---

”I’m fond of most animals, truthfully. I travel quite a bit, and they are all I have with me most of the time.”  He listened as she spoke, the faint smile lasting upon his lips as she wove the faces of her travel companions. ”I have a horse, Freya, who's a bit more dragon than equine,” his expression would form curiosity, never having heard of such a thing before. He wondered what such a horse would look like. Scales? Horns? Wings even? Talons in place of hooves? An endless menagerie of depictions swam within his cerebrum, and he would certainly tick the subject for further questioning. His apprehension shown slightly by the shift of his weight, placing himself more forward, further weight upon his hands as they gripped the tabletop tighter. ”Also a hawk, Sif, and a wolf, Ghost... It’s a bit of a crowd I guess,” she gave him names, imaginary faces to go with the scents that lingered upon her skin. Certainly an interesting group she maintained. It also gave him a better glimpse at the woman herself, at least giving life to an impression of her within his mind's eye. Many who claimed birds of prey were hunter's themselves, it stood to reason to him at least. Her regale was accompanied by a soft laugh here and there, a fondness that bled through the mere descriptions. "An animal person indeed," he hummed. "I would be lying if I said a dragon horse didn't interest me," he would tilt his head slightly.

”And your cat? What's his name?” Again, his mind warred within. A distressing war between obscurity or truth. While his primary course of action was normally to tell as many truths as possible, this was a knife's edge in the dark. A risk either way. "Osmanthus." Came his reply, though he would abandon his post upon the table, instead settling into the chair nearby, habit winning over as he adjusted his sleeves slightly, pulling them downwards. In the end, he supposed that he would indulge in his curiosities, to push the limits of his own secrecy.

At the mention of his own home, she seemed to further settle, to relax in their sharing. Was she still trying to scratch the itch of familiarity that she seemed to sense from him? Was she hoping to be able to fix this faux mask to a name and memory within the back of her mind? Was it cruel of him to simply observe the way she tried to unravel this connection? He still sat facing her, cutting stare forcefully softened. ”It is, that. Oh? Where is home then?” A  thoughtful rumble softly reverberated within the confines of his throat. Further debate, and yet in spite of it, only more truth would drip like poison from his mouth. "I come from across the northern, angry sea." He began. "An island surrounded by mountains. A lot like this city is, though not quite so many people. You would have to go further south before you found anything quite like Odersten." He wished there was something more to distract him. A cup, something to drink to dull the faint smolder within his throat. How he longed to be getting deep into his cups by this point like he would have back home. The violent bastard son. The watcher of the gate. It was spring, the sun would be dawning over the ridges. Deep shadow would still cloak the valley, but the outside world would begin to remember them again. Ships would begin coming to port because the horrors outside the wall would be crawling into their deep caverns for slumber. "Well, grim tidings brought me here. Things I'm sure others can familiarize with."

---

Even before she spoke the objection, he could tell that whatever fables he had conjured for his mysterious dragon horse were false. He'd heard tall tales of such a beast though, he believed many referred to them as kirins, a beast he would be most keen to meet. ”Oh no, a poor explanation, I’m sorry,” she would continue on to further explain and he would shake his head lightly, ”It’s more of her fierce and fearless nature, dragon is a bit of a term of endearment and… I suppose frustration.” There was a light of true amusement that lit his features. "She sounds like every dragon I've ever heard of, so not a bad comparison in the least." Nefarim was such a remnant as well, in some regards. In others he was too much like his owner and trainer, and it should come as no surprise that the beast had become so level, tame compared to his younger years. While he was still very much young, most of the fire seemed to have been forged from his veins. He had become steady, resolute, dependable. He merely followed orders. Yet another sickening revelation. How did one remedy years, centuries of mindless obedience? How could amends possibly be forged with ghosts of the past? Only more answerless questions were rising, plaguing the mind.

”A noble name. Is he named for the flowers? A part of your homeland?” "Both, I suppose. They bloomed in the late spring and summer. Beyond that it was too dark for too long. They were a favorite wine and tea of mine." The admittance came easily, a bitter fondness of the warmth after coming in from the bone numbing cold in the depths of winter. The fragrant steam called to them all when the harsh climate had robbed them of their voices and their throats burned from inhaling the frigid, wild zephyrs. It reached further back than that even, recollecting those few precious memoirs with his mother. The golden powders stored away within sealed jars upon her shelves. Helping her pick them from the garden she was given among their own private court to hide away the shame of his father.

