Just saw an article that mentioned Mark Kelly as a potential 2028 presidential contender, and while literally any president who was not a gibbering demented old orange fascist would be a huge upgrade, I'm not sure how you could top the sheer coolness factor of President Astronaut, The President Who Is an Astronaut. It sounds James Patterson levels of fake.
(Etc etc since the only way we have a chance in this wretched shithole idiot country is to run a straight white man, we could do a lot worse than Kelly.)
Liam aged 17 performed a dark ritual to summon a devil in burnage manchester and was like hey can i have my gay brother back from gay tour and the devil was like sure little boy and i'll even make you both world famous rockstars but YOU can never ever get married and liam was like haha rockstar brothers yayy!!!
A lot of cool shit this episode, as is to be expected
But one scene in particular is bothering me like a scab I can’t stop picking at and it’s gone past upsetting and into really truly angering so I’m going to purge it all out here so I can get back to enjoying the rest of the session’s good bits
It is, of course, about my sunset-eyed son Azune
Short version:
I’m truly livid about how that exchange between him and the couple others went post-table breakup.
Long version:
I have been waiting since Azune’s meltdown with Hal for something. Someone. Any factor at all within the narrative to step in and truly be on this guy’s side in a way that he actually deserves and needs. Let’s rewind.
Hal did fine with Azune’s original meltdown over Thjazi. He did. And he was obviously juggling a lot of emotional and practical horror show shit on his end. But he heard Azune confess out loud that he expected to be killed by the Sundered Houses after throwing his scan as the Arcane Marshal to get Thjazi safely out. If it had been one of his own kids—two of whom are around Azune’s age—confessing that they were ready to commit suicide to save Uncle Thjazi, Hal would have flipped his shit. But this is just Azune. The soldier half his age who his brother dropped off like a stray at the end of the war when the boy was sixteen, when he has to know that Azune was scooped up at age twelve. And all he gives Azune, this young man who admits to likening him to a father, who wanted to die to give him his brother back, is a pep talk and a tissue. Soldier up, keep going, attaboy, work to do.
We go to the sewers. To the grand rescue of Demodus Blix. Everyone putting their lives on the line for this grad student in distress. He sees Murray and Hal and Bolaire circle around him, this 22-year-old who Murray calls child and kid, pouring on buckets of concern and worry and protection. While Azune, a whole 27 going on 28, struggles to do his job because he sees Hal playing paternal to Demodus out the corner of his eye.
Out of the sewers:
Azune: “We need a proper safe house. I should keep a look out for something that we can use for that. He's gifted, and we might need all hands.”
Murray: “He's a child, Azune.”
Bolaire: “He's right there.”
Murray: “He knows he's a child!”
Demodus: "I'm an adult."
Murray: “Your frontal lobe still isn't fully developed. You're still a kid.”
Bolaire: “Mm.”
Azune: “He's not that much younger than me.”
I saw a lot of takes about how Azune was so close to catching the message in there, that he too is too young! That Murray knows this too! That these young men ought to be safe and away from danger!
And I thought it was odd then and think it’s still odd now that Murray, who has no trouble at all with speaking her mind, could have pointed that exact thing out right then, to Azune, out loud.
And she didn’t. She has no response and the conversation keeps rolling.
Then we get to today’s conversation with Azune, Murray, Occtis, Thimble, and Vaelus.
Oh man. Oh wow. Mayali’s appearance did a fucking number on him.
(Does he still have her blood hidden in the red stubble of his beard? I wonder.)
Mayali Nayar, the sister he thought dead, realizing who he was, throwing everything about her mission and her life away the instant she recognized her little brother, and flinging herself between him and death without a second thought. The desperate healing of her in his hands, the childhood wound ripped open after almost two decades of trying to remember without destroying himself, the sweet-wretched reminder that he is not a thing, he is a person, he is a person who loves and is loved by at least one, one single person, wholly unconditionally in this world and she’s here, alive, in his hands—
And gone again.
But she burst the tension of whatever bubble Azune was keeping his turmoil inside since the start of his triple agent work. So much so that it’s all coming down on him at once. His deeply unwanted role in the wake of having to live past his intention to hang in Thjazi’s place, the pressure and preparation and playing with fire from two different Sundered Houses on top of already living a double life as a plant in the Arcane Marshals with so many people depending on him in a way far beyond his set role as a Useful Thing, the Child Soldier, and now—now!—the 50/50 chance of his meeting with House Einfasen to present the case against House Tachonis being either an earnest request for proof that Einfasen needs to turn on the necromancers, or else it being a trap outright, with both options meaning immense danger not just for him, but for the entire house of cards the Schemers have been building if they try to wring something out of him or he fucks something up in the case, and by every dead god, he isn’t enough, he hates this, he hates what he’s been and what he is and he needs help please, please, he needs to get this right or the whole plan’s fucked please—
And he breaks.
