In Media Res.

[odium.]

One week after the events of Daeor's fall.

There came a rapping at his chamber door.

"Yes, come in."

The soldier entered through the slate doorway, pushing open an old heavy wooden slab of a door. This soldier's name was Markus, an emmisary of the Resistance loyal to the Terces family. Upon his entrance, he noticed Gavin standing in the middle of his room, or rather what appeared to be Gavin. It was humanoid in shape and size, its hair and facial features belonged to him, the only exception was that this countenace was ghastly blue- practically white. Markus also noticed that, though he was naked, Gavin's appearance held no distinguishing sexual features. Its contours were static, almost ghost like.

"Sir, Markus of Rosinder reporting."

"Yes, yes. What's your report, soldier?"

"Sir, apparently Daeor was attacked by a group of non-Rosinderites claiming to be the Resistance."

"... Go on."

"Uhm! Reconnaissance confirms that they are a group of 'freedom fighters' known as the League of Mages. Apparently Julius Aldoid is rumored to be among their numbers."

"That's interesting."

Gavin's despondent form corrisponded perfectly with the tone of voice it projected. Rather than its mouth moving, let alone any of its features at all, his voice reflected from the Astral corridor that this current body was projected from. Had the wind blown through his open window, not a single hair on this form's head would have moved.

"Apparently, upon attacking Daeor, the non-Rosinderian Resistance team noticed that the city itself was an illusion. That the Renovatian military occupation had left the city, but left behind something odd..."

"... Oh?"

"The report states that there was an illusion of the city left behind, as if to fool everyone into thinking the Renovatian's were still there."

"Heh... that's ironic. Who would have ever thought tha-- ungh!"

His voice spiked, it echoed through the room as if they were standing inside an endless corridor.

"S-sir?!"

"Ease yourself. I was only glanced, it's nothing major. Have you anything else to report?"

"No sir."

"Alright, send a scout to keep an eye on this new Resistance, you know the Law."

"No weapons, no magic."

"Leave the room, I'm coming through the gate... and send for a doctor."

[odium.]

Again, there came another knock to his door.

"Please... come... in."

Gavin's response was slow, between heavy breaths. He was standing in the center of the room, aside from his robes he wore a cold sweat and plenty of blood. A gloved hand clutched to the wound at his torso, just above his liver.

"Dear me... I would say you appear to be in bad shape, but fortunately I know you are a Terces."

"It's just a scratch... unfortunately, it's a magic wound."

"You boys and your freedom fighting. Can't you ever just put your swords down for a second?"

"Shove it, glasses. Just 'effin fix it, or at least stop the bleeding."

The doctor entered, closing the colossal door behind him, he latched the bolt. Setting his bag down, the man practically caught Gavin as he stumbled, now they both walked to the Terces' bed. With helping hands, he laid Gavin out before him on the bed, knowing that the most grevious wound was the obvious one. The doctor kept pressure on it, while inspecting the others just to be certain.

"Alright, the rest of them appear to be superficial... and it appears you've managed to stop their bleeding yourself."

As he spoke, the doctor cut away Gavin's tunic. His bag on the ground at his feet, a bowl of water on the nightstand next to him.

"So... doc. Got a... name?"

After a few moments of working with his scalpel, the doctor looked up from behind glasses with a pair of vibrant golden eyes.

"Corwin. Doctor Corwin Berenger."

He returned to his duties, removing the supernaturally damaged tissue from within the wound. It was a mess, the contours of the wound were now rotten flesh, it was beginning to multiply through, and affect, the other tissue cells around it.

"Know how to fight, Corwin?"

"I'm no good at doing my job backwards. I save lives, not end them."

"Then shut the hell up and don't give me advice about the war."

"Your elder brother is a good man. He'll lead the people of Rosinder well, once this war is finished. The people of Rosinder love him, almost to a fault. It's quite amazing, if I don't say so myself."

"You're not from... around here, are you?"

"No, I don't have a clue. But I know it's not from this continent... now hold still."

