The tower’s kitchen had the lived-in warmth of a place meant for people rather than spells. The long wooden table bore all its years in the scars carved across its surface—knife grooves, stains from ink and spilled wine, the ghost of burns where kettles had sat too hot for too long. None of it had been repaired by magic, not properly; it had been allowed to endure, to carry its history in plain sight. The chairs around it were a mismatched lot—some tall, some low, one leaning slightly to the left as though too tired to stand straight—but together they gave the room the uneven familiarity of a place that had grown slowly, not staged all at once.
Enchanted objects moved with a casual rhythm that seemed almost human. A kettle on the counter hummed softly, rattling as if it knew it was reaching the boil before the flame beneath dimmed to keep it steady. A knife chopped vegetables in easy time, pausing between strokes as if considering its work before moving again. The mop sloshed its way across the stone floor, not with cold efficiency but with something like personality, flicking water behind it when the pail lagged too far behind. A loaf of bread hovered in the hearthlight, crust browning as it turned itself with unhurried grace, the smell filling the air with something warm, grounding.
It didn’t feel sterile, like some enchanted construct. It felt like a place where life had happened before, and would again.
Arc sat at the table with his books spread wide, their spines creaking faintly each time he shifted a page. His shoulders bent toward the parchment, but no longer with the slump of exhaustion that had defined him earlier; this was the posture of focus, of someone letting the weight of thought settle into him like a second skin. In one hand he held a pale, pear-like fruit, biting into it with quiet deliberation. Its flesh was crisp, sweet with a tart edge, juice running down to pool briefly at the corner of his mouth before he swiped it away with the back of his wrist in a careless motion.
The other hand traced along margins filled with notes and diagrams, claws dragging lightly but carefully so as not to tear the fragile paper. The first tome before him was dense with alchemic symbols, inks faded but legible, filled with sketches of vessels and glyphs used to align reagents. Beside it sat a heavy manual of healing recipes, its pages blotched with someone else’s spills and fingerprints, practical wear that suggested generations of desperate hands thumbing through its instructions. And at the edge of the spread, almost an afterthought, lay the last book—thin, brittle, its pages browned with age.
It was a collection of svartálfar tales, though calling it a scholarly account would have been generous. Its script had been penned in an uneven hand, with whimsical illustrations of caverns and hills where pale-eyed figures lurked among mushrooms as tall as trees. The drawings were rough, little more than smudges of charcoal ink, but they carried a peculiar charm. Arc paused on one of them longer than he meant to—the sketch of a svartálfr figure crouched with a lantern in hand, its face caught between menace and mischief. It was closer to a bedtime story than history, the sort of fanciful nonsense a wandering peddler might sell in a market square. Something cheap, meant to keep a child busy. The kind of thing Atticus might have once bought for him when the boy had grown too restless to sit still, when distraction had been easier than discipline.
The memory stung and soothed in equal measure. Arc’s claw tapped idly at the page, violet eyes lingering on the curling script as though waiting for the words to change under his gaze. He wasn’t sure why he kept the book among the others, or why he’d pulled it out now, except that its presence felt grounding somehow—an anchor in the midst of blood, ash, and potions. Something simple in the clutter of complexities.
The kitchen itself bore echoes of Tír Élas in ways Arc hadn’t consciously crafted. The table, though older, carried the same lived-in familiarity as the one his father had kept—where Atticus had sat hunched over his own work, coaxing Arc to eat his vegetables and bread when he’d rather have run wild through the docks. Even the mismatched chairs carried faint reflections of home, of neighbors lending what they had when his father never bothered to buy a proper set. The air smelled faintly of herbs drying from the rafters, and for the briefest moment it felt not unlike the seaside cottage—the kind of place where Atticus’s hands had always seemed busy with something practical, where warmth came less from fire than from presence.
Arc looked more himself now than he had in days, though in a different way. His horns were whole again, sweeping back from his brow in perfect symmetry, their polish catching faint light from the sconces. A dark shirt fit sharp and close, more mage than wanderer, though notably sleeveless as it appeared to be a preferred staple for the demonic entity. Where the familiar placement of bracers, were gone, his collar still in place, the only incongruous note. His hair was damp, swept back haphazardly as though he hadn’t cared how it settled, but it made his features sharper, more deliberate.
And though he had left Calia to rest, it wasn’t distance—just a room apart, down the short hallway where the air hummed faintly with layered wards. He hadn’t gone farther. He wouldn’t. Every so often his gaze lifted from the books to the doorway, as if half expecting her to and wander in with the air being alight with the smell of food being made.
The room breathed with warmth and motion, and Arc let himself sink into it. The taste of sweet fruit. The hum of a kettle. The creak of the uneven chair beneath him. All so simple, so steady, so unconsciously drawn from the memories of a boy at a seaside table with his father’s shadow stretched long across the wood. For a moment—just a moment—he looked less like a demon clawing his way through grief and more like a man sitting down at home.
This time Calia didn’t have a mere nap, it was a much needed deep sleep for one who tended to treat her own body like it was some temporary, disposable thing she was trapped in. Having no dangers to fear or worries to weigh on her, she was able to fall into such a slumber that even dreams weren’t going to dare bother her. When Calia did wake, it was like the stretching of a lazy cat. Unconcerned about anything beyond just the vague awareness that she’d been tucked into an actual bed this time and could smell something wonderfully yeasty wafting through the air.
She didn’t make an immediate move to rouse herself. For once she just lay there, letting her thoughts roam where they will without trying to close doors or shut them down. Finally opening up that box in her chest where she tended to stuff everything down in her efforts to keep herself upright and not drowned in the overwhelm of every thought and feeling she had.
Back to the beginning she went to a time when she was happy… or thought she was happy. Thinking about her family was an interesting mix of emotions all in itself. A rose tint came with some memories; the first time her father let her come on a hunt with her brothers, listening to her mother reading stories by the fire. Squabbling with her siblings out by the lake, catching frogs and chasing ducks. Being a general nuisance because there were too many of them and they were all a little too clever for their own good.
Other memories had a bitter taste to them. Calia had never quite fit into the role either of her parents imagined for her. A princess was to grow into an elegant and charming young woman, know her politics well, be a leader that made others feel comfortable. Her role was to follow tradition, marry someone that would benefit the family and kingdom. Have her own family and stay the course. Instead she come out defying every plan they ever had for her. Swung swords around instead of taking up an instrument. Climbed out windows and escaped to other towns instead of cultivating relationships.
Calia used to think she was nothing but a huge disappointment, worse yet, fearing what her parents would think of her if they knew her magical secret. Now she was wondering if she had just given them the chance, if maybe they would’ve loved to see the potential of what she could do if given the freedom.
She never really thought she was capable of more – then Archimedes appeared as a golden annoyance, like a little tiny conscience to pester and frustrate her until she did more than just throw herself on the ground and die. …or worse.
The archmage turned demon was the next thing she pulled into her hands to turn over and examine, with an awkward amount of care. There was no denying that she’d hated him at first for everything that he was and what he represented. How he’d been rude, biting, careless… and yet not as careless as he liked to pretend. Even in those early days, he’d have these moments of looking out for her enough that she’d noticed it enough to be confused by it. Like he’d been wearing the role and skin of a demon, even though it didn’t really fit. Something about him under the surface had always tugged at her. Not matter what he said, what he did, it still begged her to look past the mask he put on to see what was underneath. Even when he didn’t realize he was wearing the mask at all.
Calia could not pinpoint exact moments her feelings turned. It all sort of crept up on her, little by little, bit by bit. Where things that once annoyed her became the very things she missed. How his presence nearby filled her with a sense of calm and ease, while at the same time had the world more vibrant and lively and interesting to live in. Calling him her soulmate was probably a childish sentimentality, stupid and foolish and pure nonsense. Calia just couldn’t think of a better word to describe how she felt. She needed him to exist in her life, else she’d not feel complete.
Ironic when her heart was still out there in someone else’s hands.
A sigh slipped out as she lift a hand to rub at her forehead, finally shifting to sit herself up properly. As much as she wanted to hide away from all of the things that wanted to treat her like some prize to claim, there was no avoiding the need to reclaim her heart. To have her own magic back within her hands and not out there in the world being used to torment others. If Calia was cursed to be a blight on the world, she damn well wanted to do it herself! Not because some asshole used her to do it!
The progress of her healing was going well, but it was a stark reminder of Arc’s words that she was still mortal, even if she were fae. She might not die of old age or until she decided to stop existing, yet her body was still mortal flesh made all the more vulnerable by the lack of her own natural magic. Being bound to Archimedes helped, so too did whatever nonsense he’d been administering to her, just she needed to be more mindful. At least the rest had done her wonders as well, so when she pulled herself out of bed she took to making good use of this magical new little place to have herself a good bath. Made all the easier for it was all of Arc’s own magic and she’d grown so used to it that it took no thought at all in finding what she needed.
Afterwards Calia reset those bandages and shifted her clothes into something comfortable. Just this once, fully embracing the entire idea of being a faerie princess in a mage’s secret tower just because it amused her so damn much. Taking full advantage of a place they could rest and simply exist as their true selves, like she had wanted and failed to accomplish at the bordertown.
When she came striding down the hall, following that soft thread of their bond, it seemed Archimedes himself had the same ideas. Fully two horned once again, instead of the jagged edged reflection of what had been broken on the inside.
Her smile was immediate, brilliant and wide and all too amused.
“Ah, you’re a book man,” she teased, as if it weren’t something she already knew well. Blustering into the kitchen space as if she owned her itself to first examine the array of spells that working all on their own, then to see if she could meddle with them.
It was the padding of feet that alerted him first. Attention slightly deviating from the means of both attentive reading and dedicated eating –other than bloody hearts- to give her a sort of double glance. Not because of her presence or the commentary, but rather well… her attire. It had not been expected having seen Calia favouring the means of being the faeish assassin princess for the last… ever. The sage green gown was a fine compliment to her sloe locks and bright emeralds that placed themselves as eyes.
Leaving him to be openly inspecting her with a quite seeming approval and a tilting smirk when she teased him about the obvious. “Seems useless to merely collect them but never read.” Chin tilted up some as the pale fruit was bobbed into fingertips, “Managed to sound out all the big words myself too.” Leaning into the effect that he might have been reading above his scholarly level.
The way her gaze flipped was telling. As if broadcasting that she was now ready to start poking, prodding and preening through everything possible within this pocket realm of magely creation. “Just don’t try to set anythin’ on fire and yah can have yer freedom of lookin’ about. The space is liminal mind yah, so don’t try to run out the front door and expect the ocean in the distance to be real. But it’s all connected to that of my well and replies to most expectations.”
Arc hummed some, “So if yer wantin’ to feel it out, yah be welcome too.” His way of giving her the A-okay to truly explore. “Nice dress by the way, very pretty.” Attention veered and he was back to flipping a page in the large potion manual and finalizing the means of food to disappear properly into gullet.
“I can be pretty when it’s not being forced on me,” she responded with a puckish grin. “And-!” Stopping nearby, she pulled back the slit of her skirt with a flourish to show off the leather strap where she’d stuck the silver hairpins he’d given her. “Convenient for the stabbing of people who are not me. Or pulling my hair back if it’s in the way. Whatever happens first.”
Calia appeared to be in full faeish spirits now, next reaching out her hands to give and flick of his hair to straight it – or muss it up even further around his horns. It was the same tried and true Calia energy of giving him a shove or a smack or a shoulder check, only with a much gentler fond touch that lingered rather then pulled away.
“I am glad too that you’re not so lopsided anymore,” she mused. “Was starting to worry about you getting a crooked neck.” Then with a wicked sort of smile that hinted he’d basically given her permission to storm his castle, she bustled away to absolutely take command of his kitchen.
As she’d stated, Calia was always hungry. A cup of tea to steep was first and foremost, set aside out of the way so she could conjure up manner of a satisfactory meal. Getting sidetracked here and there with her explorations of what was readily available to occasionally make some soft contemplative sound to examine a piece of magic that baffled her. Once or twice standing there with some item tucked under her arm while she turned something upside down and around while she felt out the threads of it, seeing it’s construct and weave. Reading invisible things that truly only she could see.
“What big words have you worked out,” she finally asked, taking a glance over her shoulder. “A million problems for us to solve, what is the one you are pondering right now?”
“Never said yah weren’t,” He countered softly with a smirk already housed upon lips, though dimmed out of curiosity when she was ruffling the skirt aside to reveal her little addition. In true Calia flavour, to never be without a weapon on hand –though she was technically the weapon- he gave her little leather strap a proper consideration. Pleased to know that the swiped little hairpins were coming in handy for a multitude of reasons, “Let’s start hopin’ its more of the latter rather than the former, love.”
It was immediate that he was squinting at her in the same efforts that a youth would to their elders. Attempting to straighten or sort what wasn’t sitting right, in this case it was apparently the gradient drying state of hair that was being given the Calia special. Though it was increasingly softer and gentler than she may have been with anyone else, Arc rolled his eyes playfully at her appreciation that his head was no longer leaning more so to the one side than the next. “It would’ve grown back. Just in a year or so, but suppose a strong reset in the abyssal realms was hardly so terrible if it avoids me lookin’ like I am peerin’ about every corner with suspicion.” Was he surprised that she had leapt into the means of prying through the current room once allowance was offered.
Not even a little.
Just that he kind of get an attentive eye out while she went into learning with her touch on anything she possibly wanted to figure out. Ready to reply to verbalized any answer to a question asked between the means of flipping between his arrangement of items.
Currently cracking the air out of knuckles when she came around to query to what big words had he managed to sound out himself. Staring at the passage in the scripted scribbles while the cogs unseen in that of his head were trying to fundamentally double check everything read. “The healing potions,” Arc replied firstly, “They’d be handy to have on stack but the blitherin’s I’ve got here are generalized nonsense. Useful and not so much. Especially when the other is that of alchemic symbols that truly do contradict itself a few pages after.” Violets squinted some as lips idly mimed a few words like the action was going to clarify his thoughts.
“The latter is mere fairytales nonsense that is better used as tall tales to give children either terrible nightmares or stir their active imaginations into build their own farfetched tales upon.” A hand plopped down to lay out upon the thinner book. “All in all, one useful item. One less so. But neither are part of said million problems to solve.” With that Arc tucked his chin into palm, so he might offer his undivided attention to the woman making herself at home without his constructed mage tower. “Suppose the better question would be to ask, what is the plan forward. Still to that of the mountain clans?”
“A shame you can’t just pour it into a cauldron and tell it to reverse itself back to it’s original state. You’d get the ingredients for sure, but not so much the craft,” she mused aloud with casual thought. As far as she was concerned, potions weren’t anything different than trying to good a meal. You could have all the ingredients you needed, only you still had to know how each one cooked itself up and how it would blend with the others. Much as she was doing right then trying to prepare herself a mixed platter of every tasty looking thing she could find. Sliced meat and buttered bread and fresh fruit, pickled things that’d kept well and beautifully aged cheese. Adding to it with things pulled out of her own hollow.
Calia did pause when he asked if her plans were still the same, drawing another thoughtful frown and an affirming nod of her head.
“I can’t very well ask you to face your ghosts, then turn around and hide from mine,” she confessed. “Aside from making sure my people have safe places to go beyond just refuge in Edelguard, I can seek council from the clan leaders. Even if I wanted to be a queen, I can’t settle down somewhere without my heart and magic. It doesn’t matter of the people of Caeldalmor can return home or if they have to become nomadic once again, they’re still going to need an actual leader that can stay with them.”
As she spoke she’d acquired quite an array of tasty treats to set out on the table, somehow including a hot mug of tomato basil soup to go round out what was a ridiculous spread. At least this time when she sat herself down with that usual royal poise, it didn’t look like she was starving enough to unhinging her jaw and start swallowing things like a snake.
“I can’t be the savior that swoops in and makes everything right for everyone, but I can make sure there is support. Somewhere to go and someone to look after them. Then you and I go murder a wanna be mage and take my heart back.”
And even though she was seemingly busy making a little sandwich of butter bread and cheese, dipping it into her soup until it was sopping wet there was this surreptitious glance out of the corner of her eye. Seeing what thoughts flickered over his face, on if he approved of this plan or not.
Her idea of just dumping the potion into a cauldron and telling it to reverse itself was certainly a thought. Though as far as he knew actual sentient inanimate objects weren’t just casual items one create. Typically because they came with a very hefty price to manufacturer such things. And a cauldron that could do what she mentioned would either be stepping into the grounds of nefarious black magic or just ancient relics that were so rare that he’d sooner just keep doing as he was doing. “It would be nice but alas, I do like knowin’ the craft part.” Arc admitted then, “Knowin’ the how and what’s itch a part of my brain that isn’t rife with just tyin’ someone’s laces together under the table.” It wasn’t exactly the most demon thing after all.
Where the allure of doing ill and behaving poorly should have been a stronger invite –such as trying to use ill behaved magics to make sentient things- Arc clearly was missing that part of his biology now that the elven portion had been reawakened.
Idly brushing fingertips over the worn pages while observing the arrangement of foodstuffs that she was orchestrating. Seemingly using the chance to both tend to it while actually replying to his general wonderment of what’s the plan, Stan?
She came, she sat and the platter of broad variety was being picked at rather than ham-fisted into that of a aching gullet. Giving him time to simply be the listening ears while Calia had clearly been thinking about things in a broader spectrum. That she wanted to get everyone in order with their various flocks to build a patchwork semblance of unity but knew that for her own sanity, she needed her own heart back. To be attached to her own naturally grown magic and to stave off the said dipshit from doing… whatever the hell it was that he was doing.
His stare had centered upon that of the table. Staring with a lack of blinking, dazing thoughtfully into a void that was only seen in his own head. Thinking about what was all said. Somewhere knowing she was watching him. Somewhere knowing that this was very much a fitting test for one who had once upon a time been trained to advise that of a ruling body of Edelguard.
Claws tapped upon the yellowed pages. Little flicks of violets indicated that while he was clearly dazing, there was still someone mentally home. Eventually he leaned back slightly, the book before him forgotten for the moment. The violet of his gaze lifted from the page to her, not sharp, not judging—just seeing. He watched the way she tore bread through soup like it was strategy itself, then the quick cut of her glance sideways. She was looking for approval, and he knew it. However, he didn’t rush to give it.
“Yah got more sense than most rulers I’ve ever read about. That I’ve seen in my ancient years.” he said finally, voice quiet, but even. “Wantin’ to make sure they’ve got support instead of tryin’ to play savior? That’s a finer kind of leadin’ than crowns and titles. Anyone can sit a throne. Not everyone can admit they can’t do it all, or shouldn’t.” Claws tapping against the wood of the table. “A leader who knows when to lean on their council—who makes room for others to step up—usually ends up buildin’ something stronger than the ones who think they’ve got to carry it all alone. That ain’t weakness, Lia. That’s the kind o’ leadership people follow willingly. The kind that lasts.”
Arms rose then to cross over the strength of chest. Attention raising to consider the roof, “It ain’t guna be easy to go and murder the boy loser. As much as I would love to think so, but I think he is more afraid of yah too… and this may sound highly questionable but considerin’ that yah’ve got a wanted ad out on yer head from the dark fae… it may beneficial to figure out a way to speak with the rightside fae. Gain backin’ there and information that may be necessary too. As a thought.”
He was taking far too long to think about her words, and Calia assumed it was more related to the latter part of her plan. A hunt and a justified murder of a power hungry thief. She simply had a few bites of her soup soaked sandwich and waited with an easy patience.
…only to find herself on the sheepish end of compliments and praise. Leaning to the side, with this demure sense of shyness and a faint flush to her features. Surprise, surely, because she hadn’t thought the idea was anything more than what made the most sense. Calia couldn’t be the queen people needed her to be, so finding someone else to care for them was important. She hadn’t thought such a choice was what a leader should be doing, at least it didn’t feel like it. It sure as hell wasn’t the sort of thing people sang praises about.
Calia managed to shake it off with a soft him and a flicker of a glance, instead focusing on his suggestion of her seeking out what fae she could meet that weren’t trying to manipulate and pull her into some new trap of a bond.
“Seems like a good idea. I’m… not really sure how to go about it. They seem to be practically falling out of the trees in Edelguard, but none really of any consequence. Or… hells, common sense it feels like! I’m not sure what sorts we’ll fine up in the mountains or if they’ll be any kind of communicative.”
She reached for her mug to take a sip, frowning just a bit. Still. There were reasons more than just seeking aid about her heart… unanswered questions and just a general wish of wanting to know more about what she was, how she came to be. Eventually she did no her agreement, reaching out under the table with her foot to tap gently against his leg. A means of touch while her hands too busy.
“I suppose if we don’t meet any fae with sense on our way to the mountain clans, afterwards we might seek them out with purpose. Surely there is some out there that want to do something more than chitter out riddles and be a nuisance.”
He considered her a moment while she expressed that there hadn’t been any thus far that had been particularly useful. Which was fact and not so true. “The elder fae yah freed and saved from Fawna,” Arc stated as if she had forgotten about the white elk. Only for him to pause a moment because there was her foot tapping to his leg.
Warranting a bit of a thought but no verbal call out because well, he didn’t want to honestly. Instead flipping the books he had closed and willing them to float up and out of the room. To be put back away into the work space so they weren’t just lost in the means of the liminal space. “I ain’t so sure about the riddle part, seems to be a prerequisite for fae to have the ability to speak in frustratingly vague replies. But I know there is a fae forest in the Imperial lands. Everything practically lives in the accursed lands,” he offered on as a tagalong.
Shortly arranging his frame to drape in the chair rather than sitting upon it entirely any longer, thought’s deep and attention spearing itself upon the comfort of the kitchen space. Not even sure when the mopping had ceased but noticed it now that the very item was tucked away to the corner. “As long as whatever we go and try to talk too ain’t keen on makin’ me their chew toy, I’m open minded to most ideas.”
“That you helped save and free from Fawna,” she quipped back with that infuriating, puckish smile. Fleeting, though, as she did take this correction into consideration with a soft shift of her features.
The white stag had told her what a highblood was – noble born, high fae. They’d discussed limited other things, and to be truthful with herself, at the time Calia was afraid to learn much more. A person could only shoulder so much information in such sudden bursts, and she wasn’t exactly great when it came to processing things and letting them sink in. Calia was a tumultuous storm of emotions all of the time, and if she didn’t keep herself managed, everything got real explosive real quick.
