Roen

To be brief, I’ve succumbed to diverticulitis for the second time in just as many years, which means/meant emergency room and hospital visits, with several more doctor visits pending. There are complications, but it will suffice to say that I’m on the mend. I’m fatigued, still a bit out of sorts, and am in a generally foul(er) mood, but I’ll be coming back soon. Hope all is well.

'It was I who made the promises, Irene. You were busy in the adjacent room with Raphael and our son. I will always be thankful for that.' Smiling, the Outsider looked at the vampyre with hard, glittering eyes, his expression betraying nothing. There was no judgement in his voice, nor any recrimination. There was only sentiment transitioning into the matter-of-fact information sharing, and delivered with the flat, emotionless tones of honesty. He was a creature of truths, this one. Crossing one leg over the other and folding his hands across his lap, the Outsider leaned back in his chair and stared at the vampyre. 'Irene, I only wanted to tell you that I have honored our pledges, nothing more. I am not Yhi'mi's ambassador; I cannot petition aid on their behalf, regardless of who sits on the Orisian throne.' He laughed, quiet and sincere. 'I don't have to talk to anyone about it. That is between you, your newest Lord and Master, and the representatives of that Terran body.' Drawing in a deep breath and sighing it out through his nose, some minor theatricality on his part to speak volumes of a man at comfortable ease and pointed deviation from the topic at hand, the Outsider idly twisted the signet ring on his right hand and flicked his gaze down to Philippe, whom he adored. While he saw Irene as something lower than dirt for her blatant betrayal of his trust and frequent indiscretions with her cousin, his disregard obviously did not extent to the young boy in her arms. Rather, he was enamored with the bundle of joy. It was unfortunate he did not feel comfortable letting the boy out of his sight, and even more unfortunate that he did not trust his mother with him. He had come to hear her voice, but her words, much like her gaze, was impertinent, and the benefit of the doubt he had been oh-so-willing to give his wayward daughter was forgone, and in its stead just the memory of why a month had passed since last they spoke. She was unwanted, as unwanted and as unnecessary as the conversation at hand. With his queries ignored and her small shrug all the evidence of her lack of care, the Outsider sank into the cushions of his seat and watched her and his son with smoldering, unblinking eyes, and said no more. He needn't waste his breath on the unrepentant and unashamed, and was content to supervise her visitation.

Yes, ma’am.

Truly, we are already in the nightmare realms.

'Do you know what a wise woman once told me?' Roen asked. Standing at the threshold with sleeping Philippe in safe embrace, he cut a fine if not regal figure in his waistcoat trimmed with gold and tucked trousers in high boots. As some of the surest signs of progress, change, and perhaps even flattery, he had seemingly discarded the scarlet raiments that so endeared the masses into calling him the king in crimson, and chose instead to wear what he considered the Orisian palette. All that remained of the ostentatious red was the color of his gaze, and it was on Irene, now. A soft smolder, his eyes were the color of embers, lively and dancing beneath the shadow of his brow. His humours, such as they were, were equally sanguine; there was less of the choleric Outsider in him tonight, and more of the Gentleman Sage, the scholar. Engrossed as he was in his pursuits of the academic, esoteric or otherwise, there was little and less time to whet his ire on brooding. Stepping into the room, the hard heels of his boots clicking on the hardwood floor, Roen approached the Black Queen of Orisia, and with his approach came the scent of him, mingled with that of the baby's; a newborn's cleanliness, a fiend's spice, the fragrance of citrus and quenching iron, and the hint of peat. Subtle scents, peculiar, but not unfamiliar, no, never that. To where Gabriela sat Roen went - a supple chair of leather and armrests - and to her waiting arms did he place Philippe, relinquishing his hold gingerly, with a gentleness unheard of, save for in the privacy of familial moments. He let go of the baby with no reluctance. Sighing through his nose, he looked at fondly at Philippe, less fondly so at Irene, then away, his gaze moving through the comfortable sitting room. 'People are like houses, she said. The more experiences you have, the more memories, the more rooms you have in your house. Some of these rooms are worth revisiting,' Roen mused quietly, his thin lips quirking into the frown wholly suited to his unhappy, aged face. There was more gray at his temples, more lines of worry and laughter at the edges of his mouth and eyes. Simulacrum though he was, he retained the years, it could be said, to mark the passage of time. What a thing it is, it could be said, to be sobered and anchored to life at every mirror's passing. He turned slightly, the frown on his face deepening and the heavy set of his brows furrowing. 'Others.. others are better left locked, boarded up, and bricked over.' He sighed at this, a breathy little gust of air that escaped his nose, as if he was half-amused, half-mocking. He was enamored with this place, this construct of walls and halls and means and wills. More than a home, more than a refuge, he had fashioned this villa of brick and mortar into something far more substantial, yet so far less real. It was lonely here, it had to be said. Even with Philippe. So when he was informed that the Black Queen had come calling for her son, he had met the revelation with something of a mixture of dread and excitement, and he did not quite know which sentiment bothered him more. He avoided looking at her, unwilling or perhaps unable to meet her eye or the fullness of her expression. It was enough to glance out of his peripherals, to feel the coolness of her, even here, at arm's length, and smell the quality of her skin beneath the layers of her clothes; all these things so familiar, so utterly, inescapably familiar, they couldn't help but gladden his heart, though he willed it to steel and stone. What were academics, what was ambition and striving, what was the pursuit of vanity in the face of such visceral prompt? Love, and he could hardly call it anything else, so unavoidable was the sentiment, was a dreadful, crippling thing. Just breathing the same air as her was -- terrible, absolutely terrible. It was hard thing to do, to loathed and despise, and he found nothing of the furnace fire of disdain that sent her away from him a month ago. It galled him, truly. He had changed over the years. She had changed him. He had, somewhere along the path from then to now, forgotten what it was to hate and how to do it. He had lost his vindicta. It was why she was allowed in these sacred, hallowed halls. It was why she could sit in his presence, unmolested and safe. It was why he didn't chase her from that room with their son. He cleared his throat, shook his head, and found a seat opposite the Black Queen of Orisia. Stretching his long legs out beneath a table that served as a bulwark between he and his family, Roen crossed his ankles, adjusted to accommodate the length and width of his tail, which coiled on the floor beside him, and lifted his gaze to, at last, seek out Gabriela's own. He wanted, after a month, to see the molten flash of sunset. While he had her portrait in his study, and while he captured her beauty in the stroke of a brush and an artist's care, it was imitation and nothing but. 'It is good to see you,' he said simply, and honestly. He was many things, Roen. He was not a liar. Soft, sweet, his storyteller's voice was modulated low and conversational, just shy of a whisper. The sitting room was a quiet place of waiting, and it, much like libraries and churches, somewhat demanded the lowered tones. 'I'm sorry we haven't talked in sometime. I've been..,' he trailed off, groping for something more substantial than busy. His thoughts went towards Yhi'mi, to the dark forests of Eastern Terrenus, to his foul undertakings of flesh-smithing and techno-advancements in the Lore-Spire. Oh, he was busy, this graying fiend. The alternative was remaining here, grinding the edge of his malice and ill-intent on the stone of dissatisfaction and resentment, or otherwise brooding, as some were wont to whisper concerning his whereabouts. So long as he kept his hands and mind busy, he didn't needlessly dwell on -- he canted his head, the movement sharp, like an errant twitch. He closed his eyes briefly. 'Mmm, busy. Our aid to the Shadowlands of Yhi'mi are due any day now. I've sent a brave soul to shepherd those men and women.' He looked at her again, sober. 'What.. have you been doing?' He asks, hesitant. Small talk, this was. He was no adept at small talk. The awkwardness of it all was not lost on him, but more than see her, he wanted to hear her speak.

