Chapter V
‘Old money flies far and has seedbeds to land in every brook.’ So spoke the old saying. A fitting aphorism when it came to the wealth and presentation of the Gentwind manor. The opulent fortress jutted up to claim the horizon. Though the familial tree was now wholly entwined with the young branch of Gale, the house presented its veneer as a monolith of ancient pride. Unstained by the passing of so many scions and modern tastes, it stood as a marvel of alabaster and graven masonry. Of all the arisen boughs in the stone garden of Gorgotha only the great cathedrals, the royal palace, and a couple older lines with roots stretching into the wings of industry could compare in glory. A ring of towering gates lined with vigilant gargoyles and ancestral totems welcomed faceless throngs of nobles into its dominion.
Those hearths & lanterns beneath the mountainous terrace seemed nearly microscopic by their distance. In the shadow of fanged spires, the destitute slept; blanketed by cold Night on their beds of rust, sleet, and refuse lathered ditches. Here, only the firmament itself held greater court, and yet the stranger peered past the procession into the maw with the incandescence of a fell star peeking through his false countenance. He clutched to impish vows of his own make, swearing to see the ruin of the host’s line and to see all other parasites uprooted & flung down into scoria. By cunning or claw he would see to that roguish Gale which’d flown into the house of Gentwind, whose existence begged excision by his estimate.
The stranger immured his noxious feelings in the walls of his mask, playing his part as a welcome guest among the rows of chattering nobility & industry leaders. He dashed alongside the lines as a jolly courtier. For his facial attire he wore a mask with the equal resemblance to a devil and a jester. Bells and horns hung above his brow in contorting shape, dangling chimes and thorny spines impaling the air, with a devious simper etched along the gap of his filigree metal face.
Approaching the guard standing vigil at the threshold, the stranger pulled out his signet letter. “Will you invite me in?” Congenial charm echoed from beneath his mask, though it rang hollowness to linger. The household warden curled a sneer through his granite until he eyed the official sigil of his lord’s request and heard the man’s announcement. “Aldred Harrow.”
Ushered in through the antechamber, shuffling down endless halls after pompous pigeons and gibbering porcine puffed up in their impersonations of gods & beasts, he found entry to the grand ballroom. A fanciful game of whispers congealed around each corner, where gathered pustules of people partook in allotted festivities; fingering plates on tables & jabbing velvet threats while churning their interests around guessing the names & natures of every other costumed reveler. Yet for Arden titillation thrived in his hunt. His game: to unveil the lordling of the House & sever the branch of Gale; to discover and dismember the unworthy heir of the Gentwind estate.
What shape would he find the mind of his old enemy Vincent in? Was this pomp true to his spirit or a method to hide the deterioration of his mind? Could guilt even touch such a callow soul?
Among the attendants with their enigmatic dress & farcical expressions etched on metal fronts, one face pronounced a clear memory. The mask worn by this man, whose history he now recalled through the wax-like features he adorned, was a near perfect replica of his face beneath it as Arden remembered. A likeness in porcelain to mock all ivory, the look belonged to an old doctor of immense ethic who he’d labored with at times: Valdred Halloway. The aquiline nose and equine length of the pale jaw had been exaggerated, yet that mold with its heavy brows and tall forehead was unmistakable.
“Sir, what possesses you to wear such an honest expression to this masquerade?” Asked Aldred, extending his hand and sleeve in the posture of a handshake.
“You know me, sir?” The grey doctor’s rigid mien moved no brow yet tilted to attend him. His hand struck a strong grip with the one offered then slid to his pillared cane.
“Doctor Halloway, yes? Mayhap I hath seen your icon in some publishing here and there. I believe you had business with kin of mine.”
A low emission escaped the rim of the elder man’s façade, perhaps a sigh or a gleeful whistle. “Valdred Hallo, at your leisure. You’ll have to remind me of these publications.” Silver eyes cast a heightened study of the stranger through the veiled holes of his arduous replica. “We shouldn’t sully the revelry by announcing each other to the gossips. Still, shall I hazard a guess as to who you are beneath that costume?”
