The Lionheart.

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[princemordecai]

THE LIONHEART

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[shewolfaurea]

Aurea's expression softened as she looked upon the man on the other side of the table. Leander had always been someone she'd been grateful for, someone that she thought had their circumstances been different, that they might officially be able to call each other friends and not just allies. He did not have to come to her at all, he was right, he had enough on his plate already and it wasn't lost on her that he'd taken time for her and her people anyways, perhaps even without his mother's knowledge at all. Moving around the table, she glances to his hand and because she is who she is, she takes it only to bring the man into a half armed hug, her fingers squeezing his gently. "Thank you, for everything you've done for me. When this is all over, if you call upon me for help, I will always see what I can do for you." Letting go of him and his hand after giving him a gentle clap on the shoulder, she can't help but think that regardless of what happened further in Lysara, that as long as Leander lived and breathed, there was hope for the monarchy.

[princemordecai]

The hug came as a surprise, an oof followed as Aurea threw an arm around him. Leander didn't really know what to do about it so he more or less just half-tapped the wolf queen on the back. "Alright- yeah whatever sure." This was only going to end one way, at least they'd get to die fighting. He'd never know why the hell he ever thought things might go differently for him.

END

[princemordecai]

OPEN STARTER Location: Tower of Olympia Notes: For the Tower girlies (guards, novices, accepteds, and olympians), here's an interrogation thread <3

I am not my mother, you will not leave here alive. You will feel nothing but pain until I learn everything you know about Valerius Noctis.

The last of the darkfriends directly involved with the escape of Valerius Noctis were either executed publicly or swiftly put down - deep within the bowels of the Tower. Burned from the Pattern completely to keep them from joining the Dark One's rank and fold.

But those were only those they'd captured that night, when wild magic erupted across the city and Valerius escaped from his holding of fifty years.

Protecting the city from the abuse of the power and those who'd abuse its holders was why the Warriors of Mars were formed. Fifty years Valerius' agents had toiled under their noses, Leander could not know how deep the corruption lay, but the prince was resolved to tear it out - root and stem.

"The Shadow can't reach us here." The Students, in conjunction with the Apprentices, had built this chamber specifically to illuminate every angle. There were no shadows among their features, nothing beneath them, just a chamber where every instrument and surface radiated.

One by one the members of the Tower would be brought forth and questioned until the interrogators were satisfied. Those away when the questioning began would find the Florine, Leander, and Damaris "We'll place a field over you, stripping you of all magic and enchantments. Do you have anything to say before we begin?"

[shewolfaurea]

"I'm optimistic, but I'd like to think I'm not blind. I have scouts all over the place running potential routes, there's information coming in and out every day." And yet the world had never felt heavier upon her shoulders despite her using every resource she had to try and lighten it. There was no amount of planning that would take it away, she would have to shoulder it, but she would not be shouldering it alone. Posture relaxing a little, Aurea looks to Leander with her mouth drawn into a thin line. "Leander, I'm afraid for the rest of Lysara if I stand aside." The Kossith had made it very clear that they would keep going, Haven was but one of many stops, they would keep crawling forward. "This is but a temporary solution to a much bigger problem for all of us."

[princemordecai]

Tower business was Tower business but the Lysaran Olympians concerned themselves with the affairs of much of the world. Lysara - and Eterna especially - were firmly under the purview. From the silver halls of the city of the elves, to the harsh winters of Haven's wildlands and every isle that dotted the Queenset. The world was under their thumb, at least, that's what Leander had long believed. He'd seen the faces of those who recognized him and those who did not, the colours - the gold and the red of Warriors.

"There's a saying," Leander smirked into nothing, "when they were designing our robs they chose red for Mars because it'd help hide the blood." A chuckle, but there wasn't anything funny about it. He looked up from his overcoat, staring in the characteristically heated way that Leander glared at most. His hand scratched at the line of his jaw - a fortnight wasn't a long time - and they'd need aid before the fight began. "My own house is a mess right now," he admitted, "darkfriends, spies, cultists-" which all said nothing of the actual darkspawn to their south. Leander didn't address the danger that Aurea had highlighted, he was a Centurion and a witch - he knew which way the wind would blow these Kossith.

Leander rolled his shoulders back and straightened his spine, looking down but meeting Aurea's eye. It was likely that this would be the last time that they traded words, so the Prince extended his hand toward the Queen of wolves. "Fight well."