“The ones in the Court of Vines didn’t speak in mazes and riddles,” she added with ponderous confusion. “…they also didn’t talk about anything of consequence either. I guess now that I’m thinking about it, it was all very shallow and contained within the manor itself. Annoyances with others guests, asking my opinion on costume and clothes, all dancing and drinking and meaningless nonsense.”
A similarity to Fawna’s own construction of a beautiful pretend place trapped in one single moment of time. A garden cottage. An endless ball. The thought had her glancing around this single room they were in now, of a warm cozy kitchen, made by Arc’s own magic in shape and form, sprinkled with real items he’d brought in mix-matched over time. The way the magic wove together was surely different, she could see it… but the atmosphere of those spaces said something about what their creaters wanted.
Fawna made a space she thought Calia would desire, a quaint and hidden family home.
Alewillan made a space he felt grand in, host to an endless party where he was the king.
…and this space Archimedes had made? It spoke of something nostalgic and sentimental.
“I guess we’ll see what makes the most sense when we get to it,” she decided with a smile she hadn’t meant to be as soft as it was, not that it was even there long enough to be noticed for she was back to pecking through her breakfast or lunch, or whatever the hell time of day it was. “I’m in your hands until you’ve declared me healed enough to menace the world again.”
There came a gentle twist to lips, soft amusement at her correction about savings the grand fae elder. Though vocally he didn’t say he agreed with her on it, Arc didn’t contest it either. Likely because some part of him did agree he’d helped. Just a little.
The broad of shoulders shifted, shrugging with simultaneously summoning the means of enchanted items to work on bringing that of a glass and pitcher to the table. So he might have a drink himself that wasn’t tea. Listening at the same time as Calia expressed that those of the proclaimed court of vines hadn’t spoke in verbal labyrinths. But they hadn’t been exactly deep either. “Superficial?” He questioned though it was likely more rhetorical than needing an answer. “I suppose if yah live long enough, yer greatest problem is the surface level thin’s.” In turn, suppose he hadn’t reached that age.
Probably a good thing.
He noticed her looking about but when no question came, well, he gave her a nudge with his foot back as she had. “I can practically hear the amassin’ of questions yah be havin’, love.” Giving an added roll of hand to indicate he expected her to start asking. “Yer always in my hands regardless of the place, Lia. And truly I doubt my word or allowance would ever be required for menacin’ at all. If yah be feelin’ well, then we can leave whenever. Or return in the same way. Seein’ as I finally recall the use of this place. Thankfully not overrun or coated in old blood.”
Superficial was a good way to describe it, leaving her giving an affirming nod. Calia had spent some untold amount of time with that faerie court only to learn absolutely nothing of worth. For one to call himself king, you’d assume they were highborn noble fae… but what did that even mean when it came to faeries anyway! They didn’t seem to do things the way they were done in the mortal realm!
Calia was hitting her limit on even wanting to think about it at all. Narrowing in her focus to what was immediately around her, as she always did when the world become overwhelming. The warmth of this small kitchen space. A leisurely meal without needing to rush to think right away about the next steps.
He’d nudged her back under the table and announced he could practically hear her wheels turning, prompting this immediate pleased grin at the mention that she was always in his hands. Nearly begging for some spicy little comeback, even had one or two ready to go before she dismissed them. Was she feeling well enough to resume her quest? Sure. Was she actually ready to? …not so much.
“This one doesn’t live in your head like the hollow,” she pointed out with a spin of her finger towards the room. “It’s… a bubble? Realm adjacent? So then does it follow the same rules as the Arcanum Hollow, in that it is sustained by you and vanishes when your gone. Or is it strong enough to be self sustaining? Is it attached to a specific location in the world, or is it free drifting? Can others come here without escort or invitation? I’m guessing someone needs to actually be a master of their craft to even making something like this because the magic threads are so layered you could knit a sweater.”
She reached to make herself another sandwich for soup dunking, giving a soft shrug of her shoulders and a glance from the corner of her eye.
“Give me a day of being nothing more than a house pest. Then we can go.”
A long claw traced idly at the rim of his glass as he listened, the corner of his mouth twitching at the sweater remark. For he had given her the chance to ask and she was meeting that allowance with the same level of gusto he had come to familiarize himself with. “Knittin’ a sweater, aye—that’s not a bad way to put it,” he said, violets flicking toward her. “But yah got it right—it ain’t like the Hollow. Hollow’s in yer skull. This?” He gestured around them, to the stone walls, the faint shimmer where enchantments clung to the air itself. “This is a pocket plane. Realm-adjacent, aye. Think of it as a sealed bubble floatin’ just off the skein of the world. My well anchors it, ties it to me, but it’s not in me.”
He shifted slightly, elbow leaning on the table, voice low but steady. “So long as I live, it holds. If I die, the tether snaps and the whole thing dissolves back into raw thread. It’s not self-sustainin’—not unless yah pour enough divine power into it, which I don’t exactly have lyin’ about. As for location? Free-driftin’,” Arc explained, a hand lifting as though weighing the words. “It don’t matter if I set it in Edelguard, the Otreran sands, or the deepest hells—the bubble itself don’t cling to any one place. And there is no door, Lia. I’m the door. Where I walk, it follows. Where I stand, it opens. No me, no entry. Simple as that.”
The blue drying crown tipped slightly, a faint grin ghosting across his tired face. “And no, no one gets in without escort. Not unless I invite ’em through, or unless they’ve got a key made to match my well—which I’m not handin’ out like sweetcakes. Even then, the walls here listen to me first. Anyone comes wanderin’ in unbidden, the Gate will fold ’em right back outside. Or worse.” Finally he leaned back, claws tapping once against the book in front of him. “An’ yah guessed right—it takes more than dabblin’ to spin somethin’ like this,” Arc said, tapping a claw lightly against the open book. “Athanor’s Gate is one of the spells every apprentice’s got to master if they want to be called a journeyman. The whole point is to give a mage a place that’s safe—sealed off, steeped in their own weave, where they can practice without blowin’ up their master’s cellar. It ain’t just about skill, either. It’s about endurance, patience, learnin’ to let the magic carry its own weight while yer inside it. Fail at that, and the Gate collapses, takin’ yer work with it. Succeed, and yah’ve got yerself a realm that’ll hold steady so long as yah keep breathin’.”He huffed, softer now. “But aye, Calia. It’s strong. So long as I draw breath, this tower’s as real as any stone hall built in Tír Élas.”
There was a pause, “It’s similar to how fae make their little pocket realms, granted there are a little more stable from my knowledge. Takes quite a bit of force to break into them, and I don’t think they are associated with one person per se as mine is. But I can’t say that with a hundred percent certainty either.”
He took a drink from that of glass once more before she tacked on that she wanted a day to simply exist and then they could step back from the space to continue on their preselected destination. “Ain’t no complaints from myself about that.” A finger was lifted, “On the topic of the current location however, since yah be entrenched with my own magic, yah do have the ability to alter, adjust and influence the space. I merely ask yah don’t influence my work space, otherwise if yah feel emboldened to do whatever, yer more than free to do so.”
There was an immediate release of tension that she hadn’t realized she was even holding on to when he said it was fine to stay a little while longer. She ought not be surprised, though, as Calia was finding herself more and more tired of the world. She was powerful, she was extraordinary, she was eternal, blah bah blah. Calia was also just a single individual person who just wanted to loaf around and exist in her own skin without having the weight of responsibility and the whole damn universe crushing her shoulders.
A day to just be Calia, with full permission to meddle with his magic tower. Things couldn’t be better than that.
“I think fae realms begin something like this,” she remarked, casting another look around while she made quick work of polishing off her array of treats on the table. Now that she had something she wanted to get her hands on, the act of leisurely eating was no more. Now it was time for a little educational play! Experimentation of the best sorts!
“A person wanting a private space of their own making, in the vision and atmosphere that they want,” she was talking out loud, putting it together in her head. Popping the last pieces of fruit in her mouth before scooting her chair back and beginning the means of cleaning up her mess. …pausing only when she realized she could be doing it the fun way, the quickly touching finger to plate so it would all clean itself up! Giggling something wicked under her breath as she did so.
“The difference is… fae don’t seem to be solitary. When is it ever just one faerie? Those sacred trees are meant to look after many, so faeries are social things. They’re making their realms with intent to fill them with people. Even damned Fawna seemed to have an intent to rule a court of her own.”
While she was speaking she’d moved over to the window, tapping her chin with some idea or another before reaching out to weave her own bit of summoning magic. Archimedes had made this place with a nostalgic sense of home. She could see it in every stone, every item he’d conjured and brought into it. And his taste? Wonderful. Not at all what she or anyone might’ve expected for some master of arcane turned demon menace.
So she wasn’t going to change it. Merely… enhance it.
Her own weaving came with a delicate touch of fingers, as she always did get more physical with her casting. The lighting her was just right and she doubted there was a need for actual curtains, but she wove them nonetheless. Pale lace in a warm creamy white, to drape around the frame of the window. It gave the room some texture in the form of shaped shadows, and because she was a sneaky little minx if one paid attention there were shapes in those shadows cast. Little stars and half moons, and every now and then when the curtain shifted just right, a googlie-eyed beetle shadow.
A perfect work of art!
“For the two I’ve crashed through,” Shoulders were effortlessly shrugging like he wasn’t casually mentioning that he had bulldozed his way through some fae realms recently, “I can’t say too much about it. Just that they seem to have a little less construction on how they hinge on thin’s. Or well, that might simply be altered because yah were in the pockets and we be tied to another by a rather sticky bond.” He’d been thinking about that with a little more depth now. Because he knew how contracts worked in the demon’s efforts but this one… the one crafted by Calia was truly proving that it had some untested mettle. And strength that appeared to be well above what he had originally thought it to be.
It needed some intensive research which he could do later.
Right now, she was leaning into the means of magic –unsurprisingly- while that of dishware was set to mind itself. While she was both mentioning to herself about the private space of one’s own creation –practically guessing that she was feeling it out to replicate the spell, because if there was one thing he was figuring out about Calia, it was she tended to figure out spells in ways that no other could. Had. Or may in the future, be able too.
“Fae are from my recollection, extroverted bein’s. Some work even better with a collaboration of multiple bodies. Strength in numbers, as it were. Perhaps that’s what a court does. The more bodies present and aligned, the stronger the one whom is sittin’ upon their homemade throne.” He simply offered the thought freely while he started to gather himself up. Picking up glass and tucking chair back to where it belonged. Watching as Calia had helped herself with adding details to the space in which he simply tipped his head at. Because to have lacy curtains added was not what he expected. It was the little soft additions that he absolutely seen as a googlie eyed thing that was more her style.
A motion of hand and other various items came to life. To clean the space once more. “I am guna do some studyin’ a bit further. To dig around in my own skull a bit to see what ugly remains I can sift through and see what other damnable spells I’ve forgotten that could be of use. As I said, there is an outside to this place but be mindful. There’s limits of how far yah can go. Typically most would be dumped out of the gate if they went too far, yah might just hit a wall due to our alignment in that of my magic.” He paused in midstep and hummed, “Yah might see echoes as well, just so yah be aware. If yah see things wanderin’ around, they be just that. Echoes. Harmless too.”
If Calia had known he wondered about the construction of their bond itself, she wouldn’t have been any help. There had been a touch of something from the faerie tree because they’d been at her roots. A structure provided by Ashera that was already in place from her mages. The rest? Words and magic spoken by Calia herself? All of that came from somewhere deep within, where her wishes were simple and wants uncomplicated. A contract not just meant for her own benefit but for his as well. Of a shared magic… as far as she was concerned, that was that.
His thoughts on how faeries courts might be as they were did give her something very interesting to ponder, though! Nodding in her own, before paused a few paces away to declare he was going to return to his idle studying. It sounded so damnably domestic that it drew out all kinds of amusement in her. Such a juxtaposition of what their lives were presently like, to imagine him bent over that work desk scrawling through books looking for useful information and twiddling with potion work.
…actually she might like to try a bit of herbalism and potions herself if given the chance. Close enough to cooking to make it interesting for her. She almost got lost in that bit of thought, quick enough to catch herself to make sure he knew she was paying attention.
“Right, don’t stab myself, don’t go falling off the edge of the realm, don’t scream at or stab echoes.” She reached out to give his arm a soft gentle squeeze. “Don’t worry about me. Trouble is the last thing I want to get into right now.”
“I mean, yah can try to stab the echoes, they likely wouldn’t do anythin’.” He offered her back, lightly patting the fingers that came to squeeze at his arm. Only that lips shortly started to quirk up at her at the suggestion that trouble was the thing she didn’t want to get into.
Head tipped to the side in thought, “Save that we both surely possess the middle name with trouble neatly scribed there unseen, but felt.” The demon could only call it as he knew it. Trouble was in both their bloods. Deeply settled and content in having successfully made itself at home. Unlikely to leave.
Granted he did want to keep sorting through all the myriad of thoughts that had been so graciously thrown around in his head to make quite a mess, at least here they could be generally safe. His greatest foe here would likely be a giant googlie eye beast that she found herself enthralled with making.
One day Calia was liable to make a giant googlie-eyed beast, yet on this day one could be grateful that she was plenty occupied with the greatest gift anyone could’ve given her. A space so far away from the outside world that she could do anything she pleased, with the cherry on top that it was pure complicated magic in every sense of the word.
Once upon a time she’d been the most frustrating of students for her teachers. There was too much energy in her to sit perfectly still for long. Reading through books and taking notes was an excruciating chore as no one wanted to believe her when she complained that words and letters liked to jump around and squiggle or rearrange themselves. Lessons never really wanted to sink in unless she could see, touch, feel, experience whatever it was they were trying to drill into her head. It may have been why she took so well to weapons training, for it was a physical thing she could practice and learn as she went. Even learning instruments was easier than the endless lists of history, political sciences, literature. The worst had to be social etiquette as that was the one thing you couldn’t go around screwing up as you went, then hope it all worked out.
And magic? There were no true teachers for her when it came to magic. Oh, she’d met wizards here and there, witches, a mage once or twice. Most of them didn’t have two wits of sense to them. Magic was so rare in Caeldalmor, she wasn’t going to dare share her secret and especially not to an idiot.
In the here and now given free reign of such a place born straight out of magic itself? There was no better way to experiment and learn!
Like the very vision of a green fairy, dressed in her gown of sage velvet and with a surprisingly gentle touch for someone that liked barreling through things with all the grace of a rampaging bull, Calia examined everything she could get her hands on. Object by object, wall to wall, room by room. She found what was created by magic itself to hold and turn in her hands until she figured out what it was that made it be. If she had what was necessary to recreate it, she absolutely gave it a shot. Sometimes with an instant success. Sometimes, taking several tries and having to learn there was more to the process. One or two attempts might’ve set a fire or near exploded in her face, but she was well skilled at hiding the evidence of such things after a lifetime of doing so!
Perhaps an unintended consequence was leaving behind a bit of Calia with every room she meddled in. Wise enough to know when something was brought in, might be too person of an object to fuss with. She’d had a decent sense too for magic things that weren’t any of her business. Everything else? Fair game! She’d shift colors so they were a little richer. Beams in the ceiling become more than just wooden logs, art motifs of faeling creatures and silly demons romping along were carved into the wood. Chairs that should’ve had more plush to be comfortable got more plush. Empty space on walls found themselves adorned with woven vine wreaths.
…and she did not forget her creature. A place like this needed to have a creature. Calia found an old worn out roll of a pillow cushion and mashed and contorted in her hands. Slender little plush legs and a long tassel of a tail, more tassels with whiskers. A button became a nose, and naturally it’s button eyes weren’t proportionally sized right. She made it long and slinky so it could weave in tight places as it pleased, and it became the most demented shape of a cat she’d ever seen. She set it on the floor to let it free, but when she stood up straight and rest her hands on her hips, it didn’t feel quite right.
They would have to leave here and it’d be all alone.
Naturally that meant it needed a friend.
A second cushion got a similar treatment, but instead of long and slinky and elegant, this one was a round puff up fatso with short stubby legs. An attitude of pure nobility, too so when she set it free to join it’s friend, it seemed furious to even exist here in this place at all.
“Go on, now. You are the guardians of this place. All is your domain to keep safe.”
Should she have warned Archimedes? Maybe. Did she? Of course not. For Calia had already moved on to her next project – turning a bedroom that a demon was never going to use into the most beautifully lush place of relaxing sleep, lounging, and laziness that anyone had ever seen.
The workroom of the tower was never truly silent. It breathed with him, reflected him, and sometimes—when the light bent strangely across the stone walls—it even whispered back. Arc knew better than to mistake the presence of echoes for company, yet they filled the chamber all the same, moving at the edges of his sight like half-remembered dreams. He’d left Calia to her own devices, knowing damn well she’d meddle with some trinket or contraption sooner or later. Mischief wasn’t foreign to her—it was stitched into her bones like fire into the sun—and he let her have it. The tower was safe enough, and truth be told, it warmed something in him to imagine her weaving herself into his sanctuary as if she belonged.
His books lay spread across the oak table, the heavy tomes whispering of recipes, tinctures, and obscure lore. The page before him spoke of svartálfar bloodlines, threads of power that curled unseen beneath the skin, an inheritance of shadows. He traced the script with the careful edge of a claw, his lips pressing thin. If Calia was right, then somewhere in the winding halls of his bloodline, dark-elves had threaded their magic into the marrow of his family. It explained much, too much, in ways he wasn’t ready to stare at head-on. The words blurred, caught between the flickering shadows of his tower, and when he lifted his head, the room had shifted around him. Not physically—he knew the architecture was sound—but the echoes had drifted closer, more insistent, demanding to be seen.
Atticus appeared first, as he so often did, his figure rising from memory as naturally as breath itself. His father’s voice came soft and low, rippling faintly as though it rode the salt-heavy air off the harbor. Arc watched the echo bend over his smaller self, steady hands guiding a boy’s clumsy fingers around a coil of rope. “Not like that, tae,” Atticus murmured, his tone patient, kind. “Tighter. See? Let the line bite, then it’ll hold against any wave.” The memory tasted of brine and woodsmoke, vivid enough that Arc’s chest ached with the force of it, a pressure that made the present feel thinner, paler. Just beyond, another version of Atticus sat cross-legged with a young Lyra, their heads bent together over a scattering of seashells laid out like treasures on a worn plank of driftwood. They argued in bright, overlapping voices over which shell gleamed prettiest in the light. Lyra insisted on the spiral with the violet sheen, Atticus teasingly championed the ridged white one, until both dissolved into laughter that rang too alive, too warm, too devastatingly familiar.
The air shimmered again, and Aelyra came flickering into form. First she was a golden-haired child with bruised knees and a crooked smile, stubbornly determined as she tried to climb a rock face twice her height. Then she was a teenager, lean and sharp-eyed, a blade balanced in her hand, testing its weight with fierce pride. At last, she was a grown woman, eyes aglow with holy fire, her stance regal and unshaken even when she smiled his way. Each image trembled like flame and guttered out into ash, leaving behind the phantom ache of her presence. Arc reached for her once, without meaning to, and his clawed hand closed on air.
There were sweeter echoes too, gentler in their sting. Eden, his niece, appeared with cheeks flushed and fingers sticky from honey-sweets pilfered from a kitchen tray. She squealed with delight as she chased him, curls bouncing, her small hands snatching at his sleeves as she begged him to play. He could almost hear himself laughing back, unguarded in a way he hadn’t been for years. Jakson came next, his stepbrother standing solemnly with the heavy hilt of a sword clutched in both hands. His face was pale with concentration but proud all the same as he managed, for the first time, to lift the blade and move it without fumbling. Arc remembered clapping him on the shoulder, remembered Jakson’s grin, the kind that spread so wide it made his ears go pink.
And then there was Liriel. She arrived not with clamor but with quiet—the shy smile of a girl he had once courted honestly, when his heart was still tender and unscarred. She turned her head toward him, her expression faint and delicate, the kind of look that had once made him foolish enough to dream he could be more than his blood and temper. That echo lingered longer than most, as though it wanted him to suffer the sweetness of it, before finally slipping into the shadows like a sigh. Carlisle followed, his specter less forgiving. Sometimes he appeared as a boy, cheeks smudged with dirt, their voices tangled in raucous laughter as they tumbled down a grassy hill together. Sometimes he appeared older, his features hard, his eyes sharp with responsibility, a man twisted into something Arc wished he could forget. Those were the worst echoes, the ones that left him hollow—the good memories forever spliced with the ruin of what became of them, impossible to separate, impossible to heal.
Not all the echoes were kind. In the far corner, Omais took shape, stiff-backed and severe, his arms folded with the rigid finality of judgment. His eyes, sharp as shattered glass, raked over Arc’s younger self with the same disappointment he had wielded like a weapon for years. The echo’s mouth moved, lips shaping words Arc didn’t need to hear aloud—he already knew them by heart. Every barb and every cutting dismissal had carved its mark into him long ago, and even now, the ghostly cadence of that scorn still pricked like needles beneath his skin.
Then came Eleanor, as inevitable as a shadow at noon. The woman who had never once called him her son, never once softened her gaze when it turned on him. Her chin tilted in disdain, her mouth curled in that quiet sneer, and the weight of her presence pressed against him like a blade slipped between his ribs. He could almost feel his younger self shrinking beneath her stare, braced for a rejection that never lessened no matter how many times it was repeated. She lingered longer than most—her silence crueler than any words she might have spoken.
Worse still were the Bladerift mages. They did not appear whole but in fragments, like slivers of mirror reflecting only the ugliest angles. A cluster of figures with their backs turned, robes whispering as they drew away. Mouths bent close together, whispers spilling between them like poison: too strange, too malicious, too unstable. Sometimes a pair of eyes would flash toward him, narrowed and wary, before turning away as though his very presence was a stain upon their order. Their dismissal was a wound that had never healed, and here it replayed itself endlessly, every murmur echoing against the stone walls like a verdict he could never overturn.
These echoes did not vanish quickly, nor gently. They clung to the air like smoke, heavy and choking, refusing to dissolve no matter how tightly Arc’s jaw set or how deeply he buried himself in his books. His tower seemed to know—seemed to insist—that some memories could not be softened with distance. They lingered, sharp and unyielding, like scars carved into the very foundation of the place, as though the magic itself refused to let him forget how unwelcome he had been in places that should have been home.