“Please do. If your estimate is right, it shall save me some breath.”
“Are you the infamous cousin of one Arden Harrow?” Valdred stretched tall on his heels, striking up a gentleman’s poise and acting as though surveying the ballroom floor where waltzes blended into a blur of motion and glassy expressions to hide all carnal threads twining their steps. “You could well be the same man whose arrival has summoned up a storm of rumor.”
“I am he. Aldred Harrow.” Admitted Arden with ease. “I mean no offense to the court by coming forth as a stranger. Only, costumes & starling myths are the fashion of our evening.”
“You delight in intrigue enough to have assumed the nature of this show, I suspect. But remember that it would be too much trouble to be known here as anything more than a rumor.” Dr Halloway gave a meek gesture to the crowd, sensing legions of eyes lighting glares to divine the stranger’s nature, more than his name. “As for my appearance, well: all masks reveal the same creature underneath. These vultures, peacocks, and preying hawks are no less themselves for shying from their faces. & the many little gods here embody their hubris.”
Aldred’s knowing smirk stretched his dubious mien, cackling a peal from the bells that draped his hair. “What would a court be without such iconic creatures? One bare of intrigue and proud facades is hardly a stage for noble courtiers to flock.”
“And your mask, Mr. Harrow? What do you embody by wearing this: a fool or a devil?”
“Perhaps, sir, I come to show how the devil is a fool.” Aldred offered a grainy chuckle.
“Oh, but a Fool is a miraculous thing to be. For the Fool is a being capable of great transformation, an omen of adventure and what change might be brought through it. Yet the Devil… well, a fool remains one to cling to infernal horns and make a monster of himself.”
“Well, I should say then that this Fool reminds himself of what he might become. Only to know the devil’s shadow and fly from it.”
“A Fool is a fine role to play as, for a time.” Said Valdred, taking a swig from his chalice. Though his cup brimmed with cold water alone, he acted as though it were a potent libation of spirits that caused him quite a stagger. “Yet that state should be fleeting, just an opening part to earn a place on the stage – to earn another in the next act, if his will, his truth through performance, earns it. Pretend overlong at horns & bells and you may find yourself the devil’s fool, dancing the way to perdition to bedlam’s lilt.”
The glint through Arden’s slits prowled the throngs of dancers for the creature of his desire, seeking her scent & aura through whatever mien she hid behind. He veiled his intentions with passing discourse, pushing nearer to the doctor with splayed curiosity. “Are you still practicing, kind doctor? Beyond what beasts we may be, there is a need in this heart to fulfill a pact of my kindred’s unfinished work. That purpose to preserve Gorgotha’s marrow.”
“And your kin, you have a predilection for his work?” Valdred’s vulpine grin pushed up his mask ever so slightly, impressing the folds of his true face. “I surmise a great similarity between yourself and your unfortunate cousin, all the same.” He paused, perhaps fishing for a reaction from his strange peer.
“My kin & friend, Arden, was brilliant. I am told he-”
“He was brilliant in some ways sure, but troubled. A man of as much emotion – and perhaps more – as scientific intellect.” Said the doctor with hoary affectation, tapping his cane as a priest of elder liturgies might wield his scepter to knell ceremonies. “Had he been ruled less by hapless passions and his heart’s base ambitions, he might well be among the living. Then your presence here would be uncalled for by tragic circumstance. By the fate he chose in contending with our host of the hour he is gone. Yet you?”
“Regardless of his passing, and the man you claim he was, I still aim to complete the wonders of his work. And yours.”
“I am many things myself, yet always a man. Until I am dust. The vocation you ask of me: the labor of an alienist, alchemist, or a pathologist?” Inquired Valdred with withered tone, belying the shine of disturbed concern under performative disinterest.
