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Tweak says, "Yippiee-ki-yay Mother--"

shadow_master (shadow_master) wrote in 4bidden,
@ 2015-04-29 23:23:00

WHO: Carrick and Alcuin
WHEN: Week 18 Monday. An hour after sunset
WHERE: The training yard of Carrick's estate
WHAT: Training
RATING: Pending.
STATUS:in progress

There was a still a violet glow in the sky when Carrick walked outside and set down a selection of weapons on a rough wooden table that stood in the corner of the training yard. Tonight he had chosen a traditional Spartan spear as well as pair of matched Renaissance-style daggers. The vampire kept to the rigid disciplines he had been taught as a mortal, and nearly every night of his long existence he had set aside some time to practise with sword or shield or spear.

It was a cool night, but nonetheless he stripped off his shirt. He had learned to overcome hunger and pain and cold during those long ago days in the Spartan <i>agoge<i/> and they hardly bothered him now. He picked up the spear and stood there, motionless and bare chested for a long moment, gathering his thoughts, allowing the world to shrink until the only things that existed were him and the weapon in his hand.

He hefted the bronze spear, feeling the weight of it, balancing it perfectly until it became almost an extension of his arm. He dropped smoothly into the first of the many fighting positions mercilessly drilled into him all those hundreds of years ago, allowing the metal and wood to spin and thrust about him in a lethal dance.

As he reached the end of the first series of exercises, he turned his head towards the archway that led to the building where both his armoury and his stables were situated. There was someone there, just out of view. Not one of his own slaves - they knew better than to disturb him in his nightly exercises. He thrust the butt of the spear down into the sandy ground of the training yard and looked over expectantly, waiting for the visitor to show themselves.

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alcuin
2015-06-19 11:30 pm UTC (link)

Alcuin hadn't intended to progress any further than the formidable wrought iron gate at the forefront of the ancient's property, truly, but found himself ensconced within nonetheless – and by a clever bit of politesse at that. The sleepy-eyed gentleman who met him at the gate was timely and succinct – echoing the demeanor of the master of the household – but no sooner had he pressed the familiar bundle of clothing into his arms and turned to leave did the servant reach out to grasp the crook of his elbow. “The master will see you,” the gentleman said, his eyes glinting cleverly in the dim evening light. Immediately, his thoughts swirled and reassembled themselves like a flock of startled birds. “I'm sorry,” he lied. “but the full moon approaches, and my master will be sour with me if I do not return in time.”

The gentleman repeated himself with a sweeping gesture of his arm toward the grounds. It was the sort of thing his diavoletto used to do when he tired of the polish of their pedigree and wished to test his mettle, often with mulish abandon for the consequences. Only, he didn't love this gentleman. “So you say,” Alcuin replied, his tone more waspish than he would have preferred. The gentleman smiled colorlessly and shifted aside to allow him passage. Their shoes crunched audibly in the partially frozen gravel of the drive as he was led across the grounds toward the ancient's estate; yet, to his surprise, he was not ushered inside but rather redirected down another path toward what looked to be stables.

Alcuin had only just begun to mouth an inquiry as to the ancient's whereabouts when a dark shadow darted across his periphery and vanished into the darkness surrounding the grounds. “Sir?” It took him a moment to realize that he'd frozen in the middle of the path, stock still and terrified, like a deer glimpsing headlights. “It's only a little further this way, sir.”

The horses raised their heads and stared at him when he entered the stables, some lazily grinding away at their feed whilst others pressed their noses to the bars expectantly. Alcuin rubbed their soft snouts with the palms of his hands along the way. “When you're ready,” there was that colorless smile again, the one that made him want to reach out like a viper and wipe it off. The gentleman gestured in much the same way he had before and departed without another word. Alcuin was bereft of company but for the docile horses and the sounds which emanated forth from the great stone archway a little further down the path.

Alcuin knew those sounds, recognized them as surely as one might the backs of their own hands. He heard them every morning when their taciturn guardian thought the household asleep for the last few months of his former life, but there was something different about it now. Alcuin inched toward the archway, listening closely for any variation in the sound that might constitute awareness, and pressed himself against its craggy surface. Already, he could almost make out a pattern of movement in the sound alone, could almost see it in that strange place his mind wandered to sometimes. Carefully, he shifted to glimpse around the edge of the archway, and beheld one of the most exquisitely ruthless training exercises in the world.

It felt like the ancient had reached into his chest and stolen the breath right from his lungs. Alcuin quickly discovered that where his mortal eyes struggled to follow, his mind almost preternaturally reconstructed the movement as if it were, in fact, something he'd seen many, many times before. Had he? No, of course not. No, that would be impossible. Yet the growing sense of familiarity leeched the color from the world around them until that was the only thing he could see, the only thing he could hear. Then the ancient looked at him and what had felt like a moment snatched out of time or, perhaps more accurately, what had felt safe and distant instead became viscerally surreal.

