Synnaquin

Two Years Ago...

There is a fragrance to snow. It is a biting clean. It felt impossible to feel dirty in the snow. It's why I had always loved this place.

The walk from the Club was a relatively short distance. The familiar cobblestone street weaves before her, cigarette ash blooms behind her hand. She watches smoke dance. Eventually it moves on. Everything moves on. She had meant her words to him.

Even if he had a way back. It didn’t mean it was to her.

With a solemn jump down from the steps, she walked the distance to the edge of the Row. Her feet burned from where she landed. Jorsca was back. That meant something. But what? Was it a chance to get it back.

That thing he had stole from her? From Cynrick?

It wasn’t that small a thing. It wasn’t something that she could overlook. It required a response. The kid was fucking crazy. She knew that. But there was something in him. Something good, once. She knew that too.

Still, that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to make him pay.

He had stolen the one thing that she had left.

This was not how I intended to end the night.

“I love you. We will work this out Aelberyn.”

I woke up sore in all the right places.

Five months she has carried her. Five months of concentration. Five months of enduring bouts of illness, soreness, exhaustion, tears, and the closest connection to any individual she has ever had. She loved her child. It was not a twisted love. It was a pure one. She knew the difference innately now. Ironically it would set the tone for all future love. Children did that.

I miss her scent.

Aelberyn.

I can feel it like a dull ache in my belly. I wanted her to be here besides me.

Even now, even when I was like this.

This thing I have become.

Somewhere in the bowels of Draenor.

The air was nearly static as I circled down towards the outcrop of pebbled floating rock. I fell to a grinding halt, my claws digging into the rock, sending skittering debris into the violet and sickly green atmosphere.  I moved back to huddle over my mentor. His skin was clammy and his eyes slammed shut as he shudders and shakes in his rumpled scholarly clothes. I pull his head to rest in my lap; the tattered robe seems to hold his head at a strange angle, his lips turning nearly bluish despite the fiery heat that poured from the magus.

Iantoh Stardust was badly hurt. I could smell it on him.

His impending death was a perfume of weakness that I could not ignore.

I saw his Diogenes dying before my eyes. 

Iantoh had given up.

He was ready to accept that beyond.

He was perhaps too old, too weary to sustain in the face of his suffering.

He wanted me to end him.

Fel knows, I will do it too.

The shimmering cotton candy pink liquid fell to the floor and I had to see what it did. I touch my fingers to the liquid, slipping it between my lips experimentally. A love potion. As if such things existed. Like all magic it would be a bastardization of such feelings.

I just knew it.

Nothing happened at first. Then I saw her. Her divine halo. She was the Light. I was her eager supplicant. She was pure and I could not resist my advance. I could hear the roar of my friends and friendly gawkers as I cradled my new love to me. She responds to my worship with gentle innocent desire. The Light loves me!

I was being bad.

In the ruins of my Tranquillen estates; I practice deception.  I test the filigree of the Pact and its binding spells. In order to destroy it, I need to know the limitations of its power. I stare with bloodshot eyes at my narrow fingers trembling to grasp a quill that refuses to commit words to paper.  A crimson trail of blood that slides from my left nostril and drips onto the parchment almost in mockery of the black ink that shimmers rebelliously at the quills tip.

It is as though it says, NO, NO, NO, the voices of a thousand in blood screaming in my ears.

I concentrate on writing another letter, the rebuke of magic forms into that inky ichor forces from my parched lips in rebellion, as I try to assault the ancient magic of the Pact. My breathing escalates pained from the constant rumbling assault of magic against her shaking hand.

It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. Jerichos’ words, I mean. They cut deeply though. I guess he still has the power to hurt me even more then I suspected.  I had forgotten.

Jericho says I destroyed him. I made him weaker, softer. Is this what I am trying to do to Cynrick too? Destroy his dreams? His plans? Is that what I did to Tylel? I ruined his reputation, made him a laughing stock of the Convocate.

Am I at my core just the betrayer that Iloam accused me of being?

Aelberyn is worried about me. She knows me well enough to know I am taking Jericho’s cold words to heart, enough to wander the streets at ungodly hours, searching for something more. Some measure of truth.

Let me share my vision, he says.

The manor was remote in its destination. It nestles itself within the twin hills of some desperate stretch of land that was probably considered a part of Brill. My companion for this trip hugs my back as we coast on the newly repaired rocket that Cynrick had recently bolstered. I look down at the pale elongated fingers that are grasping my ribcage for support. His nails are a strange combination of black and splatters of red at the tips; like murder rests underneath. The crimson haired warlock with hetero-chrome eyes is gaunt and pale in ways that I identified with. Not all of us elves are pretty.

The Marquis went a huntin’,

Over roaming green

Unknown to the warlock

Who skulks sneakily.

The Beginning.

The rich tang of iron hangs in the air.

Blindness.

“I have to marry Arya Duskhallow,”

“Nope,”

“It’s the only thing Darroc has ever asked of me. It is to solidify our houses.  The families have to be bound together.”

“No,”

A long, long time ago...

The girl tumbles thoughtlessly from the soot stained cupboards, her hair jerked to the side; falling in a feathery mist from the grip of the nail that had held her captured. The dolls fall to the side besides her like guilty companions. She blinks at the troll who had 'found' her and is staring in disbelief. Her mouth parts in rounded surprise as hands come to slap at the clouds of dust that litter her from head to toe. Synnaquin saw a parade coming down the hallway and she squints at the procession.