He closed the book and shoved it aside with a sigh that felt centuries old. His horns throbbed faintly, an ache that told him he had lingered too long in the mire of himself. Rising from the table, he left the echoes to dance without him and wandered the narrow hall until the stone door gave way to green. Outside, the air was cool and full of the quiet hum of enchantment. The great tree stood there, tall and strong, its roots breaking through the courtyard stones. He remembered Atticus planting it, remembered how his father had whispered to the soil, coaxing it to grow faster, straighter, prouder. Now it towered, a monument of living memory.
Arc sat beneath its boughs, spine against the trunk, and let the breath slip out of him in slow, steady measure. He could feel the ghosts even here: Lyra laughing as she swung from a low branch, both of them children again, their faces flushed with the wild joy of play. The rustle of leaves carried their voices, bright and fleeting, like the sea-wind of Tír Élas. He closed his eyes, half-hoping the echoes would fade, half-aching for them to stay.
There was no better way to learn how a magic worked than getting you own hands all over it. While she had explored the majority of his tower and certainly left her mark on everything she touched, it was in that single bedroom that Calia truly found her focus in learning how to weave and apply the craft with actual purpose. For those who were powerful, rest was a necessity – even she for all her wild behaviors and bad habits of pushing through chaos knew that. If this tower was his refuge from the world, his workshop and library where he could work freely and concentrate, then there should be a room where rest was a welcomed and appreciated thing.
Calia’s exploration through the tower itself had lend her a good idea of what Archimedes seemed to like. The colors he favored, the style of objects he liked to surround himself with. He was – as she always accused – a romantic deep down in that demon elf soul of his. Far away from the gilded grandeur of places like the Edelguard palace, his space was rustic and cozy. Full of greenery, textured woods and warm light. She kept this aura as she worked. Gently touching pieces of furniture to be sure she wouldn’t alter things that were brought in rather than made with magic. Those things were likely to have a sentiment she wasn’t about to disrespect. Everything else became fair game of magical enhancement.
Her first experiment had been pushing out the walls to make the room larger, half to see if she could do it at all, half because cozy didn’t have to mean cramped. Such a room needed proper natural light, thus constructing a window came next. A wooden frame that wove itself like natural branches, with carved accents of and woodland creatures. Calia applied this to the glass as well, the very top pieces being a mural of midnight blue stained glass with specks of stars while the rest became frosted.
…it was only after she had finished it that she decided a bedroom needed a balcony. A balcony was so stupidly unnecessary, but so perfectly attuned to romantic sentimentalities. Thus she’d grown her window and split it into grand double doors instead. One side of the glass being the starry night sky, and changing the other to a dawning sun. Having to craft a balcony there from the bedroom ledge by summoning up the tower’s own stone until there was enough space for a little table and pair of chairs.
Calia turned back to the bedroom then, rubbing her hands together with a feline grin. Rustic stone walls were fine; colorful wallpaper was better. She stuck to the deep greens and rich browns to add a combination of leafy forest pattern with wooden paneling. Lit the room with an enchanted chandelier of starlight twinkles, and warm glowing candles along the walls. A man that liked to keep his nose in books needed book shelves anywhere one could stash them, naturally with her own added flair of etchings. Plush chairs next to a simple stone fireplace so one could do all that reading somewhere comfortable.
The bed became her final piece of art, of wood and bark shaped into something wide enough to suit a royal with posts and a canopy draped with heavy velvets and whispy sheer curtains. A stupidly unnecessary amount of pillows, with extra added plush in the mattress. All in colors of rich gemtones, emerald greens, royal blues, deep violets, and burgundy reds. Never just one color, or a simple palette. Always with different textures and tones, something both visually interesting while feeling wonderfully soothing all at the same time.
And rugs. Calia couldn’t forget rugs.
The mountain princess wasted so much time in there on the little tiny details, that she ought to have been exhausted from the constant use of magic. To the contrary, it seemed to be feeding the excitement that by the time she was finished, she was practically tipsy with the feeling. Almost skipping through the tower to seek out the demon that was it’s creator and forced to finally brave stepping outside of it.
Calia hadn’t known what she was expecting to find out there – surely not the way it truly seemed like part of the world while still feeling separated at the same time. Archimedes wasn’t far, under a tree that Calia stopped near to stare at. Looking up and up, mouthing a quiet how the fuck.
And there it was, the dawning of a new series of soon to be questions blooming across her face as plain as daylight. Yet instead of asking them, she crouched to the ground, pressing her hands to the dirt to feel it all out. Searching for how far his little bubble realm went. Seeking where the roots of the tree went, even following them like a four legged creature of a nonsense in her sage gown before she took off running towards the distance.
He might come to regret giving her a playground.
Calia ran until she found the edge of his constructed bubble, wise enough to not try flinging herself out of it, merely touching her fingers to the invisible shimmer and walking along it’s borders. It wasn’t smooth and perfectly shaped like a snowglobe, it had dips and curves more like a pool of water. There was a loud witch’s cackle of laughter when she took off running again, flinging magic to grow up patches of white lilies and icy blue delphiniums anywhere there was empty space. It took her a few minutes to round the entire tower before she circled back to that great tree where Arc rested.
Finally tilting her head up towards the sky with an expression mixed with curiosity and that pure spectacle of having ideas. Calia reached both her hands up as if she could touch the sky itself, ever so gently tapping her fingers to whatever invisible threads she saw there, until the sky had shifted from the soft daylight into a muted cloudy grew. The air growing cool, not uncomfortably so, as a gentle rain more misted the air rather than fell.
She closed her eyes and just smiled something blissful, serene. What a wonderful thing to be surrounded by beautiful unrestrained magic. Calia might not leave at all.
It was somewhere between her running along the space of the whole construction and her cackling, that drew his attention open. Not entirely sure what to expect from Calia but not really surprised either that she was racing around like a cat that had a bit too much nip recently. Merely missing the flicking tail and eyes so wide that pupils were busy devouring irises.
Pulling knee up to rest arm across the top and head to thump itself into that of the solid trunk, she was clearly having quite the expressive time of her life. Feeling the subtle pulls that were constant on the means of insisting the flow of magic keep coming forward. To obey whatever thing she decided to create, to twist or adjust to whatever outrageous choice she wanted too. Familiarizing herself with it all till now, where she moved the environment to meld from cool spring to a rainy mist.
Earning a squint somewhat. Knowing he had given her the freedom of creativity and she really did take that to run liberally with! After all the years she spent having to keep it all hushed and quiet, one shouldn’t be shocked that the means of freedom meant she was going to stick her finger into everything possible.
It was good that she was able to freely explore it. And it was not something he was intending on stopping either. Not unless she decided to turn the very tower into a new age shuttle that went outer orbit.
Calia stood there for a long while, face tilted towards the sky with her eyes closed as she just… basked in this seemingly endless well of magic. One would think with the way she’d dissected spell, wove arcane, and flung magic here and there that by now she’d be spent and exhausted. Overstimulated, drained to the core. Instead she was calmer than she had ever been. Content and filled with a rejuvenated sense of peace.
Magic was her very soul and she’d been denied it for so, so, so long. He’d given her something precious, whether he realized it or not.
Her eyes finally opened, head tilting to regard the top of that great tree truly thriving here in this constructed space. Wandered her gaze down it’s branches until she as thoughtfully examining the man that sat leaning against the base of it’s trunk. He was tired all the way down to his very bone marrow, Calia could see it plain as day. Burning the candle at both ends – physically, mentally, magically – all because of her.
With quiet steps she crossed the grass to crouch next to him, skirts shifting to expose one leg in what was certainly a most unladylike position but so typically wild, feral fae. Reaching to gently smudge off a black spot from his temple, that must’ve been ink or charcoal he unintentionally smeared there while pouring through his tomes and notes and rubbing his head in frustration.
“I am going to make you a nice dinner. Come tell me all about your progress with healing potions and medicinal herbs. Then we can go to bed.”
Having expected her to either see if she could conjure a little dirt devil to twist and play with the mist she had summoned, or something a little more liberal with its magical freedom; Arc waited. Watched in a silence that was probably as foreign to the epitome of the word as it was to him. A thing that he could do –obviously- but rarely did. As if the means of doing so invited things he didn’t want to deal with. Which was partially true.
Still, when the princess of the mountains didn’t summon some grand torrent of following weather to see how it moved with the air in her lungs, but rather stood in the unseen sea of magic; he could only guess what sort of budding thoughts were coming together. Doubtful that she would leave a single thing untouched in this pocket realm of his creation. And if she wasn’t touching everything, he expected her thousand of questions in which he would have to temper his answers not to get too wordy or too methodical.
Violets rose curiously when she was then looking at his location. Immersed in a space that was tethered to a portion of a life that no longer existed and yet still brought quite comfort to him. He was still an elf in memory, still tied to nature in some way. Even if it was all smoke and mirrors and utter bullshit!
When her form changed directions to come closer to the point that she was plopping down in probably the most Calia way that wasn’t attempting to be over exaggerated, the whole reaching out to knead something off his temple, he did not have some witty, snappy and colourfully amusing quip to give. Just a sort of nod that expressed a tamed appreciation for her consideration though he didn’t know who or what he was needing to be presentable for. Settling to where he was arching a brow at her, “Yah know I don’t technically need to eat every day, right.” Arc offered not sure she needed to wasted such efforts and still because he was who he was, “Plus, yah be endin’ that whole offerin’ with somethin’ that sounds far less innocent than what I know it really is.” Implying she was trying to throw him between the sheets.
“Why don’t we ignore what I’ve been doin’ and focus on what yah have been instead. I ain’t… terribly interested in bein’ that vocal currently.”
The one time she hadn’t thrown out a saucy double entendre on purpose to see if he’d catch it, he’d chosen to be cheeky with her words. Bringing her a quiet sense of relief, even if it was far tamer than the usual spicy things that came out of his mouth. Flashing him the sort of smile she usually reserved for bawdy taverns and clandestine moments, almost daring him to ask the question and second-guess if he was right at all.
“As soon as we go inside you’re going to know exactly what I was up to and I’m betting you’ll be plenty vocal then.”
Fleeting was the wicked look, however, for he was doing exactly as she knew he would. Wriggling himself out of being the one cared for. Leaving her giving him a sort of examining look, hesitating on just how she wanted to phrases things.
“Let me do nice things,” she stressed with a weary sigh, having likely made that statement a dozen times by now in different levels of frustration. Shifting how she crouched to wring her hands because she was a little afraid she might reach out to shake him. Or drag him across the ground back into the tower! Being honest about her thoughts had never been an issue for her, but trying to do so in a way that wasn’t like an angry snapping turtle? That was difficult.
“Feeding you is the only thing I can seem to do that doesn’t blow up in my face, so let me do it.”
There it was. Brief but present. The look that he could vouch had more than a few eyeballs over the years leading the rest of one’s head over to be as close to Calia as possible. For the grin she gave was familiar and he could’ve prodded it. But there was a strong lack of desire too and well, she was pointing out that his choice to showcase that he did know what the meaning of silence was; Arc gestured to the still standing tower. “Yah have a lot of fate in that, but I was expectin’ the very place to have turned into a new tree. Or launched into the false stratosphere replicatin’ one of the crown prince’s furry woodland critters.” The demon softened the corners of his gaze, “I’m also guessin’ there’s probably a hundred thin’s inside with the biggest googly eyes anyways.”
Likely outrageous and shaped in some animal appearance. While making all sort of instrument like music that wasn’t soft and lovely like a harp. Something obnoxious surely.
She shifted. Adjusting her position that appeared to be tethered to a sort of uncertainty. Drawing line of sight and a breathy half laugh. “Yah do nice thin’s already. Yah be frettin’ over nothin’.” Arc pointed out though of course it was liable to start a whole spew of ways she could combat his commentary. Taking to baring observational consideration when she was dry wringing her hands. Spurring him to reach over and lay one over top. An act to stop her from doing so. Hearing her suggest that apparently the only way to temper things was to feed him like a housecat. “Yah worry over wee nonsensical thin’s, love. But fine, if it will keep yah feelin’ free and loosey, then—”
Gesturing towards the tower in the way that said, lead the way. “Show me what sort of googly eye disaster is waitin’ for me this time.”
Fretting over nothing her ass. Calia stared at his hand over her own for a moment, giving a soft frown before eventually heaving a sigh and claiming it to help draw them both to their feet.
“It’s not nonsense when I’ve tried three times now to take you somewhere to ease you mind, and every single time it’s ended with one of us kidnapped or running away from each other or half dead. Or actually dead.” She was about to say she couldn’t kill him with food, but then one stray dandelion seed or sprinkle of marjoram might do the trick and Calia wasn’t about to put that into his head. Not when she was still working away on her little project to take that one miniscule threat out of the equation.
She may not be able to solve all their problems, but at least she could solve that one. And feed him.
Arc seem determined to assume she’d created a small army of googlie eyed creatures to fill his tower with, and Calia did not even try to deny it. Instead painting on that nonplussed air of innocence, as if perhaps she really had taken over his magical sanctuary to fill with every manner of kooky weird creatures to torment him for all of eternity.
Two were enough.
“I want you to remember that you did tell me I could have at it,” she warned him, deliberately making it sound far worse than the truth of things. For Calia could have changed the entire tower and all of it’s contents within so drastically that it was no longer his space at all. She could have created a elven king’s lavish chambers. Made a barn house full of weird animals. Created a pocket realm inside his realm and stepped him into a forest!
But when she tugged him by hand to the front door now etched with forest creatures and ivy vines – and okay, maybe a hidden googlie-eyed critter here and there if one looked hard enough – to grant them entrance inside, there came no uncanny feeling of things being changed into wrongness. That odd uneasy feel that it was all tampered with and wrong. Instead it remained the same cozy space as it ever was, with nothing more than a touch of Calia in the strangest of nooks and crannies. In the carved beams of the ceiling, the wood of bookshelves and frames of windows. Where she’d wove tapestry art and wreaths for barren walls and returned plush furniture to it’s original fluffiness. Somehow by touch alone she’d figured out what pieces she shouldn’t meddle with, things that shown a sentimental sort of wear that needed to remain. Things that were placed with gentle care only received a good dusting.
One entering the kitchen proper she finally released him, shifting to pluck her hairpins from where she’d stashed them to twist her hair up and out of the way.
“…also I think you should consider that food is the original healing potion, and just because demons don’t need to eat doesn’t mean that you’re not getting something vital from it, especially when it’s made with talent.”
…she sure as hell wasn’t about to say made with love! Not that it stopped her from throwing a cheshire sort of grin over her shoulder.
That, well, he couldn’t argue against. The intentions of going elsewhere had resulted in some added flairs of dangerous dramatics. Things never going as one wanted but they also had to consider that they weren’t exactly part of the normalcy of everyday life either. Trying to fit together while having their own personal wars –his was a few lifetime’s worth and still trying to manage even now. Better than saying anything about it that could be heard as flippant, Arc rose to her pulling tug. Getting off his rear and tossing a momentarily glance back at the tree that was part of his roots.
Quietly thinking to himself that turned to a nonchalant shrug at her reminder. “I did, and I suspect all sorts of whimsy and annoyance’s cause yah got that freedom that yah ain’t had before. I mean, any magical creature getting said open invitation surely couldn’t resist havin’ at it.” Arc wouldn’t fault her and he was mentally bracing to be bombarded by all sorts of creatures that had over exaggerated eyeballs that rolled around in their sockets.
Noticing how the front door was certainly influenced by the means of fae naturals –favouring the nature scenes and organic charm that absolutely had more to it than a quick glance could offer it. To where stepping inside, it wasn’t painted all neon colours in zigzag lines and having a warped stairwell that went down to go up. Leaving him to throw her a quick cautious look as if to say where’s the punchline. Surely expecting the free-range faeling to have gone balls to the wall.
He felt her pulling on the tendrils enough to know she hadn’t sat idle and read a book!
But it was subtle touches. Clear enough to draw looks from him to the beams of the roof, and slight alterations that were declaring more decorative value than he really ever put effort into. He was pretty theatrical as a person, so there had never been much of a motive to do so in his living spaces. Real or void spaces alike.
With a mere hum that seemed pretty suspicious that surely somewhere in this whole tower had been re-crafted by her touch; the kitchen was the resting space once more. Moving over to sit in one of the mismatched chairs yet again but this time leaning into it. Sinking some so his head could rest on the backboard and eye her quietly when she decided to point out that food was the original healing potion. “I think the expression is with love, not talent.” Apparently not about to just skim over that, “Add on that yah gotta remember that I’ve only recently come back to have eons worth of memories poured back into my skull. Food isn’t really somethin’ that has got me cravin’ it the same way as I had when I lacked horns.” He knew very well that Calia loved food.
For she devoured mostly anything that was sat down in front of her and she clearly enjoyed cooking. And this was something she wanted to do so as much as he may be still in a state of his own thoughts that were cool and drafty, he wasn’t about to shirk her need to do something –as she put it- nice. “Yah pulled a lot of magic, surely it wasn’t just to colour the roof beams different colours.”
Again that smile was there, broad and bright as the sun with every flickering, questioning glance he gave her in waiting for that shoe to drop. To discover whatever menacing calamity she’d created within his tower to make his place of respite and circus of chaos. Truly finding just as much joy in watching him squirm about it more than had she actually done anything truly full of mischief.
While he sank into a chair, Calia gathered up the assortment of pots, pans, and knives she liked the best out of the kitchen arrangement, pausing there for a moment with one of the spoons to rest a hand on her hip. Suddenly grinning ear to ear with that puckish gleam.
“If you want a meal made with love, then I expect to hear a lot more glowing compliments. Until then, how about I just make sure it tastes good.” After a little wiggle of that spoon at him – better than the knife, he’d probably assume she was about to throw it! – she set it on the counter to bustled away across the room to where there was naught but stone wall.
With a quick bend and spreading out her hands, she traced a frame upwards to a good height, casting, weaving, and twisting that very magic that made the structure of the place to will up a quant little door. One she pushed open immediately into the misty day, talking even as she crossed the threshold at a volume he could still hear.
“You might be a prodigy of the arcane, but I am having to learn this place… kind of literally from the inside outwards. And truthfully I’ve been sidetracked more than once, seeing as you have interesting little trinkets just laying around on shelves and in dressers and all over the place.”
Out there in that little side yard, it took only a few paces and a quick examining glance to get an idea of what she wanted to do with it. Drawing up his magic here with an ease she’d never quite had before. Twisting it into shapes that were more familiar to her so that she could take what was present and grow it from the ground up. Literally, again! A variety of garden vegetables and herbs that would be useful not just in the present moment, but later too. Calia then plucked a few that were going to serve her best for dinner.
With this liberal use of magic, she likely could have conjured dinner straight out of thin air like it was a drop in a bucket. But there was something to be said for the methods of how it was to be made. If food was a healing potion in itself, the process was important, wasn’t it! Made with love or not!
“This place is like a ten thousand piece puzzle and every piece is made of woven silk, and that silk has a thousand threads itself,” she explained upon entertaining back into the kitchen. “That’s a lot to unravel. I spent most of my time with a single room.”
“Save yah take to compliments about as well as a fish on dry land.” As if he didn’t notice, “And with the same measure of distrust, because I have complimented yah earnestly and was on the receivin’ end of a suspicious stare. Merely missin’ the puckered twist of lips one gets suckin’ on a lemon.” By no means was any of that super secret and hard to see, Calia exposed it too at one point that she didn’t trust such things. Whether he was full of shit or truthful, it warranted her to be uncomfortable.
And personally he really did doubt she needed and wanted to cook for him but rather then means of getting herself further involved with the tower as it was. To test a different way of seeing how it all worked. Which currently, had her moving over to a naked wall so a new door could be made. And stepped through. Adjusting posture so he might shift from his slump lean, to just bend over the table. Crossing arms and cradling chin into its hold, listening still as she had gone out this new creation. Feeling every pull and tug on the fabrics of his very skein, while she suggested she was having to learn about this place. “By comparison, I ain’t no prodigy.” Arc stated, “Yer ability to move between the threads is uncanny. Doin’ thin’s that most mages spend eons tryin’ and failin’ religiously.”
Heliotrope eyes fell behind the curtain of lids. “Suppose I was sentimental at one point.” Referencing the trinkets though he couldn’t at all figure out what ones she had eyed or been sidetracked by. Probably unable to remember them unless they were shown to him anyways.
Smirking in the crook of arms, “It’s my magic though I think yah called me super complicated in the nicest way possible. Fittin’ though, it is a lot of unnecessary pomp and wasted threads on somethin’ that works just as well as a dirty rag.” Shoulders shrugged, “Yah asked for at least two days here, I’m sure by the morrow yah’ll have the whole tower properly unraveled.”
That sucking on a lemon look was exactly the one he was getting then, though not at all because she couldn’t accept a compliment… but because he himself was trying to dodge them! Ready to throw one of those freshly plucked tomatoes right at his head, along with a few potatoes too for good measure. Calia never could understand why he accused her of things in one breath, then turned around and did it himself in the next and not hear his own words coming out of his mouth.
She was going to add extra pepper in this meal if he wasn’t careful.
Instead of snapping back, she held her tongue for a few quiet moments. Arranging her rainbow selections of garden vegetables on the counter before snatching up one of the knives. After a few tentative slices she had to pause, shaking the sleeves of her safe gown with a little alteration to shorten them up and get them out of her way. Then put all of her focused energy on very carefully slicing produce into the perfectly sized circles. Using it as a way to steady any rising ire that was sure to come up.
“…you never trust anything I earnestly say either, you know.” she pointed out. Conversationally, quietly. Devoid of that usual sharpness that tended to come with her temper. “We’d have far less fights if you’d just let me take care of you.”
Mouth opened ready to fling at her his best yes I do, but paused. Wisely at that. So he might feel the means of her words rather than reacting to them as though they were sharp brambles stabbing at his backside. Rather than being immediately defensive with his cheeky attempt at a slide of indifference that was fooling no one.
He did have a brain –it was actually pretty smart when he let it mull over a reply or a topic rather than replying before it had a chance to.
