as was the way of amaryllis plenty had happened since their last meeting. some had managed to drive the wedge even deeper between the two leaders, and yet he climbed the peak to talk to her. alaric is on high alert, his senses tuned to his surroundings as he weathers the climb (cursing her choice of a territory in the bitter winds of winter). he is distinctly aware that while he and @Morrigan may not be enemies the rest of her pride would not be so quick to stay their paw.

perhaps, then, it is sheer luck that has his arrive unscathed, keeping well clear of the borders as he calls for the queen. hoping that they will be able to meet without prying eyes, for he is not keen to don the political mask he would be forced to around the rest.

coding and art by dusk

you made your
sceptre with the
bones you've broken

If anyone else had heard the call and attempted to following, Morrigan would sternly turn them away. Her voice was hoarse and scratchy still yet, but it had returned at least, leaving a nasty scar in that still shown through even the thick dark fur of her throat. She had expected this meeting, though she had assumed she would once again be the one to seek him out, and to find the Mire King standing on the pathway up to the borderline, he looked very alone and out of place.

Her expression was steely but neutral as she descended, no anger or even annoyance present even as they had just clashed once more, almost more violently this time than at any other. At least no one had died, she reminded herself, but there were still plenty of bloodstains frozen into the snow, unlikely to completely disappear until the summer thaw. As she draws closer, she allows her own mask to slip and a look of curiosity replaces it. Was he here with his own brand of anger at her violent reaction to being invaded and potentially usurped?

No, not completely she didn't believe. They were too much alike. At least part of him would understand completely. "Welcome to the Summit, Alaric." Her voice was very different from the last time they'd spoken, but at least she could use it, harsh and still painful as it was.

table by ferus, art by grav3wolf

She comes alone and he cannot help but feel relief. It would have been easy for her to bring an army down upon him, take him out while he stood unprotected at the borders. Alaric would have fought to his last breath, no doubt, but even the fabled Mire King was no match for an army, no matter his skill.

Alaric likes to think he knows her well enough to know she would not pull such a cheap move. If there was one commonality between them it was respect for bloodshed and a honor of the battlefield. @Morrigan did not strike him as the type to attack a political visitor if only because he knew he was not the type to pull such a shit trick.

They were alike in that way, and so he does not fear coming. Before she had arrived he had been on guard, tensed and ready, but as the scarred queen slips in to sight he visibly relaxes. A show of good faith, perhaps, or an indication that he does not hold the grudge one might expect.

That being said, he had come for a reason.

But first -- "you're healing well, then?" Alaric didn't know the full extent of the damage she had suffered, but he was not blind to the scars.

coding and art by dusk

you made your
sceptre with the
bones you've broken

If the Mire King expected any sort of ambush after the violence of his last visit to the Summit, he didn’t seem to wait around for it long before he seemed to relax into their usual odd camaraderie. He asked after her health and she couldn’t help the ragged chuckle that escaped, at just how normal the question was in the aftermath of so much bloodshed. An outsider might have mistaken them for old friends rather than the longtime enemies they had been.

“Ja,” she began, letting the amused look remain on her scarred features, “That second Rike stole my voice for a time, but curiously spared my life.” If @Alaric had any confusion about just why one of her own members would have turned on her in such a way, therein lay at least part of the answer. The way she spoke, however, they could have easily been talking about the weather, rather than a bloody battle resulting in serious casualties on both sides.

table by ferus, art by grav3wolf

The Rike. The Sigrun. Alaric had known for some time that they stood on opposite sides of that endless war, but it wasn't something they had ever properly addressed. He cannot help himself from asking, now, as she mentions the man that had stolen her voice. "You are related to the Sigrun, @Morrigan?" It is not an attack and he is careful to keep his tone neutral; despite the conversation he does not wish to fight with her. "You are aware of what they believe?"

Maybe it was simply a matter of her not knowing, though he highly doubted that she was in the dark about anything. Morrigan struck him as one who prided herself on being in the know, and yet he found it hard to imagine she'd be okay with the practicing of the sea-born family.