“Do I appear so foul of mind to be in need of an alienist?” Arden’s shrill guffaw did a poor job of cloaking the wince aroused from his chasmal muscle. “Mayhap ‘tis our host in need of a stay in an asylum, under the scalpel and scrutiny of science. Alas, nay. Tis the toil of defeating the pale blight of this palace of wonders and tormented flesh that calls me to you. If you are willing, I would seek it so that we ally ourselves in this desperate matter.”
“You harbor malice for your kin’s sudden rest? For the wroth justice in your soul would you seek to see the hand responsible buried under boils and belligerent gales? Such would only be human. That instinct is always there, passed from the sins of our prehistories to our dwelling hour.” Once more Valdred let his iron whisper temper the air between them for a piece, until he snagged no telling sign from the impish jester. “Or do you honor the fallen by burrowing your pith into the work he left? Should you have chivalry in the part of honorable stoic, more than a fool, well then, we might yet have business. Although I can promise little of myself and my tired attempts at medicinal wonder. Mayhap, we’ve some kinship in being labelled – wrongfully so, I hope to imagine – as charlatans and warlocks by the eyes of high society.”
“They are oft blinded by the gilt that sews their sockets.” Declared Harrow, leering at a muse upon the ballroom’s glistening reflections. “Little love, little art, lives through them. The palls that mark their Triumph are built to outlast us all, yet they forget the hands that sculpted them; they forego all warmth for cold proscriptions.”
“Yet still I bear no contempt for this court. While I respect the firmness of purpose in your voice, I have matters of a more personal scourge to attend first. Fear not that I shall forget your quarry, sir.” Valdred leaned on his winding stave & toasted his dry libation. “Yet this old man’s presence distracts you from more lively guests. I shan’t shirk you for seeking happier prospects here.”
“Ah, of course not.” Aldred struggled to retain his repose at the rim of the ballroom, for his longing lashed to the heart of lethal passion nearing the floor. A regal woman, an aspect of earthly heaven, who his deathless affections named Lucilla, trotted toward the circle of dancers. He offered a swift dismissal from Valdred’s company. “I understand. Yet I pray this private issue warrants mirth for you soon after. One day mayhap, we will invent an immunity for that fervent vein of passion which eclipsed my good cousin’s mind in dusk. Fare thee well, for now.”
“& may you keep your heart & head thoroughly balanced, Mister Harrow.” Dr Halloway patted the ‘good cousin’ on the shoulder before vanishing into anonymity with a murky trail echoing his breath and knelling scepter. “Walk not in Arden’s shadow.”
Lucilla - for surely, it must be her - curtained her immaculate visage in a feathered mask befitting a phoenix. Winged pinions of flaming hue flapped about the corners of her sleek, incarnadine mask, curling, and braiding into the raven mane which flowed effortlessly behind her head. Even half-hidden under that avian mold, there dwelt such ethereal shimmer in every motion of her stride. She angled about, a solitary bird, seeming tentative to join the celebration.
Another partygoer affirmed her identity and his own by way of his recognition & subsequent stride towards her. His fetish-mask, which had been formed & emblazoned in embodiment of Bacchus with braided metal for his beard to assist the shape of pagan joy, wore thin. Vincent’s desperate leap to acclaim Lucilla as his partner revealed himself. What perspired from his airs beneath his ram horns and heathen form was far from merry, verging on the neurotic. Replete with desires he was ravenous to cling to, his hurried pace confessed his fear of pride’s despoilment. Panic traveled with the jaunt-affecting strides, shimmering hysteria coiling his motion. Though the Lady accepted the hand of her host, her reticence, and the cautious sway she offered him through their dance gleamed to the looming watcher. Arden gleaned delectable hope in that sign, sensing the rift between them, and gnashed fangs under his horned-belled helm to rend it fully.