He holds it in as long and as best as he can until the whole houseful of people won’t have to see it, but he breaks.
When?
After this:
Azune: “Murray, I don’t know how to do this anymore. I feel like I’ve been lying so much and it’s starting to really weigh on me, so I don’t know how many more lies I have in me, I need help.”
Murray: “Alright. Well, I mean I’ll do anything that you need me to do.”
Azune, barely able to look at her: “I need Demodus to come with me.”
Murray, immediate admonition tone: “I said I would do anything you need me to do.”
Azune, like an apology for touching something expensive in a store: “I know.”
Murray: “I don’t really feel super great about volunteering the child…”
And it starts sliding downhill from there.
I’ve seen a couple takes already suggesting that Azune’s envy of Demodus’ place as the elected ‘precious 22-year-old baby who needs protecting’ by the other Schemers is part of why he wants to dangle the guy in front of Einfasen. Luis might play that out later, it’d be an interesting swerve. But it’d also be a wild change of pace from what Azune’s MO has been all his life. This is a young man who has had it reaffirmed over and over and over again, both by Thjazi’s sculpting of him, his peers, and Azune’s own fucked mental state, that he exists to be useful. If not something to be discarded, then still something expendable for the Good of the Cause, for the Good of the Mission, for the Good of All the People He Watches on the Street, the Innocent Strangers Enjoying Their Lives. That shit’s engrained in his soul.
Is he jealous of Demodus? Probably.
Is that enough reason for him to pull an, “I’m vindictive~” the way he did with a corrupt abusive cop and blithely throw Demodus at Harondus’ feet, as though hoping it would all go wrong so the gnome gets hammered to death?
No. Full stop.
If not because it goes against character, then because things going so wrong that Demodus ends up hurt or dead means the scheme went horribly awry, which Azune obviously does not want.
What he does want—and which he spelled out crystal clear—is that he is, in fact, running out of lies to Jenga tower on top of each other, and he needs solid proof to bring before Harondus or the entire plan might be fucked, never mind the fact that his life is implicitly in danger whether or not the whole thing’s a trap. Having spelled that out, he then wrenches out Demodus’ name to Murray like he knows he’s asking to borrow the Holy Grail.
And, as expected, he’s met with immediate negation. He shrinks, he begs—I don’t want to go by myself, please don’t make me go by myself—directly to Murray, as though she were his commanding officer. Because in his mental hierarchy, she is. Hal is the pseudo father who needs protecting along with his family. Bolaire is his fellow veteran and battle duo partner. Murray? Murray is his closest friend in the entire city and the smartest person he knows. Varen Kadorn said he was a friend (read: fellow vet and guy who stopped at the Falcon’s Rest to mourn now and then). Thimble is his friend, who he had so little contact with in the city for at least a decade that she doesn’t even know where he lives.
Murray, his on-the-side mentor who helped him brush up his sorcery and got him ready to be Thjazi’s boy man on the inside with the Revolutionary Guard, has been the only one to truly stay in his orbit. How many times has he said, in how many ways, that he is ready and willing to do anything for her?
(I will kill someone for you. If you help me find my sister I will do anything you ask of me.)
And, even though she was joking, Murray asked Azune if he could choke out Demodus and put him to sleep after too much yammering. To which Azune only paused and asked Is that what you want me to do?
Murray isn’t just a friend or mentor in his eyes, but the first person after Thjazi who he looks to for direction, for orders, for wisdom, for an understanding of things that Azune feels too lost or socially stunted to grasp.
He knew Murray would give an immediate no about Demodus. But for the first time in this campaign, probably in his life, he has to ask, he has to dare and infringe upon the unspoken contract of his life which says in big bold letters YOU ARE A THING. YOU ARE HERE TO BE USEFUL. YOU ARE HERE TO PAVE THE WAY FOR OTHER, LESS EXPENDABLE PEOPLE THAN YOU.
And so he begs. He weeps. He lets all the mess out on the floor as he pleads with Murray—the commander—to not send him off alone, to please use the one resource they know they have in their pocket, a fellow young adult, already in danger whether he leaves Bolaire’s apartment or not, already in the wings as a witness, please.
Murray: “You understand the implications of what you’re asking for? This could ruin this kid’s life. If he still has a life by the end of this, right?”
Azune: “I know, I know.”
And then Thimble…
Thimble: “Could they kill him?”
Azune: “Yeah, they could kill us all.”
As if he has to remind them that his life is also in danger. (Because he does.)
And Murray keeps calling Demodus a kid, a child. To Azune’s face. Over and over, like they’re magic words that will somehow simultaneously leave her student as a precious youth to defend and leave Azune marooned as the full-grown man who needs to soldier up at the same time. Sidestepping the double standard elephant in the room with a wide berth.
