their game begins.

[Caelum]

Say what you know. Do what you must. Come what may. - Sofia Kovalevskaya. Timestamp: 50 Winter 513 AV The banks of the river glittered with frost though the stars sunk in an hydrangea sky at dawn. It was not the world's end, this breath of a coming winter, of autumn in maple blushing trees and the bite to the breeze that drifted across the river waters, shades of blue and green and gold to reflect of all the world. It was the natural cycle, for summer had been long, and so long as the winter did not settle in to sit for years on top of years then the sleeping earth beneath would thaw again. It would trickle back to life fed on the same snow melts that had blanketed it, and it would burst and churn and spring with new life, new growth. Resurrection. At but nineteen years of age, Kas'bel Sunsinger already remembered what so many had forgotten in their war: winter was as necessary as spring, that forgiveness was not one moment's act but a matter of constant renewal. The grass crunched beneath the hooves of their striders as they rode the last league, the familiar gut and roll of the grasslands of Alahea in harvest hours yawning around them. The cypress copse in the distance and the pretty, star scattered dots of orangeries and orchards glowed like jewels, each a blessing to his hungry eyes. Then there was the sunrise over Claridon. It rose from amid the great sprawl of grasslands with ceder smoke and harp song, sprouting towers cloaked in brier roses and honeysuckle, ivy and trailing rhododendron at the sky. Glistening peristyle gardens shot through with marble and glass and sculpture, intricate wrought iron and ancient, weathered docks rolling out in ash and knotty oak to touch salt encrusted against the drift of pleasure barges and shrimpers, fleet skiffs and drowsing rowers beneath dripping bits of weir moss and willow tears. The dense forests shadowed beyond it, beginning at creekbeds to spread long, green shadows into underbrush and thicket. The trees teemed with miscarriages of myth and rustled with both vibrancy and decay. Life. Death. Cycle. Renaissance. The last of the morning's mist was dissipating as their progress slowed, eyes spying the no longer distant shifts and shadows whose grey was melting into the sun. It revealed the colors and arms of knights and men, sorcerers and legends, heroes and nightmares. They had come, signaled by scouts, and they, too, had slowed to a halt now, staring back as their enemies stared on. Kasb'el did the only thing he could in that moment, when all the scales were being weighed, all but breaths away from ruin; he looked between them and, after three beats of his heart, dismounted. Boots bit the earth, the frost touched grass, whipping and whistling strands of meadowlark against their heights. He tugged at his cloak's clasp, tossing the heavy weight of it over saddlebags, defiant of the chill in the air, before venturing further between these thrumming lines. Discarding the cloak left him in shirtsleeves, a plain white tunic that revealed the scrawl of ink on muscled biceps before the edges of his vambraces took over. The world around him shuddered and then twisted, pivoting on the axis of his soul as he settled into a seat at a table between armies. The sun finished rising and burst over him, bringing transformation to more than just the day. It left the memory of the dead Ankal behind and placed the modern day ethaefal at his seat, the chess board sprawled before him and the opposing chair ominously empty. The lines stirred, restless. Caelum waited.

[Wrenmae]

It was always going to come to this.

Egyptus lay in the field of battle, clutching the crossbow quarrel that had pierced his chest and perforated his lung. Around him, the sounds of battle raged as steel clashed and the hush-song of spellfire roiled between reimancers and other battlemages. The sky was black with their transgression, night-dark with the hubris they had strewn in the land. Slowly the hypnotist reached up to the quarrel and tore it from his chest, casting the bolt aside and struggling to sit up.

No one stopped to help him, too absorbed with the melee symphony of screeching blades and death-shrieks. He was alone in a crowd of the dying. Above him, the sun was being overtaken by the turmoil of black, of the war he had brought to Mizahar.

Who was it that was fighting? Sunberthians against the Sylirans? No...they'd be slaughtered. Even with the help from Iggy and the Zeltivans...

Perhaps he had enlisted the Sahovan golems...maybe...maybe.

But what did it matter now? The flower of his lifeblood stained like a rose on his chest. It tore the symbol he had chosen and now, reflecting while his life ebbed...was it all for stability...or Rhysol's Chaos?

He gasped for wind, had no air, fell

And...

No. This was all wrong.