The couple’s stilted ruse of a dance did not go unheeded by the orbiting rings of so many veiled faces. Servants tamely navigated the tables & guests hid their heads in deeper shame for fear of the contagion of anguished embarrassment. A chorus of searing whispers began amongst the courtly revelers, sharing sentiments that pondered the loss of grace and heart in the once darling Vincent. The musicians carried on, preserving the joyous lilt of their strings, drums, and panpipes, pretending not to notice the shambling staccato between their host and his chosen woman.
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When the troubadours concluded one suite, breaking unsurely before reconvening for another jaunt, Arden seized the opportunity and stole the floor. Strutting forth with confidence to upset all measure of station & mortality, the cloaked son of Harrow lunged an elegant intrusion, disrupting the pairing of Vincent & Lucilla. The wan & sublime phoenix of the Duskmont line separated from her suitor with a gasp. She stood stupefied before this rapturously familiar stranger who now bowed to offer his hand.
“May I have this dance?” Arden’s eye twinkled through the holes in his jester’s façade, baring a glint as devilish as handsome. He draped his voice in the seductive silk he’d shared with her before, in an evening that now trespassed leagues past the hour they’d tasted in his old life.
Lucilla knew him by the timbre of his cords and the touch of their hands adjoined. Yet she trembled all the same, knowing him a ghost. Accepting his offer with a weary palm, the Lady leapt to hypnotic trance; exploring his soul through his keen smile, ambling steps, and the gentle hand he cupped her waist with as they twirled. Her shuddering wonder, that initial disavowal of who this stranger could be, evaporated in the gently lascivious friction of their lavish tango. By their spiraling steps all others recoiled into opaque anonymity, forgotten for the gravity of this eternity winding through them. Groans and hateful beams from the crowd dwindled in the dark, obscured. The pitch laid by the passion of the talented minstrels became nothing more than the manifestation of the music reverberating between both partner’s pitter-pattering rhythm.
“You know me.” Arden dipped Lucilla low, per the sweltering request burgeoning through her chest, then brought her up. He heard the purr of her mortal engine, offered the sweet hiss of his breath upon her ear, and dared a revelatory word in the hushed heat under the splendid waves of music. “I am still and forever yours. If only your heart speaks it so.”
They danced and pivoted and pressed against each other. Even so, as her breast rose & fell to test the weight of his, there was a gulch between them – one deepened by the dearth of the forgone grave and the fickle pacing of his pulse. Lucilla’s intuition was struck by thunder, alight by the lure of infernal delight, sensing his hunger without guessing the broader nature of it. “Is that so? I know your shape, beneath that disguise, but I know it impossible. You cannot be.”
“Yet I am. Here we are. Basking in impossible chance.” A spectral vesper bathed in the sheen of a warming moon licked the essentia within her head. A devious promise, strung betwixt abyssal force and kindling gristle, dipped the ink of his words onto her brain. “If you hold need of me, only speak to the moonlight and I shall be yours. To serve your whims and bear the sun upon any night, no matter how moribund. Whatever you dream – of me - can be.”
The dreamy veil that cradled them was so suddenly alit by tempting flames yet washed by a tap in the dark under their grazing matter. The caress of his hand through Lucilla’s feathered mane strummed chords of memory. Those strings of her lute and the keys of her piano resurged from songs shared with Arden before baring more in bygone harmonies between their instruments. Resonant aspects of their blend became odious for their abrupt return after a lifetime’s immurement; his fingers plucking buried notes sent her to shivers. “Dreams often become naught but dew and dust by the streams of day.” Lucilla swung about in Aldred’s arms, creating a wider berth from him when she landed gracefully on her heel. “Visions that visit our heads in the night can bring as many black mares as delights. Are you a prodigal lover, or a mist of longing that should have been buried?”
Aldred wheeled Lucilla in all her selenic sumptuousness back toward his chest with another measured twirl. “I am more than what I was. I can be any shade of infinity that you so desire.”