Eventually it comes to Azune’s meltdown, turning to Thimble and begging her to remember him as the child he barely got to be when they first met in the war, not the wretched mess who hates that he’s a killer, a liar. A stark contrast to the Azune we saw giddy and capable in combat, killing enemies with abandon, lying like a rug to enemies to pave the way for his schemes. Where are these tears coming from now?
Mayali.
The sibling pin who burst the bubble. Her face, taut and tired and only a year older than his own, ravaged by a hellish life as somebody else’s useful thing, somebody else’s violent tool. Who, like him, still carried a single kernel of personhood in her love for her family, her little brother. A person. A person. The little boy lost to her on a street corner when the mercenaries herded her away without him. That boy clawed out of the grave of memories Azune Nayar had him in the second he met Mayali’s eyes, dying, healing, disappearing in his arms. The boy who never wanted to leave home, lucky or not. The boy who wanted his mama and papa and sister, not a sword or even a meal if it meant being apart from them. The boy who only pushed himself to crawl and fight and kill and lie through the life his parents’ sacrifice bought him because they had sacrificed for it.
And that boy weeps through a young man’s sunset eyes in that scene.
But also—I saw it too—there was the brief hitch of calm in which he tries to convince Occtis to come along in lieu of Demodus. Arguably an infinitely better pick than the grad student anyway. He’s walking talking proof of everything the Schemers have been trying to prove about the massacre at Palazzo Davinos, and he’s proven able in combat if shit goes awry, and he already left evidence of himself with Lord Otto Einfasen per the message he left with the undead cat. Again, if Azune were one step to the left of the MO we’ve seen of him so far, I would 100% believe that pause was fully calculated as a guilt trip, a baiting of Occtis into the case with his own tears and the frankly excruciatingly obvious logic of this guy as proof positive of the whole Tachonis plot mess.
Instead?
Occtis: “Azune, if I come with you, I expose a lot of things, including everything we’re doing. If they realize that I am still around, that’s a lot of problems for us with the Tachonis. Listen, I don’t know you well, I met you a little while ago—”
Azune: “Then stop, stop. The answer’s already no, you don’t have to—. No, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it. The answer is no and that’s enough for me.”
Occtis: “I’m not asking, I’m just going to say, that in my position as I currently am, I will not die of old age, I will continue living. And I will not forget the good person that you are, as you currently are. And I will always remember you.”
Which is a very kind sentiment.
It’d be sweeter if Occtis—or maybe Alex, possibly blanking on the notes—weren’t sidestepping the fact that his family is very, very much aware that he is ‘still around.’ Unless he’s referring specifically to worrying about his family becoming aware that he’s in Dol-Makjar, which is an extremely reasonable thing to want to dodge, if he means he’s worried his family will find out he’s undead and kicking?
Sir. Young man. Frons and Tertia are dead, but that’s worlds away from not being able to snitch to the necromancer house. Whatever Tachonis soldiers were left alive on that bridge know you’re up and about. You left a goddamn goodbye note to Lord Otto Einfasen attached to an undead cat back at his castle. I think it’s pretty established the Tachonises are aware of Occtis’ whole undead deal. I want to believe Occtis was talking about trying to keep his presence in the city under wraps. I really want to. But the still of ‘still around’ makes me doubt it. Which makes it feel more like he’s just ducking out of range of another Einfasen interaction because he just doesn’t want to deal with that again.
(Also, loving so much that nobody has mentioned what happened to Greta the Handmaiden yet. You know, the spy who got outed in the castle and who Otto immediately pulverized into red paste the second he discovered she sent a letter his daughter didn’t tell her to. Would really appreciate that getting brought up in conversation BEFORE Azune waltzes in there. I know the threat is implied, but evidence beats implication.)
We go back to Azune, who asks:
Azune: “Why does that hurt?”
‘Oh, he must be feeling so guilty for even asking!’
I believe that’s true. I believe he feels guilt when he asks for anything on his own behalf. And I know it’s too much to ask that he’s registering it consciously, but I’d bet you a spell glyph that he’s just tucked this in the growing cache of, People Who Could/Would/Should Feasibly Be in Play Here, But Are Not For Very Important (Your Expendable Ass Isn’t Worth the Risk) Reasons.
Then Murray goes into her spiel about him being a Boy Scout, all her poetic business about how he still has innocence, how he has sunset in his eyes and the light’s still there, blah blah there there stop making a scene and clench up. Azune nods and quiets and, regardless of the sunset eye talk—and the knife twist of Mayali’s memory shooting up in him as Murray mentions it—you can see the light going out of Luis’ face as he starts boxing himself back up, retreating back into the soldier shell. Bracing for dismissal, for a thumbs up and fuck off.
Murray goes on about the support around Azune, how implicated all the Schemers are, how Azune isn’t alone in this…and then.
