Luka Forrester

[[Enjoy my Bulgakov reference, I couldn't think of a better name and Mikey B really has every name ever in Master & Margarita]]

The box found her in a jumble of other mail, surrounded by academic journals and reports, the newspaper and a few letters from the saps Lady Kaivodulin kept clinging to the spider silk threads of her affections. It was wrapped in canvas and brown parcel paper under that, unremarkable and unmagical in every sense but for the smell of lavender emanating from it.

Once unwrapped it was a beautiful object, rosewood set with shiny silver fastenings, but Eligre had seen better. It was large enough to hold something good and the lavender smell was even more powerful once unwrapped. Throwing the neatly fit latch, she found a dark round shape inside tucked up to its ears in a sea of purple.

The head had belonged to Archibald Archibaldovich, a sometime pirate and restauranteur who had been a ceaseless pain to Eligre. When last they met the old pirate had vowed to to skin her alive after pouring molten iron down her son's throat. And for all that half the threat was meaningless, Archibaldovich's track record suggested he was not only serious but well equipped to make it all happen.

But not well enough, evidently. 

The wound absenting his head from his body was severe and ragged, misshapen enough that the head had to lay back on a pillow of lavender rather than sitting straight up in the box. This left Archibaldovich's mouth hanging open, with his grey tongue lulled back in a stretching slide towards the back of his throat. Between the bloodless lips and teeth was a neatly rolled piece of parchment tied with a leather throng, almost as wide across as the box itself.

In a tall, sharp hand it read:

My ' Lady Kaivodulin,

Do not destroy this letter err you have read it. It was through serious work and not inconsiderable pain that it came to be written, and though I am assured you should like nothing more than to warm your little hands over its flame the information inside will be of value to you.

Please find enclosed the head of one Capt. Archibald Archibaldovich, who I have been told had an outstanding account with you. The late captain enjoyed a brief acquaintance with myself and in that time he made his disposition towards you known to me. For all that I can well confirm the veracity of his account of you and your foibles, I found the captain a low and unctuous person and thought best that we end our association. He has his uses, as you see. I did not take these steps purely for your good name, nor would I ever do so, but I felt it a better use of him to assist in sending this letter than just sunning him on a pike. Not the least because my days of lining the perimeter of a war camp are, for the time being, behind me.

I have never known you to enjoy olives, nor nature for that matter, so let what remains of the captain be our olive branch. Those events that transpired to end our marriage are as water into the sea. I can assure you the intervening time without you has been some of the most peaceful of my long life, spotted with frivolities that would bedevil you for reasons I cannot now nor have ever fathomed. That said, we would fracture our social life to insist we never be in the same room together, not to set eye or hand upon one another.

Because it has never been my ambition to rid the world of you, as has animated so many others. They are, we know, fools who waste their lives on a futile pursuit. A modus operandi I know you share with them, though for far different reasons. But there is no need for their wish to be mine, and so it is not. I only hope that I might have still more peace knowing I will not expect the same violence that befell our captain visited upon myself for such crimes as being within miles of you. That fate alone ought be sorry enough.

I will be in attendance at the winter ball held this season by the Madani family and I have heard you are also to attend. Of course I cannot assign an end of hostilities to both of us, given your hard-headedness, but for my own account I will not be there for anything more than those things I typically enough at ball where you are not.

It is my great hope that our worlds will meet such that we may move forward with both our lives, removed from the viciousness that has colored our time together. I assure you I do not cherish having my memories of you so scarred by our separation that the woman I married must in fact be dead and gone, honoring the hopes of her rivals. I imagine you do not enjoy it either. So let it end.

I suppose I will see you,

And signed in the same angular black strokes, with enough looping filigree to assure her it was his genuine signature:

Luka Forrester

It paled in comparison to the letters he used to write her. Here and there on the page were dry and wavered places, as if it had been written in a rain that didn't smudge the ink. The rambling lines were neatly arranged but without rhythm, as if they had been started and stopped ceaselessly until they stumbled into the next period. Where he flowed his anger was clearly holding the pen but where he meant to say anything else he might as well have been dictating things over the noise of his old war camp.