[|°ὺ₯₳ↄĸJONES]

And it was when the daystar's light was most timid, would a hexagon divided via its own diagonals into scores of equilateral triangles manifest. Such was a cube that represented life and or recreation, and from it's constitution spewed brilliance, for it shined like heaven's day.

Blinding light bled from it's core, breaking down the purifying white into numerous bars of various colorations like that of a prism.

From the window would this ethereal entity enter unannounced with the Essence at his back, and the sun and moon at his feet. "You've been misinformed, Corwin." Left foot leading, Exus Prime slowly bopped his way on out of metatron's (Primus') cube, with both appendages resting on his broad chest. Within his palm, a crimson double helix bejeweled by cosmic debris spun. All the while, quick-silver fingers serenely tugged and tightened the knot of the tie the spinning helix became.

"Salutations, gentlemen.". Pivoting off the heel of his right, the star riddled blazer rippled as it prostrated to the realm of this reality whilst the enigmatic entity about-facing. He shut the window affront and fixed the drapes, recording the texture, fabric, and color while doing so. "...fantassstic." he whispered to himself, even without a mouth.

The cube quickly effervesced into a realm of nothingness, and the room once brightly lit upon his entry darkened, submitting to a state of gloom and isolation.

[odium.]

Gavin's eyes narrowed. Damn, in his current state he was unable to detect the presence before it was too late. Unhampered, there were a thousand things Gavin could have done to dampen his presence, guard his corporeal coordinates, scatter his astral signature in a kaleidescope across Rosinder to keep those from finding him in his foxhole!. With a wound as severe as this, the summoner hadn't the time to enact wards or seals of any sort.

Corwin covered his eyes, the light filled the room with ambience, a veritable nano-star came to life before the two men. The doctor backed against the wall, something inside him stirred. It was a primal feeling, something dark that lurked behind the surface of those eyes. The scalpel in his hand became non-existant, or rather, it fit the grooves and callouses of his hand so well that it became as much apart of him as his own beating heart. With narrowed eyes, he remained trained against the stone wall, prepared to essay this task of defending his patient.

Gavin was already standing. Interposed between the two, strafing any chance of altercation between them. His eyes, unlike Corwin's were aware of the Law, and they perused no breach in such a contract.

"Stand down."

The Terces looked from over his own shoulder, a hand clutched over his open wound. A final gesture with his hand led the good doctor to lower his scalpel. The image in Gavin's mind was a grim tableau, practically everything had changed about Corwin in that instant, he could feel it. Not on a simple level of emotion or fight-or-flight, but a deep subconscious and perhaps metaphysical transformation. There was practically energy breaming off him like some celestial nimbus, it piqued his interest-- until he recalled the task at hand.

"So, you've... heard word of your subordinate in Daeor, I take it? You've come far sooner than I'd imagined."

His voice was far more stoic than when in the presence of his brothers, but even now it was static, the wound was draining the life from him. He could feel it, the coming struggle to even remain conscious, but he refused to falter in the face of such a man.

[|°ὺ₯₳ↄĸJONES]

"So... You know who I am? Splendid!" His right hand gestured out and back in towards his chest, his heart. His words traversed space nonchalantly, lathered in honey and compassion. Such was Renovatian pride-- asserting dominance and exhibiting superiority. Subtleties in high Reno rhetorical style always made the precise intent of ones lexis tricky to ascertain.

Primus' hands met at his lower back as he pivoted once more to locate the origin of this overwhelming sense of heaviness. Not that it razzle dazzled him or anything silly like that, but it was indeed noteworthy.

"I watched the entire event transpire with my own eyes, Gavin." Primus took a single step forward, his eyes, that never were, impaled the doctor's soul "Are you capable of fixing him doc?" Primus' vision was rather unique, for he had analyzed all of Gavin's wounds and exercised all possibilities of treating him via programs spawning from mere thoughts. "if so, please continue your work. Don't mind me."

The two gentlemen shared his attention, though more importantly, aside from the reason he showed face was "The designer... What is his or her name? I could user their deft in Nu Martyr should I ever rebuild. The marble theme is a bit played... No?"

[odium.]

What became of him was of no consequence to this man.