The illusion swirled away, leaving Wren alone again on the battlefield...but it was no longer a battlefield but a field of gently waving green grass. It was all wrong, he had run it again, and again, and again...Start in Sunberth, yes...lock down the alliance in Zeltiva, yes. Push for financial support from Kenash, pull in the hermit nuits.

Where had it gone wrong? Why was it always like this?

No matter, he could run it again, this was his world...after all...although he couldn't remember how he'd come into possession of this power. It felt like it might be important, but he waved it away. Insignificant. He needed to plan.

And-

There was a door.

A simple oak door with a brass handle. It hadn't been there before and he certainly hadn't given it permission to be. Reaching towards it, he attempted to banish it, flatten it to bring up Sunberth again, recall the ruined city and its frosty-roofed shanties. But the door remained, obstinately clinging to reality.

The all-powerful did not mean beyond curious...and he found himself grasping the handle, pulling open the door, expecting a god beyond, the blank void.

Not a stranger sitting across a table of grotesquely alive armies.

Unless.

Yes. Of course. Even in his subconscious he found a way to solve his problems. This was his opponent, some denizen of order or guardian of the rotting tenants that held Mizahar as it was. This was how it was meant to be played, between armies as commanders glowered across bloody fields, spoke words of poetic justice to serve as rough epitaphs to the hundreds of fallen.

He took a seat, crossing his fingers at the edge of the board. In this reality he was himself, thin, handsome, but worn down by violence and the road to something more wolfish than pretty. His brown eyes found Caelum and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"You're to be my opponent, then?" Wren asked him, leaning back in his chair, "I guess I'm surprised you aren't someone I know...that Knight Imass, or Kit, or Edreina, or Fallon...although I suppose only the former ever actually stood against me. No. You I don't recognize...but I suppose it's just as well."

He reached out over the army, feeling them, testing them, and then paused, the army shimmering and changing.

"We set the stage. I've begun my revolution in Sunberth. In the ruins of the Daggerhands I have forged a new gang. A front, but a profitable one, we ally ourselves with the Nighteyes and Sun's Berth separately, eventually turning the both of them on each other and devouring the survivor. The people of Sunberth refute order, they crave chaos, so we give them just enough of the latter to encourage the former. Ignotus in Zeltiva secures me a force of Waveguards and a fleet...useless, regrettably, in the eventual battle...but some place to retreat back to. I, personally, have secured the alliance of Sahova who is all but begging for an excuse to be a unified nation again. That is my force...mercenaries, savages, sailors, guards, golems, and wizards. I suppose you'll take the Knights then? The monks won't help you, they're too xenophobic and bound to stay within their borders...and Ravok won't have you, not with what you represent."

The army on his side shimmered and became what he had said.

"Not the most organized offense, but I have the superior arcane power and numbers. What do you counter with?"

[Caelum]

