taxonomites | 02: Who says you can't appropriate a forge?

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02: Who says you can't appropriate a forge?

If there's one thing that can be said for Nuada, it is that he does not suffer idleness. Since his arrival he has gathered information from Long, traded for tools with Glitch, found a friend in an upside-down skull monstrosity under the delusion it's a canine companion, proposed a bargain with a werewolf - and generally made quite a nuisance of himself.

He has a standing arrangement with the barriers surrounding the city, for instance, and he knows for certain there are two residents here who would like nothing more than for him to make an untoward move. Or, well, one of them; the would-be knight, the tarnished champion of the 'peaceful' residents. The other one, the woman, he's not so sure would raise a hand unless it served her own agenda.

If she sets her filthy paws on his crown, he'll rip her voicebox right out. That goes for anyone, human or simply a fool.

But, all that aside, as mentioned, idleness sits very poorly with him. Having ventured into the Northern district, it seemed to him a natural progression to see about weapons. The Extra patron wasn't too happy about relinquishing his forge, but Nuada can be very persuasive.

And so, one elven prince can be found in the Medieval village's forge, day or night, fashioning himself a pair of blades. Bare from the waist up and perfectly covered in soot and grime, handling the metal and the heat as if he's done so a thousand times before. Perhaps so. But a more relevant question is this:

Do you dare approach?

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As much attention as Nuada spares him, he might as well be a spider crawling underfoot. The spider moves, and Nuada resumes working; the spider talks, and Nuada lifts his eyes from his work. It speaks. How very clever.

The mention of the violin earns Sherlock a sharper look, of widened yellow-red eyes that swiftly narrow into slits.

"Yes," he says simply, laconically (acridly). "It does."

This is certainly the first time in Taxon someone's cared this much about the existence of his violin. Possibly the first time ever. Sherlock files it away, curiouser and curiouser, and moves on: he goes back to looking at Nuada with open interest. Hostility rarely deters him, much less frigidity: that takes being boring and so far Nuada's at least more interesting than anyone else within reasonable walking distance.

The forge is hot. He fans himself with his hand and it occurs to him: "The heat doesn't bother you," he observes, a very chatty spider indeed. "Do you do it for a hobby, the weapons? Or do you intend to use them? No, don't answer me--both, I imagine. You strike me as in want of a war."

As far as human flaws go, inquisitiveness is among the better ones. At least for now, Nuada's patience may be brittle, but has yet to wear itself into nothingness. What's more, if the inquisitive finds the answers to his query all on his own, well, all the better.

A hobby, oh, that this be a hobby. Hairless eyebrows lift, the hint of a smile as he lifts the blade (the glove he wears is not for protection from the heat, but rather the sharpness of the tang), feels its weight and balance. It's good enough. Now to fashion a grip and a guard, then to mount the same onto the blade. A job fit for its respective masters. He still has his knife - a paring knife by comparison to his spear blade - but having gone so long with a proper weapon only to find oneself without... It needs to be remedied. In due course.

He holds the blade out, and one of the apprentices comes dashing forwards to relieve him; Nuada plucks the glove from his hand. There are more interesting matters brewing.

"In want? No. Not in need of one, either. Is there a reason you're still here?"

As it happens, Sherlock Holmes may well have all the Promethean curiosity of Men contained in his person; his eyes follow the blade when Nuada raises it in the same way they've been following Nuada's eyes and hair and the curiously solid cant of his speech in English. He almost ignores everything Nuada's saying and plows on with another question but it occurs to him that Nuada won't likely respond very well to that tactic; he's making it very clear that being pestered with no yield in return is not going to go anywhere. So for once he stops and considers answering a question of his own.

The apple's half-eaten now; he turns it around in his fingers and takes a bite out of the untouched side. "I'm bored," he says, "and I've literally nothing better to do. There is literally nothing better to do."

There's the distinctive hum of malcontent buzzing behind his eyelids, but Nuada listens with half an ear as he finds a moderately clean rag to wipe the grime from his face and neck.