He'd have a use for the doctor, yet. Though the tool he was using was mundane, the art of his craft and precision were something else entirely. Perhaps this was the key he was looking for, the answer to a question he only asked himself. Fanning his gloved hand out behind him, Gavin proceeded to seat himself at the edge of the bed as Corwin approached to further inspect the damage.

"Your haste has torn some of the tissue bordering wound and the underlying muscle."

"I know you didn't come here to give me decorating tips..."

The doctor went back to work, Gavin was an incredible man, if one could call him such a rudimentary thing. The glaive that pierced him was infact arcane, a lance emblazoned in ether, wounds less than this have ended the lives of countless men. The rumors appeared to be true, the Terces had the blood of titans flowing through their veins. Corwin shook his head and resumed operations, the blade flowed freely and without err, surgical lines cut so precise that Gavin's body didn't bleed.

"I suspect something, but I need you to confirm my suspicions."

[|°ὺ₯₳ↄĸJONES]

"Of course not... Seeing as how I am the one in dire need of such."

The soles of his spiffy shoes clicked and clacked on his way over towards the bed, situating himself a foot or two in front of both the doctor and Gavin.

"I'm sure you've questions pertinent to this makeshift war and or Daeor... Or maybe even this revolution that will surely end in a debacle. Though, not because it's leaders are inept-- well, some of them. But because their cause is futile. Wasted efforts." Had they possessed a cosmic awareness on par with that of Primus', surely they wouldn't have been so ignorant. "There I go ranting again, excuse me."

His stature was that of a Titan, a colossus; towering over the two with his left arm across his chest cupping the elbow of his right. Primal digits rendered his chin a mottled puddle, a substance similar to mercury. He was simply scratching his beard, one which he obviously didn't have. It was all to clear that the enigma had dealt with humes for far too long.

"I suppose we can play twenty-one questions. You first."

Like a child, his hands clapped frantically.

Silence quickly trounced the more talkative entity. Primus was actually curious and overwrought to hear the details of this man's suspicions and such. Wars didn't happen everyday, not here on Valucre, and rightfully so. For they all would have been fiascos, surely, whereas he, Primus, only knew success. His resumé spoke for itself.

[odium.]

"You're going to have to lay back down."

Corwin pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, the smell and sight of blood on his hands didn't bother him. It was merely part of the job.

"You've abandoned Daeor, but I highly doubt it was at the behest of my meeting with your admiral Cartyr. Doubtless, you've heeded my warning that we, the Rosinderian armies, are coming for our land. Having your armies spread out over the land was one obvious flaw in your military, I'm surprised you would take the word of your enemy."

Gavin couldn't help but wonder the countless other reasons, reasons that Primus would never think of alluding to. Had Primus shown up with weapons, or in some manner of threatening pose, Gavin knew he couldn't stop him in his condition. Conversely, it would take all of his wily knowledge and brevity to fell an opponent with such... nuanced features as this. Living metal that can become at least partially liquid upon command... what the fuck. He cognized; his mind racing through a thousand windswept battlefields of would-be's, the results were grim. Fortunately, it did nothing to strafe his confidence in Arthur's strategical maind, Brand's fortitude, and his own wisdom.

"Why don't we just settle this here? One match; winner take all?"

He could feel Corwin's hands heavy on his torso, as if his grip steeled itself at the mention of conflict. Those eyes of his looked down, as high brows furrowed and a painstaken smirk carved itself about his features. He nodded in a could you get your fuckin' mitts off me sort of manner, to which Corwin obliged. The scalpel rolled across the nightstand and clanked against the bowl, what was now filled with murky brown water.

Gavin drew a deck of cards from his pocket, its features were mundane, though the case was an interesting thing. It was a rectangular cube, for the most part, shaped specifically to hold dominion over the cards within. Its texture was wooden, and yet at the same time, contained a lacquered surface like leather.

[|°ὺ₯₳ↄĸJONES]

"Abandoned? Blasphemy. My surveillance is omnipresent in Rosinder thanks to Xevn and project Rejuvinay. Imagine every single blade of grass you've trampled hosting a set of eyes at its tip. The trees even have ears, all of which transmitting data to a mainframe that is my mind... every second of everyday."