It was in this moment with said care of consideration that, Arc merely offered a low hum. “Likely cause I don’t think yah ought to be doin’ so.” He stated softly as a sort of way to show he had thought before replying and was being honest in said efforts. “Surely yah can figure out that the whole takin’ care of thin’ ain’t my strongest suit.” Nor was he about to point out that those who had in his past that had cared about him, or tried had met a grisly end. Not about to rehash old topics that were practically beaten dust at this point.
“I ain’t the only one who gets all prickly and fussy like a pissed off porcupine when someone’s starts tryin’ to fuss over me.” Arc shot her a look, “Care is… a loaded stick of gun powder after all. And if it ain’t burstin’ into explosive flames, yer own thoughts are well acquainted with detailin’ the whole slew of ways yer just guna fuck that shit up.” He was starting to get uncomfortable with being open. Shifting in his little manmade nook of limbs. By no means was he looking or wanting sympathy, but he was attempting this whole being verbal thing about his thoughts and his strong means of being uncomfortable being seen.
In his true fashion, of course he had to ask. “Have yah ever taken care of someone before that wasn’t related to yah by blood. And required to keep an eye on them less be shamed by the upper family echelon, anyways?”
Calia was expecting the yes I do, even was preparing a long list of examples. So when instead he came back with a candid – the actual truth, not just truth wrapped in a layer of bullshit – it caught her breath as a lump in her throat and suddenly she wasn’t sure what to say. Especially since he was so quick to point out that she herself didn’t exactly accept someone’s care without hissing like a feral cat. Almost ready to blurt out a that’s not true – she’d behaved today hadn’t she!
Barely.
And he surely wasn’t wrong about those inner thoughts, as they were there in the here and now. Reminding her how many times she’d opened her mouth, said a few short phrases and ruined every step forward they’d ever taken. Giving only a quick glance in his direction when it seemed like he was wriggling in his chair before she set her sights back slicing up circles of vegetables. Calia could’ve already chopped through the whole lot of them with practiced ease, but the slow simple motions were giving her that chance to linger on his words a little longer than she might’ve before.
“I’ve looked after people,” she mumbled almost with an air that it was a silly, if not near insulting question to ask. “I’ve always looked after people, whether they’ve noticed me doing it or not. That’s never been difficult or even a thing I’ve ever struggled with.”
A final slice and she bent to reach over and grab a large casserole style dish to start layering her rainbow of circles in.
“…That doesn’t seem like the question you’re really asking, though, so if you’re wondering if I’ve ever cared for someone the way I do for you, then no. No I haven’t. You are the only person that’s ever-” she stopped there, almost saying that he was the only one worth all the agony, but of course he would take that as an insult instead of the reverence it was meant to be. Finally just scowling down at the layers she was placing down to shrug her shoulders.
“A kindred soul,” she muttered. “Don’t make me say soulmate again, you make a face.”
They were frighteningly similar in so many ways. And so different in others, naturally. Yet, if she was anything close to him, then her own thoughts were easily the cruelest things ever imaginable. When one got so near you could feel the heat of their skin radiating beside yours without touching; prompting that of the vicious thoughts to spark and declare like a war cry just how it was all going to be ruined.
Detailing lists in numerical order of one thousand and one ways to fuck up everything. From a single word, to elaborate schemes that seemed innocent but weren’t.
They lived comfortably within his own thoughts. So cozy and snuggled in that at this point, he wasn’t even sure he could recognize them as anything different than normal every day considerations unless he paused to think about the hissing tones with due thought.
The difference between him and Calia as an example was, he was accustomed to these thoughts and reactions outwardly for years. To the point that he had perfected his clowning act with the level of theatrical marvel that most would never see through it. He was the fool, the muse, the sleaze and the asshole all at once that bore a remarkable unbothered grin. All the while having behaved as such for so long that it was practically every niche of his being. It was not a mask, it was simply his face.
In turn, it meant moments like this when he was being perceived beyond that articulated camouflage, it made him so uncomfortable that it almost felt like he needed to jump on the table just to make a scene in some elaborate, over the top spectacle that he might feel safer being considered stupid, than anything else. That his antics were so frustrating and grating that it would keep everyone else far, far away. For their own safety but he’d not say that out loud, less it make him sound as though he were looking for empathy or a medal.
Thankfully, Calia wasn’t hounded down on him currently. Rather she took his question after his reveal of truth and pointed out in a matter fact mumbled suggestion that she did take care of people. Whether or not they noticed, he couldn’t say. And that, was probably the wisest thing he could do. Saying nothing in reply to that portion.
Instead, he was watching her work on a dish simply because she liked to cook and keep her hands busy, while deepening the wonderment to where he was giving her a quiet consideration from over the crook of elbow. Brows raising a little when she was scowling no sooner, “I make a face cause I am wonderin’ what the hell hit yah upside the head. And worry that yah really do have some truly terrible taste to call me a soulmate. We both know there’s at least a handful of better souls warrantin’ such a fairytale title.” Arc was smirking behind his arms, “Probably some over the top fop that likes cake and uses glitter as a weapon against people that is also a fae and can properly give yah devilish ideas while meeting that mettle effortlessly.”
He was thinking now, “Some outrageously good lookin’ faelin’ that has hair as red as blood and looks like they just came outta the stables rather than court. The ying to yer yang, as it were.”
Calia wouldn’t have called it a fairytale title and the frown she shot him said it plain enough without her having to elaborate the full scope of her thoughts. A fairytale meant it was something mythical, romantic. Star-crossed souls filled with light and radiance. A fairytale wasn’t anything more than empty sweetness between two people. What she saw in them was a reflection. It was fire and pain and a turmutultous storm. Tragedy and aching, swirled with spectacular possibilities. Hope and magic and darkness all wrapped into a complicated mix. A star split in half to be both destruction and life all at once.
…gods, this was so dramatically stupid! Why was she like this!
For once she was greatful for his strange need to imagine pairing her off with all manner of ridiculous men he dreamed up for her. Almost blurting out the statement that he truly did spend a lot of time thinking about her with random men! Instead it came with a scrunch of her nose as she sprinkled on her assembled dish an array of herbs, salt and seasoning. Adding a little butter too before she was scoffing out loud and shifting to tuck it away into the waiting burning stove.
“Oh, I met one of those. His name was Alewillian and I pulled out his bones,” she answered with a near laugh. With their dinner tucked away in the potbelly oven, a snap of her fingers came next to ignite the flames and get that started bubbling away. Calia turned on a heel, resting her hands on her hips to finally give him the full undivided attention of her narrowed green eyed stare.
“I’m not a fairytale kind of princess. Is it not clear by now that I am in fact, completely insane, potentially deranged, and absolutely going to be scourge on this world? Everything I touch becomes chaos and mayhem, and the only thing that has kept me firmly rooted in this world has been you. I think that’s worth making you dinner and taking care of you. Unless you want me to go on a bone-ripping spree, that is I think I could do.”
Had she pointed out, he probably would have had a comment to it. Something perfectly him and also intending to keep himself so far removed from it that he wasn’t playing stand in to something he really did think was out there for her. Romantic or platonic, that didn’t matter. Just that he believed in his heart of hearts, that he was not the thing she ought to be putting so much concern or thought into. Without outright saying, she was wasting every bit of effort she had on someone that was as used up and worthless as a dirty hole ridden sock!
But he did find it amusing that she was pulling all sorts of scrunchy faces even as the meal was tucked into its oven and she decided to give him a telling. “Well, yah didn’t say he was red head. Only that yah revoked his bone privileges.” Arc met that easily, smirking playfully more so with his eyes than the hidden mouth.
“I never said yah were the fairytale kind of princess, just that whomever is the better compliment to yer chaos, would be. Balance, y’know.” Where chaos brewed, a gentle rainstorm came to purify. Where she destroyed, they’d come behind and rebuild. Where she screamed, they whispered. Well, she did call him a romantic at one point in the way that declared he was just a dolt in its own right. So maybe he was.
Breath pulled still as she gave him that nonsense of him being the root to this world, “Why do I think yer wastin’ yer efforts?” He wished he had some grand way of expressing that. Making her understand that while she detailed herself as less than, she wasn’t. Hell, if she was, not everyone and their fae dog would be chasing after her. She was worth more than either of them knew and unfortunately it caused her drama.
Of course, Arc was still himself. “Listen, sweetheart, I’ve already got the corner market on self-loathin’ and theatrical misery. Years of craftsmanship, really—top shelf stuff. So unless yah’ve got a fresh routine with better lightin’ and a tragic backstory that sings, best let me keep my crown of pitiful glory. It’s about the only thin’ I’m good at.” He gave her a smirking look, “Yah ought to have loftier goals than pet handlin’ a self deprecatin’ demon, and as for bone ripping spree, save that foreplay for Derrick.”
Right. Calia should have known. Of course he thought balance came in he form of one’s complete opposite. There were two sides of the same coin. Just as he himself seemed to chase after those soft, sunbeam girls with their gentle smiles and kind hearts, he believed Calia too needed to glued to some golden retriever, white horse riding hero.
Someone that was going to constantly apologize to the world on her behalf. Temper her down until she was acceptable, is what that was. Making her squish herself back down until she was good enough. The suggestion almost struck her fragile heart to pieces, nearly rendered her silent. Biting her tongue before she snapped at him – glad that she did! For he revealed the truth of his thoughts in those stupid phrases after.
He thought he was a waste of her time. Still thought he was nothing, when he was in fact everything.
Would it be worth it to punch in him the face just this once?
Probably not.
Of course, then he had to go and call her sweetheart and start in on his theatrics and Calia in her infinite wisdom decided it was long past due someone beat him at his own bullshit games. She braced her hands on the table and leaned down close, smiling that puckish fae grin from ear to ear without an ounce of shame.
“You’re saying this after I had to watch you get smashed into a bloody pulp by a pissed off drake that wouldn’t even give me the dignity of the same demise. And that is before a stabbed myself to save you, and after a whole bunch of other bullshit. So sweetheart, if you wanted me to seduce you into being my soulmate, why didn’t you just say so. Maybe wait until after dinner, though.”
She leaned closer. Her grin far too full to say it was anything sincere and he was tilting just enough to look up at her. A brow arched in curiosity with the sort of pulled half smirk that made him all the curious to know what sort of phrasing had spurred her into this mode. For he knew something had been uttered that caused the shift, but he wasn’t about to go digging around looking for it.
As she displayed that his antics of his claim to fame and misery were not hers to have, she suggested that he had done a poor job between the antics of being chewed up by a crotchety frozen drake and her stabbing herself to save his sorry ass. The latter had more of an effect considering how he turned violets briefly away with a telling measure of guilt that was just a new seed in the mental garden of lamenting private anguish.
Gaze returned however. And she was emphasizing the sweetheart portion –ah that was probably one of the words that had plucked at her potential ire of mischief- and went into this suggestion of seducing him. Warranting a roll of eyes, that straightened and met her vibrant jade once more. Looking quietly back and forth. “Oh, is that what this is then? A long, drawn-out seduction arc disguised as a suicide pact with extra bloodshed for dramatic flair? Gods, love, yah could’ve just said yah wanted me. I’d have skipped the drake and let yah ruin me somewhere with a far more flatterin’ backdrop. But no, yah had to go stab yerself and make me feel thin’s.” He tilted his head, a lazy, dangerous smile cutting across his mouth. Evidently not about to pull back on whatever messed up game of chicken this was. “If this was yer way of getting’ under my skin, congratulations. Yah’ve bloody well burrowed in. But if yer going to make me yer soulmate –which I might add is a truly horrendous and terrible idea-, at least have the decency to let me make a mess of yah before dinner first.”
Then, voice dropping to something low and molten, Arc let a slow, wicked smile curl at the corner of his mouth—something dangerous enough to make the air between them tighten. “And Lia,” Doing that purring thing with every syllable of a shorten name becoming like the brush of a blade against silk, “By the time I’m through, the gods won’t just envy it—they’ll curse that they never heard their name screamed the way yah’ll scream mine. Loud enough to shake the stars. Raw enough to make heaven blush, and not in anger for once. Is that what yah wanna hear?”
Maybe she had needled a little too hard, as she didn’t fail to catch that flash of guilt in him and immediately felt a sense of regret for mentioning her own stupid choices at all. He was doubling down, though, now that she called him on his bluff. Getting that demon-wild look, how he’d tilt his head regarding someone like a fun bit of new prey. Gearing up for what he probably thought was going to be a quick and short game, where she blustered and puffed, hissed at him for making things weird.
He had no idea what he’d just gotten himself into.
…and for a split second, when his tone shifted and he muttered her name in a way that absolutely had to be against the laws of nature, she wondered if she had too! How had Calia forgotten that Archimedes had a way of spinning words in such a way that could make the air crackle and her insides twist. He made purely terrible ideas sound like the next best thing.
The shock lasted on her face for all of a simple moment. A slow blink shifting into an equally slow smile that was strangely sweet considering he’d just threatened to make her scream loud enough to shake the stars.
“For someone that has said many times that we are completely incompatible, you sure like thinking about me in all kinds of salacious positions.” The smile remained in her voice, even when she leaned down on her arms and tilted her head enough to press a soft kiss to his cheek. Lingering there with a grin. “I said soulmates, not lovers. But if you don’t quit talking like that I might actually take you up on that offer, and then we’re not going to get any actual rest in that nice new bedroom I spent all day weaving together.”
It was brief but a subtle change just before she started offering him a slow grin once more that was entirely out of place considering the topic was being floated around on the back of a jest. Yet, he knew that Calia was not the sort that backed down even when maybe sometimes she really ought too.
Thankfully this wasn’t a life or death situation but it was something in his realm of contest.
She was very good at pulling out old statements however and that alone –paired perhaps a bit with a peck to the cheek- caused that slow-crawling grin to bloom till fangs were polished and glinting at her so dangerously. “That’s the thin’ about bein’ intelligent, yah can change yer opinions at any time once yah have more information and a better education.” Yes, he did say they were completely incompatible. Numerous times and he still felt that way because of various reasons.
Less so now that involved the means of thinking she was too malicious with the attitude of a wild mare that wouldn’t know how to be gentle. But rather, they weren’t that sort of thing another needed in such intimate ways.
But he was not about to let her hold this moment entirely. Especially when she suggested that she could take him up on the offer. “And I never said a damn thing about lovers, petal,” Arc drawled, the words smooth and smoke-thick, dangerous in their ease. His gaze swept over her slowly, drinking her in with a kind of lazy hunger that burned hotter the longer it lingered. He leaned forward, a suggestion that if they were close enough, that the warmth of his breath would be skimming her skin like a promise she shouldn’t trust but ought to crave anyway.
“A fuck is just that. Scratchin’ an itch. Burnin’ a match just to watch it flare.” His grin deepened, all wicked teeth and velvet sin, like a predator savoring the tension in the air. “But—” Voice dipping lower, dark honey and threat entwined just to see what happened, “I’m a fast learner when the lesson’s worth the bruises. So if yah’ve got somethin’ that could change my mind, Lia… I’ll drag yah under and yah can teach me every filthy little way I’m wrong about compatibility.”
The pure unbridled smugness that bloomed across her features had nowhere to hide the moment he admitted opinions could change. Didn’t matter that she knew he was just playing the game and everything out of his mouth right now wasn’t meant with any sort of sincerity. Truthful, the real problem here was how much she enjoyed this side of him. There were other parts too she liked – when he got all professorial in trying to teach her something. Or those rare moments he’d get quiet and thoughtful trying to puzzle something out. Much to her annoyance she even had grown fond of his mage theatrics, being so blatantly theatrical with magic as if he’d always been meant to wield it like an art.
This, though? The dangerous mischief, the promises of a kind of trouble she was absolutely going to enjoy every moment of? This was tantalizing.
She answered with a soft humming scoff when he suggested he hadn’t meant lovers either, being just curious enough to squint her eyes again at his suggestion of just a fuck. A damn him, if it didn’t creak open the door just a crack, leaving her pondering the sort of what ifs that had no business suddenly popping into her head. To let out a slow breath and flickered warm verdant gaze over him in a way she never really dared before. Arrogant enough to believe she would have his mind changed in a heartbeat of what they could be, and a little too afraid that he meant what he said and it’d be nothing more than a quick burn.
A night, that’s all it had to be. Scratch an itch. Make him eat him his words and go back to business as usual. With another almost growling hum, she tilted with intent to close the distance–
Baou.
And stopped. Eyes quickly darting to the plush PLOOMPH that had ever so ungracefully plopped itself on the kitchen table. All velvet and tassels, with the sort of gravelly deep throated voice no couch-cushion turned cat had any business of making. The chonker of a creature looked so damned displeased that if she’d been under a spell, it surely had been broken!
“…unless you like an audience, suppose I’ll have to teach you those lessons another day.”
He’d sparked something.
Not that he expected her –she had plenty of excursions with others- to suddenly get all shy and bashful, or even turn crimson with this back and forth that was a test of wills. If anything, he expected Calia to size him up and huff noisily. To reach into the bag of outdated commentary to use in some sort of shield and sword situation. Or to keep trying to lock figurative horns with him to see just who broke first.
Following quietly the way her gaze had turned warm with its consideration of him. Waiting for the next play that would either have him calling her shot, or anteing up once more.
Nowhere in his hand did he expect a fucking cushion of a cat to appear on that of his table. Disrupting the game of sexual chicken, earning a few bewildered blinks. Because, this was not on his list of things Calia would have made. And of course, he was staring at the plushie rotund thing as if his own mind couldn’t feasibly fathom just what the hell it was. What it had been and why it looked so unhappy in which Arc shortly was left speechless.
Giving her the last word and him rolling his eyes expressively at her. “Too bad, I’m more of a here and now person. This was a once in a lifetime suggestion,” Sliding back into his chair as though it had never been the prop to his antics. Melting like butter and giving the animal cushion a discerning look. Folding arms up and behind head, “Whatever itches now will just have to wait to see if any of yer mountain clan ladies are willin’ to have a pretty demon for a day.” He shrugged, “Why a cat?”
Calia straightened back up to her feet, putting as much distance between them without looking like she was fleeing as she could. Shifting to the counter where she could prepare up dishware for actually serving dinner, taking a moment of pause to roll her shoulders and press a firm hand against her lower ribs where she was pretty sure some twist of horror, dread, bewilderment, and stunned declaration was making war in her guts.
What the absolute hell had she been thinking. Seriously! Maybe she should’ve taken up the challenge of his five selected paramours, because clearly she’d spent far too long without dragging a man into her bed that a little saucy back and forth had her making decisions like a drunk tart! As if their stupid convoluted relationship wasn’t complicated enough without throwing rowdy sex into the mix.
And it was still there. Now taking root in the back of her mind, that quiet, beckoning what if now imagining wild scenarios of upturned chairs and being gloriously crushed by the weight of hand and mouth.
She needed a cold shower. And he had the right of it! Calia was going to grab the first good looking man she found and get this all out of her system! In fact, he didn’t even need to be good looking, he just needed to be impossibly tall and have the stamina of a fucking demon.
Calia nearly shivered.
“A mage’s tower needs cats. Who else is going to stare at you judgmentally while you work on magic craft and potions?” she answered breezily, deliberately making no further comment on their shenanigans. He could have the last word on that, she was busy trying to push all these new thoughts back behind that door and lock it.
Almost as if summoned by the very word of cats, her first of the created pair made it’s slinky appearance of leaping on the table in a much more elegant display of smug amusement. Curling it’s tassel tail and giving a low haunted baou of it’s own. Perhaps she needed to work a little harder on vocal sounds for these things, but so far despite their cushiony appearance they were a lot more full of personality and strange enchanted life compared to her prior creatures.
“Oh I have a few ideas and I think yah would be willin’ to stare at me judgmentally if I merely asked.” Arc sighed at the very idea, though he didn’t think he needed to fit into any sort of stereotype mage anyways. Not sure where the thought of needing a cat in a mage tower even came from. Sure it was something said in passing and in turn absolutely blown out of proportion.
Which apparently Calia was going to make sure he knew it because another one appeared! Not so wide but more of a slender slinky thing that came to also join its counterpart. “Yah made them look like the number ten.” Immediately his mouth was pointing out the obvious. Short and fat. Tall and slim. They were basically a one and a zero.
And of course, “What makes yah think I’ll be usin’ this place often enough to warrant such creatures needing to offering me what everyone else typically does in the expression department?” Straightening again so he could lean on the table and prod at the fat one mostly, “This is ridiculous.”
She could count her blessings that the two critters had made their appearance when they did, for while he was distracted it gave her the chance to get her breathing back to something normal. Willing that fiery tingle under her skin to bugger off and to remember that her intentions of even bothering to bring up her feelings at all were so he’d understand she did actually care about him and wanted him to be cared for. …and not in the damn way that involved throwing clothes all over the place!
Calia poured herself a glass of water and chilled it almost to freezing just so she could take a few deep swallows. It hardly made any effect at all, but at least now her shoulders could relax.
“Okay, your tower felt like it needed cats. And seeing as living ones wouldn’t be so grand left here to their own devices, plush little beasts make for far better companions.”
Calia finally dared to glance over her shoulder to steal a peek, where the fat one had taken to bapbapbapbapbaping at his hand for daring to touch it, as if it was now it’s life’s vendetta to destroy him. While the slender one leaned and streeeeetched on the table before slinking it’s way to climb up his arm and bunt his face with endearing affection.
“See, they already like you.”
A small almost imperceptible frown pulled at lips with the mere suggestion that his place apparently needed cushion cats. Something that he didn’t know was factual considering that this very location had been blissfully uninhabited for however long. Neither him nor animal. Real or not, it was just the echoes that had called this place home. And fairly, he could have them sending him all the judgmental looks anyways, with more cut and pain and that pressurized sensation of both agonizing failure and defeat all looped up into one.
And he suspected that this was Calia’s way of silently expressing that she wanted to be entrenched further in the well of magic by giving some couch pillows sentience.
Being swatted at, Arc stared at the little fat one with a sort of gleam that could have been mischievous, “I bet yah were an ass cushion. Or I’ll make yah back into one.” If it weren’t for the nicer, sweeter one that had come up and decided that it was going to be loving. It was pretty immediate too that he took to standing. Sweeping up the slender thing made of fabric and cushion fluff into arms. Letting it contently settle like the sweetest little basket and huffed. He’d never been much of a person for animals. They were neither here nor there, but he felt the same way with kids. So that wasn’t saying too much, was it.
