Whoa. Okay, so I wrote this without realizing that I messed up the order of events a little. Forgive me!
Cidolfus Demen Bunansa has retired for the evening, a guard posted outside his door, and a girl on her way with a kettle of tea.
He stands on the balcony, high above the roiling chaos of the industrial sector of Archades, accustomed as he is to looking down on it. The encroaching twilight brings with it a half-promise of rain and a moonless night, but Cidolfus does not heed it. He doesn't much care for such trivial matters, any more than he did in his other life, his past life (in which he had a son and a wife instead of an empty bed and shadows whispering in his ear).
A knock at the door announces the serving girl. He goes to open it, telling Venat to wait there for him as he charms a maid who happens to secretly be terrified of him. She exits the room with a timid, obligatory smile, and he either did not notice or care that her hands were shaking when she poured his tea.
The heat of the cup seeps through his gloves and into his fingers, refreshingly warm in the chill after sunset. He has thought to congratulate himself today, for a wholly remarkable breakthrough was made in the upper floors of Draklor. Judge Bergan's immune system had been more than accommodating when they bonded the nethicite to his bones, and it pleases Cidolfus immensely to know such a thing is now possible, where it was not before.
It scalds his tongue when he takes a sip, fogs up his spectacles with steam, and the world becomes an indistinct blur of glows and shadows so black they could drown him. He doesn't fear them, though, when the whorls of haze melt away and everything again is defined. He can see through the densest Mist to the vagaries of the writ of history, burnt out by desire and the magicks of the Occuria.
The assembly of puppets is on the path to the Treaty Blade as he stands here in the gloom.
The princess, she must choose between instruments of destruction: whether to attain or unravel that which he himself so longs for. It all rests in her incapable fingers, stiff with uncertainty, even as they are trembling with passion. Giruvegan holds many answers, and many more questions for one so headstrong as she.
The children must fight along side her or die; the Kingslayer could abandon them anytime he wished, but Cidolfus knows he is too blindly loyal to queen and country to do so. Bloody Ffamran and his viera pet are of no concern to him. His son is an idiot and a traitor, and though he would not confess it in the depths of his Mist-induced rapture, he has forgotten what it was like to love him.
His guardian diverts him with smoldering eyes and a murmur about earlier occurances.
No, Venat, I care not for that delusional child. The ties that bind us were severed long ago. And I don't think it beneficial to dwell on battles lost.
Pause. Sunset is deepening, the sky turning feather grey and smoky purple. The tea cools.
You know as well as I that if Zecht hadn't been present we could have done away with the Kingslayer and the children, at the very least.
Pause. Their faces glimmer before his eyes. If he had noticed, he might have seen their expressions. He might have been the slightest bit moved by their tenacity and determination to live.
He hadn't.
But—oh, you're right in that. She is rather close to her precious captain, isn't she? Especially after so heart wrenching a betrayal by her other knight. Such a shame. I suppose it's a good thing, then, that we served as a mere pretense.
Of course, my dear, you are always right.
He sips the tea sedately with a smug tilt to his lips. He thinks maybe now his fool of a son will recognize the power placed in human hands, particularly his own father's. Ffamran never realized the extent of the nethicite's influence. Perchance he knew of his echo of insanity, his muse of the Mist, but he had never ruled out the possibility of his father simply being mad.
And oh, how very wrong he was.
Cidolfus swallows the rest of the tea as dusk settles, and Venat hums contentedly in the key of G, the facets of her voice ringing in harmony with the flow of the universe.