A short-lived silence gave birth to topics of greater significance. Rather than delving deeper into data pockets that would inevitably lead to the mentioning of Judas.

"I hear and see things all the time. Constantly siphoning terabytes worth of data even as we speak. It wasn't like I had a sudden whim to mass-transport my city and people to a safer location the day before the attack."

The cry of white noise faded into existence, amplifying as Primus' frame begin to rip apart and flicker. A benign anomaly of sorts that distorted his titanic frame, situating after images of himself all over the room until he found himself hanging upside down, gawking at Gavin from the ceiling as would a bat.

"That is unfathomable. I could turn a liter into an ocean, a pebble into a mountain... A single primal unit to a crusade legion if I thought it true." restless legs urged Primus to bop along an imaginary line that traced the cube that conformed to his whole upon entry. "My flaw is paradoxical. What's suppose to be impervious is susceptible to a specific frequency... all because I cannot make a perfect copy."

To the window, back to the ceiling, to the large wooden door and back to Gavin's bed. Primus' glitches were impulsive, and always surfaced when this sensitive topic did.

"I've come to convey a gem," the casing Gavin revealed failed to clasp his attention. "Rosinder's new ruler will not be a man, but a woman. A woman of the people." his form began to stabilize finally, though unfortunately, pints of cosmic radiation seeped from his being during his glitch tantrum. "Unlike those before me who made promises return, I returned. For my people."

"The Rosinder campaign began the day she and Renovatio occupied the same hemisphere. Upon my first visit to this realm, I analyzed this world only to conclude on the seventh day that it was the ideal location for my people. People who've chosen the escape I offered them when their world's governments failed to cater to their needs."

He felt like his words were falling on deaf ears, though only because the resistance had already made up their minds instead of reaching out to the being who brought life and resources to their dire lands.

"Long story short, I had to augment the terrain and its energies to ensure my people could exist here. Rosinder was a shell of what it use to be. Ran by a handful of individuals whose kingdom was deteriorating before their people's eyes. The campaign made it possible for me to bring Tellus Mater to Valucre."

Vainglory dripped from his vocals as he preached his vindications that needed not a second opinion. Though rebuttal was always welcomed, he wasn't a radical dictator out to rule the world and enforce Marshall law, but a shadow who granted paradise to every man and woman and child-- all who were kings and queens worthy of paradise.

[odium.]

Alas, a game of cards wouldn't be the determining factor in this war.

More uncanny than Gavin's ability to be personable was his luck. An attribute that had done its deed a hundred times over. Were there ever a gamble, Gavin would succeed; a single digit percent chance might as well have been a shoe-in for the hero of the west, from Rosinder.

In his hand, the deck of cards fluttered, ejecting a multitude of faces and numbers into the air around him. With a single swipe of his hand, Gavin revealed the odds. Between each finger, including his thumb, was an ace of a different suit. In the time it took him to reveal these faces to Primus, the other cards began landing on the ground at his own feet in rapid succession.

"I don't care what you think you've done for your people.

"You can't come to our land and just take whatever the hell you please, without repercussion."

He pointed down to his boot, which dangled in the air as he leaned to one side. Indicating it to be the swift foot to Primus' ass, or the soon-to-be, rather.

"If you pack up and leave, peacefully, then we won't have to kill you all. Your plight will have been in vain, running from oppression... only to cause it, yourself, in another land. Then to be destroyed for it, on top of it all."

He could have thought of more ironic things than this, but perhaps in all his wisdom, Primus would see the error of his ways. The Terces, who embody Rosinder, and their resistance were the ones being oppressed in this instance. However, they would not flee in the dead of night for greener pastures, for this was their land and they would do anything to protect it. Anything.

[|°ὺ₯₳ↄĸJONES]

Gavin's impudence tickled Primus, compelling the enigma to chortle every now and then as he listened intently. The hume spoke a good one, he thought while tucking his gargantuan mitts into eternal pockets while his restless legs carried him a foot or two towards the head of Gavin's bed. "Aren't you the prattler." Primus sat on a pillow at the edge of the bed.

