by Glenn » Tue Jul 23, 2013 1:33 am
Audmathus was the problem. He was the alien element, not the mirrors or the tigers or the storyteller somewhere in the labyrinth, the storyteller, telling her tale even now, the storyteller that they were almost upon. It was Audmathus. There were elements of familiarity in him, the history Glenn knew, as spotted as it was, the resemblance in root and stem with Faeryl, the general drow tendencies, the weight of failure. It wasn't enough, not here, not now. Audmathus didn't fit into their story anymore and he had never fit quite right into Glenn Burnie's story. His presence was surreal, off-putting. It threatened to shift the balance when there was one thing which the dispatched Governor simply could not allow to change: above all else, he had to stay the protagonist of his own story.
It meant controlling the conversation as much as possible. Glenn Burnie had to feel as if he could affect the world around him or else what was he? There was nothing he feared more than being helpless in the face of fate or destiny or some supreme being. Everything he did was to ensure that he and those around him could stand no matter what darkness poured down upon them, no matter the cost for that insolence and defiance. At least they would be on their feet.
"In the end, Audmathus, that blade could take us all, whenever, wherever. We work with what we have to prevent it, but more than that, we work with what we have to make it meaningful. If we could be taken at any moment, then we damn well make sure that the moments we have are used to the fullest." He bowed his head, half exposing his neck and half being positively courtly. "Mortality. Everything you and yours lack. Our greatest gift and our most terrible curse. Someday I'll shatter every hindrance nature has imposed upon us, but that one? Mortality? I'll think twice about that one."
Sometimes it meant control. Sometimes it meant action.
Silence. Just the stench. A halting hand? No, there'd be none of that. They had steel. They had surprise. They were fresh now. Caution could only lead to a disadvantage later on. Perhaps it was the feeling in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps it was his audience. Perhaps it didn't matter. Glenn Burnie walked onward.
As he did, a voice became clarion clear. He walked onward. He listened. He raised a hand to Audmathus and gave the drow the most honest smile that he yet to give, a smile between friends, a smile between compatriots on an adventure, and then he walked forth.
"He failed," this to the storyteller, this to the audience, "because a soldier is a soldier. If he is a foot soldier, a veteran, then he knows of following orders, of staying in line, of marching one foot after the next." Left becoming right and right becoming left as the marching went on and on unto time immemorial. "If he was a general, then he was used to giving orders, used to following strategy, used to anticipating and adapting, but not used to this. He was not a man of thought but of action."
There he was, standing before the crowd, staring the storyteller dead on, rude. "Then came an inspector, a royal inspector, a taxman," a nod to the fat man, though ever slight, "a man of numbers and booklearning, a hard man, a helstone, we might say, which is not a common noun, but it really ought to be. He investigated all the possibilities. He checked all of his numbers. He declared the impossible impossible and he failed as well. He failed because he was a man of thought, not action." There was something almost manic in his voice now, something that threatened lapse just upon the sight of her. She was unfettered and it drew a sparkle to his eye.
"And then she came, this woman of iron, with her painful Northern words, and her experience, a woman not of book-learning, but of every other sort, a woman who found joy in the wonder of life and humor in the darkness of it all. She was a woman of both thought and action, of the two not married but instead embroiled in the most torrid of affairs." He would look back now, would glance to Audmathus, half expecting him not to be there. He quieted now, passing the story on to her, to him, to the monsters around them, a gauntlet thrown down.