In Xanadu

A Manse near Lookshy
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea."
- Kubla Khan, Coleridge

Cera and Rika have gone to settle the 7th Legions troops inside the hull of the First Age vessel, seeing to their equipment, deployment, and settling into the living quarters of a vessel that has not been used in an age. The air is rushed, excited - aircrews pulled off the line suddenly have the chance to turn the course of battle.

Shrike finds herself looking down from the second floor of the great circular chamber that makes up the heart of the Manse. The purpose of the sprawling complex is clear - while her taste might run less...natural...she can see the design of a pleasure retreat when she sees it. You could host dozens within its walls, and she suspects that in the First Age, she...or her mate...did. The chamber she looks down upon carries the feel of the Wyld in it, a gentle prickling of the skin, a surge of potential in the heart. It is a sea of cushions, blankets and pillows, all looked over by a single throne-like chair. There is still the rusty red of blood on some of them from the fight to reclaim this ancient place - by his telling of it, no small amount of it shed by Killing Frost.

The Lunar appears behind her, infuriatingly quiet when he wishes to be. Wrapping a gentle, almost possessive arm around her waist, he draws her close.

"This was ours once, Mate of mine." He has resumed using the honorific, and Cera seems to have...adjusted. That he is still tender and affectionate toward the Dragon Blood, and clearly holds her in high regard no doubt helps. He chuckles. "I read a book in this place...apparently it was a gift. And a retreat of sorts, from busy cities and looming wars." He runs a hand over the smooth railing, cut and polished from solid stone. "It seems apt to have taken it back."

"Apt, and almost necessary." She leans backwards against him, feeling the hard moonsilver of his breastplate against his back. Shrike is just tall enough to tuck the top of her head under his chin. "I can't tell you how much I need 'a retreat of sorts'. Busy cities and looming wars have been figuring far too prominently in my schedule of late. You being away as long as you were didn't help very much, you know... Mate of mine." For the first time, she calls him by his true designation, an indelible, unchangeable aspect of both their personalities, ingrained as deeply in them as the power of their respective Exaltations.

"Did the book say anything about what they-- we-- were like? During the Age of Dreams? What we were like... together? Whether we were happy? How... how we died?" She places both hands over his, pressing it flat against his stomach to still the fluttering she felt there. "You don't have to answer that. I'm not sure I want to know."

Walking on, tugging him by the hand, Shrike arrives at the massive throne dominating the room. Gingerly, she seats herself in it, the enormous piece of furniture dwarfing her. "Well, I think we've learned at least one thing about how different we were in the First Age. Apparently one of us was huge."

He smiles, his expression indulgent. "Forgive my absence dear one, it was was necessary. Perhaps, when the battle is concluded, we can find some time. I think, for awhile, I have had enough of wandering." He cradles the women tucked under his chin, knowing she is the cause for much of that.

"The book said little, and its pages were filled long before the end of the Age. We were...together, and honored. Perhaps, when he is finished fending off Heaven's wrath, we could consult your Starchild ally?"

He smiles as she sits, nestling into the massive throne. "Much prettier than its last occupant. Or perhaps..." He sits, picking up her slender form and setting her half perched on his lap. "It was built for a pair?"

"Prettier? Oh how you love to damn me with faint praise." She swivels to rest her head against one massive armrest and her feet on the other, looking up at the streamers of light being filtered into the manse.

After a moment of silence, she says, "Do you ever wonder how people capable of creating such beautiful, magical, wonderful things were also supposed to be capable of causing so much harm? I'm no fan of the Immaculate Philosophy, but... there are times when I just don't feel myself, and I wonder if over the centuries a First Age Exalted must have lived, that kind of moment could become potential for disaster. We aren't Anathema... but something must have allowed the Age of Dreams to end.

"What if that something was us?" Frost chooses a cushion and reclines. Her question triggers a familiar, dark mood in the Lunar, something she has felt before, but never asked about.

He sighs softly. "It seems...not unlikely. Your kind has no Elders to pass on the tales, but I have heard stories of the First Age. They too tell of the madness of the Solars, but truth be told," he averts his eyes from hers for a moment, "I doubt we were far behind, in our own way."

"Perhaps it was the power...and boredom. There were no great wars to fight, no struggles. Perhaps after a few decades, wooing pretty girls becomes tedious, and you simply compel them. Perhaps after awhile longer, such pleasures become mundane, and their bodies and broken minds have little left to offer. Would it not be tempting to solve petty problems like political unrest with a single demonstration of might, no matter how horrific?"

He shakes his head, though he seems somewhat hesitant, a familiar blend of awe and fear.

"A dark turn your mind has my mate. We are not Anathema, and as far as I am aware, have inflicted no horrors. There will be darkness enough to come - let us savor beauty and peace while it lasts."