But he also wasn’t exactly the sort that turned down affection either. At least when it was sincere and genuine, which apparently was enough to get him to step away from the table where sir porkypie sat. “One at least gets a pass.” Arc murmured loud enough, “Though if any of them shit cotton in shoes, they are getting unraveled.”
In the way her feelings and emotions always did, crashing in ways and blustering in storms to twist and turn in a new direction whenever something struck against her – there the shift came again. Warily watching his reaction to the plush creatures, taking note of every little twitch of skin and shift of vocal tone. Relaxing her own body immediately when he scooped up the slender one for means of gentle affections… and in a weird sort of way coming to a vague realization in this small, unintended example how he tended to react to things.
Quick to retreat from what baps at him. Fast to cling to what was soft and sweet. It really was no wonder they were like magnetic poles to each other, for wasn’t she always the same way! Only ever giving back what was given to her. Quick to react to the immediate moment and never quite seeing farther than that.
“Aren’t you lucky then that I made them to be stalwart little guardians of your tower and not to cause you any mischief. Although now I have fun new ideas for harassing others.” The comment came with a smile, something bright and actually genuine. Finally having shaken herself out of her temporary insanity of completely inappropriate thoughts to circle back around to a more congenial present. Still faeish and teasing in how she flicked that smile over her shoulder, but now with a returned ease in a quiet moment.
“You better name them something nice and if you try to unravel them I’m going to give them teeth and claws next time.” she warned him. It was likely inevitable that at some point he was going to get mad at her again and pop the stuffing out of them, but Calia really hoped these two would actually last longer than a day!
In the mean time she plucked up the plump sir of smugness to drop him down by the hearth – he was completely furious about it, stomping poofy paws for a second before plopping into a loaf. Calia scoffed at it herself, shifting away to finally retrieve her baked meal out of the potbelly stove now that it had that rich savory aroma signaling that all the vegetables had simmered away in those butter and herbs enough to become perfectly tender. It only took her a moment to set the table – nothing fancy or complicated. No big spread the way she had laid out and attacked lunch earlier in the day. This was no more than a simple meal made with promised care.
Her observations likely could have been voiced in agreement. More than aware that he had a tendency to prefer the soft and sweet because there was some portion of him utterly desperate for just a gentleness aimed at him. Rather than mockery or cruelty in any sort of form. Just to allow him to exist without a snide comment or a threat aimed at his head. Not that he would have gone that deep into explanation either.
Having wandered over to the newly crafted door to stare out of –after opening it of course- to the creation of a garden. While she expressed her motive for creation was little guardians. Prompting Arc to look at the fat cat with a sort of thought that wasn’t sure for a guardian to be rolly polly and bitchy. Not that it mattered, he was content surprisingly with the nicer of the two.
Of course Calia suggested he had better name them nicely. Really favouring just calling the large one, Chunky for the sake of it. It wasn’t as mean as he could do, “If there’s no crap in shoes, I won’t be fussed to unravel them as I said.” Ensuring she heard him repeat the statement. Never mind the whole content to be holding the cushion loaf in arm. Lingering in his state of observation while the means of unnecessary food was pulled and table arranged to be perfectly domesticated.
It made him, unusually uncertain. Probably associated with the floundering state of thoughts being very tumultuous and not quite having been able to sort them in a way that could allow him not to feel every little thing. This just felt… too comfortable. Leaning on a sense of private uncertainty and an almost immediate reaction to be loud and foolish to distract from it.
It twisted his chest a little. Stooping to let down the slender cat with an approving palm smoothing from head to back, “Avia,” He muttered seemingly settled on a name that was evidently elvish and shrugging, “Name the other one as yah want. Otherwise I’m guna call it somethin’ cruel. On purpose.”
She was watching him from the corner of her eye while fetching out of her hollow one of their pilfered bottles of ale from Tir Elas. He’d do very well with a real cat, she thought, if their life wasn’t one filled with a barrage of problems on their heels and endless traveling with truly no end in sight. It reminded her of his fondness for Mercy and beyond that how she herself missed the pretty mare. Accidentally reopening that wound of a life she once had, looking after the horses in the stables and going out for long rides. Throwing sticks for the hounds and giving scritches to the barn cats.
How strange it was to think about it now. Back then she never felt lonely… not until she was standing in a crowd of people.
Calia poured them both a glass of the ale and chilled it with a touch of her fingers. Taking a seat just as he settled on a name for his favor cushioned, and audibly laughing at the fact it was beautifully sweet in the same way he was being perfectly rotten to the other just because it swatted at his prodding hand.
“In that case, he shall henceforth be called Lord Buttons, Nemesis of… well, everything I suppose. I made the first one for you, but I made his smug wickedness so she wouldn’t be here all by herself.” Now her two creatures had to live longer than a day, for they both had names personalities and purpose.
Taking her claimed seat, she filled their plates to start eating herself, none too worried about waiting for him or fussing at him to sit. The fact that all was quietly domestic didn’t much phase her or even become a blip in her thoughts. Calia was just as comfortable at a quiet intimate kitchen table as she was out in the forest by a campfire. Her thoughts skipping more ahead to the actual gift of comfort she’d spent the day weaving for him.
Well he did say Calia ought to name the bitchy thing, just Lord Buttons seemed so… well it didn’t seem to fit into his own personal narrative. Liable to develop new names for the surly looking thing all loafed up with its cushion face looking like the back end of a real cat’s asshole. All puckered and perfectly miserable. Already picking out elven names that weren’t at all flattering but not speaking them because well, he wasn’t going to audibly assault the damn thing with Calia present.
“I think yah made them just for the amusement to show off that they don’t have googly eyes and make trumpet noises, that I know of yet.” Arc countered her suggestion that she made the Avia for him and the other to keep the first company. Suspecting that Calia’s mischievous nature had subconsciously told her to turn more furniture into not so inanimate objects because that was truly her thing. Sticks, rocks, flowers, now cushions. She was leveling up but also he was starting to suspect that grand trees would start walking around. Buildings would dance and boats would fly, if she was struck with the thought.
Following her lead to come and sit. Considering the arrangement and quietly quashing down that nagging discomfort that made this moment feel too homey. It wasn’t as though they hadn’t sat down at a meal before. Numerous times now, but it was not like this. Amongst a kitchen of his own memories, tailored to be a near reflection of a youth that had spent so long looking up to an older man that did everything to keep his then only child safe, happy and they had talked about absolutely nothing. Pouring his fatherly self into the moment so in turn, he as the child would not think too heavily or feel the absence of more that was ever looming.
A stolen look proved that Calia was as at ease here as she was in a tree, on a war path or in-between. Leaving it to be simply him that was feeling those nuggets of disarray. Quietly feeling the presence of every silent node of the room between the sounds of their breathing and the light clatter of utensils to plate. Leaving him to prod at the meal that smelt perfectly fine and wonderful and taking a strong note of just how… all of this felt so alien. So wrong. So… not him.
Stirring some of the perfectly cooked circles of food around the plate as if the action was going to unravel parts of his mind and avoid it all spilling out onto the surface in front of them. Doing next what he did best, starting to fill those awkward thoughts with nonsense of other projects so he might properly start eating, less he accidentally offend Calia by not doing so.
It was true she made them for amusement, but it still boggled her how he hadn’t figured out she only ever made them for him. It’s not as if she’d been shaping objects to life before she ever met him! Every single one had been made to spark his curiosity, to draw him out of moody quietness… whimsy. It was whimsy and joy… and maybe sometimes a whole lot of her own personal desperate anxiety to connect.
Regardless, she wasn’t going to try explaining that to him again. Liable to get herself into another cheeky round of spicy kiss chicken and damnit to hell, she’d finally stopped thinking about that and it was better never thought of again!
For someone who hated to bicker and argue, Arc sure seemed to always get so pensive when moments were quiet and at ease. Calia was doing her damndest not to be so… aggressive. To fuss, to paw at, to grab, or cling or smother or scream at the ceiling. Ignoring that stupid inner voice that was now trying to suggest she’d be way better at being a lover than a friend. Kicking that thought right in the guts, tying it up and burying it in the deep void within her chest.
Finally decided perhaps it was best if she did nothing at all to break the silence. Simply sliding out a foot to gently bump against his calf now and then as a means of touch. No kicking, no saucy flirting, just a far more gentle bumpbumping so he knew she was present. Although when she was done polishing off what was on her plate, it was too hard to resist leaning back in her chair with her cup of ale and propping her feet up on his lap. Keeping an air of suspicious innocence, as well… he needed to be just a little bothered, didn’t he.
Thankfully it wasn’t hard to let his mind veer away once it found something better to chew on. Idly replying to the gentle bumps between mouthfuls and staring a bit more out into the unknown while pulling unseen threads.
Content for now when he wasn’t eyeball deep in the whole domesticate uncertainty and quite displacement of existence. That seemed well enough till there was a whole part of legs suddenly in his lap, pulling focus back to the here and now. Rounding violets back to her while she was airing that all too innocent state that spoke that she was up to something at all. And naturally, “What are yah thinkin’ about bein’ devious about now?” He asked, not about to be sold on the fact she was so pure and so not up to something. Because the Calia he knew, wasn’t innocent. Doubly so when she was trying to look the part and the fae in her blood ran all the way from here to the very Fae tree itself in Edelguard.
Calia just shrugged her shoulders and took a sip from her drink. Truly, she wasn’t up to anything at all, unless one counted pretending to be up to something just to keep him on his toes. The innocence was real, it was the mischief she was faking! If one wanted to believe that.
“I happen to be content, thank you very much,” she answered with that imperious tilt of her shoulders. “Enjoying my drink before I clean all this up and drag you off to see the absolute horrors I’ve decided to shape into a sleep dungeon.”
Unlike the rest of the tower where her magic touch had been only to tweak and enhance, crafting that bedroom had been a deliberate construction from ceiling to floor. Every detail, every board, piece of art, bit of his baubles and books all placed with a special care that she likely hadn’t given anything in her entire life. Calia had spent hours learning how the magic of his tower flowed and could be manipulated in order to grow that space.
…and if she were actually going to be truthful it was a lot easier to downplay it as a disaster and her being a devious minx than admit to herself that she was a little anxious about how he’d perceive it. He’d said she could do as she pleased, but it didn’t mean he’d see the gesture for what it was or even like it at all!
“Besides, I used up the cushions to make those cats. You’re gonna have to be the pillow tonight. May as well ruffle your feathers so you’re all cozy.”
His sights fell to the arrangement of the table. Lingering in a observational silence as if suspecting something was going to sprout legs to go running around like a headless chicken, all the while she was really offering too much in the means of being so pure when he didn’t think he could trust it at all. It felt loaded and tricky and just the right amount of suspicious that was starting to make his skin itch. As if being watched while the person was simply waiting for him to make a wrong move.
Instead he moved the ale that she had prepared for him, over to her. A second glass for her appreciation, while body gathered up. Taking care to set her feet onto the cushion that had been his seat so he could instead motion that he hardly expected her to clean up anyways. Practically hearing a voice in his head expressing that one that cooked, did not do the tending to after. Add on that he felt it might give him something to do anyways, while Calia was playing the theme of impish fae with all the otherworldly delights to set him into cautionary consideration.
She was still healing from her self stabbing episode. Picking up dishware, “Ruffle my feathers?” Arc repeated, “Or yah could just manifest new pillows for yerself and yer pretty little head. I’ll either keep workin’ now that my thoughts aren’t liable to be too overburden till the next set of echoes whispers close. I’ll see this sleep dungeon yah cultivated for yerself regardless. It’s clearly something yah be wantin’ to show off and get the heaps of praise yah be searchin’ for.”
She watched him slide the drink over with a soft frown, deciding not to say a word about it. Just grateful he bothered to sit down and eat a real meal instead of giving her the whole demons don’t eat spiel. When he started gathering up the dishware was when she straightened and opened her mouth – again having to halt herself. When Arc wanted to be lazy he was lazy, when he needed to be up and doing something he got up and did things. She needed to leave it be.
So she tossed back her own drink in a few deep swallows to set the cup aside and let herself take his to hold in her hands.
Teasing, ruffling, and general mischief had been the wrong choice. It’d be so much easier if she were one of those damn cats. Calia would just hop on his back and ride him around the tower until he finally decided to go to bed. Impossible to do in this human form of hers as he was liable to think he was being attacked!
…maybe it was time to get over that fear of shifting. Learn how to be something small and unassuming so she could be present without being so Calia.
“If you’re wanting to get back to twiddling with things, it can wait. I’ll just… sprawl in a corner nearby until you’re ready for bed. There’s really no need to rush.”
Bringing over everything to complete in a menial effort rather than manifesting some floating hands with a scrub brush and a dish rag to do the actual dishes portion, he had picked up that Calia was practically brimming with excitement at the idea of showing him what she had done to the space that was now deemed as the sleep dungeon. Either it was outrageously detailed in ways he never would have thought about even as a thespian shit on a good day, or she was scheming something that was beyond his level as a mere demon. Lacking that fae insight that could be so subtle and devilish without even breaking a sweat.
What he could pick up was the fact that when he expressed he likely wasn’t going to tumble into a pit full of ruffled blankets and softened beds; she was suggesting that she would settled down nearby.
Prompting him to look at her and study. Not the look at her and offer her a free cheeky comment that fell out of his mouth before any thinking could occur. “Lia, are yah wantin’ attention from me and to be close together?” Arc just decided to ask because well, he knew she was just as bad as he could be about being vocal about wanting something. At least when it came to personal things.
She could absolutely vocalize when she wanted to kill someone with her bare hands and did so well enough. Much like himself. But when it was softer, gentler things that was probably somewhat inspired by that idea that she wanted to take care of him –that was not going to be easier to swallow each time he thought it. But he could voice his thoughts as he promised he would do. “I’m twiddlin’ with thin’s cause I ain’t the sort that’s good at sortin’ through thoughts that sit like prickly lead. Doin’ somethin’ is the only way I can think and not drown in myself. If yer wonderin’ why I’m practically pacin’ like a captured pet, that’s trapped itself.”
Immediately she froze like a dear caught in a camp fire’s light, scrunching up her nose with distaste for an instant before it melted away off her face along with her body going limp in a grim sort of reluctant acceptance.
“That is a weird way to say it… and no! …not exactly,” she hesitated with the correction there, because now that he’d called her out, she was going to have to explain herself. Just, how did Calia put those thoughts into words exactly without it all sounding a little sad, a bunch of bizarre, a smidge of desperation and all around just stupid. Especially when he was going to ignore her intentions and just focus on the parts where she was wanting something.
She set her glass on the table to finally shift her feet to the floor, turning to fold her arms over the back of her chair and watch him with a frown. To listen to what he intended to be up to, because apparently he felt the need to explain himself because she was the one being strange here.
“I don’t need attention,” she finally muttered. “I do… want to be close.”
There, she said it and she didn’t explode.
“It’s a room so you can sleep easy and actually get some real rest after all the stupid bullshit we’ve had to deal with. When you’re ready to sleep. I just don’t want to go to bed where I can’t reach you. Or wake up without you there. So if you still need to work your brain though some things, I can just curl up nearby and entertain myself until you’re ready. That’s all.”
You’d think he told her that the sky was actually green and that the ocean was really made out of gelatin by the way her face twisted up. Letting her get all the expressions out and a need to fidget around because well, he was owning up to doing the thing he said he would. Speaking up –generally. It was a work in progress thing after all.
Using the moment while she suggested she most certainly didn’t need to be nearby because Gaia’s green ass, that was something so beyond anything she as a being of mortal flesh and blood would ever think of. Not that she didn’t just have her legs in his lap seeking physical presence. And she called him out before about being bad about taking things at face value, well, someone else really had a problem with being vulnerable. Something he understood and equally shared.
One left her to her devices of sorting herself. Getting up, moving and offering him a dark frown whilst he worked on tending to the dishware that was used to prep and cook. Making the small wooden basin fill with hot water so the leftovers could be stashed away in a hollow of her choosing. Set aside for now so the dish could go into the soapy demise to soak a moment and offered her a glance from the corner of eye. That attention was not something she needed, but she did hesitate on the whole being nearby. It was a good thing he was being inspired by the think first, then speak act because boy he could have had something to say.
“I ain’t the one who has really dealt with the stupid bullshit though.” Arc pointed out, “Remember, I was the one that got snapped up like a less than tasty treat by a bitchy drake while yah had to watch, deal with a fae court and king who wanted yah like a fancy necklace. Then the demonic twat and the resulting stabbing incident whilst I was attempting to flee everythin’ like a over stimulated toddler.” He was by no means going to say he didn’t do anything wrong. He had acted stupidly and foolishly after all.
Of course Arc paused, “Sleep isn’t exactly restful anyways, I don’t think yah ought to be puttin’ yer own health at risk because I ain’t ready or wantin’ to deal with phantoms clawin’ at my thoughts and insides like mud, Lia.” The demon set himself to cleaning duty right proper, “But if yah wanna lurk around as I consider the great mysteries of life in a vain attempt to escape myself, then I ain’t guna complain. Just make sure yer comfortable is all that matters.”
“Yeah, I dealt with all that. And you were tortured by Starling and tortured by some random demon, and then tortured by Fawna and had about twenty different fights with me before getting snatched up by an opportunistic twat.” she pointed out, tit for tat. He couldn’t dare say she was the one going through hell when he himself was the one literally getting snatched up and tortured by everyone with hands and ambitions!
Finally she just sighed, seeing the futility in bickering about it again. Going limp there draped over the back of the chair, watching him go through the motions of tidying up instead of snapping it all away with the tips of his fingers. Ironically the same as she’d been doing in making dinner for them in the first place. Understanding all too well how busy hands helped worked through those frustrating, tangled up things in the mind.
“I know it’s hard to sleep and I’m sure not going to force you to do it. I am just trying to make it easier.” she grumbled. “I’ll be fine lurking around. It’s not like I’m going to hang upside down from the rafters in protest of your machinations, watching over you like a disgruntled gargoyle. I’d just like to stay close so I can make with the stabbing of someone other than myself should any attempts of you being disappeared decide your warded tower is easy to topple.”
“Hmm, just another Wednesday,” Arc chuckled as she expressed the means of how he had apparently been snatched and tortured like it was a sport for others to participate in. Being something akin to a theme night seeing as it did seem he had a particular type of people that just wanted to see how far he could stretch before screaming in agonized mercy. Granted, he wasn’t looking to bicker about it either.
Honestly, he was pretty tired of doing so with Calia. Knowing he just had to learn to say things rather than getting all thorny about it.
Hence his efforts now. Even if she seemed to become rather boneless for a moment. Warranting an eyebrow raise and maybe a little concern that he wasn’t saying the right things to stave off any potential ire from her as well. Momentarily shifting to offer a chuckle that she just wanted to try and make the whole means of sleeping easier. “So yah guna smother me?” Arc smirked showing that he was teasing about it, “Might work too.” Though it was not on the top ten things he would want to try either. Staving off an added depreciating comment to instead fill lungs. Glancing at the rafters as if wondering how easy it would be to just dangle upside down from them anyways.
“I don’t think we be needin’ to worry about uninvited guests wantin’ to invite me to their next torture chamber, love. At least not from here. Out in the means of reality, oh absolutely. After all, them dark faelin’s don’t want our tether to be ours. But theirs and yours. And any demon’s that could want that, let’s just hope they’re too busy makin’ their knees raw tryin’ to please the thief of yer heart.” Hands paused a moment with a depth of knitted brows, “Y’know I ain’t tryin’ to push yah away, Lia. I’m just… ever not used to someone in my mind, being dumb enough to want to make sure thin’s are okay. I… do appreciate yer care, it’s just… weird. Makes me uncomfortable like I need to peel my skin off cause well? It’s not because of who yah are, just who I am.” Violets were looking at her through the corner of eye, “In case yah needed that knowledge, I prefer yah close by but I ain’t good at bein’ domesticate either.”
Calia let out a soft scoff at the suggestion of smothering him – tempting! Sometimes a little too tempting with how often they tended to get into a scuffle. Admitted, most of those times it was her losing her temper because she didn’t take the time to just shut up and listen, She was trying to, though, keeping herself loose and present. Not letting things that usually would have her throwing up a middle finger and walking out get in the way. Especially now that she knew, knew it was willful misunderstandings because they were both oh so stupid about the same damn things.
Never in a million years would she have thought that patience would’ve been rewarded with one small little statement she didn’t even know she needed to hear. Breaking into a faint smile where she rest her head on the back of the chair. He did actually appreciate the efforts, it just made him wriggle inside. He spent more of his life as a demon going through the hells and knowing nothing but chaos and malice than he ever spent as an elven man. Calia didn’t expect him to be okay.
Then he had to go and complain about being domestic and she suddenly burst into a loud raucous laugh.
“The last thing we’re ever going to be is domesticated. Cozy dinners and quiet nights away from the world is never going to make us less wild. But if it makes you feel any better, next time I drink too much of the ale and dance on the table for you.”
Once she had that laughter under control Calia was up out of her chair in an instant, caving into that insistent need to steal the means of contact while he was occupied and willingly telling her that she wasn’t being obnoxious or smothering him just with her presence alone. She slipped behind him to slink her arms around his waist to hug him and bury her face into his back. Squeezing almost hard enough to seem like she actually was trying to smother him.
“Don’t peel your skin off,” she grumbled, muffled into his back. “I’m not touching a skinless demon.”
“Alongside the rest of the bar if yah get that sloshed and start doin’ so.” Arc met that bright laughter at the whole idea that he was uncomfortable with being domesticated. Not in the way she was referencing but more towards, it was his own thoughts that didn’t know how to just sit with someone anymore. In a mood that was no more than a comfortable ambience where it was just spent in the presence. He couldn’t even really pinpoint the real and true last time he had even from his memories.
Just in a kitchen. With hot food, company that was chatting about absolutely nothing and feeling nothing more than the ease of being part of the scene rather than being the problem to it.
But she was pleased obviously at his phrasing and he wasn’t really too keen on correcting the perspective anyways. Taking the moment as it was while appreciating that he hadn’t pissed Calia off because he didn’t explain it the right way.
