Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-25828117-20200106232024/@comment-5543592-20200107025407

Kismet was butchering the last of the True Faithers who had unwisely tried to stop him from entering the Arcane University when Aves appeared.

Aves did not say anything or move to stop him, only stood watching placidly as Kismet hacked his victim’s head off. The human body, when struck a certain way, makes noises very similar to an axe chopping down a tree.

Kismet’s shortsword finally got through the spinal cord and then the head was off. He stood up and kicked it away.

“That one called me short.” Kismet joked and smiled at Aves.

“I see you had your fun.” Aves cast a look of displeasure across the room. Benches had been overturned, bodies strewn around the room in pieces, limbs at odd angles. Aves made his way through it, carefully stepping over a severed leg.

“Oh, don’t act so superior, as if you don’t have your carnal pleasures from time to time.” Kismet plopped down onto a fallen bench, swords held loosely in his hands.

“If you’re implying I enjoy violence in the same capacity as yourself, you are wrong.”

Kismet stared hard into Aves’ mask. Eggshell white, nose and brow of the mask arched into a beaked eagle motif, It showed nothing beyond his eyes, “I’m wrong very rarely.”

Aves swiveled on heel, “You were wrong about Taneth.”

Kismet waved a hand, “She’ll come around. It’s not a question of if, but when.”

“The when is what concerns. The longer the Council is delayed, the smaller our window of opportunity becomes.”

“Silas operates on the same schedule as us. He can’t move before we do.”

Aves snorted inside his mask, “As if you know him so well.”

There was some truth to that. It struck an old wound inside Kismet. An unhealed need to measure up to his teacher, his father even. Silas was the closest thing he had to a parent in every definition of the word. Silas was there in Kismet’s first memories. He had raised him, supposedly taught him everything there was worth knowing, and still Kismet couldn’t outmatch him. Silas was impossible to anticipate. Everytime Kismet thought he had figured the Dunmer out, the tides had changed.

Kismet shrugged, “I’m still right. It all hinges on the Council, which will not convene until all have arrived.”

Aves didn’t respond to that, he walked to one of the windows and looked out. “Tell me what happened when you confronted them.”

“It was the usual, nothing worth noting at the start. A routine ambush, I stopped to chat when I was finishing up.”

Aves tented his finger, elbows rested on the windowsill. “Skip to where the Shehai appeared. Describe it to me.”

“It was as you expect it to be, what do you want me to say? It looked like a sword, but magic.” Kismet snickered. “You’re too obsessed with something so boring. Mundane, in a word you’d use.”

“Mundane? What an idiosyncrasy. It is anything but.” Kismet picked at something in his teeth, tuned Aves out. “The Shehai has caged gods. Wars were fought over control of it. In the ancient world, it was one of the Yokudans’ most prized assets. It was the deciding factor in some of the greatest and most impactful conflicts in history. How can you possibly disrespect it?”

“It’s not overwhelming hard to figure out. Use that brain of yours.”

Kismet couldn’t see Aves’ sneer but he could hear the contempt well enough, “Don’t mock me.”

Kismet laughed, simpering like a jackal, “You’ve fallen into the same trap as the same people you hate. You’ve lost perspective.”

Aves turned towards him, “I’ve lost perspective?” He stalked towards Kismet, venom dripping from his every word, “Do you know what I’ve endured? What’s been done to me? I swore--”

“Yes, yes, swore revenge; ‘they’ll get there’s one day, oh yes they well, on my father’s grave!’” Kismet shook one of his swords about like a prop, snickering. “It’s all been said before, friend, you’re not running a very original racket.” Kismet could see Aves narrow his eyes. “I like your passion, even if it’s a bit tiring at times. Believe you me,” the blademaster gestured to himself, points of the swords touching his chest, “no one appreciates a good sense of retribution more than Kismet, it’s what keeps me employed, but you’re worked up over something so tiny.”

Kismet said these things mainly to provoke Aves. It was fun to wind him up and then watch him spin. Kismet had no real interest in seeing Aves’ lofty goals of comeuppance go through, he was in it for the entertainment value, and because it would be a punch on Silas’ nose.

He could see the anger well up in Aves, first in his shoulders, then spreading to the rest of him. Muscles tightened, breath quickening. Anger was a terrific emotion. A person could accomplish such things in its grasp, things they wouldn’t have even conceptualized without it. Despite what people thought, Kismet was not emotionless, nor was he fundamentally different from anyone else. Anger, joy, humor. These were all things he had. He could remember a time in his youth when what disturbed him about others had disturbed him as well, but Silas had honed it out of him. Silas was good at taking your pain, what made you weak, and using it against you, playing your insecurities in his favor. No one could play pain like Silas. He played what he knew.

Aves didn’t seem to trust himself with further words. Although rational and focused, he was hot-headed. He knew that sometimes his mouth ran away from him. Kismet made sure to constantly keep Aves in check. It was a balancing act. The art of manipulation is an incredibly fine thing. It’s all about pushing the right buttons, only you can just as easily push the wrong one. Kismet, or someone else, could say the wrong thing and cause Aves to explode and mess this whole thing up. It had taken a lot of maneuvering on Kismet’s part to align things as they were. Plots layered on top of plots. Aves thought he was the one tugging every thread. He was very much a child in that respect. Even Kismet understood that, for all his talents, there were thousands of things outside of his own control.

“Elinhir would be just the first,” Aves had regained himself enough to speak and did so in a quiet, but fervent voice. He spoke as though it were a prayer. “It needs to be all of Hammerfell. It needs to be all of them.”

The blademaster rolled his eyes behind Aves back. So predictable. Why was every revenge story the same? It was always a wrong for a wrong. Wouldn’t a more interesting one be vengeance on someone for being too charitable? A punishment for someone too annoying good-naturedly to live. That was someone Kismet could get behind. It was an unfortunate truth though, that the mild-mannered rarely mixed themselves up in Kismet’s business, and. on the rare occasions that they did, they were quickly reduced to waste. No, the recurring story throughout history is that it is the embittered who battle with the embittered, and all the little people get squished in between.

“Yes, yes, it’ll be all of them. I promised to do what you wanted, didn’t I?”

Aves nodded his head infractionally.

“And I’ve delivered so far. Don’t think about this Shehai nonsense. It never comes to anything. Nothing beats a sword well-used. The right man with the right tools is capable of a surprising amount of things.”

“I cannot follow what you’re saying half the time.” Aves scoffed.

Kismet smiled and shrugged. “Your loss. You’ll understand this though--keep drawing people to the Rightful’s ranks. The bigger it gets, the greater the momentum. Soon it’ll be a movement too big to ignore. And then we’ll make our play.”

The Grand Council would go through. Kismet was confident Taneth would make it to Elinhir. Afterall, he had someone keeping a very close eye.