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Post by Silverfallingstar on Feb 5, 2021 15:09:21 GMT -6
Setting: Between White Wyvern parts 1 and 2, Hearthstone Palace - Advisor's offices, early afternoon.
Shay|Aodh|Gentry
Shay knew he really should have sent a letter ahead requesting a meeting. That was what was proper, and avoid the possible embarrassment of getting turned away at some point in the process. But he'd been mulling over the rumors that hadn't been addressed at the Goldhead meeting for several weeks and the nervous energy that had gotten him out of bed this morning refused to leave until he'd made the decision to head to the palace today and speak to Aleksei about what had occurred months before on Oriel. The young teenager had almost made it out the door but Eleanore insisted that no, if he was going to the palace he was going to both go on a full belly and dressed appropriately. So with his red and gold gilded bridle and matching half cape and dark iridescent eye shadow applied to his face by Eleanore's practiced telekinetic grasp he was sent off after having a full, though an admittedly late, breakfast.
As he traveled closer to the palace, the nervousness had returned. He'd not been back inside since his family had moved out. Sure the ground floor was open to the public during the daylight hours, but there had been too much pain for a long while to make going back worth it. Getting in was fairly simple, he'd just been told to behave himself by the chevaliers on duty. He'd just smiled and nodded and moved along. He pulled his wings in close without really thinking about it, looking around at the familiar hallways and rooms he had lived in only a couple years ago. It was strange, being back here without the clearance he used to have. He used to be able to go almost anywhere anytime, now? Relegated to the ground floor without invitation otherwise. The paintings had been changed since he left, not all of them of course, his aunt, cousin, grandparents, and other ancestors still graced the walls, and its not like the paintings had stayed the same when he'd lived here, but the new paintings just added to the feeling that he wasn't home, not anymore. He fought down a grimace as he remembered what he'd learned about its current occupant, and just how he'd gotten his hooves on the building, and the crown that came with it.
And now here he was, at the start of the advisor's offices, about to approach Aleksei. He'd never considered himself to be the closest equine ever with his cousins, though he loved them just as much as he did his siblings, they were family after all. But as it stood, Aleksei was the only advisor he was familiar enough with to approach to talk about important matters. He read off the nameplates in his head as he passed by, looking for Aleksei's office. Finding it, Shay had a moment of pause. He anxiously tugged at his bridle as he stood before the door. He pressed an ear to it to see if he could hear anyone else inside, and finding that he couldn't actively hear a conversation, took a few steadying breaths before knocking on the door, doing his best to hold himself up in a confident and poised manner. He waited until the door was opened or he was told to come in before saying,
"I'm sorry for the unannounced visit, Advisor Aleksei. I have some interesting information, about the kirins. If you're willing to hear it."
Post 1| WC: 575
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Post by ThatDenver on Feb 5, 2021 17:54:28 GMT -6
ALEKSEI
It was a strange combination to be simultaneously extremely busy, and barely utilized. Isador seemed to withdraw from his advisory cabinet more and more each day, and yet the paperwork seemed endless. Most of it mundane, almost pointless – matters that could easily have been handled by others. He was not sure if Isador meant to bore them until someone confessed what they were up to, or if it was simply that the King trusted anyone outside the Advisers even less than the Advisers themselves.
Still, as days dragged on and the plan, the rumors, began to coalescence into a cohesive whole, Aleksei knew the game would end soon enough. Isador wasn’t stupid; the grey King surely knew by now that more was up than simply seeking to gain from political games; more than just using the power to step on the King’s hooves.
He had reason to believe Isador had yet to identify who was involved – surely he would’ve acted if he knew.
Or perhaps not. Isador was crafty, but he was also in power. He had most of the Chevaliers, and the wyvern.
Aleksei wanted to be out there, watching, participating.
But he had to be here. It was his place.
For now.
He was cut from his thoughts by a knock on the door, and a vaguely familiar voice. Aleksei racked his mind for who it might be – they sounded young, but if they had been allowed into the Palace, it surely wasn’t just any random child off of the streets.
Shay?
Probably. He couldn’t be sure. Lilith had too many children, and he had long since given up on recognizing all his step-cousins from a distance.