His focus, lost among the past, was sharply drawn to her once more as she moved, her footfalls carrying her closer to him. However, her intention was far from harsh, a tenderness within her as she reached a hand out to him. It was one he could take, though it was far too late to save him from drowning. ”Your home sounds beautiful, the north is beautiful.” It was warm, her touch, not like the fake temperature of his own skin, but genuinely so. Her words also bled understanding, ”I’m sorry for what's become of it. I’m also from the North, more the mainland though but far from here. Still in the mountains though, probably a bit colder. Nothing in my home comes close to Odersten though.” Her vocals were taut, her breath hitching in the slight attempt at a laugh as she settled closer, his thumb brushing unconsciously over the back of her hand. It wasn't smooth and pampered, it did indeed reflect a life of work, hardship. Did she enjoy it, he wondered. The way she lived. He remembered what it was like in the years following the collapse of his home, how each and every night he simply wanted to dream of the past, to lose himself in it so that he didn't have to accept that the era had come to an abrupt end. "When I was younger," he offered, a slight hesitance in his vocals, "my brother told me that grief was just love with nowhere to go." The sentiment had been more pointed towards his mother at the time, but he hoped that she could draw at least some measure of comfort from the words as he did in his youth. "It's alright to grieve the home you lost, but don't let it blind you to the one you have now." Least you become a mindless soldier wherein nothing but duty mattered any longer, and you didn't recognize the face in the mirror or the atrocities your own hands had wrought.

---

”Is Osmanthus your only one then?” He would slightly shake his head. "I have a horse as well, Nefarim." Again, he held very little doubt that she would be able to tie the ends together as very few knew the title he had given the steed. He was not the large, gallivanting war horse that some boasted, but rather a slimmer build, one that hailed from the gilded grains of the desert. "He's lively, but I don't believe he's as vicious as yours." Certainly all of the dragon had been wrung from their blood - at least when the reigns lie within Theo's own grasp. No one else offered the stallion any attention, let alone the intent to settled into his saddle. Maybe the wildness was still there, merely an understanding forged between them. They'd been through several battles after all. The brimstone and blood no longer frightened him, and even the hail of cannon fire did little to spook him.

The gates of his memory showed no sign of damming up the flood of recollections that plagued him. A malady of the mind that threatened to wholly consume his thoughts. The faces he had once shared the warmth of the dining hall with were very long since faded from clarity. No longer did they haunt his dreams, and he had abandoned his once prominent ideal of trying to remember each and every single one of them. As long as he remembered them, they would survive with him. But he hadn't survived the encounter either, and the husk that bore his face and name was not the comrade they would have wanted to recall them and their tales. ”It sounds like a fitting name then.” A slight hum of agreement. It was not immediately after his turning that he had found Osmanthus. It had been many years after the tragedy that had befallen his home. It was after he had deigned to bury his past and allow it to rest in the peace it deserved.

Her expression still remained soft, her gaze linked upon their joined hands. Normally, he'd have recoiled from her touch as if it was a viper, but Aevor could not be seen to be cold and unflinching. This guise was supposed to be softer, and perhaps he had intentionally fallen too much within the character her sought to portray. Sometimes, it was an easy feat to do, and this masquerade was somewhat well versed. Any time he had crossed the threshold into Vufrien before it was this mask he donned, and the lines were easy to come across as most times he spoke very little. He had never considered that sympathy would be a mark upon this shroud, let alone the words he had once unknowingly pined for would depart his lips in an attempt to soothe another. How he wished  Viktor could have told them to him one final time before their fall, though maybe it was good that they hadn't become tainted by some bloody last breath and remained a simple melancholy gesture. ”That is… a beautiful way to look at it.” He noted the ache within her expression, the tightness within her vocals. He had a beautiful way of thinking, the words didn't leave him, a memory he jealously guarded. While he still vividly remembered Viktor and Isabella, and even commissioned portraits of them to be illustrated for his home in Lavalles, he would be lying if he wholly remembered his sire. However, the duke and his older half sibling both held lofty and tragically gorgeous ideals, ones that while he would silently admire them for their commitment and optimism, Theodred simply couldn't grasp. Not with hands and feet so firmly rooted within the earth at least. "He was a good man." Was the only thing that leeched from his throat at long last. He'd have done the right thing from the beginning.

”Thank you,” vision would attune back to her through the distance of memory, to her taut smile as she finally looked back to him, ”I hope you’re able to do that too one day.” Oh, how he hoped she would never know how long he had mourned a place and time no longer attainable. Especially through those long years he was chained like a rabid hound, when he was as tumultuous and angry as the sea he had crossed to get here. He would pray, were any gods that would listen. "Thank you." The slight stiffness bled through his vocals, uncertainty clawing at his throat. As her hand departed his own, he would draw his fingers in towards his palm, reminded of the coldness that lingered there. ”Where do you call home now?” She inquired, her intonation different, albeit not unpleasantly, marred with reservation. "I wander, mostly. I don't know what to do with myself without the threat of war." The draft had been quietly dismissed, a decision perhaps influenced by the rumors that another heir had graced the ruling pair of Vuf, and while he had never been an avid part of it on this front, he knew enough of the happenings here. After all, many a word drifted through the stagnant mire of Dunmeath. "What of you?"

---

”He sounds lovely.” Though the light, happy conversation seemed to die there, moving into far deeper, darker conversations that were as debilitating as a bottomless abyss. He himself was withdrawing, a sensation he certainly felt, and while normally he would not try to halt himself, if he even remained at all, but this wasn't meant to be a solemn occasion, nor should he merely brush off the company he allowed himself to tarry with. He could not cruelly sever the bond that had at least momentarily forged between them and retreat from the discomfort. It also stood as odd that something that had failed to sink its talons in him for quite some time now had rended him open entirely, and he felt helpless to stymie the incessant flood of feeling that bled from the wound.