"I'm tired of it all," he admitted, and then gave his head a small shake, a wry smile on his lips. It wasn't what he had come here for, so he adds (almost half-heartedly) "but I'd appreciate if you'd refrain from throwing my members off of cliffs. Some are still missing...."

coding and art by dusk

you made your
sceptre with the
bones you've broken

She didn't bother trying to hide the surprise that arched her features at the question, at the fact that it was him who broached the subject, one that Morrigan had stricken off as forbidden. Every other time the Sigrún name was brought up, he'd immediately stiffened up, shut down, masking shoving firmly back into place. She would let him finish speaking entirely before broaching that subject, choosing to enjoy the small, maybe a little half-hearted bit of banter he'd offered.

She smiled in return, though her eyes were darkened with a grimness at the news that some of his members were still missing. She thought of her cousin, stolen away and still missing. "I did warn them first, and I would expect no less than you throwing enemy invaders to your pet crocodiles in turn," her smile faded as she finished, "I made sure that younger lion was breathing before I dropped him. Do you think he would have done the same for me?" Mostly a rhetorical question. If he claimed to know the Rike well at all, he already knew the answer.

She saw the way they looked at her, the Sigrún's loyal hound who cursed them in their own tongue and bloodied them at every turn. They'd taken their pound of flesh from her thrice now but she knew it was only her death that could sate them if their goal was her icy throne. Because she would rather be dead than ever see a Rike take that sacrosanct seat.

He'd asked her if she was related to them, the Sigrún, ready to say no until she realized that wasn't exactly the truth anymore, was it? "My husband is Skagos, the closest, oldest ally of the Sigrún," leave it there, she scolded herself, your friendship and loyalty had been evident enough. Instead, she continued to speak, because if anyone else could understand the position it put her in, the once-foreign fear it left in her bones, maybe it was him.

"I have both Skagos... and Sigrún children by blood. And yes, I know about the rite, was present at my grandchildren's ceremony. Where they walked into the ocean of their own accord as willing yearlings, all of them returning." She studied him as she spoke, wondering just how much breath she might be wasting, whether he even had it in him to believe her. And why should he? At the end of the day they would still meet on opposite sides of the battlefield, right?

Why should her words change anything now? Or maybe it would change everything, she realized, maybe it would finally show @Alaric the truth of herself and exactly what she was willing to condone. What she had already condoned and taken part in. She waited to see if he would at last condemn her, as she had been by his friends, waited for the jarring end of this long, strange dance around each other.

table by ferus, art by grav3wolf

he clings to it almost desperately, as if he, too, can feel the untimely end of their strange situationship approaching. a long overdue end, surely, yet even as he faces it he wants to deny it.

more than that he doesn't know why he wants to deny it, except that he would be a fool to ignore the fact that some unexpected bond lived between the two of them. alaric might not vocalize it, he might even scoff and mock any who dared name it, but beyond the masked surface lived recognition. "pet crocodiles?" grasping at this banter, strangely afraid that it would be the last they would share. "it suddenly makes sense why so few dare to challenge for the mire..." a joke, as evidenced by the crinkle of skin around his eyes, the last glint of humor visible in vivid green.

but there is a heaviness to their conversation that looms despite their efforts to keep it at bay.

"no," he answers, because he knew well the ways of the rike. they were cold and callous when it came to the sigrun, and alaric was hardly willing to name them wrong for it. the sigrun had killed his wife, after all, after coming in to his home and screaming for war when his babes were barely weaned. "but neither would most sigrun were the roles reversed." she was unique, morrigan, a fact he attributed to her being a greyflood and not born of the sea.

she knew. of course he knew that she did -- he was not surprised -- but still he looks away. picturing this rite she mentions so casually, as if it were no small thing. "children will go to great lengths to please their parents," his voice remains steady but he says it almost as if he dares her to argue. "especially if they are raised to believe it is the only way..." drown and face vellen or be denied the family name, wasn't that the way it worked?

"and the newborns? are they just as willing?" alaric had heard stories of sacrifice, of drowning tiny cubs before they had a full night of rest. despite the conversation, despite the questions, there is no hatred in his voice. not for her.

never for her.

coding and art by dusk

you made your
sceptre with the
bones you've broken

"why not? i'm sure their personalities would fit right in to the mire. i might even like them more," she continued the banter even as she felt the cord begin to fray, poking fun at his kingdom, yes, but she felt she was allowed the small jab considering how deeply some of his people hated her. What would Adalwolf think if he saw them now? What of Alaric's own sons? Hell, what would Morrigan's daughter think?