“To bind your essence to the liking of another denies the truth of it.” Warned Lucilla, nearly biting her partner’s ear when stretching tall to meet his embrace. “Could you be whole when serving the image of someone else’s fancy alone? I fear not. Such fancy would immure us both. And as for your shape, your face,” she gripped the lining of his mask, “I have not seen the seams of it by the sun’s glow.” She suppressed an icy spell at the fancy that the mold beneath might be just as cold as that metal-mâché.
“Let it be illumed by your light alone.” Proposed Harrow. He did not utter the next thought which crossed his lust yet, by Lucilla’s narrowing glare and the subsequent concern docked in her silver-blue sea, she felt the terrible meaning. ‘I would die for you again, if it must be.’
Triplet lunes from three-fold stares divvied the prime square, pushing aside the sentries among the circling throngs. Petrified confusion from Lucilla froze her under the study of her strange dancing partner. Arden’s own look bled fear of losing both her and his renewed pulse aroused by this fleeting chance. But the greatest glare in that moment, as the troupe of jugglers, flutists, and fiddlers abandoned their song, came then from the evil eye of their host’s envy.
Vincent Gale, in all his Pan-esque splendor and jealous sweat behind it, stomped up to the couple. Ire flooded back into his vital rivers, having been dragged by an undertow of shock for too long as his woman humored the advances of this stranger. His temper bristled until it burst into a tempest of thorns, uncaring how his erraticism might embarrass him further. After all, what could be more humiliating than this potential coupling of his lady and a rogue – or any one else?
“Wanton rake! Enough!” The lordling’s cry split the dome of his grandiose hall. Vincent slammed his knuckles into this impudent patron of Lucilla’s hand. Just as swiftly as the first blow, he shoved the rogue back several meters. “This angel is beyond your paws, whatever beast you be!”
The force of the blow did not shake Aldred off his feet, but he bowed into the motion of it. He played up the brutish gesture and brushed away the giddy smirk it struck him with. A second fresh pulse battered his shallow veins with a surge of life and the vengeful emotions on offer. If he couldn’t win Lucilla back with ease, he could still allow his fatal enemy to destroy himself – starting with his repute. “Sir? This hardly seems in kind taste-”
“Satyr of mud! Thou, carnal slime, seek to slither as a lech into the loins of my Lady!” Vincent’s inclement rage towered above his heritably blessed height. Chasing after the ‘beast’, he clutched his foe by the folds of his coat and the flesh beneath his frilled neck. “Under our roof? Nay. One more step, one more verminous word to her and I will bury thee to let the worms have fresh burrows. Let them bite and burrow into thee as thou would try of my moonlight!”
Lucilla, however, refused to be quartered before so many eyes as the object of a bitter dispute any further. “Thou art a brute!” She plunged far from the pair of them, diving toward the crowd in wary hope of disappearing. Crimson flush upon her cheeks mirrored the blazing feathers that winged her mask. One slight glance back was all she offered before chasing after solitude. That look hovered on Arden for only a moment, but he heard her eyes speak all the same. “& thou: I know not!”
The wounded party suffered the shame lancing him from Lucilla’s parting glare, diverting the pain to serve his performance. Vermillion tendrils lashed the eyes of both, incarnadine pyres resplendent in refractions of the marrow they’d briefly shared with one another.
Harrow shoveled his hurt to hone his gaze on vengeful meed. “What grace & manners for such a prominent host. How curious an instruction.” His enemy’s hands clamped around his throat, and Arden made a fine show of struggling to breathe while battering Vincent with the curse from his dead lungs. “If thou seek contest, is it not more polite to strike me with the gauntlet and throw it down? Ah -! So desperate… to cross our swords, are we? What prior loss do you mar me for?”
