Dubhaine Family/Brigdha/Roleplays/2018/July

30th July

Evening -- Meuse

Brigdha Dubhaine

Three days and three nights had passed since Brigdha received word that her niece had arrived in Meuse and the Ambassador had not left her pavilion in all that time. Members of her Ghosts stood silent watch whilst her grandson Leopald rebuffed all attempts to disturb her meditation, though from time-to-time a non-descript figure would pass unchallenged on some private errand.

Brigdha had much to consider if she were to subtly alter the fate so long prepared for her niece in the court of The Dragon. That vengeful old lizard who slumbered, dreaming his dreams of chaos and bloodshed as Elven drums beat their incessant frenetic tattoo. Across the northern plains Lords marched to war, their eyes fixed on the great fastnesses of the Vix. To such Perdan was almost an afterthought. An ancient foe so utterly transformed by immigration that long-nurtured hatreds were largely irrelevant. If Brigdha could but leverage that ambivalence... and yet there were those for whom the destruction of Perdan was a sweetmeat long anticipated and amongst their number where the mightiest.

Nor was this Brigdha's only concern. Queen Glory was close to her time, mother to a scion of the Archirium-Dubhaine bloodline like her mother before her, the seed of a most unlikely union casting its shadow once more across the continent as surely as when its founders clashed all those years ago.

Fate has a strange way of playing her hand, almost carelessly placing the future of a generation on the shoulders of a few tragic figures. For Fontan perhaps half-a-dozen had unknowingly borne that burden. Tal the Superstitious who cast the north to ruin for fear that the Gods would punish him and Sullivan the Cunning whose stratagems overwhelmed all in his path. Mikhail the Lawmaker in whom the Constitution lived, and Gregor the Old who cast the lot for civil war. And then there were Aeneas and Moira...

Perhaps had her sister been of gentler character Aeneas might have been dissuaded from the tragic dream of Asena, and with him many good warriors whose long road led to an ignoble end. But she was no comforter who held no man her master, nor he one to be comforted who had lost all he loved. Two peerless blades, brightly ringing as the sparks flew from their sparring... two peerless blades... two blades merging... two blades becoming one...

Three days was barely sufficient to prepare what Brigdha had in mind, an ancient charm rarely attempted since the days of Lilith. As her mind's eye focused on the blades she thrust her will into the High Firmament, freeing herself of the limitations of flesh as she looked down upon the world from the vaults of eternity.

The hungry flame of Lannceann MacTiré burned bright and strong across the wilds of Beluaterra, an all-consuming justice amongst the unjust. It was hard not to be drawn to its warmth, to swoop across that blighted land and see with her own two eyes her beloved sister wielding it. But now was not the time for such thoughts. Brigdha needed all her concentration for more urgent matters and she focused her inner eye on the warm, sustaining strength of the heirloom blade Glory now bore.

With a succession of logical propositions she wove a path of shadows to the blade and thence a shroud to enclose it. Such shadow forms were part of an acolyte's training routine and no great effort to a seasoned Balancewalker, but to share them with one uninitiated in the ways of the Flow was a considerably more complex exercise requiring a purposeful descension to interpose this higher reality into the mundane world of flesh and matter, a private factum beyond interference save by another sorcerer. And to do it such that the subject was unaware of its otherness? Well, three days would have to be enough as there was no more time to spare.