“Friend of few, related to none,” the stranger muttered, golden eyes intent on Egyptus, on Wrenmae. He understood what it was to have more than one name, the truest of them the hostage of an unspeakable language or wrecked by a tragedy that set traps for your tongue. Later he wouldn’t be able to say how he knew the man had multiple names, but perhaps it was as simple as like recognizing like when it settled across the table from him. Caelum had never been so conceited as to think he shined as much on the inside as he did without. He wore a familiar face for Wrenmae, one that ached with beauty. It had caused the goddess Nikali to envy on a far flung shore and thereby resurrected all of his ambitions. Nikali’s mark coated him in additional allure, the sort that hauled at a person’s trust with clever hands, certain he would never, never kiss and tell. His appeal was at once disastrous and addictive, the fact of his presence a doorway to the fulfillment of all desire. It was really too bad he was marked by Vayt’s mortal enemy as well. Or maybe that just perfected the challenge. “You aren’t who I expected,” he confessed while the armies of history faded around them, replaced by those of possible futures. His eyes never wavered from Wrenmae’s face, curious and wandering over feature and form. “Unless it’s only your face I don’t recognize.” He shifted forward, elbows to the table, strong shoulders still holding up his serving of the sky. For all his ethereal appearance, he was no unanimated statue. Vitality coursed through him, stark when set in foil to blight. Disease couldn’t touch him. His flesh was immortal, shaped by sunlit hands in the realm of the gods. Pestilence and famine posed him no threat, every drop of blood in him suffused with nourishment by the dawn. “If I had to guess,” he continued, still studying his opponent. “I would have named Alander Jin. My friend Hadrian Aelius would not have surprised me, or even that witch Rahel Aurelius. Maybe even the magic infested Azenth whose visions set my past on fire. The Ruv'na. A Ruv'na. But you, you…” He trailed off. Without warning, he smiled. It was impossibly disarming. “You’re perfect.” Caelum sat back, and he watched Wrenmae’s plans unfold. The smile on his face faded, the whole of him sobering as he overlooked Sunberth and Zeltiva and then a city to which he had never been. Sahova was unfamiliar to him, but he recognized an attitude to it all the same. These pieces tangled on the board between them and ultimately tumbled to the grassy floor surrounding, littering the otherwise empty grassland with phantoms of possibility. Silence was suffered through while details and tactics, catalysts and strategy puzzled at each other in his mind. Through it Caelum remained the cruel manifestation of Wrenmae’s most ardent need – he was a creature whose worth was already proved, evidenced by the elegant curve of his horns. He believed, and he could believe in anything, even a ten year old running from the slow deaths of his siblings and into the arms of an illusory fate. He was warm and he would not leave, steady as the rising sun; and he wondered if that was what Wrenmae had meant when he said that Ravok would not have him, not with what he represented. What did he represent? The answer to all that had ever been wanted, sitting on the opposite side of the board. “This,” he answered finally, and held up his hand. An orange appeared in the grip of his fingers, round and ripe and smelling of summer. He set the fruit in the middle of the table and slumped indolently back. One hand curled about the ankle of his boot, propped on the opposing knee, and he raised his eyebrows in eager invitation. “This orange is my counter,” he encouraged. Was he being dismissive? Was he being wishy-washy and comical? Unaccountably, he grinned, and it was flush with anticipation. No, no. He was not dismissing Wrenmae at all. He was here. He was in it. He wanted to be asked. Invited. Welcomed in.

[Wrenmae]

"An orange." The hypnotist's eyes narrowed, the herald of a coming storm he kept at bay with curiosity. The army surrounded the orange, the miniature golems staring up at its imposing size with blank fascination. Wren considered, then swung his hand across the board, demolishing his army as if swiping a fly. The orange remained, frustrating in its opaque simplicity.

Across from him, the Ethaeful reclined and grinned, eager for the next move. He wanted to be asked, he was begging to be asked. The way his eyebrows arched, like strange gateways of invitation, the way the sun glittered off his flawless gods-rejected skin...there was nothing but open invitation there. Perhaps it was more infuriating that his opponent wasn't gloating. In the innocence of the simple move, so uncharacteristically what he did not expect, Wren had found himself locked in a game with more rules than simply how to route a force or press for a victory.

This was every bit a social game, a battle of wits.

What could he extrapolate from the orange? Nothing. His mind was blank. There was a name, Hadrian, familiar but only barely...an ambitious professor and master mage from too long ago, a friend? Possibly, certainly, mages often had that well traveled look about them...defying their soul as they defied the wilds with each creeping step forwards.

No. Off track.

Focus.

"An orange." He said it again, slower this time, reaching forward and picking it up, examining it for clues. There were none, he expected none. His opponent was trying to make a philosophical point that would only be detailed in the asking.

He wanted to be invited, treated like a conversational partner rather than an enemy general. With the simplicity of a fruit, he'd changed the nature of the game.

Did it make him dangerous? Maybe? Sort of? Agonizingly unsure.

"You're trying to be clever, aren't you?" Wren asked him, raising an eyebrow and frowning, "That isn't the way the game is played...unless you mean to tell me you have a city sized orange ready to roll across my ill-prepared army with your citrus cataclysm." He crossed his arms, fighting and failing to prevent a smile from crossing his face. There was something inviting about the Ethaeful, something comforting about his presence.

But it was exactly that which made Wren so on edge...the easy trust was not something he ever gave anymore, and that this figure could elicit it so easily...

Annoying...worst of all, frightening.

