What do Illusions Dream of? [Victor Lark]

[Marius Valdemar]

35th of Spring, 512 AV, somewhere on top of a shop He was awake long before his eyes opened. Honestly he just laid there with his eyes tightly shut against the light because he was pounding with pain. The light hurt his eyes when he tried to get moving, and so he decided to lie there a bit longer. Something was poking into Marius's back. He rolled over to try and get more comfortable, but that was worse. He turned the other way, and continued to roll until he reached something worth sleeping on. Instead of comfort, Marius found air. He had rolled off the side of... something. His shout was short and ended with an "Ow!" as he hit cloth, tore through it, then hit street. That woke him up. He opened his eyes and stared at the sky, until his eyes focused. Then he saw the roof he had fallen from, then the canopy he had fallen through, then the crowd staring wide eyed at the youth who had fallen. His head pounded and his back ached. It took him a few minutes to pick himself off the floor, but eventually he was able to stand on his own two feet. The crowd had more or less dispersed, their interest in the situation having run out, and Marius was left standing in a wreckage holding his back and his head, feeling sick and very very confused.

[Victor Lark]

It was the cry that woke him, wholly and suddenly. His found his eyes open, his sleeping pupils assaulted with the white shine of the sky, so he closed them again and wrapped his arm over his face. He felt a groan escape his throat, but he did not hear until a second later. There was a commotion to one side of him, or below him—which was it? His ears were as reliable as his eyes, it seemed. His head ached, his lips were parched, and the prospect of vomiting felt imminent. He rolled to his side, and felt sticky morning dew stretch on his skin; there he retched, and coughed, and groaned again.

Nausea clung to the edge of his lips, but after a while it dripped away and dry clarity rose on his eyes. Victor felt weathered stone beneath him and saw various colored of rooftops rise up and down around him; he was atop one, he realized. It was not the first time he had woken on top of a building, but it had been too long since the last time. He pushed to his feet and stumbled to the edge of the roof. There he found a storefront, and the moment’s situation finally began to piece itself together.

But why couldn’t he remember anything before it?

He gripped the ledge that had been Marius’s bed and kicked his feet over the side, then slid clumsily down the brick face, stopping for an instant at the ledge of the door so that he could jump safely to the ground. “Marius!” He said when he saw him, gripping the poor boy’s shoulder when he noticed a similar aches in him. Green sickness whorled to the front of Victor’s mind, but it was the kind he expected to pass. “How—Do you know where we are?”

It was a stupid question. Even if he did, there was no way of knowing where anything important was. But it was a remnant of a life spent in a world where the city did not move, and Victor was at a loss for any other words. Searching for some answer, he looked down and shoved his hands in his pockets, only to realize that his shirt was gone. As was the necklace that he always wore under it. His jaw tensed as he curled his fist atop an empty clavicle, and then his eyes shot down to Marius again.

“Hey, that’s my shirt,” he mentioned, eyeing the throat beneath it.

[Marius Valdemar]

"What? Huh?" He stammered and stuttered through his bewilderment. A second ago he had been falling from a roof, and now there was some effeminate guy without a shirt grabbing him by the shoulder and saying his name. It took him a moment to realize that the half naked guy was Victor, who seemed just as dazed and ready to spill his guts all over the place. Some unsightly spittle at the edge of his lips suggested that he had already done so. "Victor? Wha-?" It took him another moment to process what the man was saying. "Uhm, no. Not really." He stared up and around in order to view their surroundings and to get a better bearing on the situation. They were definitely still in Alvadas. The familiar twists of alleys that were constantly shifting told them that much. They seemed to be in some market area, though they could have very well been transported here while they were sleeping by Ionu's whims. There was really no way to tell. Marius looked back to Victor at his accusation, and looked down to his own chest to confirm it. It was baggy on him, smelled funny like perfume and puke, and was definitely the nicest thing he had ever worn. Still, why was he wearing it? And when had that happened? In fact, now that he thought about it, the last thing he remembered was entering a tavern with Victor, having challenged him to see if he could beat a child at drinking. Anything after that was a blur. He shoved his hands into his pants pockets as well, which were, thankfully, his own. His search yielded less Mizas than he had started the night with, some tufts of an unidentifiable animal, a small, iron unmarked key that wasn't his, and a note that said the docks at noon. What did it all mean? What in Hai happened last night?