[zanephillips]

TYLER LEPLEY Harlem 1.08 "Five Years Ago"

[shewolfaurea]

Theon. She grabbed for one of the many pens scattered about the table and scribbled the name down on one of her many scraps of parchment. "My plan is to make sure none of my people are enslaved by those things." Her eyes fall on the islets and Aurea can't help but nod to herself, tracing potential pathways on the map. They would need to make stops; it'd be foolish of them not to take advantage of the scattered islands. It'd be easier to get them alone but getting them docked seemed the safest option for all parties involved. "We'll rebuild, we'll expand. Haven's it's people, not a place." And people needed to be alive, and so they would pick up whatever they could, and they would move it somewhere else. Setting down a couple more markers, Aurea straightened up and looked to Leander and she knows how it all sounds, she knows everyone sees her optimism as naivete. "I'm putting together a search party of sorts, we'll go through the caves and down to the water, set off into the night. I've put word out to families and factions of missing people to see if they know anything, if they wish to go with. I have pirates walking through these very walls asking what they can do. Hope is a very foolish thing to have, but I cannot sit here knowing that they're out there and I did nothing."

[princemordecai]

A people, not a place. Hopefully there were still people left when all this was done. Another fight, another march, another battle, another war. It was endless - as soon as one conflict ended, another arose. Aetherians to the West surrounded by the Blight, the Kossith on their shores, the darkspawn in the South. He’d been torturing Astorian prisoners of war all of a year ago and now the Tower was begging the foreign nation for aid while a civil war split it down the middle. Hope was a fool’s currency, Aurea was right about that much, at least she was smart about it and planning to cut and run. 

There was a brief, fleeting moment where Leander thought about Akanis. He’d let the Queensguard down and Ingrid was with the Kossith now. Prince Ikaros. Leander didn’t have any friends left to bury, the elvhen would be the last of them. Part of him wished he’d taken the other more seriously when they’d beaten the blight out of Caer Glas Keep a decade back. Not that it would have changed anything. Leander wished a lot of things, but that wouldn’t make them come true. 

“Nah, not foolish. Dangerous. Especially when it’s a lie.” 

[tylerlepley1]

Follow this page and @romeflynn123

[shewolfaurea]

So it's not entirely good news, but it is something and Aurea looks from Leander to the large map of Taravell on the table. Immediately she picks up several pieces off to the side and starts placing them appropriately. "You could say I owe the lives of my people and my own to two of the women taken. To not attempt to save their lives would be dishonorable." Placing a ship somewhere between Haven and Itzcoatal, her eyes look up at Leander and she drops the formality because she doesn't have patience for more than the bare minimum for it at the moment. "And perhaps because I am pure of heart and dumb of ass." The smile that crosses her lips is a brief and somewhere between hopeful and sheepish. But then it's gone and she is back to business, looking for points between each place mentioned. "I'll pay handsomely, if there's anyone you can get me in contact with, that'd be much appreciated." Her eyes are on that ship she'd placed in the ocean and it is a little wooden figure, and yet it is a heavy reminder that this is really happening. A tiny wooden piece looks a lot less daunting and trivial when what it represented was something so vile. "Any clue as to where they might stop?" There was no way they weren't docking somewhere along the way, it would be easier to overtake them, attacking them on the actual sea put them at a disadvantage, no matter what pirates she could muster.

[princemordecai]

“And throwing your life away - and all the lives of the people you’re bringing with you - is? There’s nothing honourable about death: you’ll just be dead.” Leander was absent any formality, his chipped tone and glib nature bespoke the prince’s nature to speak his mind at nearly every turn. It was for the Queen alone that Leander tended to mind himself. 

“His name’s Theon, he works sometimes out of Eterna.” At least, last he heard that’s where Alcides had landed but the figure was elusive and getting a solid pulse on where the wayward prince had ended up was difficult - even for Leander’s contacts through the Agents. “If you’re planning on going through Astoria, 

“They’ll need supplies,” Leander pointed out a number of small islets North, South, and West of Caribella before landing on the narrow channel between Iskaldrik and Astoria, “and to pass through here. Once they make it into the Veiled Sea, they’re as good as gone.” The condition of the channel was uncertain, it was previously controlled by the Iskarans of Hellskorn Bastion - but that was a year ago. “Our reports indicate that their dreadnoughts can submerge, but only for limited periods of time.” The centurion looked at the board and didn’t see the hope that Aurea was stringing along, but instead folded his arms. 