"An orange...suggesting, what? The sun perhaps? Considering your heritage, it wouldn't be surprising if you considered yourself in good graces with the sun...or do you mean to ask how I will feed my armies? I assure you that contrary to popular belief, Sunberth is fairly good at growing food...should organization ever be brought to them. And if you mean to suggest I should be..." he pondered, rubbing his fingers into his temples, "Growing...growth...orange...planting seeds of peace, if it's as convoluted as all that...Five hundred years of just existing has already happened. I think if we were going to make progress on natural assimilation, it would have happened by now."

Caleum said nothing.

There was a moment.

"Fine. FINE!" Wren sat back in his chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose, "Be clever then. Tell me why the orange is an answer to my army."

[Caelum]

It was distinctly possible Caelum had yet to realize he was the enemy general. It could also be that he had not reconciled his role, a very oppressed part of him balking against the threat of fresh responsibility even in this imagined environment. Of course, he was a worshipper of Nysel, a recruiter and intelligencer for an ancient order of seekers, and he knew very well what dreams could birth into the world. He had been beckoned before by their infant screams. But Wrenmae’s supposition was correct. He did not want to be an opponent. He wanted to be a conversationalist, perhaps even a friend, and advert the possibility of war altogether. Kill it in the cradle, the black bastard Delucia used to say. Well, he hadn’t always been wrong; but there was more to this moment than Caelum’s rotted revenge. And there was more to Caelum than sunny smiles and soothing hands. He could still want. His name was muted but not yet erased. There was a self in his skin and it had a history of viciousness in the wolf hours. He may avoid the concept of countering Wrenmae for now, preferring to proof the future against the necessity; but should their time come to it in any place outside of dreams, he would find a way. Roads had a habit of rising up behind him. A chuckle rumbled through him, cozy as hearthfires. He rubbed a finger down the side of his nose and shook his head, temporarily wordless with the weight of Wrenmae’s smile. “Citrus cataclysm,” he echoed. “Hell, mate. What if I said yes?” He tossed up his hands, his smirk delighted. “Yes, I have a city-sized citrus. What are you going to do? Make lemonade?” He dissolved into snickers then, laughing at his own wretched sense of humor and one hand rubbing over his face until subsiding. It left him with his arms folded on the table, shoulders pitched forward, peering at the emptied board and the man across from it wielding his orange like the weapon he had to realize it was. A smile shot across his mouth when Wrenmae exploded, and he waited, eventually shaking his head as if to say: no, no, it’ll be fine. “Here, let me –“ And he straightened so as to stretch a hand across the table, gently tugging the orange out of Wrenmae’s grasp but only so he could twist it around again between them. He stabbed a finger at the orange. “This is our world.” His arm flung out, encompassing their surroundings. And their surroundings answered, shifting beneath the pass of an unseen hand, rustling into new and different dimensions while a wind that smelled of sunlight rushed through. Scenes of different cityscapes and the varied biomes of Mizahar slid past one another, pallid through a pearl fog that pounced at the feet of the men at the table. “See –“ He hunkered back down, elbows to the table, and tilted the orange toward Wrenmae. It maintained its shape and relative size, but it became a remarkably familiar planet with wisps of that same fog, proven to be stratosphere, tangling above land and sea. “Here we are on the surface, suffering and thriving on the peel of the orange.” Grasping the orange in both hands, he dug his thumbs through the clouds and the oceans, the earth and the people who populated it to break the skin and peel back a thick strip. The sharp, sweet scent of oranges intensified and fibrous, white connective tissue stretched in strands from the removed peel to the juicy, fruit pulp inside. “This tissue,” Caelum poked at it with a finger. The white blushed through with color, a changeling rainbow of it. “Is our chavi. And the pulp, of course, is the Ukalas.” He took a sipping glance at Wrenmae’s face before returning his regard to the fruit. It was turned around again in his hands, shimmering with illusory metaphor, and Caelum reached out to plunk it down on the table in front of Wrenmae. He settled back, patient as Tanroa’s river stones. “What are you going to do with it?” He asked. “Once your armies have won.” It was a counter, after a fashion. It just began in a different place.

[Wrenmae]

What an infuriatingly likable man.

It was hard not to laugh with Caleum, like some external force was pressing a steady palm against the support of his resolve. Tumble, it seemed to tell him. Tumble and laugh, can we not be friends here?

