to the window."

Xen looks up into green eyes set in a hard-creased face and takes a breath. The man is not old—not by elf standards. But he is weathered, and embittered, and his arm is encrusted with what seem like diamonds. Elven crystal. A power and a curse on his body.

"Your masterwork, I've always said. I'm still using him, did you know? For another work, in another world."

"You told me. I'm touched." Draken smiles, and this time it is wide and full. "I was always proud of him, cliché as he might have been at first. He had heart."

19-Jun-2013 04:11:47 - Last edited on 20-Jun-2013 03:55:40 by Xereva

Xereva

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"I've given him more to do than even you wrote for him, though your ideas are still the core of it. But that's another story, I suppose..." he blows out a breath. "And a longer one. I'll tell it later, if you ask."

They stand in silence, and the moonlight suddenly washes over them through the window, hidden until then behind a cloud. The room glows. The eyes of the many characters seem to move, and there is a moment when Xen alone can see them moving. Ranis in his rage, a mind meant for wolves stuck in a biped form, cursed by darker Gods with powers and hunger; Tramis merely standing, tense but clearly ready for battle, a shifting intensity in his eyes. And then they are still again, and dark.

"You put magic in them, I knew you did."

Draken says nothing, but blinks slowly, impenetrably. Xen shakes his head.

"Keep your secrets then. But you have me believing."

"I did. Not the kind you'd expect, but yes, I did." He nods to Tramis. "Him most of all. Potential energy, some call it, but they've got it all wrong, though the name's right. Or they have it right, but there's more to it." He spreads his hands open and he is holding a small coin, a Varrock golden, stamped with the crest of the broken shield. "The coin has the potential to fall. The energy is in it, the gravity. But it can be transferred. Removed."

He lets go of the coin, and it does not move. He brings his hands out wide and then slams his hands together, and the clap is thunder-loud, deafening, far more than it should have been. Xen's ears ring with it. Draken eyes him carefully.

"Potential at its purest, then. Possibility. If one takes enough energy from enough sources, and puts it toward a work, then the work takes the potential. There is no predicting what might come of it, for good or ill, but the significance is there. The promise of it." He looks up at Tramis, his hard face, his scarred limbs. "I put all I had into him."

19-Jun-2013 04:11:53 - Last edited on 22-Jun-2013 02:53:37 by Xereva

Xereva

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"It will be good, I promise. I'll do him service as you wanted."

"You had better." Draken's eyes fix, and they gleam even in the faint light. "There is enough power in him to build an empire, Xen. Do not waste it. I will not have it. Ranis was a slight, but to leave Tramis would be a heresy. I will take him back, if you do not use him, and try my best to put him to work—but it would not be the same."

"I will not waste him."

The air is charged. Draken fairly crackles with energy. Potential, he called it, and it is accurate. The space around him seems like it could explode, and Xen steps back without thinking, toward the window.

And then Draken breathes out and is himself again, free of whatever consumed him. A single hot breath makes its way into the night air. Xen blinks and looks around, and the room suddenly looks much older, the walls sagging, boards peeling and rotted, the floor covered with dust.

"This place is only half-real."

Xen puts a hand out to the wall and it dissolves under his touch, the woodwork crumbling, the space beyond showing starlight. Draken nods.

"The characters make the room something different. Fragile. The potential is corrosive, which is one of the reasons so few use it." He blows into the air and for a moment the air itself ripples as if filled with unimaginable heat, distorting the view of the walls, reflecting shards of light in random directions like shattered crystal. Draken nods to the window. "We should leave. This building is never the most stable, but it seems to have gone a bit more fragile in the last few moments."

He reaches out through the wall and grabs a beam, which comes apart in his hands like putty. The roof sags abruptly, and Xen makes a dive out the window, Draken close on his heels. Though it is the second floor, both know the limits of their bodies, and land easily—Draken on his feet, Xen in a dive-roll that takes him out into the middle of the road. He snorts dust out of his nose, and sighs.

19-Jun-2013 04:11:58 - Last edited on 22-Jun-2013 05:02:18 by Xereva

Xereva

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"We had adventures like this more often, once. And then you left."

"I'd say for greener pastures, but that wouldn't be accurate. I'm only a part of myself, as I said—but my duty and my life lies here. With the others of old that still remain, the world that we both inhabited for so long." He points down the road, through the cloud of dust which billows out of the slowly sagging edge of The Golden Pen. "The White Wolf's guild is down there. The lighted one."

They walk slowly along the road, and as they go Xen admires the old architecture of the many buildings, though the signs have long since fallen and rotted, their names forgotten. Ahead of them a single-story building, more a tavern than a guild like the others, glows with light; the windows are wide open and there is movement inside, a flurry of blows and a figure in white fur, too fast to track. Xen looks at Draken and raises an eyebrow, but Draken only shrugs.