To know he must have written it alone made it a sad and stupid rag next to the works he used to send her. When, in brighter days, he had sent pages of poems about her eyes and the shine of beads of sweat on her scales. When he used to tell her more than his small mind could possibly contain, and would pledge a love for her that was as deathless as he himself. Back when he was General Luka Forrester, and proud to head an army without a cause, and carried her on his arm as an empress he put even above himself.

It was, despite all that, certainly the vampire's work. Eligre could see, in its awkward mishmash of phrases, some of the not inconsiderable pain that went into making it. And although his final result did not give him away too badly, there was one stroke out of place. In addressing it, where he used to write in every name of love he had ever had for her, illuminating some and turning others into a first flash of a burning desire for her, he had slipped. His pen had started to write in one such name, unknowable now, but still there as a soft sigh of the pen as it realized that work was long finished.

Just one mark of what had been.

The dogs and goats and pigs, the smoke from the forge works, the chattering of the officers and soldiers and scared children. A sea of tents, rivers of mud, the ceaseless tanging of hammer and steel. It all makes Baron Knacus grind his teeth and tap his heel against his horse's flank, irritating the animal and making it blow and tug at the reins.

The witch is bound and gagged, tied behind his horse where she can walk along and take in the war camp at eye level with her new captors. Knacus contented himself that this was the best they had traveled together, and that his relationship with Eligre was ending on a pleasant note. Her books and spell components are locked in chests carried by terrified boys three horses behind her, and Knacus has paid a few extra roughs to flesh out his contingent. Eligre made up with magic what they lacked in might and now, as they said goodbye, Knacus hoped to make up for her loss.

Their four months under contract was to end with Eligre winning a number of his family's finest gems, the best books from his library and whatever she pleased from the dungeons they traversed. As it stood she had gotten a five month headache, a few fistfuls of gold and the most interesting book on offer: a moronically written travelogue for a country she had yet to visit.

And now she was being sold for Baron Knacus's peace of mind.

The obligatory bald place in the campsite loomed before her and the terrified boy holding her lead left her at its center.

"General Forrester!" Knacus grins and laughs, his heart on the back of his tongue making the whole sound shiver. He sits tall in his saddle, his brown and red slashed sleeves and leggings too tight and threadbare for him making the Baron look every bit like the turkey he is. His sweating face smiles at the man sitting across the bald patch of ground.

"Baron Knacus." The general stands from the table of paperwork that had held his attention till now. He tucks his glasses away and turns slowly to face them. The girl in the mud and the sweating man on the horse behind her.

The general wears a Loden green wool coat, cut perfectly to his broad frame and arabesqued across the chest and shoulders with black braid. Matte iron fastenings give the shoulders, the cuffs, the collar their ranks of metal importance. The general's air of tired dignity and the cut of the coat make it easy to miss his riding trousers and heavy, worn boots. This meeting required a coat, not dress.

"It is my honor to finally meet you, sir." Knacus keeps his smile on and doesn't blink. At Luka's elbow a bored aide de camp moves papers around, their scarred face and stern eyes lightless. No one here is batting an eye at the Baron's station. The general watches him with all the interest he'd show a tapering candle. Soldiers around them waste time, chew loudly, talk over each other's shoulders. "My thanks that you've made your camp such a welcoming place."

The general raises a hand and winds it through the air. Get on with it.

"I bring you the price we negotiated." Knacus hurries to say through his sneer. Luka and his army have been a threat since his father's day but only in the last year had they become an inevitability. Knacus could choose to back the king whose line had handed his ancestor their barony or he could lay what riches they still possessed at the general's feet and hope. Eligre and her works significantly increased the value of those riches. "My riches are yours, as is my loyalty. For the good of my house, we pledge ourselves to your cause."

