Sulliman Renart

Character age:

30s

Character gender:

Male

Offsite roleplay:

This doll's character is not available for offsite roleplay.

A magician with bad luck and worse decision making skills.

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"Sulliman." His name came out as a short growl. It wasn't a shout, but it didn't need to be.

"Viscount." Sulliman only barely remembered his manners, and swept into a frankly pathetic bow. "Viscount Altham. Can I help you?"

"Come." Altham grunted, jerking his head for Sulliman to follow. He marched off towards his rooms in the Palace. Sulliman scurried after him, distinctly aware that, by the stares he was getting, he was wearing a bit more dirt than was polite. He kept his head ducked low and let his hair fall over his injured eye.

It wasn't recoverable, in all likelihood. Too much spellwork in too short a period of time, and the great tipping scales of the universe had decided to latch onto his eye for this round.

Altham opened the door for him and gestured him inside. Sulliman half expected a fist between his shoulder blades, but Altham simply locked the door and sat on the overstuffed chaise lounge in front of the dead fireplace.

"Light it." He grunted.

Sulliman knew what he wanted, but took the matchbook of the mantle instead.

"With the spellery."

Sulliman closed his eye and exhaled, then grit his teeth together so he couldn't bite off his tongue by accident.

He centered himself, willed it, and felt the dull burst of heat in front of his face as a background echo to the feeling of the last scraps of his eye imploding in on itself.

He staggered, sank to his knees, but he managed to keep his dignity enough to not retch all over the carpet.

"Well?" Altham lit a pipe, huffing a cloud of foul smoke around his head.

Sulliman groaned in response.

He raised a shaking hand to his face—it hurt too much to touch, but the sensation of the eye at least being covered was comforting.

"Girl in the plaza." He managed to whisper. "Carriage nearly hit her."

"You're pathetic." Altham tapped out the ashes. "But I think you're well aware of that by now."

"Oh certainly."

"What are the Imperalists planning?"

"Prison break. The old tower."

Altham grunted. "Baron Redwren is there. Dissent against His Majesty. It shouldn't succeed. I have an audience in a week. I plan to advocate for his release."

"You plan on becoming his cellmate?" Sulliman touched the corner of his eye. His fingers came away bloody.

Altham threw the ashtray at him. It bounced off his shoulder and hit the ground in a puff of ash. So much for the carpet. "Of course not, you fucking idiot. I plan on letting him be executed. Once His Majesty is murdered, Redwren will be their first choice for Emperor."

"Ruins your plans, I'm sure." Sulliman was pushing a slap.

"I need them to rally around me. I'm too valuable for His Majesty to imprison outright—I have grandmother to thank for that—so I can sow dissent without fear of having my nails ripped off by some braindead guard."

Sulliman glanced down at his own hand, where his nails had just finished growing back. "I can't recommend the stay."

"How long until you can cast spellery?"

Sulliman shrugged. "A week. Perhaps. The girl must have been important, to cost an eye."

"What will you lose if I make you spell regardless?"

"My back." Sulliman. "Probably. More scarring."

"Hn." Altham snuffed out his pipe. Sulliman felt around blindly until he found the ashtray, then stood and handed it to him.

"One week."

"I understand." Sulliman turned to leave, then paused.

"What?"

"Is there an Automaton in the guard?"

"One of those clockwork things?" Altham tapped the mouth of his pipe on his bottom teeth. "No. The telescopist made one, but I'm told that it was a fanciful delight for His Majesty. It's locked away somewhere. He brings it out to sing for parties sometimes."

"Sing?"

"It's a bird."

Ah. Wrong automata.

"Clean yourself up. You're disgusting." Altham brushed past him on his way out. Sulliman was taller than him, but Altham was well bred and well fed. He outweighed Sulliman by a good five kilo, not that Sulliman could do anything to him regardless.

Even if he survived assaulting a member of the nobility, Altham's warmonger Empress grandmother would demand that he be executed, and threaten an invasion until she got her way.

Instead of doing the right thing—or perhaps it was just the less wrong thing—and offing himself for the good of the country, Sulliman hunched over the little washstand and squinted at himself in the mirror.

The Sulliman he recognized looked back at him from underneath a layer of dirt and blood and trauma. Well, minus an eye.

He didn't bother to mourn it. He'd be dead within a year, withered away to skin stretched around a skeleton.

Was it still suicide if one took that long to die? It wasn't like he was pulling the knife himself. He was just… letting someone else do it for him. Sulliman watched himself in the firelight until his dark thoughts bled away to the quieter parts of his mind.

The Automaton must have been a vigilante—some creation of a vengeful victim of spellery, with the sole purpose of killing witches. Or perhaps he was a member of some sort of secret police. The Imperalists talked about them enough during their coffee room screaming matches.

Sulliman wet a rag and carefully wiped away the blood and street grime. The basin turned dark and cloudy. Now that the blood was cleared away from his eye, he could see the full extent of the damage. It was blackened and bruised, and his eyelid sank into the socket. A normal injury, on a normal person would recover: the mottled blue and green would fade back to flesh, the blood would stem. But this wasn't, and he wasn't.

Sulliman shifted slightly, peering over his shoulder. No blood on his coat, which was a good thing. He slipped out of it and dropped it to the floor in a puddle of patchwork silk.

Standing in shirtsleeves, he could see the old scars on his back bleeding through the fabric. He drew air through his teeth and pulled his shirt off, then tended those wounds too.

It looked as off some great beast had gripped him by the shoulders and scraped downwards. For all he knew, whatever force kept the grand scales of the universe in check was some sort of animal. A hunter of those foolish enough to try and make something from nothing without offering something else in its place. Ammit for the modern world.

Sulliman scoffed at himself and pulled his shirt on over the bandages.

"Oh, look at you." He muttered at his reflection. He picked up the filthy basin and placed it next to the door, then slipped out of the room as subtly as he could. The rumors, when they flew slowly enough for him to catch them, placed him as either the estranged bastard brother of Altham, or his lover. Both were equally disgusting and equally wrong, but he was more concerned about being jumped and stabbed for indecency, or whatever they were calling it these days. Altham was, of course, immune from everything except treason, thanks to dear granny, but Sulliman, as his partner in crime, was fair game.

Well, having his teeth kicked in was better than what would happen to him if Altham ever got bored and told His Majesty that the scruffy blond man in the tattered vest was actually a witch, and not a dalliance.

Death never came quickly for witches.

He had plans, of course, if such a thing happened before he expired. He'd cure a few dozen guards of the consumption that ran rampant through their ranks on the way out, perhaps, or bring another prisoner back from the brink of death, although that lacked mercy.

He scoffed at his own dark thoughts, and buttoned his coat.

Sulliman Renart

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