No. No they could not. To be friends was to set aside aggression and allow Caelum to set the tempo for their discussion. Really, he simply countered at an entirely different angle than Wren had expected. Instead of straight battle and tactics, he wormed his way through rhetoric with smiles as his key.

Wren's body language was the opposite of Caelum's. Resolute, even rigid, there was no relaxation in his taut frame. Muscled quivered on the precipice of action, sweat stubbornly beaded his brow with glistening jewels of strenuous royalty. He could explode into action or pause like a coiled spring, and that was where he felt comfortable...prepared.

Even if his muscles burned and his mind leaped at shadows and sudden movements, the alternative was far worse...unprepared and dead.

As Caelum explained the orange, Wren absorbed the information with suspicious hunger. He wasn't a god, or rather, he couldn't be...maybe...it was hard to tell these days which of the people he met swung with divinity. In any case, it would afford him no advantage even if he WAS. This was Wren's dream, his ambition, and as far as he was concerned, Caelum was the invading power.

"The physical world is just a shell," Wren said slowly, eyeing the orange, "Unpalatable, and protective of the interior. Our chavi holds the world together, but the heart of our existence lies in the Ukalas within." He didn't offer up whether he felt it was right or wrong, simply noting the ragged ends of orange-flesh at the peel Caelum had made. Had it been so easy then? Is that what the Valterrian was? Someone peeling an orange?

How easily the empire of man crumbled into dust.

"I will build," Wren said, swinging both hands up, as if lifting something from the empty air. Around them, towers and walls tore through the topsoil, spitting grass and trees as cities with complex roads rose from the ground to crisscross the face of Sylira. "I will build an empire. We will conquer the Wildlands, unite the city-states, and rebuild what has been lost to us. Our population will not balance at the edge of eradication, we will embrace innovation and scientific advancement, and we will have peace with ourselves and the world around us."

He crossed his arms and stood, twisting the world around so the sky was a window looking down into a crowded marketplace of the capitol city. People thrived, bustled among each other, as shimmering-armored guards looked one with steadfast vigilance.

"I don't suppose this will compromise your chavi and Ukalas, will it?"

[Caelum]

A grin loitered on Caelum's face as he watched his opponent -- his friend? -- mull over the orange, thoughts chasing their own tales through his eyes. The wind cuffed at the tangled ends of his hair, but he paid it no heed. The board between them was scratched by the feet a thousand miniature golems and the desperate knife fights of incensed mercenaries. Caelum collapsed away from him, slumping far down in his chair. The tips of his fingers were pressed together and he made of his hands a steeple, elbows propped against the armrests and his head tilting an inch to the right. Still watching. Still studying. Still completely fascinated. Caelum gave a faint shake of his head to the idea that their world was nothing but an unpalatable shell. That was not the message in his metaphor, but he was wise enough to know it took more than a piece of fruit to create a common language. This was a dream. They still had time. "Xhyvas love you," he remarked while towers spat out of the ground surrounding to stab accusing fingers at the sky. Breath left him like a gasp, eyes a little wide as he took in the changing landscape of ambition. It was stunning. Wrenmae was magnificent. Details caught in reflections off golden domed towers and armor alike. Opportunity pirouetted through the people, and the world as a single community evolved into higher states of being. Pushed by progress. Elevated by necessity. Supported by the -- "No, no, no," Caelum protested, his heart catching up with the rest of him. He was on his feet by now and had wandered from their table, away from their abbreviated chess game and some steps into the potent portrait of a restored world Wrenmae had summoned up around him. He swung around, hands rising, empty of weapons but not of warning. It was a bid for peace, a terribly small gesture in the middle of an incredibly fierce ambition. He moved loose-hipped and determined, returning to Wrenmae where he stood among the clouds to gaze down upon the culmination of all his hopes. He turned when a pace or so away, settling himself beside his opponent and taking a sideways glance at the distant sun. "The shovel," he murmured, their conversation once again intimate. "Is brother to the sword. You build a world with bricks of bone then you must continually mortar it with blood. Do you understand? This --" He gave a little lift of a shoulder and the capitol withered like shed skin in the sun. As if it were a painting, parts of it began to peel off in strips until all of the progress and unification offered by Wrenmae's vision was revealed as a facade. "This is fallacy. You cannot create actual peace with war. Innovation and scientific advancement? Where do you think they will have begun? What do you think they will have been fed by? War. Famine. Dissolution of society. Deaths by the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands, the numbers too high to even hold meaning to you anymore. While the practice of debridement is a proven method of healing, a physician doesn't dip his patient's entire body in acid just to melt off the disease." Passion built in his words, emotion infusing his archaic accent with a demand to be heard, to be listened to, to be considered. Why else would his opponent be here if not to hear him? The enemy general settled into a frown, studying now the rot that ruined Wrenmae's empire from the inside. Softer now, he asked, "Have you seen war?" His head turned, taking in Wrenmae's profile. "I understand that you know death and have survived untold suffering. It is plain. But have you seen war? Has dead Ruros sent you dreams from his tomb? I am worried, friend. I'm worried that you imagine your shining dream to be worth the waste. I'm worried that you don't know what it is you're wasting. Strength in arms is not strength in soul."