The general stands listening, his eyes small black pinpricks against the gold rings of his irises. He waits, watching the sweat swell through Knacus's skin, hearing his heart stuttering and starting to try and beat its way free of his chest.

He lifts a hand and brushes it through the air, dismissing the baron. The noble on the horse starts to go, the animal skating back awkwardly, shaking its reins as Knacus gets the will to refuse his dismissal. The general is a commoner, a foreigner, he's no king. He's not even human, some say.

"That will be all, baron. Fare thy well."

Knacus clutches his reins, looks behind him to the boys on horseback dressed as knights, and leads them away. They leave Eligre, her crates of books, and take the fineries and horse she joined their company with.

"You would think they never met a mage in their lives." Luka says to the scarred figure at the table. The other grunts in response, organizing the papers in front of them. The general takes a lead block from the table, handling it like it were a snuffbox. It is a leaden square, with a pair of hands bulging from its center and a lock on one side. The general opens it like a book, showing the hollow place inside designed to trap a pair of clasped hands.

He comes up to Elgire, casting a long shadow over her, and stoops in front of her in the mud. The lead gloves sit open on his knee as he takes both her hands, folds them together and then sets them in place, closes and locks the contraption. His big hands are cold, very cold, and he goes about the task as if it were simple and he weren't locking away her best chance to obliterate him. Once locked the gloves are shoulder-achingly heavy and she can feel the heat of her fingertips sweating on each other.

Forrester Tailor is a three storey turn of the century townhome made of red sandstone. There is a hexagonal tower on the front corner, with bay windows looking out onto the street and in onto the shop that makes up the first floor. The front door in etch glass and dark, polish wood, set back in a shaded porch that opens through a circular marble archway that grows down into a set of low steps onto the street. The porch is shaded by a second floor balcony built of the same white marble, with the posts of its railing carved to read 'Forrester Tailor.' Dorian has never been upstairs, the ground floor itself offers plenty of fascinations all its own, but he's come and gone from the shop enough times to find the ostentatiousness of the façade pleasant and familiar now.

Luka Forrester himself has become one of those familiar fascinations, too. Dorian usually finds him in the racks of the tall, red curtained main room of the shop. Here there are Persian rugs covering the hardwood floor, gently gold globe lights hanging from the tin tiled ceiling, long curtains covering the tall windows that face the neighboring buildings and a pair of covered mirrors. Everything else is shelves and racks and stacks of clothing of every cut, shape, material and purpose imaginable. There is a fitting room off the main room and a pair of pocket doors that close on a tomb of bolts of fabric and the rattling sewing machine Luka can be found at from time to time.

The man himself is tall, a full seven feet, and built as broad and brawny as any experienced adventurer. He's got pointed ears, dark blue skin, and yellow eyes like a cat's. Dorian has to wonder what combination of Drow he might be, though Luka has ducked the question if it's ever asked of him. With his good looks and implacable accent, a non answer is just as good as a real one.

He finds Luka at the large desk at the back of the main room, just in front of the tomb of fabric, reading the newspaper and nursing a cup of tea. The cup is a tiny, elegant porcelain thing with gilded lip and handle. It looks silly pinched in Luka's big hand, in a way that reflects the oddness Dorian feels in this building. The ornateness of the place is one thing, but it's also been built on a total different scale than Dorian is used to, all the doors, press-buttons for the lights, coat hooks and any other fixture built for someone Luka's size. The feeling of being a foot too short is now also familiar to him, though perhaps not altogether pleasant.

Luka sets his cup down, looking up over the corner of the newspaper.

"Dorian, right on time as usual I see."

Luka's experience with horticulture had been limited to the few gardens he planted and then dug back up whenever he had something new to put in the ground. It led to a lush, all be it haphazard ecosystem of tall, buoyant azaleas, plush rose bushes and a lot of odds and ends torn up or pruned down to nothing to make room for more 'fertilizer.'