Alcuin panted his startlement against the cool surface of the archway for a moment before slithering out from his hiding place, his arms still clinging to the solid stone foundation of the arch. “But where is your shield?” He asked after a beat, his eyes gleaming unnaturally in the dim light of the rising moon.

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shadow_master
2015-06-20 12:24 am UTC (link)

The vampire stood motionless, regarding the young mortal who stood gazing at him with something what looked very much like rapt fascination.

"The shield protects the man at your side," he answered quietly, and lifted a hand to gesture to the empty space beside him. "And I appear to be missing an eremenos."

The vampire thought for a moment of all the times he had stood behind the wall of bronze that was a Spartan phalanx. The shield wall was designed in such a way that each protected the man standing to his left, the heavy circle of bronze covering him from shoulder to thigh. A younger, inexperienced hoplite would naturally seek to press closer to his companion, seeking greater coverage and safety, but in so doing would open a gap in the phalanx's defence. It would then fell to the man on the right to stand his ground, to calm his younger comrade, and force him to hold the line of defence, for the sake of all his brothers.

Carrick's fingers closed lightly around the polished olive wood of the spear's shaft for a moment, his touch almost caressing, before he looked back at the slave. Alcuin was beautiful in the moonlight. His skin was almost vampirically pale, his white-blond hair shining in the silvery light. And his eyes... that gleam was so much more than human, and of course the boy was. He was Nephilim, a child of what the religions of the Middle east called the Fallen ones.

Carrick folded his hand in front of him, as composed as if Alcuin had found him in a wing chair in his library "What brings you to my door, Alcuin no Delauney?"

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alcuin
2015-06-20 01:26 am UTC (link)

Alcuin blinked back the vision as if suddenly awakening from a dream without any awareness of how he came to be there, and slowly the lens from which some part of him peered out of began to withdraw. He could once again distinguish the warm glow of the stable lights in his periphery, the yellow of the sand at his feet, and the paleness of the ancient's lips as they formed words. “How very sad for you,” he whispered. From anyone else the statement might well have sounded heartlessly snide; there were plenty enough people in the world who hadn't the slightest clue what it was like to lose everything and everyone around them, after all. Alcuin was, however unfortunately, not one of them. “My master sold my companion to another,” he offered quietly. “I did not want him to go.”

Their words – spoken and unspoken – seemed to hang in the gloom of the training yard. Alcuin hung his head as the horses did when they wished to be left alone, hiding behind the curtain of his hair from their collective grief. Although the ancient never did strike him as the tactful sort, he couldn't say that he wasn't grateful for the change in subject. Even if the answer was the last thing on earth the ancient would've liked to have heard in that moment. “I came to return the clothing you had delivered some time ago,” Alcuin carefully avoided eye contact in favor of the spearhead. “Master – objected to his nudity, as you might recall.”

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shadow_master
2015-06-20 12:35 pm UTC (link)

Carrick's gaze hardened at Alcuin's next words. He mourned the loss of his beloved little bird, the boy he had set free and allowed to make a life far away from the wounds of his past, but he would not suffer to be pitied for it - and by a slave, of all people. When he saw the grief in the boy's eyes, however, his tension eased. He nodded slightly.

"And so you are alone." Carrick's voice was no louder than a whisper, as expressionless as always, but in the pale eyes there was a quiet understanding. His gaze dropped as Alcuin spoke of Hermes once more. It was true - his boy had been without shame, as comfortable naked as any ancient Greek had been. When Hermes had shapeshifted from avian to human form, feathers still in his hair, he had never cared that he was naked. And why not? He was beautiful. Neither modern sensibilities nor the Pacific north-west climate was amenable to nudity, however, so Carrick had sent a selection of hermes' clothes to Alcuin's master's home so that his slaveboy would be properly attired when he visited his friend. And now they were back. The final evidence that his eremenos was gone for good.

"You miss him." It was not a question. Carrick gave a sigh that was barely audibly, and paused for a long moment before he spoke again. "So do I." The cold night wind made the thin film of sweat on his brow feel like ice. Or perhaps that was just his heart, ancient and cold and locked tight again now that Hermes was gone. He turned away slowly and closed his hand around the spear once more, pulling it from the earth. He glanced back over his shoulder.

"How long had you been watching?"

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alcuin
2015-06-24 10:45 pm UTC (link)

Alcuin smiled humorlessly from behind the curtain of his hair. It wasn't the first time his former life had given him cause to be bitter, but it was the first time he allowed himself a single poisonous moment to reflect upon it. How many hours, how many days of his former life had he spent within the dusty confines of their archive with only his thoughts and translations to keep him company? That he should feel lonely now! Where was that boy who valued the written word over conversation and companionship now? Had he favored these things then he might have lifted his head every once in a while and sought it out. Perhaps if he had, he might have remembered the names of his fellows that died that day. How selfish was this person he'd become, that he should be lonely now? It never troubled him before – not even a little bit. “Yes,” he admitted, and again to confirm what the ancient already knew.