Bored. Well. There are worse conditions, far worse, but if that is the height of itty-bitty-spider's woes who is he to dissuade him the notion.

"I'm sure you could find something worse to occupy yourself with than ingratiating yourself to an elf prince. I must point out you're not doing very well, so far. But then, one cannot be good at everything with such a short lifespan and limited use of one's faculties."

Yes, little man, little long-legged spider with sharp-enough eyes and a myriad thoughts running along the Habitrail of your mind, that was an insult. Are you clever enough to see it; wise enough to let it absorb?

"However... I can sympathize with boredom." And curiosity, at that.

Sherlock scours the apple for the rest of its flesh, all the while picking bits of information like scraps of meat off the bone: elf prince, short lifespan. He smiles at ingratiating yourself. The idea that he might attempt to ingratiate himself to something gives him a sort of childish amusement, sarcasm or none.

"Yes, I hear that Taxon's full of all manner of lions, tigers, and bears these days, oh, my," he says with his arms crossed.

There's an assortment of questions he could, hypothetically, ask Nuada, with a low probability of receiving an answer; maybe Nuada will tell him more in bits and drabs, like he has been doing, maybe he won't. The fact is, Sherlock's not exceptionally curious about Bethmoora at the moment. Bethmoora is even more unreal to him than the notion of ingratiating himself to an elf prince. Nuada is another one of this endless marching order of proud immortals, this one not yet exposed to the arbitrary humiliation of their captors; he'll probably learn, and if he doesn't, it's hardly Sherlock's problem.

No, Sherlock's mind has returned to something else, something a little more directly relevant to himself. He twists the apple core between two fingers. "Don't you like the violin?" he says.

...and now he's quoting popular culture.

Nuada closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. What ever line of reasoning it was that initially urged him to exercise caution, it's leading a threadbare existence at the back of his mind. Caution. Patience, and inaction, and waiting. He can be patient. He can wait. He's waited an aeon already, what's another few years?

"Quite contrary, I have a great fondness for all manner of instruments: it is beggars and minstrels I've a distaste for."

Sometimes Sherlock says the things he says because he's clueless; sometimes he says them because, while he's aware they aren't the best idea, he's not sure what else to say. Sometimes he's just being a pest.

He crosses his legs leaning against the smithy's wall. Nuada's irritation has the heat of a slow-burning fuse. That's a little more alluring right now than the charms of the Adventure Zone which, while charming, have been designed with the precise purpose of giving him something to do (or observing his behavior while he does it, or whatever the point is of this particular Skinner box). That's no fun.

"Then in Bethmoora," he says, "I take it the instruments play themselves?"

The pointed ears lift, the shadowing brow as well, and the lips curl over sharp white canines. As alluring as Nuada's rapidly fading patience may be, his fuse is significantly shorter around humans; shorter yet after spending days on end in the company of mindless oafs. To suddenly have an overly enthusiastic parasite sticking its head where it might be gnawed off...well. It warrants no explanation, and his justifications are his own to keep.

Eyes burning hotter and more deadly than the forge so nearby, he stalks close and slams a hand into the wall by the young fool's neck. In his other hand, a blade. His voice is soft as baby's breath, deadly like the roots of the weeping willow. "You don't know better," he says with mock understanding, as if speaking to a child. "You don't listen. You just talk and talk, and talk. You think you are unique, and so very clever, but I have listened to a thousand upon a thousand men just like you."

He raises the knife, which in size and shape seems little more than a letter opener, lets his eyes slide over its length and width before once more boring into Sherlock's. "I shall tell you a story that has no end. If you can think of a proper, clever ending, I'll let you keep your tongue."

Animal fright does wake in Sherlock's body, of course: he may be an unusual man, but he is, as Nuada has observed, just a man. His heart is rattling along in his chest when Nuada leans in close and his breathing comes a little faster. Epinephrine isn't wholly unpleasant, though, nor the host of sensations it brings. Least of all for Sherlock Holmes.

