Recent content by Tian

"I don't know what I want, anymore." Not melancholic, not self-pitying. No, the words have the ring of truth, simple and straightforward. "My talents have been bent towards ruining the days of the oppressive and abusive for some time now. My patron will live forever, and so will I apparently. An...

"Glamours will be your friend," he said in a desert-dry voice. "You fae have a great deal of skill with such things. I am just a human." One without those particular talents. Of course, he had gifts in other areas. He was certain of his ability to fight most anyone to a stand still, if not...

"So," he said. "How exactly do we find this delightful fae-Lord, then?" He could still see the face, etched into his minds' eye, but that was all that remained of the Lord after two centuries of aimlessness. Well, not completely aimless; he killed the right people now instead of at the behest...

Tian was silent for a long moment, stretched almost to the point of discomfort. After which he huffed a bitter laugh to himself, and shook his head. "Somehow I always thought he would try to be the center of attention among his ... peers. Shattered dreams and subverted expectations it is, then."...

"He has been closed to me for decades," he said simply. "Unfortunately, anything regarding direct confrontation with him will require good old-fashioned leg work. Cloak-and-dagger spy things. I have never seen him outside of the wider world." And he had received no work from him in a century...

"And one of his kindred, no less," Tian added in a desert-dry tone. "I do not know where he lives. Likely among one of the fae Courts, but he is consistently enshrouded in his own glamours." He paused, cut his eyes to the side as he finally reached up to draw his hood back over his head. "You...

What must it be like, to be meant to live so long? The frame of reference was different for him than it was for her. "Two hundred years for you might be nothing, but it is not so simple for me. Especially where the Lord is concerned. I am pact-bound to him... I think." It was a question that...

"I could lead you to him, but killing him has proven to be..." Difficult. That didn't even begin to describe what it was, but he had attempted numerous times throughout the years. Since a knife in his fucking heart hadn't proven effective, he had spent a century trying to work through the...

"Were?" Finally some real emotion in his voice. It is not indignation or arrogance or humor. It is unadulterated rage that hisses in his voice. "He still holds my leash - or the broken end of it. Avanth. A fae Lord, and my patron. Cruel, capricious, arrogant, and ruthless." He looked at her...

"That I'd get another day." There was nothing else he could say to the question, after all. He had managed to escape his slaver since then, but the details were hazy at best. The details of her family - that was hazy, too. He had never been meant to live beyond a hundred, and two hundred years...

"I don't get a choice." There was an intensity in the statement that had been lacking up to this point. Something akin to anger and frustration, tinged with a deep sorrow. It ran contrary to his normal flippancy, his general disregard to form and seriousness. Sarcasm had been an armor for much...

"No." He paused for a moment, took stock of all the questions asked. "I do not regret killing your family. There is only one death that I regret delivering; the rest were necessary. My sense of self - indeed, my self - only continue because I did what was necessary." He let his hands fall to...

"Because I do not kill for the sake of the art. Whatever history that lies between us, I do not know you. As for fleeing?" A fleeting smile, there and gone. There would be no answer, no boasting or bragging. They could cut one another to pieces and aside from the chance that he might die in the...

"Then whoever they were either pieces of shit or were unlucky and have been dead for quite some time." He could not scent her well enough to pick up emotions. He was not fae. Wasn't precisely human any longer, either, but what abilities he had were grounded in the unremarkable banality of that...

A sigh escaped him as the blade faded and she spoke. There was a certain element of weariness to it, the quality of someone who has been down a particular path many times. The road was well worn to the point of being a rut and escaping that well rehearsed story was a chore in and of itself. The...