“Deviant. I have thee fingered as a fiend!” Again, the thunder of lord Gale’s fists brought blows to his unkind guest. “I should have this pernicious lech clipped for his grubbing.” Half of Vincent addressed the fascinated crowd, many of whom seemed over eager for such unplanned excitement, with spurious explanation. Yet his talons never ceded their conflict with his foe, gripping and tearing all parts he reached for. “This is not how we behave-”
“-sure, s-ure.” Harrow evoked the harshest cough he could, praying to embody a convincing plight, in anguish under the hands of the party’s wroth master. “Brutality is surely the best example to set for such events. Keep them – agh! – enter-tained. Let them see… what you are. Show them the way of your kin. Public brawls are so adored. But where is your -ahck! – merit?”
“I will have thee sing of my chivalry as a castrati. Thou hath forfeited the right to all carnal organs and must beg forgiveness through soprano pitch of prayer.” Lord Gale clung to this loathsome adversary as though his entire world were wreathed by the furious halo, he crowned the mocking visage with. “Should we not turn this lascivious rogue into a choir boy, as penance for the sin he sought?!”
“Such phallic fascination drips from thy tongue, lord.” Spat Arden through dubious meekness and crimson’s foaming spite.
“Aghh!” Vincent thrust his gentleman’s thew into Aldred’s gut. Such was his fury and the aplomb of his belief that he was assured his blows had brought this wretch to keel. While he paced away from the reeling joker, the lord of the gorged manor did not retreat from his anger. Instead, he sought new angles to unleash it – with no deference to optics. “O, bloated goat!” He trotted up to a dining guest with the graven face of a laughing satyr and the glutted paunch to match. “Hand me that carving blade! I shall cut this swine and let it be done.”
The gourmand ‘goat’ at the nearest table trembled with fork & knife in hand. The man forfeited the cutter. To the awful snickers & shrill gulps of fellow onlookers, the blade fell into the equally tremulous grasp of Vincent’s ire. Marching back to the offender, who veered about breathlessly, he flashed the carver and hurtled the edge through the frills of his enemy’s shirt. “Unrepentant coveter, taste the only mercy thy tongue has won.”
At the edge of a blade, Harrow coughed a ghastly chuckle before whistling a jagged taunt through gritted teeth. “My lord, your words would be better wielded against a mirror.”
The attendant’s viscous moans and copulating gurgles were windfall. Aspersions flitted at the frazzled lord from myriad spectators crouched in their regalia.
“Just who is this fool who comes into my house to gyrate with the woman who is to be my wife? What shape hides under this dumb mien?” Growled Gale. Enthralled by the spectacle of verdant anger and how close he was to the face of hatred, Vincent grappled with the urge to peel back the rude stranger’s mask. Even knowing what such an act would signify – for the removal of a mask by the host spelled the end of ceremony – the frivolity of the hour had long since been slain for him. The attempted conquest of his imminent, yet torturously distant, spouse was too biting an insult to bear on the cheek.
“Your would-be wife appears to have discovered a justified disgust of you, my good man. Perhaps she will be in better humour after a needed purg-”
“Who dares?!” Gale had consumed his fill of insults. In a stormy flash, he struck down the face of the jocular demon who was in his power. An all too familiar specter grinned back. Arden’s spotless face shined upon Vincent and his court, all ridden with abrupt and thunderous cries. The petty knife tumbled from his hands. He quivered against the arctic illumination of an old enemy.
The sallow ghost answered the looming question with assumed civility. “I, brazen lord, am Aldred Harrow. Kin to the man thou slew for lack of chivalry and wit.”
“Wraith of the Wyrm!” Vincent wailed. His own pagan deception fell from his face, helped by a hexed gale spurred by a vulpine sign from Harrow’s hand. The host’s face was naked before his less than adoring audience; blubbering slop, flustered colour and pronounced veins across his temple affirming his loss of lucidity. “So, thou hast come to steal from me? To plunder and ravage what is mine over some wrong thy heathen mind scries? How pathetic this vengeance…. I-I… cannot stomach any more sorcerers of thy line.”