That’s funny.

Time to be big damn heroes.

...to the anterior aspect of the pituitary gland by Transsphenoidal surgery through the nasal cavity and sphenoidal sinus. This method of surgery is relatively safe for the aspirant as no other portion of the recipient’s brain tissue is touched. Most complications from this organ arise after the surgery and are hormone related; however, strokes or blindness can occur as a complication of surgery. Glancing from one text to another, the Outsider wrote an anecdote in his journal and sighed at the memory. It was not a pleasant one. The organ, gene-wrought in the Lore-Spire, had lethal complications in nearly thirty-percent of the inductees. Cancerous ossification had happened, the greatly increased osteoblast activity imperfectly executed. In other words, aggressive osteosarcoma. He had watched the aspirant writhe much like the others a slow and painful death march as his bones - like some cancerous malignancy - crushed and impaled him from within over the course of several months. Roen cleaned the head of his pen on an ink-stained napkin with some solvent and cleaning alcohol, and leaned back in his seat. He was in his study, deep in the heart of his manse in the capital of the Summer Isles. He was dressed simply and plainly, having nowhere to go in this place and no expectation of company, and had by his side the two things he needed to see through the long hours of study he performed in the dead of night: a bottle of dry Orisian Red, a seven year old vintage he found as the particular best, and his tutelary. An androgynous blemish of light that floated near a bookshelf, looking much like a Will O’Wisp of faen folklore, it served at the Outsider’s discretion, much like all of its innumerable kin throughout the manse. Gesturing vaguely, the Lord of the Black City indicated the book that lay beside his journal, a thick tome of dusty parchment that was either antediluvian or advanced beyond all mortal ken, pending one’s particular perspective. ‘Take this one back,’ he said in his tired, mellifluous voice. He impressed the book’s origin unto the tutelary: the door of burnished copper, in the hall of ochre glass. It came over without delay, the ball of pale light, and with unseen hands, lifted the tome from the Outsider’s desk and leaving. Another one of its siblings moved up through the floor to take its vacated position. There it floated, humming tunelessly while the Outsider finished cleaning his instruments. Turning his head, Roen cast his gaze to the cradle at his side, where Philippe slept soundlessly. The boy’s lullaby had been and always seemed to be the scratching of pen against paper, and the quiet humming of the fiend and his tutelaries. The chair creaked beneath the Outsider’s weight as he leaned over, peering more inquisitively down at his son. ‘I think that’s enough for one night, don’t you think?’ He sighs then, resting against the cradle’s edge. He had dragged it to his side, kept it there while he worked, through it was incongruous to the room itself. The fiend didn’t care. After a moment, Roen nods sagely. Silent though his son is, the boy was nonetheless a firm influence on his father. ‘Oh, I suppose you’re right..’ He says, dragging his gaze away. It flicked over his desk, where there were other, equally large tomes waiting for his attention. ‘I should get back to work.’

Godspeed to people running two or more; I can barely do one.

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