Setting aside a few of the newly washed and scrubbed dishes so they could be dried momentarily, he didn’t trace her approach. Yet there was a short tension in his frame when she came and settled behind him. Sliding in close to loop arms around that of waist and tighten so much that he suspected she might have needed this more than she was ever going to say. Warranting a hand to find where hers had looped over and lightly pat, and squeeze in reply.
“Eh, I’d probably only get about a quarter the way through and get bored doin’ it anyways. Sounds like a lot of fuckin’ effort to be a dramatic dumbass, so not my motif.” Arc chuckled, “Yah ain’t guna have to worry about that.”
Another pat, “Show me the sleep dungeon that yer practically giddy about. I might as well get an eyeful and maybe if we are lucky, I’ll be overcome with a need to rest that yah won’t have to see if my rafters could in fact be hung from upside down out of scholarly inquiry, petal.”
“Well now I don’t want to out of spite!” Calia declared into his back, stealing at least one more squeeze before letting go. Clearly not serious about this complaint, even if there was this sheepish expression crossing her features and the faintest hint of pink in her cheeks. She wasn’t going to waste time and deflect about it, though. Keenly deciding it was best to get it out of the way of showing him, after she’d made such a big deal about it so he could go ahead and make his commentary. As long as she did get to stay close, it honestly didn’t matter if it was in bed or sprawling out on his workshop sofa while he fiddled away at those healing potions.
She grabbed his hand, tugging him with her at the speed of urgency. Not giddy because that was so silly, but she wasn’t going to deny that she was proud of what she’d managed to put together in the manner of a day.
Like the front door, the bedroom’s door had received it’s decorative treatment with the same etched care, and she pushed it open without an ounce of hesitation to tug him inside. Sweeping her hand with a quick curl to ignite the various lights she’d chosen to give the room a warm glow. A chandelier to be lit with soft enchanted stars that twinkled, tall candelabra’s in corners and sconces on the walls to mimic the flicker of the tempered fire in the hearth. She’d pushed out the walls and paneled them in a combination of a dark deep wood and a deep emerald green wallpaper that shimmered a faint pattern like evergreens in the forest. Not that there was much wall to see, as she’d covered most of them with shelves of books and little trinkets she’d pilfered from all over the tower. Nothing that seemed so important that it needed to be on hand in his workshop – she’d obeyed that request and left his workshop well alone – simply things that caught her eye or her interest.
Of course there was the chairs for him to read in by the fire, rich with a violet hue he seemed to favor. The stained glass in the double doors that led to a small added balcony if he wanted to do so with fresh air, with their starlight sky one one side and the bright sun on the other. Most of all there was her threatened sleep dungeon of a bed. Her center piece of art with it’s tall posts and heavy backboard, rich fabrics in a gemtoned rainbow of colors from the draping canopy of velvet blue to the plush burgundy of blankets and gold embroidered violets.
Calia had not just studied the way the magic of the tower worked to craft the space with such detail, she’d studied it’s contents too for it to fit so seamlessly within his tower that he may as well have made it himself. It could’ve always been there the entire time, if it weren’t for the fact that she had such a recognizable style of her own in those hints of forest creatures and little hidden silly things if one squinted their eyes and looked hard enough. It was just a space made for him but something she poured herself into as well.
And she was holding her breath. Not daring to look at him, instead flicking her fingers at some invisible speck of dust.
At her insistence, they left the kitchen. To take the standard spiral stairwell upwards into the reaches of the tower that housed the space that was once no more than his slab of a bed and a few other rooms. Mostly empty because he hadn’t really ever had a reason for others to stay in this realm of his concentrated magic.
A look over the door was enough of a tell to speak, Calia was here. Earning a hum and a direct follow into the space.
Immediately it was certainly far grander than what it had been. Walls expanded outwards. Losing the simple gray rock and mortar paste, to be filled in. Detailed with paneling and a deep rich green that loudly expressed that a woman’s touch had been here. Something he knew about because he seem how is father’s own study had been turned from naked minimalistic to grand whiskey regalility. Now tye space where had been just a place to lay down the body bag of his own organs, was transformed.
Lush. Extravagant. Rich in ways that bespoke of Calia’s royal roots without it dripping gold and silver. Something pointedly warm and decadent without feeling over the top in the way those with money would flaunt their wealth.
He stepped around. Considering individual pieces that were both new and pieces that were quiet associations to memories of his. Paired like cheese and wine, just this was comfort with books and touches of a woman that often thought herself black and hollow. Where feet led to the extension of a balcony behind artistic glass, and a space beyond that was meant to be personal with its table and chairs.
Of course the largest and hard to miss portion was the bed. Practically screaming posh living with its eight thousand too many pillows. Looking like it was a mortal trap that was waiting to suck the next victim into its soft smothering warm grasp.
Arc truly was looking at everything. Thoughts wondering if this creation was an echo into what Calia truly wanted, and he mentally wondered just why the hell she was wasting just efforts on a demon that honestly had very little good left within. It was, in a sense, overwhelming.
But he was not about to wallow in his private thoughts. Rather turning to look at the princess attempting to look indifferent. “I’m nearly speechless, Lia.” His tone was gentle, sweet and warm with awe. “This is certainly more than what I was expectin’ and absolutely not at all what I thought would be here. Truly thought yah’d have a hoard of flower llamas waitin’ inside to trample me over.”
The demon smiled a little, not the broad cheeky span. “I ain’t no designer but, yah only prove yer remarkable once more. It’s grand.”
When he finally spoke he had to go and say he was near speechless with such a sense of awe that it made her stiffen and twist ever so slightly where she stood. If he wriggled in his own skin in those moment where someone showed their care, here was hers. Not uncomfortable with the compliments themselves for she damn well knew she did a good job and deserved them – it was the nature of his tone. Where she couldn’t seem to find any of the sarcasm, cheeky amusement, or performative joy. Only something soft and gently genuine that she simply didn’t know what to do with.
“It’s a nice place to sleep,” she answered when she finally found her voice again. Taking in a breath to shake off that discomfort to straighten and actually set her sight on him. Almost mimicking that stance he took when he got all professorial about magic to explain it away.
“I’ve always thought one should see something beautiful as they’re falling asleep, so you’re less likely to have bad dreams. There’s no room for nightmares that way.” A shrug of her shoulders followed and she tilted towards the door. Gesturing softly with her head. As she promised, she wasn’t going to force him to sleep if he still needed to work through some things. Calia could throw herself anywhere comfortable and not have an issue sleeping. Her nightmares were always the same anyway.
“We can go lurk in your workshop now. I can probably conjure a few llamas while you’re doing your research and fiddling.”
“No, what I had before was a nice place to sleep. This is,” Hand gestured to the room as a whole, “Is somethin’ more than that. Not quite to the point of bein’ so capricious as a royal’s bedroom that can change between the hours, but certainly carryin’ the means of being homey. Important and a sense of personal care that yah put into it all.”
He wasn’t really one for fancy things. If he had been, the tower probably would be a manor and made from gold with no purpose to anything. But the place had been cultivated from important memories and a show that while he was absolutely the loudest thing around with an circus act in triplicates, he did prefer things to be generally minor. At least where it counted. No pomp, no pizzazz. But he could also tell that Calia appreciated things that brought comfort. As she expressed she thought the room ought to be beautiful in a hope to keep the means of shitty dreams at bay.
And he could tell she was trying very hard not to be awkward because she was a bit stiff, if not throwing him the biggest I know when he said she was remarkable as always.
Another look around the room and he certainly knew he didn’t belong in such a place so detailed. Like pearls before swine but he could appreciate the level of care and consideration she had put into it all. Because this wasn’t just a show of what she could do, it was Calia’s silent way of showing she paid attention to things and was trying her hardest to prove –unclear if it was to him, to herself or something else- that she was more than a angry little hurricane of biting sass and a quick sword.
Now he was going to have to figure out a way to appreciate the space that felt far too lavish for a trash goblin while not hurting her feelings and keeping his out of the way.
“I’m sure the stack of books on the wall will interest yah to skimmin’ through them till yah don’t wanna then yah can make yer little llama army.” Arc motioned for them to step out of the space but he made sure it was clear he was still observing it. Just as they moved back into the hall, he was exhaling sharply from his nose, pausing on the landing. Bracing a hand to the wall as the air shifted softly with the concentration of magic in a familiar way that made the hairs at the nape of his neck, stand. At the top of the staircase, there she was: an echo of Aelyra. She wasn’t solid as he expressed they were just passing visualizations of the past. As her golden hair caught the faintest shimmer, and her eyes were fixed down the stairwell.
Somewhere lower in the tower, a sound threaded through the stone. A ripple of laughter. Not just any laugh—light, bright, and high like wind-bells. Rising upwards till the faint image of a young elven girl was springing up and animatedly gesturing in excitement to the elder one. Arc stood still for a long heartbeat, violet eyes lifting toward the spectral figure above, the sound tugging at something old in his chest. The tower, his own and steeped in magic, didn’t just remember—it played memories like lullabies. And tonight, it chose theirs as if to show off he suspected what it could do because Calia was getting attention and the tower could potentially be jealous.
He gave the image a lingering look before moving on. Stepping through to descend down the stairwell, and now unsurprised that the very space was offering another few echoes to move through the hallway below.
Calia could not quite tell if he were squirming in his own skin again wanting to refuse a gift made for him, or if perhaps she truly had done a little too much. If she’s zeroed in and got swept away in all the small details that she’d gone overboard and created something cluttered and smothering, rather than a visual space that was meant to feel like a warm embrace. He’d seemed like the sort of person who needed small intimate spaces to be cradled in, compared to the hollow empty voids of grand manors and stone castles.
All she really knew for certain was that Arc was being particularly careful delicate about her potential feelings, and that softened something in her just as much as it might a piece of her chest tighten and twist.
“I hope they’re picture books,” she murmured, easing out in the hall to join him and finding herself too pausing when there was the most subtle of shift within the tower.
Ah. The golden haired beauty that Calia had come to guess was his sister. He’d warned her about these visions he’d called echoes, and it was true that as she meddled and prodded and plucked at the threads of his tower she’d caught a faint glimpse of them here and there. Only, while she’d been on her own they’d only been the briefest of quiet whispers. Perhaps a tiny glimpse out of the corner of her eye before she could straighten and really get a good look at them. Sometimes that feeling would prickle the hairs on her skin as if to warn her not that item or felt like an encouraging breeze of yes, that. Strangely similar to that of the Bladerift Tower, where it wasn’t exactly sentient or alive but it surely reflected the feelings of it’s masters.
Here in the hall with her sight flickering over to Archimedes to examine his face, they were far more prominent. As if they needed him to see these visions: to acknowledge them. Feel them. Bringing a curious bit of understanding in Calia’s thoughts.
She stepped in close, entwining her fingers with his and squeezed his bicep with her other hand to walk with him back to his workshop. All that awkwardness of before brushed side to take on that of an apprentice eager to share the secrets she’d just learned.
“I learned a lot here meddling with your things,” she confessed with a squeeze of his hand. “Magic can do anything but even for the most powerful wielder of magic, it still requires something extra to be poured into it to create something. Like Alchemy requires equivalent exchange down to it’s base elements. magic needs… a signature? An imprint? I’ve not figure the specifics just yet, only that in the case of a mage’s tower and the space around it that sustains it, that is all memory. Everything here only exists because it’s made of pieces of yourself, and so…”
She paused there, tilting her head and glancing around at the halls where the remnants of girlish giggles were softly fading.
“…and so when the tower speaks, that is your magic trying to tell you something. I suspect for a wizard or mage who studies magic for decades and lives centuries, it’s not just a place to practice magic safely, but a place where your magic can have a voice. Help you with your work. Process what is on your mind. Not become one of those crazy sorcerers that get consumed by their own magic.”
He wasn’t sure really the need or the presence of Calia stepping in close, but he hardly found it to be unbearable. Rather there was a silent nod that was his best of expressing his appreciation to her attention. Tilting attention as they walked back down the stairs, whilst listening to her detail her thoughts openly. Telling that her investigation of threads that attached itself to this very place rife with his own abundant concentration of magic; she had discovered things. That magic was powerful but it required something to make it into something stable.
Arc didn’t interrupt. Rather he was curious to hear what her thoughts were because honestly, as trained as he was as a high classed mage, it was always interesting to hear another’s perspective. At least he had thought so. To learn from another and Calia was someone who was embedded in the flow of the natural movement of the gift while also being distinctly different due to her fae blood.
As she paused, he motioned for them to keep going. Humming a bit when she was expressing that it seemed that the very place he was, the existence that was created as the gate for a mage to work, appeared to her as a voice of that very conduit that was his own. “I mean, I feel like some of them crazy sorts were made crazy because of thin’s like this. Or they didn’t listen, can’t say.” He chuckled a bit but he wasn’t disagreeing with her assessment. It was a way of thinking he had not considered before and it was worth feeling through his figurative fingertips.
With a motion towards the workshop door, it yawned open before one needed to lay hands upon it. Inviting them in as the expectation of quiet and peace was to be present, it did seem like Calia’s thoughts about the space attempting to speak and help was potentially very right. As the air seemed to be alive with the workbench supporting a new echo.
Sharp and bright, nearly cruel in its clarity.
A man leaned forward over some intricate contraption, his dark blue hair tied back in a high ponytail, a few stubborn strands escaping to brush against his brow. The curve of his mouth was serious, the set of his jaw familiar—too familiar. Baring telling signs of familial lineage between himself now and the echo then, declaring itself without words as Atticus. Stilling him at the threshold, every muscle taut. The memory breathed as though it were no more than a re-enactment rather than a former memory that the means of magic was trying to show.
Atticus lifted some gleaming thing between clever fingers, brow furrowed in concentration. And then, like a ripple through water, another figure darted into the light. A much smaller version of Arc—four years old at best—toddled forward with an earnest lack of patience, as one would likely expect from someone of his fame caliber. Hair a mess of soft blue, cheeks flushed, tiny hands reaching up with complete disregard for whatever delicate project his father was immersed in.
Atticus didn’t scold, he seemed to almost hate the effort of doing so even when necessary, but rather his face split into a grin so warm it cut like a blade now. Leaning back, arms opening without hesitation, catching little Arc mid-ramble and pulling him up into his lap with a soundless laugh. The echo held him close, fingers smoothing down the boy’s hair, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head as though this moment was everything. The tools on the table shimmered and blurred, as if the magic itself remembered the rhythm of their shared life—father and son in the golden hum of the workshop, where the world outside never quite mattered.
Easing out a exhale as the view shimmered away into the quiet of the room once more and Arc flicked a hand to the bookshelves, “There might be picture books in there, probably about herbology since yah gotta know what shit looks like so it don’t poison yah.”
“I think the intent of creation makes a difference too. Like did they make their tower with intent to learn and grow, or was it made out of ego and ambition,” she answered with some thought. “Are they are a person that can accept truths about themselves or have they always lived in delusion, and thus even everything they create ends up feeding the delusion.”
While Calia could not say for sure how the Bladerift Tower was constructed, seeing it had been built by many hands over many centuries, being here surrounded in Arc’s well of magic gave her an insight into his. Because unlike the persona he seemed to throw out into the world of a theatrical mage and court jester meant to annoy and distract… his inner private world was something quiet and humble.
And with this sudden display of old memory with the elder man that must his be father, so studious at his research and so loving with a wild tiny boy, or those visions of his sister and baby niece – Calia was certain those echoes weren’t trying to fill him with delusions or drive him mad. They were trying to remind him where he came from and things that were important to him.
…she had to wonder if this binding was a prison keeping him from being able to find that life again. He was a demon now, but who made the rules that said demons couldn’t build lives of their own if that was what they wanted? Archimedes himself might’ve been a special case and extraordinary exception, but there were moments Calia was really starting to wonder just how many demons out there had once simply been people whose true intent had been twisted and now they were marked forever as something evil without any chance to prove otherwise.
That was maybe far too big a problem for the likes of Calia to be thinking about. What was she going to do, storm the hells and rescue demons? Sure as hell a good road to making those dreams of becoming a wicked dark queen come true.
“Just let me know when you’re ready to go to bed,” she told him, brushing those wilder thoughts aside. Calia squeezed his arm one last time before finally setting him free to move towards those bookshelves he gestured to. Already plucking up a dusty tome to thumb through the yellowed pages and see if anything would pique her interest. “I won’t be out of sight.”
The gentle squeeze and he chuckled softly at her, “Y’know that’s prolly the tamest invite to bed I’ve ever gotten. And innocent too,” Never one to entirely shirk aside the suggestion of things, there was a quiet moment where he just watched her slip over to the worn shelf. Knowing she was not a book person because of what she had told him vividly.
Calia was the hand’s on sort, not the sit down and read sort. Less he guessed, it was a way for her to be put to sleep quickly because she grew bored.
For now, he shifted over to that of the workbench. Stretching hands, popping wrists and settling amongst the collection of items that were used in everyday alchemy and in turn, a hope to decipher those last stubborn ingredients that were eluding him within the healing potion! Allowing the time around them to become soft. Filled with a presence that was a studious, eager to learn sort that greatly belied the said showman that lived, breathed and perfected the act of tomfoolery with gusto.
It did seem as though the tower was truly trying to do something.
For it wasn’t clear to him when the return of the first echo came. A faint clink on the bench—so soft it might have been a drip of water—broke the stillness. But no mug sat there. He didn’t have to look up to know the shape it belonged to.
Aelyra, once more.
Her hair—a pale, sunlit gold—fell loose for a breath, then ghosted upward, catching itself in a high tail in that familiar habitual motion. She knelt by the edge of the bench the way she always used to when she came to pester him into abandoning work for something more reckless.
Arms folded. Chin balanced on her hands. Mouth moving in silence. Then came the faintest hitch of breath—the sound of her laugh before it ever became a sound. Shoulders shook with it, just once. Her grin curved impishly, sharp and bright. In the old memory, he must have swatted at her for something she’d said, because she leaned back with a mock-offended jerk, mouth widening in a grin he would have matched once upon a time.
She wasn’t looking at him—not really. They looked through him, as though stuck in the ruts of a past too old to know it was dead.
Her form thinned like smoke pulled toward an unseen draft. Gone.
But the bench did not grow quiet. A warm pressure hovered just over his left shoulder—so close that for a heartbeat it felt as though breath ghosted across the nape of his neck. The tap-tap of knuckles against wood followed, light but deliberate, as if pointing at a formula he couldn’t yet see. His father leaned over him in the way only memory could, his weight a phantom, his gestures animated and brisk, sleeves rolled to elbows as though ready to correct his son’s mistake with good humour and due care. The tap of his knuckles fell again near a faded rune on the parchment. Then, as naturally as breath, the gestures expanded outward. He was beckoning—not Arc—but someone else. Someone just beyond the moment.
And they came.
Faces—half formed—rose and fell like ripples in a pool. A figure Arc recognized, and another he didn’t. They leaned in, nodded, blurred. Memory was never consistent; it frayed at the edges. But they gathered as though Atticus had called them in for one of his lectures.
Arc didn’t chase the ghosts. He let them haunt the air around him like uninvited guests who knew the place better than he did. Keeping himself moving as he uncorked a bottle with his thumb, the sharp pop punctuating the soft thrum of the Echoes’ presence. Pouring carefully, steady as the tower around him seemed to pulse with old magic. His eyes flicked between runic shorthand and the residue in the glass. The tower itself had begun to listen. It always did, eventually.
Another sound now—light, quick, layered with youth. The thud of boots too large for the boy wearing them. A younger version of himself was laughing, shoulders thrown back, wild grin splitting across his face like mischief come alive. A fifteen-year-old Arc, sharp of tongue and endlessly infuriating, leaning toward the figure of Omai. The older mage threw up his hands—frustration carved into every movement—and the boy’s answering laughter was light, ringing, bright enough to make the air hum.
That laughter brushed against the edges of the present, tangling with the slow bubble rising in a beaker Arc now stirred absently with a glass rod. A rhythm long practiced: stir twice clockwise, once counter, wait for the shimmer. But then the sound changed, alerting him already to how things could shift with just a single breath.
There was a drag of boots—familiar, confident—and the air between where Calia stood and Arc’s workbench seemed to thin. The grand prince of the Elven realm stepped into the echo like sunlight slipping through half-closed curtains. His shape hovered closer to her space than any of the others ever dared. As if the echo itself was trying to show something to the mountain princess that Arc couldn’t even begin to guess at.
A faint exhale through a half-laugh, a soft tap of fingers against the frame of the nearby shelf. The shift of fabric brushing against the stone floor. It was so absurdly, achingly familiar that Arc’s chest tightened without permission. He could almost smell cedarwood and frost—a phantom trace of winter nights long gone. Carlisle tilted his head, the way he used to when Arc said something wicked just to make him bite his tongue. There was a teasing sharpness to that posture, a silent challenge tucked into the shape of a smile not made for this world anymore. That was the dangerous thing about Carlisle’s echo. It knew where to stand to hurt.
Arc’s pulse ticked once—hard.
The beaker in his hand stilled.
Then the warmth faltered. Because of course, it did. It was the sound warped first: the faint tap of fingers against the shelf stuttered into a wet scrape. The brush of cloth became something dragging. The breath grew shallow, strained, like air struggling through broken ribs. His boots no longer moved like a soft pacing—more like something pulled across the floor by bone and weight alone.
Carlisle’s shape convulsed at the edges. What once had been all confidence and lean grace twisted in on itself like meat pulled from the bone. One arm flickered—not quite where it should be—while his face warped through three fractured versions of itself: laughing, silent, ruined.
The sound of air being pulled through blood began.
His mouth never moved. But Arc didn’t need him to. He knew this sound. He’d lived this sound. That moment burned too deep into his marrow to ever fade. The laughter of Eden in the rafters faltered like a string pulled too tight. The boyhood echo of Arc went silent—just gone, mid-laugh. Atticus’ steady tapping against the wood turned to dull, irregular knocks, like a hand hitting a coffin lid from the inside.
Carlisle staggered closer— the echo’s movement was jerky, broken, as though something unseen was pulling him through the floorboards. His head jerked with it, eyes black and glossy as a pool at midnight. His jaw hung just slightly open, enough to let a sound like a choked breath leak out between phantom teeth.
It was wrong. All of it was wrong.