Hermes, his beloved little imp, had been set free. He was his own man now – for better or for worse – and he liked to think he was not so petty as to begrudge him this freedom. So, too, was his companion now free to pursue the love he felt for his sweet-tempered musician. Alcuin should have been happy for them, should have rested easily knowing they were safe and sound and doing what they loved, but the holes in his heart were too numerous to ignore. Soon, he thought, there might not be a single surface untouched by loss. And then...

Alcuin studied the ancient while his back was turned. Lord Carrick was rather like a monolith carved from stone and forgotten by time, as with most of his kind, yet there was something intrinsically different about him. Alcuin got the sense that rather than moving fluidly through time, the ancient had merely decided to stand still. “I saw only the end,” he replied with some reluctance, chewing anxiously at his lips in a bid for time. “but I felt much more.”

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shadow_master
2015-06-24 11:33 pm UTC (link)

There was such bitterness in the boy's smile, Carrick reflected. The deep, liquid eyes were so full for one so young. Far too full. What a pair Hermes and Alcuin must have made, he thought - the one bright and radiant but with sorrow and rage hiding beneath the merry smile, and the other so composed and melancholy but with a tender heart behind the sad eyes.

The loss of his little bird still pained Carrick. He thought of the boy often, praying for him almost every night. He liked to imagine Hermes living in a white-painted house on the edge of a beach with turquoise waters and white sands, where the perfume of flowers filled the air and colourful birds roosted in the treetops. Somewhere warm and bright. Florida, perhaps. Or Mexico. Somewhere with sunshine. The boy had lived in darkness for too long.

He took his time pulling the spear butt from the ground and smoothing the sand over once more. His face was too ancient and expressionless to show his true feelings, but he nonetheless did not want to face the slave who had meant so much to Hermes while thoughts of his eremenos were so close.

Carrick glanced back over his shoulder again before turning to dace Alcuin once more. "What do you mean by you 'felt' it? " He gave the spear an idle twirl in a figure of eight, then regarded Alcuin with an assessing gaze. "Have you ever been trained in combat? You obviously have an interest in weaponry."

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alcuin
2015-06-25 10:32 pm UTC (link)

Alcuin shifted uneasily against the stone pillar of the archway when the ancient pressed him for clarification. How was one meant to explain something to someone who hadn't experienced it themselves? All his life he'd been surrounded by people who shared his heritage and culture, people who knew precisely what his particular lineage and upbringing entailed. Hermes had encouraged him on more than one occasion to be more open about it, to share that part of himself with his master at the very least, yet the very idea frightened him. What if his master thought him simple-minded? Worse yet, what if he took him for a hatter? In the very worst of his nightmares, he imagines his master taking him for a whore, and pitying him for it. But the ancient...

“No.” Grateful though he was for an inquiry that was comparatively easier for him to answer there was nonetheless something briefly vitriolic in the dark depths of his gaze, something that invited uncharacteristic sharpness to his tone. “Not formally, anyway. Master Delaunay did not think it in keeping with his designs.” Alcuin punctuated the sentence with a joyless, thin-lipped smile. He could still remember the sound his palm made against his beloved's face; loud, louder than a gunshot in the dead of night, louder than anything he'd ever heard, and sickeningly wet with his own blood. He'd expected sadness, heartbreak, but only guilt stared back. “What I learned, I learned from a Cassiline.”

A shame that he'd never learned the terminus.

“'I know naught of my grandfather but the footsteps of his son, my father, who leads me to places I do not wish to go.' Do you remember, my lord?” Alcuin returned to his submissive posture against the archway, his gaze harmlessly tracing the pattern of stone he leaned against, and his voice gentling to a hush. “I am a scion of Camael; he who founded the armies of the nephilim. His blood, however thin, runs through my veins. And it is not me, I fear, who takes interest in your spear.”

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shadow_master
2015-06-27 10:32 pm UTC (link)

"A Cassiline..." Carrick mused. "Some of the best single combatants in history, for all that they're servants in all but name." He crossed to the table where he had left the twin daggers he intended to train with after he had finished drilling with the spear. His finger traced lightly over the well-worn leather wrapped around the hilts. It had moulded to his grip over the years, growing thinner and softer where the pressure of his fingers had been most acute.

His pale gaze flickered to Alcuin as the boy's voice sharpened, watching him with unwavering stillness. "Then perhaps your gods were wise in leading you here," he stated.

"I've studied almost all the western forms of combat over the years, but never the Cassiline style." Carrick remarked. "I'd be interested to see it." He picked up both daggers and proffered them to Alcuin, hilt first.

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