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Jan 20th, 2020
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  2. "But, he can //come// for me, Archscholar Sina said. He does not care that I am not sylv'alfar, now," Sunaia deeply frowns, the raw emotion of fatigue and fear threatening to boil up. "And I //cannot// forget; the dreams come to me every night - and every morning, I am alone, I feel... as if I've lost //everything// and //everyone//. It has been this way for as long as I remember...." She falteringly inhales and continues, afraid but determined to be brave, her gaze never leaving Aureth's face, "And I //will not// give myself to him... no matter //what// I did." The pale lady's voice quavers when she speaks next, "But, what if I am one of his daughters?"
  3. "Oh, then by Enslaver, you mean Orichalcum, not Legion," Aureth says. His eyebrows have risen with the faintest pinch between them. "Do you have some evidence that suggests so, aside from your haunting dreams?" he asks.
  4. The pale Ashford's platinum gaze fills, at last, with tears; she shakes her head once, misery and fear evident. "None. Except that the Archscholar thought it might be so." Her voice pitches very quietly and she nearly whispers, managing only barely not to weep, "And I am terrified."
  5. Aureth gestures again, open-handed. "I admit, I'm not as much an expert as some on the subject of Heralds spreading their seed about," he says, "but I was given to understand that most of the time there is some _evidence_ that a person's father is a Herald, other than they have unusual visions and dreams." The weight of breath on his voice is heavy, his expression grave, his pale gaze lingering thoughtfully on the signs of her anxiety. "My lady, many people have dreams, related to their past lives or otherwise; often, something speaks to people, and one of many questions is who is speaking to them or why. Could you be a daughter of Orichalcum? I suppose, but it would probably come a great surprise to your Ashford father, wouldn't it?"
  6. Weather: A refreshingly light breeze picks up now and again, otherwise the day is bright and sunny.
  7. The pale lady considers this, then crisply nods. "My father's dead, though. And, how is there to know... if. It was this or not?" She moves to speak and hesitates, then continues carefully, with some caution - but her voice betrays that she knows more than she says, "Things happen. My brothers... They were. More - and other than they seemed. Surely you know them; surely you know my eldest sister, too: Avary, Archlector to The Sentinel? And my brothers, Addison and Killian? The White Steward and the Paladin of Ideals?”
  8. "I knew Killian quite well," Aureth says, his eyebrows still swept high, "but he was graced by the Sentinel's gifts. The only doubts I ever heard mentioned about his parentage was a theory that he might actually have been Barton Ashford's get, half-brother to your cousin Aislin, though it was never a rumor that was more than whispered." He snorts a little, and scrubs his hand over his bearded jaw as he straightens away from the chair, settling his weight back on his heels. "Addison was a traitor and a liar, but that certainly didn't preclude him from being an Ashford. Lady Sunaia, finding otherworldly blood in your veins would be a disturbing turn of your life, for certain, but again, without some evidence in support of it I find it highly dubious that it is so. There are simply too many people who get divine visions without anything unusual in their parentage for me to follow the Archscholar to this conclusion. Including myself," he adds, with a slight cant of his head.
  9. "Then, what am I to do?" Sunaia asks with carefully-measured somberness, her gaze still set upon the Legate's face. "I don't know what to make of all of this. And: if I am, or if he has some hold on me that I cannot resist. What more than elfblight is there to save... my family from me?"
  10. Aureth shakes his head again. He says, "Your life is your own, and so are your choices," with absolute certainty. "No matter what burden your soul might have borne in a past life, today and now you are Lady Sunaia Ashford, for this is the life you were born into. So." The priest tucks his hands into the pockets of his trousers, returning her question unto her like so: "What do you mean, what are you to do? What do you imagine there is to do, or not do?"
  11. A player you are watching, Hana, has connected.
  12. "I don't //know//," Sunaia repeats again, her voice quietly insistent. "I have been thrice warned, Legate - once by the Archscholar, once by Shard, and once by Aleksei Morgan - to be wary of such visions, to be way of. Myself," her lips turn down. "Thrice asked, as well, if I might be another's child. Imagine if you had felt such things for your whole life, and now, nearing the twenty-eighth anniversary of my birth, I have this. ...Vision, this waking dream of m-... murdering, killing, slaughtering every person who means something to me. Including Killian, whom I know is dead. At least, I presume so," her lips twitch slightly, "as everyone has assured me so. I imagine... at the very least that I must know //how// to resist, if it becomes ...dire. Necessary."
  13. "I mean, always be wary of any vision, until you know for sure where it comes from," Aureth says in a particularly matter-of-fact voice. As though eerie visions from Beyond are like grocery lists, or laundry to be folded, or any other workaday thing. "I appreciate that this latest one was particularly harrowing, and I'm sorry about that. But all that I can say it means to _me_ is that whatever is speaking to you is making a particularly dire portent of itself. My lady, you speak of resistance, but I don't really know what that means. When you are faced with choices, choose the one you feel is right, not the one you feel pressured into, and not the one that seems like it would cause ill to your family."
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