Something new he hears himself say some three years ago of James Moriarty. Probably that's too much to hope for from Nuada Silverlance. Probably he should feel guiltier about that string of words.

"Then by all means," he answers, pale eyes fixed on Nuada's red ones and the gleam of the blade at the edge of his vision, "I'm all ears."

Should he hold such high hopes of the elf prince, he'll surely come to be sorely disappointed. Nuada has no taste for pomp or circumstance. When he wants something, he'll get it as fast and with as little to-do as possible.

However, his conditions accepted, Nuada nods, and begins his test with some measure of seldom witnessed amusement. "Once upon a time, there was a young prince. He was a righteous man, having been brought up on the back of a horse: a warrior among warriors. All he ever wanted was peace, but the king's great land had fallen into darkness. The hollow creatures came from beneath the very earth, and took what they wanted without pardon. The king was distraught, waging one losing battle after another, until finally it looked as though all was lost. Indeed it was.

"The kingdom was ravaged and plundered, women raped and children made into workers or pets for well-off ladies in faraway lands. All across the land, the heads of traitors were put to stakes and set out in the sun. A deterrent, the victors called it. Respect, they said, was just another word for fear. The king was executed, and his queen and all his heirs and all his dalliances too. The new king took his seat at the throne and ruled the land as its rightful heir.

"And so the story begins anew. More kings, more princes, a new enemy on the horizon. How does it end?"

However Nuada might accuse him of obliviousness and self-absorption, Sherlock does listen. He listens with his eyes on Nuada's, which are still at less of a distance than he would like, but by the end his pupils have constricted back to a non-fearful circumference and his eyelids have settled a little further into thought. A game. Sherlock can play a game.

More like a Rorschach blot. Psychoanalysis was always the softest of the sciences, in Sherlock's opinion. While Nuada talks he also looks him up and down with a few flicks of his pale eyes, taking in his imposing height, the waxiness of his complexion, the contradictory texture of his hair. He does so dearly want to sample Nuada's hair. Later.

"That depends," he says, feeling the wall of the workshop hard against the back of his head, "did the prince fall? Or was he the victor? I've heard of many a righteous man," he means this rather more allegorically than Nuada, and is thinking of rather different people, "who took up reluctant arms against his father in fear of his land--falling into darkness, you say. To the hollow creatures. Yes, I like that story. How does the prince rule," he speculates with a tilt of his head, "now that he's slain his father, now that he's turned against his land: for love of it? A warrior among warriors, you said."

The fairytale language doesn't come naturally to him. He pieces it out on his tongue like jigsaw. Nuada's story is open-ended, filtered through the ears of the listener: Sherlock filters it back through what's coming together in front of him. "The king wonders if there was a point when he could have turned back," he answers. "But I don't suppose there was."

Edited 2013-02-20 07:14 (UTC)

Nuada's eyes watch in a similar fashion, calculating and observant in their own way. As the man speaks, that same restlessness and simmering agitation come skimming the surface but never break it. By his conclusion, the flat of the blade is brought to rest carefully on the orbital bone just below the big, pale blue eye that sees so very clearly.

Perhaps he ought to claim it. It would make a proper offering to the memory of his one-eyed friend. It would make due compensation.

And then: "I can count on the fingers of one hand the men who haven't jumped to the conclusion the prince are among the slain heirs to the throne. But you cheat, Sir. That is not an ending, but a mere supposition. Is that the point you want to make? That there is no end, and that I, treacherous creature, would resort to trick questions?"

Edited (just because >:3) 2013-02-21 13:21 (UTC)

The knife is colder than the forge air. Fear is a curious and aggravating thing. Sherlock can muse in a detached way that death and injury mean nothing in this part of Taxon, which is set up like some sort of hyperrealistic video game. But it is hyperrealistic. So is the knife. So is the primal terror of having something sharp pressed to one's eye.