This wasn’t Carlisle. This was what Arc had made of him in the dark. Fawna’s touch had sunk claws deep. It didn’t take her much—just a twist here, a distortion there—to turn love into a weapon. To twist what Arc had lost into a constant bleeding reminder of what he’d done.
Carlisle’s face jerked toward him, and in the half-light of the tower, Arc saw it—the ruin his mind kept showing him: skin split, teeth bared in a soundless scream, eyes carved hollow by blame he could never wash away. The sharpness Carlisle once wielded in jest was now a blade pressed just under Arc’s ribs, invisible but no less real.
His chest felt tight, like the air had been pulled from the room. The potion in the beaker trembled with the subtle shake of his hand. The tower wasn’t empty. It never was. But now the silence of the Echoes wasn’t just memory. It was a noose—tightening. They didn’t speak. They didn’t have to.
The soft laugh that had once been warm was now a wet rattle under his skin. A conversation between a living man and the damage that refused to let him breathe.
Arc drew a slow, measured breath. It caught halfway down his throat. He didn’t look at Carlisle. Not directly. Looking made it oh so much worse.
So he lowered his gaze back to the bench, hands steadying as if work could anchor him. If he kept working—if he could make this recipe yield—then maybe the echoes would be forced to stay where they belonged. Behind him!
But they didn’t fade. Not yet.
Carlisle’s shadow stayed—lingering like a wound that would not close.
And Arc suddenly pushed back from the bench. The stool scraped harshly across the floor, the sound too loud against the quiet, like metal on stone. He stood too fast, breath catching in his chest, one hand braced on the edge of the table as if to steady the ground itself. The glass beaker trembled where he’d set it down, contents shivering in place. “I’m goin’ for a walk.” He declared more through a strained pull than a casual comment.
There might’ve been he barest flicker of a wicked smile to hear her invitation being called tame and innocent, for what a temptation it was to throw out something saucy and start that game back up again of intense flirting to see just how far they could push it before one of them came to their senses. Luckily the second her mind starting dreaming up mental pictures of things he’d promised, Calia immediately shut those thoughts down before she got herself into trouble.
Calia did not have a problem with reading through books, though she often felt that books had a problem with her. Of course she could read, her vocabulary was exceptional even if she tended to speak more casually than a proper royal heir ever should. Just as she stared down at the pages, attempting to trace her finger under the sentences to follow the lines of words, it had to be done at an agonizingly slow pace. Flicker her gaze too fast and letters would be all out of order. Attempt to soak in more than a single word at a time, and whole sentences became a hodgepodge of nonsense. Calia had to be still and concentrate if she wanted to get farther than a few pages, yet being still for too long and focusing on words alone made her antsy and squirmy on her feet.
She tortured herself for as long as she could stand before she caved with a quiet sigh, rolling her shoulders and instead of trying to read the words just… felt the books out through soft touch and light glances. In those moments she thought of old fae myths, having some vague memory of faes hating the written word or something of that nature. of course, another fae myth was that they couldn’t lie, and that’d surely been proven untrue as well! And if the elves were once fae, well, who in this world loved the written word and books more than the elves.
Her mind wandered with these thoughts and many others, casually turning through books in the few ways that didn’t frustrated her. The echoes of the tower that made themselves known through soft sounds and gentle touches didn’t bother her, nor did she make any attempt to listen too hard or eavesdrop upon them. Those memories were for Archimedes and it was none of her business. Although, she appreciated the way they made the tower feel full of a quiet life. Reminding her of home and hearing the background noise of her family going about their own daily business. Where Araminta would be playing the harp or trying to smuggle some animal into the castle. Haaron flirting around with the staff, or Fitz pacing in the study trying to practice the sort of speeches a future king was expected to give.
Calia was lost there in those thoughts until something in the shower shifted and drew her awareness back to the workshop itself. Almost like someone was leaning into her ear and whispering a pay attention, drawing her to catch the regal form of a man standing far closer to her than any of these other echoes ever dared. Tapping his fingers to the bookshelves with a sort of aura she could not put a finger on herself.
She felt it, that sudden warning shift – though she did not know where it came from. The tower attempting to tell her that something here wasn’t quite right? Was it simply her bond with Arc sharing that twisting ache in her chest because this was a pain he felt so deeply that it scarred his own heart? Or could it have been her own instinct, drawing her to set that book aside and stare this apparition down. Examining it from head to toe as it shifted from the handsome form of what must’ve been the eldest Prince of Edelguard, to a broken, mangled phantom filled not with expected sorrow or regret but something… menacing.
Meant to hurt. Meant to make suffer. Guilt was a powerful thing, made worse in the heart of someone who wielded so much power themselves.
…so why did it feel like this was more than a man’s self-inflicted guilt.
Where Archimedes could not seem to make a sound or even dare look, Calia did it for him. Studied it, watched it. Followed it across the room as if she were a haunting specter herself. She was almost at Arc’s side when he seemed to no longer be able to stand it and bolted up from the table so fast, she was surprised he didn’t upturn the entire thing. Calia carefully put herself between Arc and that twisted specter, giving the damn thing a squint of her eyes before they focused on the demon alone. Brushing a soft hand to his back.
“You were finally getting somewhere and making progress. He’s not even a ghost so he has no business trying to scare you away from doing something important. Sit down and keep working at it. He’ll go away.”
A walk was tame! Truly he just wanted to dismiss the entire realm so he could move amongst the cold world for a while more. Mentally challenging the idea all over again that he just might be able to seal away these laced prickles of anguish laden memories for nothing. But chose that a need to get away from it just might be enough. It never was but, it was a thought.
What he didn’t expect was Calia to be there. Blinking at her a few times as if he was struggling to register that she had still been present at all, ears themselves lifted slightly. A subtle motion that was shifting itself to show a sense of distress. Gaze flickering sideways as the echo itself seemed to be rather content to loom just behind the fae. As if it’s existence was meant to be a parrot to her and spurring a flicker of something that burned more than unease, but a sharp pang of anger. Quick, bright but fleeting.
Arc’s shoulders stiffened, the muscles in his jaw ticking from how hard he was clenching and yet, he lowered himself into the chair again. The motion jerky, too controlled to be natural. Promptly tapping fingers in a staccato rhythm against the table—anything to keep them from shaking. “Yeah, sure,” he said, voice pitched just a little too steady, like someone forcing calm through gritted teeth. “Easy fix. Just keep workin’. No big fuckin’ deal.” His laugh came out too thin—closer to a breath than a sound.
A clenching like that, chances were he was irritated with her and complying to avoid a fight that was just going to end up being a fight later anyway. Where he revealed in some grand hissing that she’d crossed a boundary again, forced him to do things, disrespected his wishes… well! Had he not run away from his own self long enough? They both had a very bad habit of doing that, so one of them was going to have to stop it!
“It’s a hard fix and a big fucking deal,” she countered brightly, refusing to meet his anger with more anger as that wasn’t what he needed right now. Not when the regrets of his past were quite literally hanging over his shoulders.
Calia gave that specter another narrowing glare before her gaze flickered to the rest of the tower workshop in a silent curious questioning. One could bet she’d stab it if that’d solve the problem. Instead, she was simply going to have to help in a different way.
“Why does that stuff look like ox piss,” she asked him, pointed out one of the various jars on his work bench. While he was seated it gave her plenty of space to rest her hands firmly on his shoulders and lean forward against his back. And when she was certain he wasn’t going to shove her away and bolt for the door, she gave those shoulders a gentle squeeze and then rest her chin on the top of his head.
“You know, for all the time I spent in Edelguard not a single person told me anything about him. As if even his family didn’t want to dare mention his name. Maybe you should tell me what he was really like, so he isn’t just a ghost.”
A deep huff was her answer. Full of wit and charm and everything he was prone to doing when he was trying to cover up the real emotions that were far too close to the surface. Not at all that he was complying because he suspected that Calia probably would manifest some sort of barrier to stop him from walking anyways.
Forcing his gaze across the arrangement of workbench. From its various ingredients in equally various states and the vials that were present. The tubing system that was meant to be heated up so it could work on boiling items together, with the pewter bowl nearby that made him want to actually grab it and whip it across the room. Not that it was going to be very useful but an want regardless.
It wasn’t intentional and it was quickly melted into a muted sigh when she had come to place her hands on his shoulders. The flinch came and left while he sought exactly what the hell looked like ox’s piss, about to ask how the hell she knew what that looked like but stopped himself. “Sallowdrop.” Arc stated as he reached to knead at his temple, feeling the lingering presence of the echo all the while. “It’s a sap from a mushroom that accelerates clottin’, and or softens bruisin’ in a few hours.” The mage demon explained all the while he was somewhere between pitching the biggest tantrum in history, and currently softening under the fact that she was being so present.
Reaching over to pick up some crystallize grains of naturally squared mineral that he gave a shake too. Considering its proportions for the very rebuilding of a elixir, knowing that sun-salt would ensure the effects of the potion to set in practically immediately when consumed. But his mouth had pursed and he was poking his tongue into cheek as she queried about how she heard exceptionally very little about the former Crown Prince Carlisle when in Edelguard. “Cultural mourning law.” Arc muttered, “The name of the fallen shall not be stained.” Heavily he sighed once more.
“When a royal dies in a disgraceful or a catastrophic circumstances, their name is folded into silence. Its for the preservation of dignity, by not speaking of them, the memory of them remains untarnished by public speculation. And an attempt to contain unrest; as mourning without answers breeds rebellion, silence is control. Carlisle was deeply beloved and people believe that I was the cause of his death. To speak of Carlisle is in a way to invoke me, as the stain of a national trauma. People say nothin’ out of fear, out of discomfort and out of loyalty. To speak about him is like remindin’ people that the crown fell and how easily it unraveled because of somethin’ close to the prince.”
“Carlisle…” Pressing his thumb against the cork of the bottle a bit too tightly, till the cork split with a soft sigh, Arc huffed. “He was a pain in my ass from the first day.” Gingerly moving to set the cork down with an absolutely unnecessary care. “I’d just come to the capital — too young, too sharp, too loud. They told me I was guna become the next advisor. The one who would advise the crown prince one day.’ Six years old. Can yah imagine?” His mouth twisted into something almost like a smile, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “And there he was. Carlisle. Standin’ in the middle of a queen’s court wearing silk shoes that didn’t fit right and mud up to his knees. With everyone panickin’ because the prince wasn’t supposed to be climbin’ trees, let alone the Fae Tree! And yet the dumb bastard just saw me eyeballin’ him and just said, ‘Well, are you going to help me down or just stare?’”
It was so soft, the faintest of laughs slipping from throat all so fragile, and all too quiet. “We were… fast friends. That’s the kinder way to say it. But really, we were idiots together. Stealin’ pastries from the kitchens, sneakin’ out through the orchard wall, and nearly set the west greenhouse on fire trying to distil nectar like alchemists cause I seen my vara doin’ it one night. I used to think he was untouchable. The grand golden boy. But he wasn’t. He hated all of it — the silk, the bowin’, the endless lessons on how to smile like he meant it.”
Reaching to pick up the ox’s piss so it could be poured into the ceramic bowl nearby, watching as the light began to clink to the surface, all slick and luminous. “Carlisle wanted to be a gardener,” he continued softly, almost like he’s afraid saying it too loudly would somehow erase it. “He told me once that the only time he felt real was with dirt under his fingernails. Not in the throne room. Not in front of the court. In the gardens. Among the vines. That’s the person I knew.” Carefully he tilted the bowl, watching the liquid swirl in its slow cascade. “The rest of the world saw a prince. I saw a stubborn, brilliant, infuriatin’ boy who kept me from burnin’ down the palace more than once. He never treated me like the little bastard-spawn they whispered I was. He just… laughed and handed me a spade to make me dig in that damn dirt too.”
Once more his jaw tensed, but this time he refused to let his hands stop moving. “I think… he envied me, sometimes,” he said at last. “Not the magic, and certainly not my fuckin’ personality. But the freedom I had to be no one when I wanted to be. And Gaia’s great heavin’ tits, I envied him too — because everyone loved him. He could make the entire palace soften with one laugh. And he didn’t even want the throne!” The sap was gingerly folded into the base of the another vial. “Yah could easily say that sop was my best friend,” Arc admitted, feeling how his voice went rough. Almost needing to chew through it. “My brother in every way but blood. And now his name’s a ghost no one’s allowed to speak.”
The silence stretches for a moment. Only the quiet drip of liquid into glass fills the air. Arc didn’t look up, doesn’t meet hers or the lingering echoes gaze. Rather he just muttered with a certainty: “He wasn’t just a prince. He was Carlisle, and had one hell of a mouth to swear at weeds that popped up in his little garden. Not that I had anythin’ to do with that.”
“…well that sounds like a fucking stupid law,” she muttered under her breath. She’d heard of weird mourning rituals before, but that one surely took the cake! Contain unrest, silence as control… it was a perfect way to bury the truth and let lies take the reigns. Worse than that, it didn’t protect someone’s dignity at all, it just erased them as quickly as it could from their friends and families thoughts. Left them trapped in that void of emptiness much like Calia had felt when she tried her damndest to bury her own grief and feelings about her family.
And here was Archimedes still struggling with his ghosts, because those very people wanted to brush the names of the dead under a rug instead of trying to discover the truth of what actually happened.
At least she manage to get him speaking about the phantom memory looming behind them, and as he spoke he returned to moving about the items on his work table. Whether or not he was actually doing anything with them, Calia couldn’t tell. She simply listened quietly, giving quiet encouragement when his voice seemed to go to soft by means of a soft squeeze to his shoulder, or nudging into the top of his head with her chin.
The picture he painted of a friend – a best friend – that was not something Calia was familiar with. Close to her siblings, maybe, but she’d always been solitary and more interested in her own company or that of her horses when she was very young. Not bothering to seek out any further attention until she was old enough to find boys interesting in a new sort of way.
How he described Carlisle, though? That she empathized with down to her bones. The life of a royal child seemed charmed in storybooks. Reality came in the form of heavy expectations. Depending on one’s line of inheritance to the throne, your destiny was set in stone. A reputation to uphold, as an entire country – and your enemies and allies beyond that!- all watching to see if you were going to grow up to be the kind of leader they wanted or someone that would be a failure to family and nation. You had to be the hopes and dreams of everyone all at once, while your own gathered dust and withered away.
It was a subconscious thing to circle her arms around his neck just for a moment and press a gentle kiss into his hair, only to return a hand to his shoulder while another reached around him to push some items back more securely on the table before they ended up accidentally knocked to the floor.
“You said that he took out his own heart and gave it to you because he knew he was going to die,” she mentioned carefully. “So why does he come to you like this, battered and broken? You have a lot to regret and feel guilty about, but he is… menacing. It doesn’t feel like your regret, it feels like malice reaching for you.”
There was no word of battle or hushing her for saying things about the mourning law at all. Because one, he didn’t overly care. Two, it was how the culture was and finally three, it was just how it was. Maybe Liriel would change it when she became the queen, or she might not.
Not that it mattered when he was apparently leaning into the whole revealing commentary about who Carlisle was. At least from his perspective. All the way down to the point that he was at least working through the variety of ingredients. Tossing them with due care and apt consideration of what was what, and how it might work. Looking like some child playing in the backyard making mud pies from dirt and water. Quietly leaning into the gentle actions of physicality, till Calia seemed to be thinking.
Moving things back onto the table less they find themselves upon the floor.
“Aye.” Arc hummed to her, knowing that Carlisle removed his own heart because he didn’t want to waste away to something that was no more than a hollow of themselves. To use his own beating vessel in an act of doing something good or grand or whatever. Not that he had ever been happy about it. Horrified that the guy knew or researched the very techniques of pulling one’s heart from their chest and offering it to another in the most macabre gesture ever known to mortal.
“It ain’t just regret or just guilt. It’s every bit of rot that lives under my skin — it’s grief with teeth, gnawin’ at the marrow. It’s malice that’s got nowhere to go but inward. I can’t even tell anymore if this is just some sick projection my mind conjured to punish me, or if it’s the truth plain and cruel: that I’m frayed right down to the last thread because I failed. Not in the small ways. In the ways that stain everythin’. I didn’t save a damn thin’. Not them or me or the home that used to mean somethin’. I ruined lives — my family’s, innocents, people who trusted me. And I carved that blight into the world so deep it’s still festerin’ decades later. That’s my legacy. Not honor. Not redemption. Just wreckage.“
His hand went still, the tremor crawling up through his jaw as his eyes flicked to the echo standing like some cruel monument. “And maybe that’s the toll, ain’t it? To stand here, bein’ shown the monsters I made. Faces I once loved twisted into somethin’ that hates me as much as I do. Carlisle’s just the one today. Lyra. Or my vara. They all take turns. They’re the way my head keeps the wounds fresh — reminders of exactly why I don’t let anyone close. Why I don’t deserve to.” Arc let out a low, humorless laugh that cracked halfway through. “People talk like failure’s normal. ‘Part of life,’ they say. But losin’ people because of it? Buryin’ the ones who trusted yah while yah keep breathin’? There’s no lesson in that. No redemption. That’s not failure. That’s a damn execution, and I was the one holdin’ the blade.”
For a moment the demon, shifted in place. Pausing his work and deciding to speak candidly, “It ain’t a coincidence he looks like that, y’know,” Arc murmured, voice rough at the edges. “The way he stands there — twisted, accusin’, broken. It ain’t him. It’s me. It’s how I see what I did. How I feel what I destroyed. Carlisle’s echo shows up that way ’cause it’s not really him… it’s the shape of my guilt. My mind renderin’ it into somethin’ that can tear me apart over and over again.”
His jaw tightened all over again, the muscle in his cheek jumping as he forced himself to look at the echo. “I dishonoured everythin’ that mattered. Him. Our friendship. What little good there was left in me. And I think some part of me decided I don’t get to let that go. Not ever. Pain’s the only language I got left for what I did, and I’ve learned to wear it like a second skin. It’s only been amplified since Fawna dredged it up and left me with a suitable present.”
Hmn, there it was. It came as no surprise to Calia that he was finding ways to torment himself. The fact that Fawna had helped open that door and set the seeds… that gave her a few moments of silent contemplation. Mulling it over to try and understand how she’d managed to do so at all. Dark fae magic was oh so good at being able to peer into your, see your pain and find a way to draw it out into the world. It was entirely possible that she cursed him, but then Calia didn’t believe such a curse would linger after the way Arc had destroyed. No, this was self inflicted and all Fawna had done was given him the inspiration on better ways to do it.
“No lessons learned, no redemption.” she repeated with a quiet, thoughtful mumble. Having moved with him to stare at that apparition only to turn back to the scattering of items on his work bench. Looking them over before bending across him to claim a small bottle so dusty that it didn’t seem like even he had bothered with it since the day it got place there.
She set it down in front of him. “Rose anise. That’s what it tasted like. Cloyingly so.”
Calia fell silent for a long stretch then. One arm draped loosely around his neck while she leaned against his back. Watching where his hands went and what he tinkered with until she let out a sigh heavy enough to ruffle his hair.
“…seems kind of pointless.” came a quiet confession. “Why even keep living if there’s no chance for redemption. If the world is only built for those perfect wholesome people of good cheer and unwavering morals. What is the point of trying if at the end of the day, every mistake we make has more weight than the good we do. Why bother being good at all.”
There was her confession and truly her greatest fear, dropped there in a hoarse whisper and the way her nails dugs into the fabric of his tunic.
“There’s not gonna be a good end for me if there’s no hope for you.”
“Choose somethin’ better then, that sounds fuckin’ awful.” Giving the bottle she set down a hard flicking ping as if it was the source for everything in his head; there was certainly a lot of quiet appreciation for her being so near. So close. And it scared him all at once.
Where this projection of his very thought and mood was standing beside them in a literal sense, and then this real fleshy person that was looped around him as if she was trying to see if she could become a scarf. Reaching to pour some silverleaf dew into the compounding creation, beside them he lit a small base so he could start distilling some of the more rough ingredients.
All the while listening as she expressed her wonderment and the deeper thought that made him frown by the end. “I doubt that, Lia.” He stated flatly though there was resounding truth in that tone, “You’re only at the beginning of a potential problem that still has many ways of being rectified. And you are actively makin’ them choices to do so. And as we both know, yah don’t tend to like when others try to tie yer hands or force yah to make decisions for their benefit. I know yer strugglin’ with yer own thoughts but I can say proudly that since we’ve gotten mostly past the hissin’ and spittin’ at another, yer not someone that willin’ turns others over or does ill deeds for the purpose of cruelty.”
He paused to reach where her nails were digging into his tunic and squeezed her hand tightly. “Yah’ve got a lot of willpower and tenacity. With apparently more power than we might realize hence yer problematic fanclub, but yer not doomed.”
His complaint about the rose anise at least cause a huff of a laugh to slip out and ruffle his hair again, though it didn’t ease that pensive stiffness that’d now taken over. Quietly listening to him paint her as someone with fortitude and inherent good. As if she were just struggling with the bad end of the stick and all the problems shoved at her, and not the fact that she was the problem.
“You don’t understand,” she whispered. For a long moment it seemed she’d leave it just with that and not say another word. Simply reaching forward to do as he suggested to claim a different bottle for a less offensive taste. Ground up mallow root was presented with a clonk to the wood top.
“…I don’t feel things the normal way. The right way.” she grumbled after a beat. “It’s overwhelming, all consuming. That’s all well and good when it’s the bright and shiny feelings. Happiness is delight and joy is ecstasy. Sadness to becomes sorrow, fear into terror. Anger into burning fury. Hurt into devastation – and you’ve seen it happen. How fast it flips and any sense I had is just… gone.”
Calia could feel that truth twisting, churning echoing the words there in that empty chasm where he heart should be. Drag up the memories of herself in those dreams where everything she was now had been let go of in favor of that dark inner voice that craved the empty silence. It didn’t really matter how good she wanted to be or how much she cared, she was so tired of struggling and that voice lie dormant just waiting for the day she’d had enough. To speak of it was like making it more real, but he’d dared to be vulnerable with her and she owed him the same in return.
“…One day something is going to tip me too far in the wrong direction and there won’t be saving anyone from that because I am going to bury them all in a flurry of fire and snow. So don’t tell me you’re worthless and not worthy of redemption, because right now you are the only thing that makes me want to try and be something better.”