[Wrenmae]

His dream cracked and bled rust. The ivory pillars molted ashy grey, the streets buckled beneath the bones sprouting from the earth like grisly trees. The people turned pale, then vanished...as if the suggestion of construction left in the wake of fire...only ash and dream, memory and whisper. A part of him wanted to reach out and stop this didactic withering, but it wasn't his move. Although the board lay behind them both, forgotten game of miniatures long abandoned, the melee of wits had been brought to a grander stage.

How Ionu of them both.

Caelum casually sauntered above it all, his words placating and suggesting...never crossing the line into an order or a reprimand. In debates past, Wrenmae had become accustomed to the sharp edge of debate when it rang in his ears. Caelum spoke to him like they were old friends, or worse...like his elder brother.

Smoke and embers burned along the edges of Wren's figure, emotional manifestations of the interior turmoil. He drifted down from the heavens, away from the ethaeful to walk along the streets that had, moments before, been filled with the happy murmur of lives lived. Now only the empty echo of wind crossed these streets, warped beneath the weight of the metaphor Caelum lay.

It was his instinct to retort, to remind him that nothing in the world was ever solved through peaceful debate...that war and violence, power in its purest form, would bring order.

But perhaps it was too narrow-minded. Nya had mentioned something about the arrogance of humans in Alahea and Suvan old...and had criticized him for his dismissal of the Knight's sacrifice. Twice he had been left speechless by those he had underestimated as a matter of principle.

It was almost comical...so stubborn, so emotional. Was he the leader to bring order to the world?

Wren took in a breath, his chest swelling with the indignation seething within him, the defensive arrogance he held when his ideas were under fire...held that breath, than let it out.

Fire and smoke billowed out over the city and swept away from him in the air. Kneeling, he took one the snake-skin shreds of his illusion and placed it, like a puzzle piece, where it had been.

"I've run the scenarios a hundred times over, maybe more." He said, picking a skull from the shadow of his capital and staring into its vacant eyes. "Even if I can bring Sunberth to heel and broker alliance with Zeltiva and Sahova, the Sylirans will fight. It is in their nature to battle, to supply the world with their idea of order." He looked up into the sky at Caelum, tossing the skull over his shoulder. It vanished into nothing before it hit the ground.

"Perhaps war is a bit dramatic...combat. My understanding of wars was fought with far more people than I think Mizahar has to offer. I haven't been everywhere, but enough places to note the spread of population. The city-states were once a matter of necessity...population pockets to spread to brave the Wildlands and make peace. But we've grown since then, established trade...commerce, diplomacy. More than five hundred years since the Valterrian and the only city-state to seek the slow grind to an empire is Syliras...ruled by a tree."

He swept his hand over the city and a tree sprang from where his hand had passed, devouring cobblestone and buildings as it grew. "God or monster, I won't have the model of humanity be ruled by either."

The sky roiled above them, lightning striking within the vortex of cloud and rain. For now it only seethed above them, but a few errant drops found their homes in the ruined city where Wren was standing. "Once I was told that mans arrogance caused the Valterrian. I do not intend to build another empire that seeks to call themselves better than the gods, or to forget their place in creation. But once upon a time we thrived on the face of this world, arrogant or not, we were conquerors and settlers...farmers and warriors. Now we exist in frightened pockets, clinging to a stagnant model of government. Force must be supplied to encourage change...either by force of commerce, diplomacy, or violence."