She doesn't answer him again until he finishes speaking, that bright glimmer in her eyes changing, melting into something akin to grief. She couldn't deny any of it, especially not if Adalwolf were still missing, not when her own wife had sentenced a Rike to death already, not when Morrigan would still kill that Rike she'd met in the freeze after he'd left her for dead.

"My own newborns only experienced a gentle baptism, but I don't claim to know the sins of every Sigrún anymore than I would blame you for what that Rike bastard tried to do in the Freeze," the memory lent s brief spark of flame to her eyes but it was swiftly smothered by the breath she took in, "But you are probably right about the yearlings and what drives them. Maybe right about all of it." Maybe that wasn't what he expected her to say, but her gaze was steady, unabashed as she continued.

"What I think you may be wrong about though, Alaric, what they are all mistaken in, is thinking I have ever for a moment believed myself the hero. We are all of us villains, our sins are just different. Even my wife has sentenced András Rike to die. You, me, Amara and her house of wolves, we're all the same. The funniest part to me... is I think you might be the best of the us. I know I am not what they think I am, though." It had been her deepest dread to let the darkness inside her leak out and stain @Talisa's ivory heart.

Yet it had happened in the end.

"If you truly wish to end this war, to end those traditions you all find so vile and wipe the Sigrún from these lands... You know I have to die. Will it be you who kills me Alaric? Can you?" Or is your heart as dark and selfish as mine?

table by ferus, art by grav3wolf

"Oh Morrigan," and his voice pitched lower, caught between a jest and a truth, "there could not possibly be any in the Mire that you like more than me" It was too close to the truth, he knew. Too close to the strangeness between them, the reality that they both steadfastly ignored. He was Icarus, his feathers aflame, tumbling back to the ground with the cold cast of reality.

A gentle baptism. It was something he had heard before, but it was too easy to call it a lie. Too easy when he had the lips of the Rike at his ear, spilling the secret horrors that her family had witnessed. Alaric had no reason to doubt her -- he knew she believed every word she had spoken -- but he was not naive enough to turn from possibility. Just as there were vast differences among even his two sons, one with a far more obvious penchant for brutality and one more sly and calculating, he knew there were likely to be difference among the Sigrun. The Rike. The Skagos. The Greyflood. Every family had its black sheep and its outliers -- so then the question remained: which was she? Or, for that matter, which was he?

If his mother and father had seen him now they would very likely consider him the black sheep. For all that he had accomplished he had grown soft around the edges; soft enough that she calls him the best of them. It is even more preposterous than when she considered he might be right, and a sharp snort bursts from his nose. "You would not say that, @Morrigan, if you knew my history." Alaric's story in Amaryllis was far less drenched in blood than the pages penned when he was young, when fighting was mandatory and children were murdered in cold blood if they were not of his loins.

Will it be you who kills me?

It is as if she shines a spotlight on the beast of old and the King of present, as if she might see past the surface that he presents and in to the meat and marrow of his being. For once he does not shy from it, though, poison green eyes holding fast to those of two-tones. "I will not kill you," and there is a fervency to this promise, a bareness that he privately attributes to the prying light she has cast.

coding and art by dusk

you made your
sceptre with the
bones you've broken

"I hope you know that isn't actually saying much," she answered through a cackle but could not disagree that yes he probably was her favorite lion from the mire, feeling the same brush against her spine as his words did indeed cut too close to the deeper truth. "Your history makes no difference to me, nor should mine. Legacy is what I'm after, and that is only what we chose to carve out for ourselves in the here and now." They might as well have died and been reborn when they crossed that Passage. Morrigan felt as much anyway.

I will not kill you.

A straight-forward, simplistic answer... if not for the way the inflection in it sent a chill down her spine. She only looks at him for a long moment, intent on searching his green eyes for the words he didn't say, couldn't say. Not in this life, anyway. "Nor I you," she said very softly even as she felt the vast chasm of space that lingered between them, the river of blood that separated them. A sudden gust of wind reminded the Greyflood woman where she was, who she was, and muscular form straightened, not realizing she'd been leaning closer.

"I should get back before someone catches your scent and raises the alarm," her words came out stiffly and she looked away into her icy kingdom. "Goodbye @Alaric," and then she was gone, the snow blown down off the mountain almost immediately covering her departure and separating the sight of the Ecrosian King from her view. When the wall of misty snow separated them, she released a heavy breath before moving toward the den she shared with her husband and wife. exit morrigan

table by ferus, art by grav3wolf