Gavin's arrogance was the oxygen to Primus' fire, and after a few short-lived minutes of blissful cogitation provoked by the Rosinderian magician, the only thing on his mind after all that was said was the idea of opening pandora's box had he lost a single card game. "Is that a fact?"

He'd no longer humor the thought of Rosinder belonging to them, for it was nothing to rewrite history were it that serious, but the idea was to build. Recreate. Not rewrite, such was labor he hadn't the patience for at the moment. All of which leading to, "Well, I've foreseen my encounter with your brother, Arthur. If you wish to get your feet wet, I can relay the coordinates, time, and day of Rosinder's liberation."

"Though, my dreams convey that your brother is the type to reap all of the glory for himself should he succeed. But that's just my opinion. I'm sure you know your blood far better than I?"

[odium.]

Gavin shook his head, the aces fell from between his fingers like the last leaves of autumn. There were many things that Primus would never understand and many things that he would never see, even in his most vivid of dreams. The certainty of his demise at Arthur's hand was one of them, it was fate; already writ. Gavin's purpose was to set in to motion the cogs, this series of events that put them all on this most final of paths.

Corwin was finished with his patchwork, though he dare not leave Gavin's side. The doctor glared from behind thick framed glasses with a cold, almost inhuman grimace. He could feel it, himself, deep in the vestiges of his being; this primal thing he knew lurked behind his eyes.

"Clearly, I'm not worried about the nuances of our victories. The ends justify the means."

Even the good doctor would find himself caught up in Gavin's plans. No meetings were by chance, everything had its due purpose, as did everyone.

[|°ὺ₯₳ↄĸJONES]

"I don't think you get it, Gavin."

Not once had the herald of heralds felt underestimated in all of his life, that was eternal, until he met the Rosinderian. The idea disgusted Primus to his very core, immensely, and yet still, his patience and tolerance would exhibit itself via mellifluous words.

From within his left pocket, a single card was withdrawn. Along with it spilled an even greater amount of cosmic radiation. Unintentionally. This card resembled those of Gavin's deck that lay a mess at their feet.

"There will be no victory. There will be no losses. There will only be liberation, and only because..." Primus slid the card face down across the minute distance that separated the two on this bed for peasants. "I allowed it to be."

Were Gavin interested enough to reveal the card to himself, he'd gain knowledge not only of a card that no longer rested on the floor, but of whom Primus spoke of.

The card was a queen of hearts, symbolic to an event that was to transpire whether he and or the resistance liked it or not.

"Protect her, Gavin." Primus stood, and made his way back towards the window where his form had begun to effervesce into a realm of nothingness. Still his voice existed here and now. "So many are quick to label me a monster, and rightfully so. I've done so much wrong... And now I can do right... By me of course."

"Kingdoms should be ran by liberals in my honest opinion, who're for both the people, and political parties-- more importantly, the wellbeing of the commonwealth. She is the prime candidate... I'll be watching."

Primus was gone, no longer here nor there. For now, Valucre was nothing more than a memory of a place that was no longer blessed by his presence. Surely for the better, or maybe for the worse.

[odium.]

He watched silently, the entire time. He waited, as he did this watching thing; Primus finished his long-winded speech and Gavin continued with his appropriate response. Perhaps it would be better to refer to it as a lack thereof. The Recreational God melded, melted, and before long withered away to nothing. Gavin stoically remained the same, statuesque, taking a page from his brother Brand's book perhaps.

Picking up the card, he would reap what it offered to him. Knowledge of these things; Primus' intention (or what Gavin could glean from it), the girl to be queen, what was in store for Rosinder.

"... kill the girl and just be done with it, then."

His gloved hand crumbled the card, digits ingulfing this thing whole before tossing it to the ground at the bedside.

"Excuse me?!"

"Nothing. We've work to do.

"We're headed for Terrenus."

"We?"

"... fuck you keep asking questions for? Grab your shit, we've got no time to waste."