ii. audio. after dark. both courts.

[vrykolakas]

[If anything, the Brucolac's voice sounds worse than ever, painfully scratchy and distinctly weary. The reception isn't perfect; he's sitting in the garden of the fortress at Redgate, where the lockets work, but the blood granite is still causing some interference.]

What languages do you speak? And what language would you say I'm speaking right now?

Comments

[vrykolakas]

[He pauses a moment, and then asks:]

Have you heard of the dreadnought Athena or any of its allied arcships?

[notavirtue]

[The word sounded familiar, but only just. Aethyta, Athame - one was an asari, the other was a prothean worshiped as an asari goddess. Neither were dreadnoughts.]

I have not. I do not believe there are any 'arcships' in the known fleets.

[vrykolakas]

Mm, no, I suppose it was a long shot.

Tell me, what is like to feel the stellar depths all about you?

[notavirtue]

[People always asked him that expecting some sort of poetic, grandiose answer. Maybe if he hadn't spent his life as a soldier, he'd come up with something better.]

It is as cold as it is dark.

[vrykolakas]

[The Brucolac—an aged pessimist, salt-stiff and soaked in too much history despite his youthful face, who appreciates that answer—sucks in air with a noise like a snake's rattle. There is the muted clicking of fingernails against tabletop.]

Yes, of course it is. And the ancient machines chase you.

You'd go back, wouldn't you?

[notavirtue]

Yes. I have one purpose in life, and it is denied me here.

[Half a year in the drabwurld hadn't dulled his senses or distracted him from his goal. It would be insult if that happened, after spending fifty thousand years in stasis before being able to continue.]