”You may enter”, he replied, and when the door opened, he confirmed that this was, indeed, Shay. One of the few non-spotted ones, if he remembered correctly.
”Cousin Shay. It’s good to see you”, Aleksei said, looking at the young pegasus rather curiously. He had no idea what someone that age might know about kirins, of all things, but he was curious to hear regardless. If the Soleil family still lived here, he might’ve been suspicious that the visit was more of a prank than anything of real import, but now – well, now things were different.
”Now, what’s this about kirins?”, he asked.
Word count: 382
Post #1
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Post by Silverfallingstar on Feb 8, 2021 17:20:06 GMT -6
Shay|Aodh|Gentry
Shay smiled when Aleksei said it was good to see him. "It's good to see you too cousin, It's been a while." Shay shut the door behind him softly, waiting to hear the click that it was shut properly before coming further into the room. He took his glasses off his face and rubbed them against the fabric of his cape before putting them back onto his face. He clears his throat and shuffles his hooves as he figures out where to start. Should he start at their appearance in the wyvern stables? With Ignacio showing up? At the start? He nodded to himself, yes, at the start would probably be best, leaving out context would probably have been a bad idea.
"Back in April, I was out on an errand with one of my other siblings and his aunt, when we went by the hole in the ground where the old Pearl was. I'm still not sure if my little brother was just pulling our legs or not, but he ran off into the hole claiming he could hear some... song. I'm inclined to believe him just because of what happened, but at the time I was more concerned with him not being hurt and also running into an actively fenced off area so I followed him and ended up down there with a few others who had also seen him running down there." Shay paused, debating on if he wanted to mention names directly. Well, if Aleksei asked, he decided, he'd give them, he wasn't sure if their return two weeks later was reported by the chevs at the gate that day or not.
"He was fine, not a scratch on him, but there was a weird light, like one of these-" He summoned a small orb of his light manipulation, small and gold in color, and let it float around his head a couple of times before dismissing it. "hovering around my brother. I'll be honest I thought he'd been blessed and just didn't tell anybody but before we can really think about it much it just zips right on down deeper down the tunnel that Sola came out of, and of course he follows it. I think... the song had something to do with kirins. Cause he's a kirin and one of the other people with us was also a kirin, and she said she could hear the song too. There's a bunch of ruins down there you know, with a bunch of really old reliefs down there, I think that the professors in the archeology department at the university would find a lot of new stuff down there if they haven't already."
The teen shook his head, focus, don't get off track talking about the trove of history down there. This wasn't about that. "A-anyway, the light went into this hole, at the end of the tunnel where Sola must have been sleeping for all that time, it wasn't a very noteworthy hole really, except that my brother said the music was coming from the hole. I was about to offer to check it out when things got really weird. It felt like when you're standing in a river and the current is really trying to pull you further downstream, except much stronger, and we all got pulled into the hole. It was real dark for a bit and then we were spat out somewhere else in a heap."
Shay took a second to breath, he was getting to his point now, he was just hoping he wasn't losing his cousin with his story so far. He scratched the back of his foreleg with his other front hoof before he continued.
"It looked like stables, but bigger than any I've ever been in, and we heard voices down the hall which turned out to belong to three other Kirin, part of the Heralds. Things got really tense and I thought we were going to be killed outright, weapons got drawn and the three were very clearly all warriors. I know this next part probably sounds a little strange but, there was a bright flash of light that blinded us and when we could see again, Ignacio was there. Physically there, not just his voice, we could see him. It was really hot and bright and he started talking to us."
This sounded ridiculous he could tell, he would have a hard time believing this story if he hadn't been there. But, he continued. "He said that... he brought us to those three because he wanted to save his children. That he wanted them to learn how to love the world for what it is... like he had to, and that we had a lot to learn from each other. That he'd chosen to defend us, his new children, from his old ones who sought to destroy, even if he couldn't do so directly." he scrunched his nose in thought, trying to remember exactly what Ignacio had said word for word was hard without a lot of concentration, so he was paraphrasing as best he could. "There was a sadness there, like he missed being able to talk this way. But after he told the three heralds what he'd hoped for them, that us and them could find a way to co-exist, that if they continued this war it would end in just more destruction, two of the heralds we had interacted with confessed that they didn't want to go along with this war their leader had started."