"Perhaps..." Shrike mulls that over in silence for a while. "But it seems that beauty and peace rest uneasily on you. Ever since you went on that scouting expedition you've been... anxious." She does not say fey, brutal, or animalistic. "You've been kind to me, and that I appreciate, but you've also been stepping around me like I was made of glass. I think you know better than that, so... Why? What other stories have you heard?" She curls her legs and tucks her chin over her knees. "I like stories." He nods. "A fair point, and I owe you that much." Killing Frost looks at the slender woman curled up on the massive throne. "It will seem silly - it is not that I fear you are made of glass, my mate. It is the fear that I am."

He paces slightly, clearly nervous, as if he was confessing something to a judge. "Our bond...Luna's chosen were not meant to stand astride Creation as champions. We were meant to stand beside the Solars, their companions. It was not a relationship of equals."

"Tales are also told of the fate of Lunar mates when their Solars were in the throws of madness. Some of our greatest stood broken before them. I am...vulnerable to your will, in a way no other being in Creation is. I felt it, when you called me back in the restaurant, over the Director. There are very few who can leash a raging Lunar as you did.

You are right that I have not been the same since the scouting trip. I...I told you I met and slew an Abyssal there. What I have not said is that the Death Knight..." he hesitates for a long moment.

"Forgive me, she reminded me of you. Beautiful, cunning and powerful. Defiant and tenacious to a fault. And I met her mate. A broken, tortured thing - and in the shape of a wolf. The image...resonated strongly."

The Lunar nurses a sullen anguish; Shrike perceives it not only in his words but in the way her very heart responds to him, plummeting in her chest to sit in a cold hard knot at the base of her stomach: a twined tension that vibrates between them like a taut string.

"I understand completely." She shifts again, once more tucking her head under his chin, this time reaching out for his hands and crossing his arms over her midriff. "I... Well, I have been in contact with the Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears. I sent her a false message trying to undermine her alliance with the Mask and getting her to consider parley with Lookshy instead of joining with the tyrant of Thorns in a major war effort. She responded positively, even kindly... but in her reply was also an offer to join her. To become... like her. I won't say I wasn't tempted. There was magic in that missive, to be sure, but I can't say with a clear conscience that even had it been absent, the temptation of that kind of power, that kind of backing, wouldn't have appealed to me at all. There was a magical compunction, too -- an almost amateurish one -- that I could resist, to seek her out at the earliest opportunity, which does mean that she is... somehow recruiting Solars.

"I don't know if Solars in their ultimate depravity will become deathknights, or whether they are something completely different from us, or whether they were created to somehow resemble us to that uncanny degree. But there is a cold... simplicity to what they are, a certain sterile elegance to their existences, that sometimes, trying to tear myself in two between a threat that requires ruthless genius to thwart and hapless allies who do not respond well to cajoling, I have also found... appealing." She can feel his arms tighten, then slacken, and it tears at her to say it, but she owes him no less than utter honesty on this matter that strikes so close to home.

"This is a long road we walk. The stories I know tell of Exalts living to be thousands of years old. I don't have any plans to -- we live in interesting times, after all -- but nonetheless, we will probably exceed a mortal lifespan in an eyeblink, even as Rika has done. And in all that time... I don't know. I don't know if it is even possible for me to become like... like her. But I don't know that I won't, or won't try.

"But I will never let you become like that thing. Not by my hand or anyone else's. By the power that the Unconquered Sun has granted me, I swear it. And you must swear too, my mate.

"Swear that you will not permit me... at any cost. Even that of my life." The woman bows her head, and covers the backs of his hands with tears. "Swear." He feels the woman cry in his arms, holding her tightly. For all his worry, his fear of what she means, she seems endlessly overburdened with the weight of Creation on her shoulders.

"I do so swear. But I also tell you this my mate. It will not come to that."

She wrings his hands, and even as he sees the telltale golden flare of her power, he feels her twine their fates that much closer. "Oh, but if it does, my Killing Frost, Heaven itself will hold you to your word." Shrike turns and manages a smile over her shoulder. "If there is to be anything between us, there can be nothing less than this trust I hold sacred.

"There will be times when you will fear for me, I am sure, headstrong girl that I am. But I never want you to be afraid of me. Not you, never you." The Lunar draws a line down her jaw, still wet with tears, a tender smile on his face.

"So be it Shrike. For my part, I am sorry for letting this...fester." He smiles down at her, reassuringly, and kisses her hard, her body pressed against his armor just a hair short of uncomfortably. Breaking the kiss, he gives her a wry smile. "Is there any other looming unpleasantness we need to take care of?"

She drowns a sob in laughter, toppling backwards out of his lap and landing in a pile of cushions, managing to make the subsequent impolite sprawl look both deliberate and alluring. "I suppose not. Now, why don't you show me the use to which this place was originally put? In the absence of trouble, I suppose I shall have to content myself with some looming pleasantness to take care of." He smiles, admiring the sprawling figure nestled amongst the cushions for a moment, letting out a not entirely human growl before following her.

"Pity the poor Lawgivers..."