"The wolf has his old ways."

"Still a fighter, then?" Xen watches the windows, and a spatter of red droplets patterns one of them like rain. He winces.

"A fighter, yes." Draken nods. "And a killer. Worthiness is hard earned, for him, and when someone comes arguing long after they should have stopped…" Draken draws a finger across his neck, and grins. "It's a sight."

"Claws and teeth and all." Xen chuckles. "It will be good to see him again."

"But go lightly with him. He is more a ghost than I, further separated from your world. He will not remember the outside ways. He is only barely flesh." Draken nods toward the doors that they now stand in front of. "After you."

Xen braces his hands on the doors—splintered from impacts and muddied from the boots of those who kicked it open in the past—and heaves, and light and noise spills out, a roar of voices remembered from ages past, and the old familiar sound of two men fighting to the death.

19-Jun-2013 04:12:02 - Last edited on 18-Dec-2013 22:33:13 by Xereva

Xereva

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The White Wolf stands in the center of the low-ceilinged room with a knife in his hand, a pelt cloak draped over himself, dotted here and there with spots of brown. His eyes are cold, but he is grinning, a feral gesture. Across from him, circling, is a short man in ragged brown clothing, sporting a wound across the chest that is bleeding freely. In his hands he also holds a knife, though compared to the Wolf's it is a pitiful thing, tiny and ineffective.

They do not look up as Xen and Draken enter, and behind them the others gathered at the bar take no notice either. They are fixed on the fight, yelling encouragements to the Wolf, who feints twice at his unfortunate opponent before drawing a long cut across the man's forehead, drawing blood that trickles down into his eyes. The man rears back and puts his arm to his head, and the Wolf, for whatever reason, steps back.

"Let him bind his head," he says, and his voice is deep and resonant. "I will play with him again after."

"Another come to challenge your opinions, Wolf?"

The Wolf turns. His eyes are proud and fierce, and if the interruption has startled him, he gives no sign. He gestures with his knife.

"And who are you? Draken I know, but you are new to me."

"I am Xen. You should remember me." Xen smiles, and for a moment his image flickers into a wolf's head, fur-covered and red-eyed, his smile a predator's grin. "I am back."

The Wolf hesitates.

"Let me fight him," Xen says, and nods to the combatant. "I'll put him out of his misery."

The man looks warily at Xen, and the Wolf grins and steps back to the long bar with the others, sheathing his knife somewhere at his side.

"Fight him, then." He spits, and the saliva mingles with the blood that slicks the floorboards. "He's come to claim what he believes is his, only there is nothing for him. He is not even a writer; to say so would be a disgrace."

19-Jun-2013 04:12:07 - Last edited on 19-Dec-2013 20:09:23 by Xereva

Xereva

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Xen eyes the man, and the man looks back. He has bound his head with a strip of cloth from his arm, and he is breathing heavily, his chest wound soaking his shirt. Somewhere in his head he knows already that he is going to die, but he is stubborn, and it was the stubbornness that led him there afirst: challenging the judgement of the Wolf, famously mercurial, has been a death sentence for many. He holds his knife and waits, shifting on his feet.

Xen stands easy, his hand at his side, and waits for the signal to begin.

"Gentlemen?" The Wolf looks them over, and smiles. "Get it over with."

The man lunges. Xen draws the Beretta at his side and fires twice, catching his opponent in the chest. In the confined space, the sound is immense. The whole crowd rises; the Wolf in particular rears back, caught off guard, but Xen is stepping forward, and before the man can speak a last word from where he has fallen Xen puts a last bullet through his temple, and he is still.

Draken, in the shadows, snorts.

Xen holsters the gun, and there is a smattering of disbelieving applause.

"'And to the ground do we commit the body of the dead,'" Xen quotes, "'to rest untroubled, and decay. But to hell do we commit thy soul, vanquished and disgraced, to live among those other unfortunates of our past. Requiescant in aeternum passus, amen.'"

"Amen," the Wolf says, and embraces Xen with a happy roar that sets the crowd to clapping again, more vigorously, and Xen grips back with all his strength, though the Wolf has always been stronger. "You've changed, man. Where is your cloak, where your fur? You were a wolf in truth once, and I miss your eyes."

"They are there." Xen blinks, and his eyes flash red. "And you, what is this cloak of yours? A relic of the old days in exile? Tell me you've washed it once, at least, blood of your enemies or no."

19-Jun-2013 04:12:11 - Last edited on 19-Dec-2013 02:02:11 by Xereva

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