"Yes, he says, holding still, "and no." He is not accustomed to having to hold very still. "Those are two questions. I do not imagine that this story has an ending, no. But I don't believe that's because you're playing a trick."

He lets that statement lie, not choosing to elaborate, because the only idea he has for leaving his predicament is something like Scheherazade's. Without breaking eye contact with Nuada he slowly raises his hand towards his face.

"Let me go, Prince Nuada," he says without rancor. "You'll better like my answer if I give it willing."

Nuada considers the reasoning, holding the so very bright blue gaze, and finds it clever enough. But is it ever really enough? The thought irritates the moment it's spawned: conquests and industry and nuclear bombs, did it ever take more than a single man being just clever enough?

His lips curl; the blade lifts, leaving nary a mark save for the faintest of impressions in the skin. He rather hopes the impression on the young man's mind to be more substantial.

He lowers his arms, and takes a step back. Behind him, the Extras wrest each other out of their collective stupor, and go about their business once more. "By all means," says Nuada quietly, returning the knife to its hidden confines. "Dazzle me with your clear-sight."

Edited (errant rathers: gotta catch'em all! + grammar blunder + apostrophes argh! okay, stopping now) 2013-02-26 15:51 (UTC)

Sherlock's eyes track him replacing the knife, not so much as a calculation of him as a threat as with more detail-hungry curiosity. Everything about Nuada is going into a folder called Nuada on Sherlock Holmes's immense and well-organized biological harddrive; so far it's full of question marks and empty spaces on endless spreadsheets.

Nevertheless, he answers the question as soon as Nuada steps away--straightening up a little to his full height, which outstrips the elf prince's by just an inch or two. He's a big human, or he would be if he weren't quite so lanky; as it is he has the appearance of a scarecrow, a boy-scarecrow with a great deal of animation and bright, bright eyes.

"The king has no regrets," he says, hitching his coat up a little: being pinned still literally or socially always fills him with the insatiable urge to fidget. "Not that I know the man personally, but--being the man that he is--I imagine he'd rather see something of his destroyed at his own hand than another's. So he's gotten what he wanted." Sherlock makes a quizzical face and adds, reflectively, "A common enough motif in fairy stories. Everyone always gets what they want, one way or another. It's just never very pleasant."

He flexes his fingers, then his arms over his head: stillness really doesn't suit him. "But you weren't asking me whether it was pleasant," he says.

No. No.

Nuada's eyes lower to watch some unspecified speck of dust or similar, but his eyes see something very different. The face of his dying father, petrifying into a serene stillness. He can still feel the rush of battle, the blind aggression and calculated tactics, all of it fading away at the sight of the dead king. He felt cold, then.

'Never very pleasant'. No. But what humans so often forget is that getting what you want always comes at a price - often at too high a cost for someone unprepared.

Nuada watches the restless husk in silence, dragging his yellow gaze ever so slowly from the tips of its boots and up the many lines and fidgety angles of his limbs, coming to settle on his eyes once more - but only after giving the entirety of his face the same blatant scrutiny.

"You may leave," he says as sole verdict of the man's wit. "Unless, of course," and here the corners of his mouth twist and bend into an unpleasant smile, "you want something from me?"

Even such a disinterested and unsentimental (ha) person as Sherlock Holmes has heard a fairy story or two. When he peers at Nuada he has no illusions that the fairy prince means him well by offering him some sort of bargain: bargains gone wrong are the cornerstone of the Western morality tale. In any case, his manner has too much menace in it--not just the knife to Sherlock's cheekbones, but the way his eyes rake Sherlock now. In some uncomfortable way Sherlock imagines they're one and the same temptation reflected in Prince Nuada of Bethmoora.

But--he puts aside the flicker of fascination. Maybe later. "Not now," he says with a faint smile in return. "I'll let you know if I change my mind."

And a bit boldly, with no more of a formal goodbye than a formal hello, he turns to go. The apple is oxidizing now, going brown in the flesh.

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02: Who says you can't appropriate a forge?

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