[Victor Lark]

Following Marius’s cue, Victor bided the anxiety of his lost trinket and let his hands wring through his pockets. One contained some grainy substance that flitted from the outturned cloth in a cloud of grey-violet dust, and neither held any money except for a large bronze coin with a hole in the middle, definitely not a miza. Besides some lint, they seemed to be the only things he owned; his ring was gone, too, and his dagger. He felt suddenly naked, in a worse way than if he actually was. “Give me that,” he said, tugging at the shirt on the boy’s shoulders.

There he caught a glimpse of the note. Noon. He stepped out into the street to steal a glance at the sun, a hardly dependable measure but also the only one they had. It shone down hot and green and smelling of spinach, and it reminded him to feel as sick as he was irritable. He looked down, to shield his eyes from the light and prod a thumb and forefinger into his throbbing temples. “It’s only ten, if the sun’s not lying.” He peered down at the boy, trying in vain to read whatever his face had to say.

“And it seems I’ve lost my things. The valuable ones, at least. If you help me find them, I’ll help you find a lock for that key.” He managed a smile that was supposed to be mischievous, though it lacked the proper shine.

People were yelling at him. Assuming it was to sell something, he stepped closer to Marius again to avoid their tossing voices. He flipped the coin over in his hands when he remembered its weight, teased its edges with his fingertips and spun it between them. It did its best to fill the empty space his missing possessions had left, and for that he was comforted. He flipped it into the air and let it fall into his palm, where he attempted to inspect it further. There he saw symbols he could not read, and found frustration in the ignorance. In the next instant, he was shoving it back into his pocket and lifting his eyes to the end of the road.

They needed to be someplace, and that place was not here.

[Marius Valdemar]

"H-hey! Cut it out!" Marius protested as Victor liberated the borrowed shirt from his chest. "Well now what am I supposed to wear? We can't just trudge around town, some old guy and a small shirtless boy! What will the neighbors think?" His eyes darted across Victor's face for signs of annoyance at the jest, but then decided to be more productive as it took too much effort to think of further jokes. Luckily the stall he had landed on was owned by a purveyor of basic needs, and possessed what was probably an overabundance of clothes anyway. The man in question was distraught over the destruction of his property, and was desperately trying to find someone to care enough to apprehend the boy. Marius took this to his advantage and pointed and yelled, "Oh no! A knight from Sylira, coming to apprehend poor little me!" The man, satisfied and excited that justice was going to be finally done, turned in order to beckon the great knight over. Snatching up the closest shirt, Marius began quickly scooting away. "We should probably..." He said in passing to his companion, before breaking into a run. When they had put sufficient distance between them and the commotion, Marius turned huffing back to Victor. "So." He began while pulling the shirt over his chest. It was comically large on him. "It's too early to go see who we were supposed to meet at the docks. What do we do now?" He looked down to the coin nestled in the older man's palm, and his eyes brightened. "Wait a minute, lemme see that!" He exclaimed and snatched the disk from his hand. He held it up to the light and smiled. "I know what this is. This is a prop from a show at the Playhouse! I have a friend that acts there, so I've been there a lot. We should go see him!"

[Victor Lark]

Victor laughed, glancing over his shoulder at the corner they had turned. As far as hew knew, the market and the angry merchant were a mile away then; if the Trickster was feeling peculiarly mischievous, it was ahead of them still. Victor had been ready to test that possibility before Marius stopped him, pointing out the coin that had grown warm in his hand.