Only after she should, did he lightly touch her arm. A silent motion to release so he could use that fancy stool to spin on top. Turning before realizing that the echo had finally disappeared. Not sure why but hardly having a reason to figure out why, instead busying himself to pull her close enough to be melded into his front. A strong squeeze even as he remained sitting.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low, roughened at the edges by something quiet and real. “I know that place,” he murmured, almost like confessing to the world itself. “The one where it feels like what’s inside of yah isn’t a just a feelin’, it’s a flood. Where every emotion feels too sharp, too big, and it claws at the inside of yer ribs until yah start to wonder if maybe yah are the problem. Or yah already know yah’ve become it.”
His fingers flexed once at her side before he drew a careful breath. “I live with a mirror of that. Mine points inward. Yers flares outward. I tear myself apart; yah worry tearin’ the world apart. But it’s the same thin’, ain’t it?” A small, almost self-deprecating smile flickered at the corner of his mouth—not mocking her, but himself. “This belief that we’re just waitin’ for the worst part of us to take over. That when it happens, it won’t be some poetic tragedy, it’ll just… be us. Unleashed which is truly a hell of a lot more dangerous than most prolly realize.”
Arc shifted her a little closer, slow and deliberate, but made sure that if she felt it, she could step back if she needed to. “I don’t look at yah and see someone waitin’ to break. I see someone fightin’ like hell not to. And maybe that’s why I can understand it—because it’s a different battlefield, but same war.”
Voice softened then, warmth threading through the ache. “When yah tell me I make yah want to be better… it hits me, because yah are the proof I need that people like us can be more than the worst parts inside us. Yah make me want to stay standin’ when it would be easier to sink.” Naturally gesturing, “Yah think I listen to others when they insist I sit and finish somethin’ when I want to escape out the nearest door?”
He reached out—not grabbing, just letting his fingers hover near hers, close enough that she could close the distance. “So no… I won’t tell yah that yer wrong to feel what yah do. I’ll just remind yah that yer not alone in it. And if the storm comes… we’ll meet it together. And right now, I’ve gotta rely on that fact to keep goin’. It’s not poetic justice in this Calia, but yah gotta see that while I’m strugglin’ to even come to believe there’s anythin’ worth a salt of myself, yah are that importance piece that I rely on.”
Softly he looked to her, “Maybe eventually I’ll feel that redemption is a real thin’, but I’ve gotta go through the murky nasty bits first. We both do in our own ways, right.”
Calia hadn’t noticed the phantom echo had vanished, she was far too busy trying to keep that well of chaos threatening to have to flipping the switch into any one of the number of intense emotions good and bottled up. She was supposed to be trying to talk him out of a demon sized panic attack and shield him away from his own fears, not fall head first into her own. Only pulling away because he gave her that gentle tap, and taking in a breath ready to argue his worth when he turned his chair around to actually face her.
Briefly opening her mouth the insist she was the problem only to clamp it shut at the flex of his fingers at her side. Eyes of evergreen flickering to violet with something raw and unspoken. Unable to really hide those shifts in her expression as he spoke, so every fleeting thought she had went broadcasting unhidden.
There were no lies in his words, the pair of them were shattered pieces aiming inward, aiming out. Broken and brutal in every way. And it twisted a vice in her throat with every inch he tugged her closer, and tried to convince her that he was in fact listening. That she wasn’t throwing her hopes and fears against an unmoving brick wall that was only destined to crumble.
Somehow he always seemed to find the right thing to say that left Calia without the words of her own. Swallowing that lump in her throat and willing any potential tears to stay swallowed too. Giving him a sharp, stilted nod even when a soft pained sound did slip out. Forgoing the reaching of his hand to drape her arms around his neck and practically melt into him. Burying her face with a shuddering breath until she shifted enough to bunt her forehead against his temple.
“They’re really all going to regret putting us together and then getting on our nerves, you know that?”
He gave her no resistance. No push back or huffing well timed sly word that was intended to be mockingly funny, with a vain effort of looking like he was entirely unaffected. There was a lot happening right now. Inside, outside, between it all and honestly, it felt like far too much effort to be the circus clown.
Simply being steady enough that when she melted into him, Arc replied. Looping grasp around to act as both a welcome mat and a stay the fuck out to anything else. To give temporary reprieve with a hope that maybe a small gasp of air would be enough for a while longer.
“Hmm, I think most who have a sense of wit about them already do regret that. Yah think we weren’t chased politely from Edelguard court simply because yah outshine them?” Arc squeezed and sighed a moment. Knowing there was dangerous truth to her words. And it had been proven already in some fashion while also echoing the means that though they were quite the terrifying pair; tellingly, they’d never used their magic against another. Sure, shown it off and made it a spectacle but such violate forces had only yelled and tried to step away from another. They had not –since the beginning at least- attempted to harm the other.
That was something worth considering as he kissed her brow and tilted attention just enough backwards to look at his work. Studying it a moment, then away. The room becoming a bit of a observational query until— “Lets head up to the room… this has got to solidify to see if it’s guna work anyways.”
Calia almost demanded he squeeze her into oblivion. Absolutely crush her until her bones snapped as holding onto him really didn’t feel anywhere near enough to temper and calm all of those thoughts in her head. Of past things and present things and the hot mess of a future she knew was coming. Things always got worse before they got better, wasn’t that the saying? And there was still such a long, long, long way to go.
“You’re going to have to stockpile a whole tower of those things,” she warned him. Reluctant to even pull free at first. Tempted to force him to carry her back up the stairs, and only staving it off for… how pathetic would that be! Calia had let him pick her sobbing ass up off the ground once before, she wasn’t going to make him do it again. Even has she finally retracted her arms to step back, she could feel the weight of everything finally catching up with her. A wound not fully healed, a magic crafting high, and being the world’s most mood-swinging faerie princess.
She didn’t leave him without lingering there a moment, brushing a thumb softly over his chin before she finally took a look around the workshop to find his specter had vanished. At least that gave her a sense of accomplishment. Somewhere in that mess of nonsense she’d done something right. Getting him to talk about the man and the people of his past wasn’t going to solve all his problems, but at the very least he’d be working his way through them.
And she? …right now all she wanted was that spark of hope she’d wished for.
“If I can figure the shit out and make sure it work like it oughta, then easy enough. All different flavours too rather than fuckin’ rose anise.” Arc suggested truly unbothered at the idea that there might need to be a secondary tower created to house all sorts of different healing potions. Hell, it could become a healing potion emporium and they’d be making straight bank off of it too because healing potions were worth coin. All because of how difficult they were to make, obviously!
Tilting attention upwards when she retracted, he could see there was more on her now than before. As if the perfectly sculpted wall that had held Calia’s thoughts and ambitions and worries alike was starting to properly crack. Silently guessing that she was still no better than him. Where he used humour and dramatic display’s to avoid those seeing the crumbled, dried up reality; Calia used her steadfastness and stubborn pride to do very much the same.
Right now, it was simply them and some pestering echoes that were witnesses. And really, the shit he was going to say was so nonexistent about it, because it would only invite her to do the same. If they were both feeling outrageously callous. The very thought alone was enough to make him nearly sigh. Putting his efforts into adjusting posture to stand up so he could lightly brush palm across the small of her back. A gentle nudge to lead the way and him making a quick effort to tidy some things up as to avoid any flash fires or magical mishaps.
But that was what the workspace was for. That and containing it.
Whether he led or followed, the re-entry to the space that had severely overhauled was still worth a lengthy consideration. Wondering idly to himself whether or not her belief of something beautiful was about to be fact or fiction, but hardly seemed to linger upon it.
Stepping over towards the arranged chair that had been made to be like a reading nook, Arc didn’t flop into it. No, he gave it just a gentle appreciative look that would eventually be the chair that held clothing rather than bodies. Not currently as he did plop his read on the cushion so he could manually deal with shoes rather than popping them off with a flick of finger!
Calia took the lead in going back to the room she’d oh so carefully constructed to be a paradise of relaxing sleep. Using that short stretched of silence in climbing the stairs to arrange and put away her thoughts so she could simmer back to something functional instead of emotional. Things were fine now – they’d truly and honestly spoke to each other instead of getting snarling and flinging performative magic to accent arguments that shouldn’t even be arguments when they seemed to agree about so many things! In fact it was actually kind of funny to think about, when they’d entered the room and she realized squeezing hugs and soft touches seemed to resolve their bickering far better than any of the shouting did.
He was starved for gentle affection… maybe she was too.
A few steps into the room and Calia gave herself a small one, two, three turn on her toes to shift the sage green dress to something shorter and far more easy to roll around and sleep in. It seemed with the freedom to use magic at will, she was gratuitous and endlessly casting whenever she could get away with it. Living it and breathing it like she needed magic to survive more than air. With a musical sweep of her hands she snuffed the candle sconces out and dimmed the fire of the hearth to a low warm orange glow. Leaving only the twinkles of the starlight chandelier giving the tiniest of shimmering light, that it may as well have been actual stars in the sky above them.
“I doubt it will take you long to figure out. I’m going to be fighting all kinds of things and liable to be stabbed a thousand more times. You’ll get to test out plenty.”
There was not even an ounce of surprise that she magically altered her attire once more. At this point, it might have been peculiar if she didn’t! Getting that freedom to use it in whatever way she wanted. Useful, frivolous it really didn’t matter. Simply that she was experimenting with it and by the time she had her own back, she was going to be beyond proficient in whatever she wanted to do with it all!
Shoving boots under the chair so they would be out of the way but still in a space that was easily found, Arc offered her a look between the snuffing of light and a airy guffaw. “I already figured that out ages ago, Lia. Though I would be recommendin’ less yerself gettin’ on the end of the pointy objects and puttin’ others that warrant the placement instead.” Tunic was gone soon enough but the compression style attire that kept his torso mostly covered was present. Not like they hadn’t slept near another before or shared a bed, but usually that latter was when he was a buggy mode. Which was still an option, especially if her styled bed was liable to chew them up into smothered comfort.
“Which there will be no shortage of. Seein’ as someone in the fae community really wants yah on their side of thin’s. Guna have to wear gloves and throw true iron pennies at them so they stay the fuck away from yah.”
There was no embarrassment or shyness either from the likes of himself. Would be rather funny considering he was a self proclaimed man whore, as the demon easily traded places with chair for bed. Plopping on it and throwing easily five or seven pillows off with a clear huff that there was certainly far too many of them at all! “Guna be a first to die by pillows,” Arc remarked, crossing ankles and sliding hands behind head as he made himself as comfortable as one could be with said threat.
Her hands went to her hips as she watched him toss pillows in every direction, the twitch of a smile threatening to curl at the corner of her mouth. Alright, maybe she had gone a little overboard with the cushions to the point of there barely being enough room left for people to climb in. They were just as much for aesthetic of comfort as they were for days of being propped up and bed time lounging. Despite it a small laugh did escape against her will.
Much like him, Calia had no shame in this regard of climbing into bed with someone. Of which she did in the manner most unbecoming of a princess, stepping up onto the mattress to walk straight over him like she was some lawless, feral forest goblin instead of a properly trained royal with manners. Only giving way to noble faeish elegance when she so fluidly sank down beside him as if she weren’t made of anything but mist and air.
She’d told him directly that she’d wanted to be close, to actually have him in bed where she could reach him. Have that security of physical contact, even though he’d insisted this place was safe. Calia the back of her head on his shoulder, molded close enough to have her own leaned up over his chest. There was no sheepish embarrassment to it, no awkwardness. Just a quiet relieved sigh as she let out a breath to ease the tension in her body and make her first attempts to let go of the day with it.
“You might be the only person in the world that can hold onto a shooting star,” she muttered with amusement, raising her hands just high enough to extinguish the last of the fire. Setting the room into the quiet of starlight dark and revealing the last piece of her bedroom surprise.
A full reach upwards and a tap of her fingertip to the air, something in the fabric of the bed canopy above started to glimmer. With the dark there was no telling if it was gems or sequins or glitter.. or if it was pure magic woven directly into the fabric! Only that a nebula of stars flowed gently in the shadows, of rich pinks and violets hues. A small shimmer of emerald green and ocean blues. Almost reminiscent of the ways his horns sometimes shifted in the light, at least in her opinion. Making it somewhat poetic he could hold a shooting star, for that made the very cradle of cosmic space, didn’t it!
In true Calia fashion she mounted the bed in the same caliber she did most things. She could be utterly regal but lend readily into her goblin fancy that honestly, had she crawled up one of the bedposts first like a spider to drop down when she felt she found her spot for landing, he wouldn’t have been surprised. This was at least the sort of motif he expected when she was hobgoblin her way over to only then settle down like the air was merely a suggestion that followed her example, not the other way around.
Settling in to where she wanted till they were suitably pressed near and he was huffing a smirk at her for the muttered statement at all. “Hmm, now what does one do if they hold a shootin’ star anyways?” He asked even as she was dimming the room further. Till the canopy ignited in wafting melds of colours that collided and blended in gentle nebulous swirls and he could only wonder somewhere in the back of his head, was this Calia’s subconscious way of expressing she was someone who was soft and sweet and liked the subtle things. Where she could be all doom and gloom outwardly but internally, she was no more than a bright eyed little fuzzy ball of fluff that liked glitter and rainbows. And just needed that soft touch to express these things were fine to be?
It was a thought, one that would need to be carefully tended too. “If yer a shootin’ star, then what the hell does that make me as yer companion? A black hole, fittin’ that is?”
His tone of voice had shifted back to being amused and comfortable, prompting this smug and pleased sensation as she sank all the further into her chosen spot. Watching the display of colors until he asked what he was as her companion and completely missing the mark of where her thoughts had been going. She laughed and leaned just enough to give him that teasing, you foolish man sort of look.
“Nah, not a black hole. A black hole would be sucking in everything around it straight into a maw of of crushed nothing with no means of escape. You’re all darkness and shadow, never asking, never demanding. Somewhere solid where shiny things get to rest and burn and thrive.”
It was such a matter of fact description, it may as well have been fact. As if everyone in the world should’ve known such a thing as historical truth. Calia reached to grasp at one of her plush throw blankets to drag up over her torso, twisting where she lay to face him. Tucking a knee under his thigh and throwing her over leg over his to curl and capture in a motion that probably came across as possessive. She wasn’t thinking about it, though, it was merely a comfortable position and ensured if anything moved him, they’d have to untangle her first!
“You have the easy job. All you have to do is keep me from crashing into the world.”
“Hmm,” Giving it a lengthy consideration as if it really warranted it. The thought or statement that he was apparently the space of blackened velvet that something brightly shining went to gleam all the more while resting; it definitely sounded more elegiac than he cared for. And far too beautiful to really fit but he wasn’t about to start combating it.
There had to be a cutoff point that he would willingly drag himself down to a self loathing state just for a giggle. “Yah haven’t seen how truly demandin’ I can get.” Arc offered instead with a crooked smirk to really sell the statement home. Though he was mentally noticing how she was looping and tethering herself so close.
Nestling in as if he were the damn shiny thing rather than her claiming shooting stardom, which he was really balancing on the act of pointing out that he was pretty sure that companions or comrades or friends didn’t exactly get this close. But found no reason to do so because it wasn’t exactly that common that Calia was comfortable. Plus he did express he didn’t have any issue with her being close.
“Oh that sounds like a dangerous job no less, yah be relyin’ on my wit and forward thinkin’ in ways that could be equally troublesome. Especially if say, it’s amusin’ if yah go and crash into the world, because someone warrants a good beat down.” Reaching over to shift and try to wrangle a blanket at least in half to throw over her somewhat, “Yer askin’ the pro menace not to whisper terrible ideas into yer ear, love.”
Her grin was immediate, something so full of doubt that he could be demanding at all while practically daring him to give it a try without her even having to say word. Despite the accusations that Starling Everflame once hurled at her about being a self-righteous twat forcing others to bend to her will, Calia didn’t go out of her way to start bossing people around. Her preference had always been to mind her own business – mostly of need for she was a difficult thing to manage – up until someone forced themselves into her purview, making themselves a problem she could not ignore.
“Hmn, it’s fun though. Bringing a little weirdness and whimsy into the world,” she admitted, finalizing the means of become a muddle limp puddle of limbs. Suitably warm and easing her heartbeat to match the rhythm of his own. Quirking up a dangerous sort of smile next.
“I’m pretty sure it’s still your turn to get kidnapped, seeing as walking into trouble doesn’t much count. Next time you’ll have to call for me, tug me through the bond and I’ll show up and make a grand spectacle of your rescue. I’ll even try giving one of your silly heroic speeches instead of just slaying everybody out right. Just tell me whose heart is worth keeping and I’ll bury the rest.”
“Yah might call it weirdness and whimsy, others might be callin’ it black magic and screamin’ to the high heavens. Which dependin’ on the reason why, could be terribly fun anyways.” Sure, he was going through a mental hurricane right now but he was still a demon. And one that did still like the means of terrorizing the general populace in ways that was unexpected. It was more just the balancing act of ensuring it was simply mischief and not blood and guts.
Even if a part of his mind thrilled even briefly at the idea.
Right now, she was seemingly getting all nestled in like a baby bird in said nest, while suggesting it was his turn to go get kidnapped. “Hell no, did it twice. I ain’t that slow of a learner that I need another nosy twat sniffin’ around and decidin’ I look good on a spit.” Shaking his head in turn, “Yah’ll just have to settle for being gallant in other ways that isn’t savin’ a demon from someone seasonin’ him up with all types of herbs for a devourin’.” Of course though, he did pause. Thinking deeply about it, “Unless it’s a really good lookin’ lass then well, throw me at her. Only way I’ll go anywhere in the threat of kidnappin’ now.”
Eyes flickered downwards however, “Yer guna have to really practice them heroic speeches if yah wanna get the right mannerisms down.”
Calia gave a small shrug, having no issues at all with the thought of mass chaos and mischief. She’d always been a pesky thing, vexing everyone that had to keep her under control. Finally having a chance to play with magic in ways that thrilled her had been one of the few blessings she had in this new life of hers. Daning magic through the Edelguard palace much to the sock and awe of noble elves. Loving every moment of raining marshmallows down on Tir Elas to cause the resulting delight and confusion. Even that evening in the tavern setting objects into life and wrecking havoc amongst the drunks was something she thought of fondly. At least before things went wrong.
In many ways Calia had always meant to be trouble for the world. Just at what level was the real mystery yet to be solved.
“Supposed I need to be extra wary of the prettiest girls, if that’s going to be the trap that lures you to doom,” she mused, seeming to almost take this seriously. Keeping beautiful women away from him sounded like a damned chore with the way he tended to flash a smile and have them falling at his feet where ever he went!
“..hmph. Sounds like too much work. Guess I’ll just stick with throwing people to the sun.” A quiet sigh came next and she shifted, caving into he need to truly be as comfortable as possible, even if that meant becoming a barnacle of a bedmate. Sliding her arm up over his chest high enough for her hand to be dangling over his opposite shoulder, to finally let out that final tired breath.
“At least yah know I’m a simple idiot.” He offered, the sound of the smile in his voice clear as a bell. Though fairly, he would hope that if someone did try to lure him away with that of a pretty face and a particular fetching allure, he could see somewhat through it. But that also might be giving him far too much credit!
Knowing that he had a strong affinity for those that pulled his attention and really, he tended to use his appeal to get that itch scratched with little thought beyond the task at the moment! Scratching itches that likely had a larger reasoning for being his man whorish self. But that was entirely too much thought for now when she was niggling in close and settling seemingly officially down. Truly tying up that one would have to worry whether or not she might stay in that one place all night!
“I am very much a handful, Lia. Lots of work and lots of frustration, somethin’s don’t change.” He offered even as she gave that deep telling sigh. “Go to sleep, love. More chaos for yah in the morn and more magic to dig through at yer leisure.” Making a effort now to properly pull that blanket over and shifted so at least he was comfortable for now. Staring up at the nebulous creation to lull brain into nothing for a short while.
“Hmn, that you are,” she murmured all sleepy soft, flexing her fingers for a moment before she stilled. “Delightfully frustrating.”
That was the only snip he was going to get, for Calia sure wasn’t going to argue about being told to sleep. Once he’d fallen quiet, she stayed vaguely aware of the faint rhythm of his breath. Already in tune with the beating of his heart, that it made for a natural lullaby and a far more lovely thing to fall asleep to than the nebula of stars she’d woven. A flittering of amused thought passing through her mind that she’d never actually slept with someone before. There’d been no sleeping when she’d spent the nights with others, preferring to kick then right out of her nest or do the scampering herself once she’d been through. It was nice to fall asleep this close to someone.
Then there was the dreams. Somehow oddly different than they’d ever been before.
Everything around her was naught but ice and snow. A world so barren that there were no stumps of trees, nor even mountains climbing to the sky. Just a flat glacier of ice stretched out as far as she could see through the blizzard of swirling snow. So dark that not even the sun, moon, and stars could break through the clouds. Desolate, isolating an alone.
As she forced her feet to move through the layers of snow an object rose in the near distance, growing in clarity as she drew near to reveal that of a obsidian framed mirror. The carvings so familiar that she knew it for what it was in an instant. Empty of all it’s glass for she had shattered it, but the rippling void within it still remained.
Calia froze where she stood when spindly crooked hand came reaching out from the black. Pale skin near as white as the snow, claws long and sharp and manicured with a slick painted black. It came forth revealing an arm draped in gold-gilded vermillion fabric until a full figure in royal gown and regalia came shuddering forth into the world. Curves of a woman, though this monstrous thing had no face, no ears, no hair. Merely a crown of gold bleeding red from the jewels atop it’s balding head.
She tried to scream when it jerked forward, shoving it’s claws into her chest and wrenching open her ribs. Certain that it would find nothing but emptiness there but…! Out came Calia’s heart, beating strong, beating wild right there in the palm of it’s hand. Streaming red down it’s arm when the beastly monster gave it a squeeze. With a gasp Calia tried to reach for the tether, the bond, only for the gowned creature to gesture to something laid out in the distance.
Archimedes brutalized and battered face down in the snow, mangled like he’d been by the ancient drake. Yet now his own heart had been wrenched free of his chest and shattered like shards of red ice scattered across the glacier. No matter how hard she reached, it wasn’t there. It wasn’t there. He wasn’t there.
A red painted smile appeared sprawling across the empty face of the blood queen.
I found you..