”He sounds like it,” she spoke alas, and her vocals were a mirror to the softly shuddering tendons within the sundered flesh. His arms burned, his chest ached with each and every breath that he forced in. It was not the threat of tears that assailed him,  it was the mere thought of feeling something again instead of being a simple, directionless void. It wasn't that he didn't think of his family and the years that lived far, far between he and they. It wasn't that he had forgotten the unspeakable cruelty that had darkened the yawn of time after either. Perhaps he had unintentionally just built a wall between those days and himself and this evening it had crumbled indiscriminately. Simple enough, likely enough.

Maybe it was just as likely that Os's sweeter, more benevolent nature had begun to worm its way under his skin like an infection. The feline had been his only true companion for quite some time now despite all the other faces and thoughts that polluted the air, the feline was the only constant. He could never quite part with the taste of violence however, ever since he could recall, he had been naught more than a soldier. He had donned many different colors over the unfortunately long span of his years, but the only constant was he was a weapon. As such, peace was never an option for one such as he. Though he could endeavor to ensure that none follow in her footsteps. Found brittle and broken, their path in life derailed. That none would be drug down the trail he had traipsed. Eventually, his end would be met, just as he lived. Perhaps just at a different coat of arms than he had somewhat been expecting.

”Is it not a looming threat?” He would tilt his head faintly. "I suppose. Though the draft was eased, we are no closer to taking back Dunmeath." He would run a hand through his hair lightly. Despite the inklings that were circling his cerebrum like ravenous sharks, he was still firm in his hatred for the dogs as well. They were little better than the parasites in his eyes. Both merely wanted control. They were slobbery, they lacked discipline. They were messy and crass. Every full moon most were just as bad as the fledglings. In the eyes of their king, strength was all that mattered. The weak were doomed to starve under his belligerent rule. "Maybe it will simply come down to who makes the first move..."

A truth, despite the inner workings that he himself knew. The true nature of his current visit. A colleague had drug him here, yes, but to scout the weaknesses of Odersten's walls. With the perfect opportunity presented in an evening extravaganza in which all were invited. How long would it be before the corpse was discovered upstairs? How long before one of those inside was discovered and publicly dealt with? Surely, by her guard, she had already pinpointed those of his ilk? ”The same mostly. I try to avoid the city and town if I can and stick to the wilds.” He would give her another slight simper. "Perhaps we'll cross paths again then. I travel quite often."

---

From one dangerous topic to the next, he supposed. Such was the nature of his inclinations when they were allowed to roam. It was of little difference to when he found himself alone within his study at Dunmeath. When there was nothing else for his thoughts to rigidly dissect and pick away at until naught but bare bones remained beneath his vicious focus. ”Was the draft not enough?” Her curiosity bid him to shift within his seat, leaning forward slightly as his index finger drifted over his lips. ”Is that not why there are so many soldiers here tonight?” He debated his next words, how much to reveal, how much to give. Much like Avarice, he had little want for this woman to be caught within the crossfire of the war to come. He didn't want to meet her on a battlefield as Lavalles's General, as the damned Lord of Dunmeath. Though if he allowed too much to depart him, he would certainly become a subject of suspicion himself. How to put his idle speculations into perspective in a way that did not leave to foreboding.

"I think..." He began, true contemplation bleeding into his vocals, one that need not be feigned in the slightest. Even withholding his ties to Crue Efros, his way of thinking would hold the potential to see him chained under the crown of Vufrien. "In all given honesty, I believe the king is... distracted." He had placed himself in the boots of the man many times. When he had first heard the order leave the Red Queen to see the first heir slain to start this damnable war, he had been trying to see things from the perspective of his given enemy. The insidious plot had been, of course, more than enough to provoke the dogs into biting, taking the bait and forgoing any and all pretense of peace. He remembered the murmurs and worried faces as the declarations had been made throughout the kingdom. He recalled the order he was given when the hounds had first struck out at a small village near the border.

It hadn't been vampires that the wolves attacked first, no, it was a human settlement. The beginning of what they had undoubtedly hoped would be to cut off the chain of food and supplies to the Queen and her followers. The fall of Vufrien's farmland was of a similar ideal. It was not easy to seize the land, but it should have been better protected. Already, the effects were beginning to show. The poor were gaunt, easy to see the beginnings of the famine beginning, and yet what was the response? A draft that barely lasted before the would be troops were allowed home for an extended period? An extravagant party to further show the disparity between the classes and waste the lifeline of goods available to even the rich? A poor gamble. "The paper reads his wife is with child again. The war began because his firstborn son was assassinated. It seems celebrations all the way around, save for the class wherein most of your drafted would come from, no? The longer he waits, the weaker his soldiers become, and then what?" His stare would flicker to her, to her face to read what she thought of the matter.

If he were in the king's place, he'd have certainly tried to at least aid the rebellions that were, at one point, a near constant. The wealthy families would need to be monitored to preserve food and other much needed materials. The poor and working classes would not be neglected and ignored. He knew that they all had a point at which they would no longer bend, but break. "I think the first stone will be thrown by the starving and dying." He confided alas.