Shay glossed over the fact that Ignacio had expressed regret over Paprika's chains, this was not the time to discuss the nuances of slavery, later, not today. "Those three kirin ensured we were able to get back home safely, keeping us out of sight of patrols, making sure we could get food, things like that. We talked, told stories, and despite how everything started, by the time our parties split, we managed to have some kind of understanding between us. I don't know if more kirin within the heralds share their opinions that the war isn't right, but given how many of them there are, its possible that there are more dissenters in their ranks than just them. I don't know how that could be harnessed to save our people and the ones on their side who want peace but, there's a hole in their defenses there."
Shay took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he finished, watching to see how Aleksei would take the news, his mouth felt a bit dry, but there was a pride in him. He'd done it, he'd gotten the story out and maybe it could be used at some point to help.
Post 2|WC: 1123
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Post by ThatDenver on Mar 5, 2021 14:27:04 GMT -6
ALEKSEI
He had not expected a story quite this long and winding, nor, well, much of anything that the story ended up containing. If it had been one of the younger cousins, Azel perhaps, Aleksei would’ve dismissed the whole thing as a child’s daydream, or an overly active imagination. But Shay was a bit older than some of Lilith’s other bastards, not really an adult by any means, but certainly not a little kid either. Besides, the way he told the story didn’t really have the tone of an excited kid rambling off about this amazing game they played with friends – it was a bit too broken up with trying to remember exact details for that.
And, he hoped, that Shay was also smart enough that he wouldn’t have bothered an Adviser with some playtime story, cousins or not.
Finally, it seemed, they had reached the end of the story, and Aleksei wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all. It sounded impossible, but then again, stranger things had happened, including during that very same week that this event had probably taken place. Talks of ghosts and all such – was a magical, singing teleportation hole, or whatever that thing had been, really any different.
Briefly, Aleksei wondered about Ignacio’s commitment to helping his people. It was not as if the god had done terribly much so far, he thought bitterly. Aleksei still remembered the time Soleil’s wyvern; he had to presume it was hers, at least, it matched the description of the beast that had attacked Ashlar; had come upon him and the other nobles in the train. Ember had been right there, watching, but had not acted.
Why, he had often wondered. Was it simply because she did not wish to be discovered, or was there another reason?
Was it trust in his mortals, or simply that inaction was easier than action?
Still, it was comforting to hear that not all the kirins were as seemingly bloodthirsty as Heralds had proven themselves to be so far. Of course they had already known as much – some had chosen to stay in other factions, after all, or even in Aodh. They clearly did not wish for a war, but it was surprising to find out that some would have chosen to join Soleil, but not share her vision for a new, bloody future.
Perhaps it could be used, somehow. Perhaps there was a chance of turning the tables on the kirin king, or at least making her army a less sizeable one, whenever she eventually chose to go for the direct assault.
Aleksei hated waiting for her to make her move.
”That’s quite the story”, he said after a long silence of just listening and musing on what he had heard.
”It’s hard to say how this information might be used – I doubt it’s possible to communicate with those kirins without them being found out, after all”, Aleksei said, looking absently at the map of Eithne hung on his wall.
”There are certainly many of them. Our scouts state that there must be hundreds of thousands of them, scattered around Northern Eithne. Surely if you met three who shared those views, all in one place, there must be several more. Probably not scattered around the wilderness – it seems those are all very much of the fighting mind”, he continued, more to himself than Shay, really. He had even heard that kirins had been sighted in Sirith and Onea, looting and pillaging for supplies, apparently.
That too, could work in their favor. If the kirins weren’t just an “Aodh-problem”, he was sure the others would be more inclined to get involved, at least eventually.
”Thank you for telling me this, Shay”, Aleksei said then, and smiled. It was a bit of a conversational smile, not quite reaching his eyes, but it was warm nonetheless.
”I’ll make sure this reaches the ears of the King”, he added, as was expected.
Word count: 657
Post #2
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