“This your plan then, leave Haven to the Kossith and chase after the people taken from Aventia?”

[shewolfaurea]

"I'm not going to ask for your mother's help." Aurea doesn't have time for beating around the bush for once but her tone is soft. Leander stands before her where she stands over the map in the meeting hall every bit Lysaran royalty. "Taking any of you away from the conflict in the South would be counterproductive and we both cannot fall." Arethusa had to take care of her own people, Aurea had to take care of hers. And she could not be someone who could extend to help others if she could not first help herself, to be a refuge, Haven needed to be standing. Whether that be where they were presently or somewhere to the East. "Haven is evacuating." Putting it out in the open doesn't feel as much of a defeat as she thought it would. Running had never been framed as some courageous thing, but at present it was the wise thing. "We are leaving and I am not asking your mother for help." Exhaling and reaching to run a hand through the front of her hair only to be met with the metal of her circlet. A reminder that this is something that requires diplomacy and her and Leander are more than just a queen and a prince, they are people with thoughts and feelings and loved ones and in that moment, that's what she wants to appeal to. "I am asking your help, in any way you can offer it, as directly or indirectly as you want it to be."

Near where the map was pinned to the large table, there was a list of names and while Aurea glanced to them, she did not need to read them. "I've been gathering information on those that were taken. I intend to aid them. I am not asking you to come with me, but if there's anyone you know or a direction you can point me to, I'd love to hear it." There's some exasperation to her tone because she knows how insane it all sounds out loud, but despite everything, there is a fire in the center of her chest where her heart is. The Kossith had already taken her home the moment she'd looked out into the crowd of people in the meeting hall and felt the absence of Thora and Freydis.

[princemordecai]

“She wouldn’t give it even if you did.” Leander said curtly, the hall had been divided, but in the end Queen Arethusa’s voice resounded above them all. He wouldn’t pretend to understand it - the logic was sound - a war on two fronts, the darkspawn incursion, the unknown element of Kossathi warfare. But that did not alter the strangeness of it, it was she who’d ordered the march on Astoria, she who demanded the Olympians do all they could to shepherd witches from Iskaldrik and other hostile nations. Yet, when the Kossith landed, she acquiesced. It would never be Leander’s place to question the Queen, in the end he was a soldier and would do his duty. 

“There’s no question where they’re being taken: Itzcoatal.” The home of the Kossith as far South as one could travel in Taravell before walking off the edge of the map. It was on the opposite side of the world from Haven, from where they stood now and to date not a soul had managed to breach their borders and return. “The darkspawn at the Southern border divides you from Astoria, a civil war after that, then miles and miles of hostile Astorian countryside where wolves and witches alike are hunted for sport. Then, even if you managed to reach the border between Itzcoatal and Astoria, the two countries have been contesting the border there for decades.” 

He’d spent the better part of the last decade in Astoria doing what he could to smuggle witches from the nation and toward safety, some of those connections - routes - still held. “I know a man who might help you, if he’s willing to take the contract. But why should I help you march to your death?”

[cozyaliensuperstar7]

CAST OF DUPLICITY 😁

tylepley:

@tylerperry wasn’t playin wit this one! DUPLICITY available on @primemovies right now. Humbled to be a part of such a talented group of individuals 🙏🏽@amazonmgmstudios @tylerperrystudios PR: @initiativepr Stylist: @benjaminholtrop

Silk Suit: @houseofgray_ Watch: @iwcwatches Groomer: @brittywhitfield

[princemordecai]

@shewolfaurea location: Haven notes: here go

The circumstances that brought Leander to Haven never seemed to changed: conflict. For the Centurion, it was beginning to feel like more trouble than it was worth - some remote region buried in the cold and the dark that was uncomfortably close to Isengrim's Embrace. Maybe he'd seen too many battles, too many casualties, but as he walked through Haven's streets to the Alpha's hall, he didn't see any soldiers. They were just people: farmers, sheep herders, craftsmen - all trying to live their lives.

"Well." It was all Leander said as he stood before the Queen, the Warrior's regalia was indicative of his station. A ring on his dominant hand asserting his place among the Olympians, another bearing the seal of Lysara's prince. The Kossith had issued an ultimatum, Leander would hear Aurea's response firsthand.

[h00dsw0rld]

Tyler Lepley

[annoyedkayah2395]

Tyler Lepley

[blackmensuited]

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[theblvcksupreme]

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