Blood fell from above them, showering the city in a mist of crimson. Each drop almost sighed with last breath.

"The strong live and the weak die," Wrenmae maintained, "And the weak would have this world remain the same rather than venture into a new future. They would say we are not ready, argue another five hundred years, but the Wildlands only press against us, our division breeds pointless loyalties and resistance to assimilation. We're not acting like we're of the same race at all."

The blood fell stronger now, coating the ruin and hardening, shifting as it dried, rebuilding the city where he stood.

"Catalyst. There needs to be cause to change. If not military, than subterfuge, destabilization, reformation, unity. Humanity must endure another crucible to come out stronger and better. Ask Zeltiva who reformed their Waveguard...who taught them the prudence that a man who holds a blade to protect must be responsible for the skill he has to wield."

Wren waved his hand and the rain stopped, the rebuilt city, albeit constructed of dusky red stone, loomed around him.

"Shovels and peace have had their chance. They've had the last two hundred years. Three hundred for us to rebuild ourselves, two hundred to agree on alliance and growth. History suggests that we have become tempered to accept our reality as it is, to abandon what we once were and exist as splinters of grandeur."

He rose toward Caelum, holding out a hand as if requesting he be allowed to finish. Settling level with the Ethaeful, Wren crossed his arms. "My suffering is meaningless. It tested my mettle and I proved myself stronger than the elements that battered me. I have been tried, and I am still here. But I will not abide us as we are. If the price for change is sacrifice, I will own that responsibility. Perhaps not war...but no change of this magnitude will not come with a trade of blood...be it someone else's or mine." He turned and looked down at the city, his features softening as children, clutching the hands of their parents, pushed along the filling marketplace.

"People seem to crave peace," he said quietly, "Family, comfort, triumph. Some cities are harsh...the land outside harsher. Even if I have to be a monster to build something where most of us can truly feel safe, can truly grow, than it is a sacrifice worth making."

[Caelum]

Silence held him while Wrenmae spoke, turning a skull over his hands beneath a bloodied sky. It was as if all the tales he ever knew were more than words, were more than true. Caelum loitered and he dusted his hand against the building wall beside him, watching it restore itself with the weight of Wrenmae’s faith. It was faith, even if Wrenmae failed to see it as such. Faith came in many forms and Caelum knew the drug of it well, spending innumerable lives well tangled in the tenets of a flawed pantheon. “You cannot own a sacrifice that belongs to one million souls," he spoke at length, meeting Wrenmae's regard when he halted before him. "It is not yours to lay on the altar of civilization and advancement. You can offer it up to the service of humanity no more than you can rightfully do so with the blood of others. It may become within your power to give Mizahar their blood for this goal, but that doesn’t mean you should. The only soul, the only blood, that you have the moral right to deliver to this end is your own.” He wiped the blood rain from his cheek and bowed his head, blinking down at the smear of pink on his hand. Slowly, he rubbed his fingers together and inhaled the soft steam that slipped from his opponent as tangible symbols of both his emotions and his control of them. How often had he found blood on his hands? How many time had he raised them up, dripping the life of one of those one million souls? A hundred? A thousand? And that was in the ten years since he had returned to Mizahar alone, discluding his life as Kasb'el Sunsinger entirely and all of that cataclysmic war he had not just witnessed but fought in the teeth of. Indeed, he had died spat straight out of war's mouth and shot like a star at Syna's bidding to her side. Alander Jin had not been the first person cruel enough to suggest to him that he healed in an attempt to redeem all that which he had helped kill. The rotted expatriate had just been the loudest. Caelum did not want the same for the man standing in front of him now, and it was with that realization that a more vast and world altering one actualized itself in his mind. This man with his predatory appeal and magnetic dream was not merely the figment of Caelum's imagination, a symbolic, ultimately false representation of his mounting anxiety and accidental evolution into a more multi-faceted healer with the return of Nysel into his life. No, the man was real. He existed. Somewhere, in one far flung corner of this world, he was plotting to conquer the anarchy of Sunberth, allied Zeltivans against themselves, and sought to forge a partnership with the slow gathering plots of Sahova. Somewhere he was lying in a bed or curled beneath a sprawl of stars dreaming of a chess board and ambitions that could chew the center right out of the world's moral core. Caelum had been here before. He had been beckoned by gods into dreams with faces he only later encountered on the brink of grave disaster. The name Denval whispered like a slow shattering in his stomach. Golden eyes rose only to narrow on Wrenmae's face, breath catching in his chest. Then it is a sacrifice worth making. Caelum did the very first thing he could think up that might have a hope in hell. The mirror-masked goddess sauntered through the door of him, naked and clasping her hands with glee at his silent admission. The ethaefal did not ignore her, but rather he embraced her in the privacy of his mind while still holding his opponent's eyes. His hands came up and in a fluid motion, he pushed them out to either side, toppling with a sudden, kicking wind all of this dangerous empire surrounding. It disappeared into the encroaching of a pearl fog and stone walls rose up around them, broken with shining strips of stained glass that spilled sunlight in impossible colors over a tavern floor. There was the distant song of water, rushing water and falling water, a river or a sea beyond this hall that smelled of green things and hearthfires and was warm as anything imagined. It was what Alements would be, almost was, his new business venture that would encompass all that he endeavored. Here the tavern was perfected and already furnished in Caelum's dreams. It was a place to tell stories and to be known, all of that obvious in the wide curve of Caelum's smile. He tilted his head, an invitation, and turned to pace behind the sprawl of a marble bar. "You never told me your name."