On the road his interest in flowers diminished even further. Apart from being nice, but short-lived, ornaments he didn't see the use of them. Which is why the tall, poisonously colorful, thick stemmed and alien bulbbed thing striking up from the ground really caught him off guard.

It was about three feet tall, its bulb the size of a man's fist, with thick fleshy petals all tightly closed around a center that appeared to be oozing. The petals were green at their base, gradiating up to canary yellow and then a wet periwinkle where they folded in together over the stigma. The stem was as big around as two of his fingers, a vibrant greenish-blue and the whole thing sat on a bulbous mound of deep purple flowers.
Luka bent at the waist to look at the flower, sniffing at it. It had an earthy, fermented aroma that was a little putrid but only enough to make it interesting to keep smelling.

"Kaivodulin," he said over his shoulder, reaching for the plant. It bobbed forward under his hand, the oozy center dripping something clear onto the ground. "Kaivodulin come have a look at this, they've made a new kind of ugly plant!"

There have been many adventures, many parties, many names for Luka to remember. Adventuring suits him. Easy food, long days of travel, new people and new experiences. There are some constants, of course.

The long morning hours that roast his skin and make him sluggish and irritable. The warm taverns and the long nights under the stars.

There was the ceaseless hunger clawing at his gut.

There were, also, the personalities who came back again and again. The irrepressible, drunken barbarian. The pious, distracted cleric. The bard who couldn't contain themselves around dragons (Luka quite liked those ones.)
And, of course, the rogue who liked to keep to themself and their blades.

Luka, built tall and strong with more grace than such a big man was due, tapped Narriel's shoulder with his knuckles. He had on hand on a jade handled dagger. The rest of the party was off arguing in town trying to settle some basic haggling, leaving the two of them at camp.

"What do you say, elf? You haven't sharpened those blades on any bones for too long."

Younger vampires were easy to spot, in Luka's estimation. There were a number of factors: baring, clothing, the state of their eyes, their nails, in they shied or demurred from conversations. It was not, he could admit, easy to guess just how young one might be but that was where his handicap played a role. A vampire from the Court of the Sun King was about as old to him as someone who had seen the Crystal Palace at the '53 World's Fair.

He guessed the young woman in front of him was closer to the Palace than Court. And, as was the case with many young vampires, closer to her humanity than he to his.
Watching her, he hummed and distracted himself and made noises at the work of Julius Victor Berger on the wall in front of him.

They were at an estate sale, part of the usual machinations of the city as the world turned slowly but surely into the new century. A townhouse on Hyde Park was being liquidated and there was a townhouse's worth of furniture and art and odds and ends to get rid of.

He hummed and indicated the painting, a portrait of a wine drunk woman in rosy pink satin playing a mandolin, to the young girl when he felt a cold spot brush close to him. He gestured with his homburg at the work, looking down at her from the corner of his eye.

"I'd love a glass of whatever she's had." He said lightly.

"There's lots of ways to do that." Luka thinks back to a suit of armor he once saw in the enemy line. In modern eyes it was a round, clownish helmet with bulbous staring eyes and a grate for the mouth set in a foolish grin. Closed in glass and cleaned for museum goers it looks silly today. But at the time, blood spattered and running full tilt towards him, it certainly struck fear into even his undead heart. "I can think of a few. If you like you can look even more like Bozo the Clown."

He pokes at Crowley's red hair as he quips.

Luka sits under the rain washed marble arch of his portico. From the shaded porch he can see the whole street without chancing sunlight, and the grape-carved knoll-post the arch of the portico ends in is just deep enough to hold a large, full burgundy glass and seven metal bbs. The small pellets of metal show small greenish reflections of the light in the street.
Luka sits over them, enjoying the shade and his burgundy, and waiting for interesting people to come by to talk and/or have metal bbs flicked at them at piercing speed.