“Is it?” He responded, stealing the toy back as soon as Marius took his eyes from it. Victor scrutinized it again, as if he could find some other clue in it, but was ultimately forced to accept the boy’s explanation. The Crooked Playhouse... it seemed a place of his dreams, a great arch he had often encountered but never passed under, a distant goal that he had never found the nerve to achieve. And it seemed he had been there already, and he could not even remember it. “I supposed we should!”

With a peculiar surge of enthusiasm, Victor made a few steps back from where they had come—it would lead someplace new, after all—and broke into a sprint. “Bet I’ll find it before you!”

The street rang with the knocking of his soles against smooth cobblestone, resonating from the close walls like a thousand drumming echoes. It might have been more appropriate to step quietly, if only for practice, but Victor had learned to enjoy the music in the percussion. So consumed was he in it, and in the breeze of movement and the adrenaline of the competition, that he did not notice the racing footfalls that echoed behind him, the angry yells.

And suddenly he was knocked off his feet, and there was someone on top of him, fists flailing. Victor managed to wriggle to his back and tried to throw the person off, but they were moving too quickly for him to get a proper hold. The voice that screamed at him, he realized, was a girl’s.

“You thought I wouldn’t find you, huh? You thought you could get away!”

[Marius Valdemar]

Marius's mind was, as his eyes, on the coin. He recalled the play he had seen it from, and how he had snuck in through the crowd to the front of the Crook, though really if he had simply asked Ifran the actor may have arranged for his position. He hadn't, though more for the thrill of rule-breaking than out of politeness for his friend. The coin wasn't even a big part of the play, in fact nothing more than a single soliloquy proclaimed it to the audience, but it stuck out in the smirking lad's mind when the actor had danced it to and fro across his knuckles and through his fingers like some round fairy tale dancer. He had been so enraptured in watching this, he had completely missed the significance of the coin itself. Victor's voice snaked it's way back into Marius's mind, and it took him a moment to even realize that he had been challenged to a race and now stood alone. His feet moved before his brain in reaction, and the boy was off after Victor before he knew it. He was losing, and then he was winning. Marius took his eyes off of the silk shirt in front of him for a moment to look at the rainbow tiles slipping away underneath him, but when he lifted his head again Victor was gone. He did his best to slow to a halt, and when he finally stopped and looked around he discovered the source of the mystery. Quickly Marius jogged back over to the hysterical woman and the unfortunate victim, and desperately tried to pull her from his friend. "Hey! Lady! Quit it! Who are you anyway?! I think you have us mistaken for some other kid and fop!" He yelled back at her.

[Victor Lark]

Marius was not as strong as his attempts would suggest, but he was distraction enough. As he pulled, she looked back and Victor pushed. The strange woman was thrown to her side and Victor was allowed to stumble to his feet.

She was dressed in a leather vest and sailor’s trousers, he realized, not the colorful patchwork garb of an Alvad. As she scrambled up after him, Victor put his hands out in front of him and stuttered, “Wait, wait! Let’s talk about this! You...” He spent a moment to catch his breath, and to look her in the eye. “You poor, sweet thing. I am so sorry if I have done anything to offend—”

“Offend! You think I’m daft enough to take offense to your blathering idiocy. I’m not offended by you and your cheating brother.”

“Brother? I— he—” His arms were flailing.

“I just want what is mine, you filthy liar. What you owe me!”

She lunged at him again, but that time he was better prepared. His outstretched hands caught her by the shoulders and flung her sideward with her own momentum, leaving him to pivot and dance out of harm’s way to stop beside Marius. Victor was no stranger to hurting women or men, but he was a creature of evasion, not strength. He did not want to underestimate her anger, its potential for growth; neither would he let her come to understand how little he knew of the situation.

His mind darted from his confusion to the note in Marius’s pocket, and the coin in his hand. Those were keys to answers, but this could only lead to trouble. They just needed time, to figure it all out. “I don’t have it... right now. I’ll get it, I promise. Why don’t we meet later? Name a time. I’ll have it then.”