[Wrenmae]

Again his empire crumbled into dust around him. Towers crashed into each other and the ghosts of people that never were, and perhaps never could be vanished. Pearl-colored smoke, like clumsy muscled snakes wrapped through the once grand brick streets, swept up their glory hungrily and built a cage of stone around them both.

Wrenmae crossed his arms and watched, the wind from the change buffeting his hair and clothes. He was not furious this time, he'd read the glare in Caelum's eyes...the brief moment where his eyes narrowed and he took the mage seriously for the first time. It wasn't much of a tell, a twitch, hardly more than the spasm of muscle, but it was the only strike against the ethaeful's immaculate composure. It was the only moment in which Wren did not need to resist an urge to embrace the welcoming creature.

A moment enough to reign in his sanity.

The ceiling closed over them, some cavernous maw shutting with the grind of stone. Tables and chairs shimmered into existence, flanking Wren on both sides as a blast of warm air indicated somewhere behind him, a fireplace had sprung into existence. The sea murmured its steady language outside, words of tide and seafoam, lost in the thunder of wave-fall.

It was a tavern, and a smile had returned to Caelum's face.

Insufferably friendly again, but that moment of shifting emotion was the tiny crevice in which Wren jammed his foot, holding fast his urge to speak without thinking. The Ethaeful was a trustworthy one, but that was perhaps more dangerous. His every nature suggested warmth and privacy, but such things could be trained...even honed.

He took a seat at one of the bar stools, hunching over the bar and resting on both elbows.

"Riverfall wine, if you please," he said to Caelum with a smile, "I had it once as a boy in Alvadas and have never since."

He worked no magic to bring it to him, this was the innkeeper's move now.

"You take offense with sacrifice then?" He shrugged and blew at a lock of hair that annoyingly tickled the edge of his vision, "I can't expect to make any progress if the only life at risk is my own. I have faith the strong will survive the culling and remake the face of this world. We all must embrace something greater than ourselves to make real change. One can't..." He flexed his hands, "Be afraid to get their hands dirty." His eyes followed Caelum.

"I don't recall a name from you either, Ethaeful," He continued with a wink, "How am I to know you haven't come to spy on me, hmmm?" Wren grinned and shook his head, "You could have chosen a more forbidding prison if you wished to chide me, you know. I spent seasons at bars like this telling stories when I was younger." He turned in the stool, pointing out and across Caelum's bar, several chairs and tables slid aside and a stone stage, modest in size, rose. "I would stand in places like that and spin tales for coin."

Craning his neck back, he caught Caelum with a hapless smile, "I used to think I'd own a place like this in Alvadas...call it Tale's End. If you've never been...Alvadas is wondrously bizarre...city of Illusion they call it. But it's a fantastic port city between Syliras, Riverfall, and Kenash...lots of trade, lots of stories."

Sighing, he turned back to the bartender, "That was all a long time ago, though."