“So, what now?” Inquired Aldred with a boyish ruse of naïve wonder. What reservation of spirit it required of him not to lunge for that bulging carotid! Those lashing tendrils of blue & red, scarring lightning across Vincent’s folds, flicked temptations of eager blood to dine upon. But no. Besides the eyes of present company, this vermin’s blood was poisoned by his heart. No, a festering destiny was far more deserved for this prey who thought himself the archon of fate.
“Now,” intruded a head of the helots with a froggy throat, “the event is concluded. All masks must be surrendered. We must ask the good people to forgive this brashness and depart with courtesy.”
“Nay. Clasp him in fetters!” Groveled Vincent in deafening stupor. No soul among the crowd, who swiftly stripped away their intricate facades to wear blustered faces, was pleased with his lunacy. Such abject vice was unbecoming of nobility, and more than that it had spoiled their delights for what should have been a decadent evening free of any grievance but the prospect of a hangover. “Arrest this fiend! It professes to witchery by way of its bloodline. We cannot suffer another Harrow here; they are a blister upon all good features of our crown. Chase this leech to the stockades!”
“For what crime, lord? You forget your manners, if I might be so bold as to address what is evident to all.” So spoke Valdred. The doctor emerged from the mindless throngs to advise peace in the wake of the night’s ruin, it’s hewn vestiges receding in discomfiture. “He hath not struck your noble person, even as your fingers drew duress to his gullet.”
“This beast, ‘Aldred’, murdered all good sense. He sought to rape my betrothed; to carry this grace we gave the good public into debaucherous squalor! Is this not a fair sign of his ill character?”
“I believe you have done all that I am accused of - o glorious host.” Teased Aldred, stepping back without a hint of bruised pain. He gestured to the carving blade on the ballroom floor. “Try not to step on your manhood.” Starting toward the moaning gate, he dropped his mask, the crown of the devil’s fool, onto the floor. With this he muttered: “this likeness befits you more, my lord.”
Gale, still flailing in the grip of his vengeful storm, stalked up to a pair of guests who dithered by the threshold. By their build and the sculpting of their brows he knew them as men of military means. To them he whipped a forked a whisper and the promise of his fecund coffers. Yet these two refused the role on offer of mercenary assassins, pouring the coin purse onto the tile.
Valdred Halloway abandoned his mask and faux mane, then hobbled over to his distraught host. Beyond the dimmed metal sheen that had dressed his feature, the resemblance was largely unchanged. His much-pronounced nose, that bent & ridged beak protruded over his gaunt lips and that long chin suited for a demigod’s icon in marble. His high brows and overarching temple seemed to pace up to heaven with its elegant, lengthy span. Gray eyes, to match the hue of the cold replica he’d worn, traced the contours of others’ aspects, diving their thought with a cunning swam out from his misty orbs. “I would advise, as a practitioner of medicine and some passing sense, against pursuing this ‘beast’ in anger.”
“Press a man who is not yet declawed with the option of force alone, and you are wont to taste the talons of his instinct.” The doctor pressed on. The weathered but spotlessly spirited Valdred affixed his cap to his head and took a few strides past Gale’s reach, as if to say: ‘the rest of this affair is yours to attend.’ Silver hair, not quite short nor excessively long, pulled back behind, sprang about in wiry tufts when the hat pressured those locks to conform. “Best to reform your own house, lest it crumble to the entropy to follow funneling any hateful obsession.”
“Can you not confine him in an asylum? Have him stay to serve your hobby as an alienist?” The master of the Gentwind manor slipped into a puddy of feature. “No, he is gone. I am felled.” Mewling spouts of breathy vitriol became Vincent’s tongue. “I have lost her, my betrothed. I shall lose the governorship which so recently was to be mine, for this, my temper. I am waylaid. What can I hope for – seek to – save the Furies? Who am I, with so little left?”
“Study the glass and seal yourself in the chambers of your mind for some time, and you may divine an answer.” Valdred’s words flicked Vincent’s skull while his sight grazed the heap of relics & fineries about the hall. Then his boots & cane scraped the enamel below as he departed.