Then the most grating bit of forced comedy in this entire exchange, worse than that intentional humor misdirect shit about the clenching of butt cheeks and sucking in balls, trying to force levity in where it didn’t belong:
She promises him a fucking ice cream party if they make it out. If he doesn’t die. How’s that champ? If you aren’t hammered to death, you get a sundae! Next I’ll jingle my keys in front of you and hope you don’t ask why I’m suddenly talking to you like you really are a child, a good little Boy Scout, who gets promised pizza and ice cream instead of the same actual protection and support that Demodus is getting, that Occtis got with a goddamn revenant miracle, like an employer ordering Domino’s instead of providing healthcare! Ooh hoo hoo, ice cream party!
And of course. Of course Azune jumps for that silly little promise. Azune loves food! Almost as much as he loves jumping for scraps of affection or caretaking! Been doing it since he was twelve, he’s a master at it!
Cue Brennan whipping out another knife, right after the Mayali memory, and getting a way in for Vaelus to clock Murray’s guilt in this moment.*
*(Quick aside: Thank you Marisha, genuinely have to shout out how goddamn juicy of a drama she’s piecing together with how Murray is knowingly spinning this.)
Guilt. Horrible. She hears what he has to say, but it doesn’t matter right now. And I think it doesn’t matter what Murray says, she knows Azune’s right.
Cool. Question, though.
Why? Why doesn’t it matter, if she feels so guilty, if she knows that Azune’s right and is pressing him to suck it up and not ask Demodus to go with him?
It doesn’t matter, because in this moment, as has been the case since she became aware of Demodus—her student, like Occtis before him—being in peril, she has put her pupils up on a pedestal of untouchability and protection that Azune has never been privy to. Not even when he was the teenager Thjazi Fang first passed into her tutelage, no less penniless than Demodus Blix, huddling under Hal’s roof as a charity case. No official classes for Azune, I bet. Too risky to have his record in the Pentevral. Just a little mentoring on the side to sharpen him, shape him up to be a twenty, maybe even nineteen-year-old Arcane Marshal.
Apparently not enough of a ‘child’ to her even back then, if she knew what Thjazi wanted out of him.
And what is it that finally makes her budge on going to talk to Demodus?
Not Azune himself, but Vaelus. A complete stranger sitting across from Azune, eye to eye, speaking succinctly and honestly about their mutual grief, the pain and necessity of remembrance. A genuine reaching out with no piled filigree of metaphors and flowery language and excuses for why one boy matters more than the other, the never-child always-soldier who has to man up and deal with the monsters on his own. She cracks through the mask of Lt. Nayar and Azune leaks another sob.
Azune: “How do you do it?”
Vaelus: “There’s not really a choice. Sometimes, to protect the ones that are left behind, you have to do things that don’t feel very good.”
Azune: “Yeah, I want to do that.”
Which itself feels like it might be an echo of something he might have heard within the Torn Banner once upon a time. But in this, Vaelus isn’t painting it as ‘These other young people are too high priority to be wasted on you, disposable young person.’ She’s highlighting the anguish that’s actually been choking him this whole time—how horrible the performance has become to live in. And she commiserates as someone who knows what it’s like to do what’s unsavory to protect others. Cue another handy hanky for him to dry his face.*
*(There should just be a whole tissue box set aside for Luis at this point I think.)
Only then do we hear:
Murray: “I’ll talk to Demodus. Let me talk to him first. I have the best relationship with him. I fought for him to even have a place at the Pentevral. Kid doesn’t have a cent to his name.”
Great! Except:
Murray: “I’ll talk to him, but under one condition, I will be in that room with you. I can be invisible. I can be nearby. I can listen in, I can plant a bug, I can do whatever. I don’t even have to be physically seen or present. But I cannot let that kid that we rescued, cold and dying out of the sewers, from the Crow Keepers’ grasp and walk him right back in to a worse lion’s den than he’s already in. You understand?”
Azune: “I do.”
Again, that press of implication. Demodus in need of protection, Azune placed as a party to accuse, barely earning access to a more precious youth than himself. And Azune nods along. Of course. He understands. Yes, ma’am.
All closing with the final cherry on top that made my teeth ache from grinding.
Murray: “Hey, I love you.”
Azune: “I just stopped crying!”
Murray: “Get the fuck out of here.”
Azune: “That’s better.”
Cue the laugh track.
I had to get up and walk away. Just—
I know. I know Murray meant it. I’m sure of it. But I’m just as sure of three other things:
One, that that love is conditional. There’s a hard line that Azune is brushing even now, daring to put one of her students (her real students, her real wards) in danger, and Azune was not wrong in suspecting that his friends’ non-transactional regard of him is based on an Azune Nayar he isn’t sure exists. He dared to breach that image and had his hand slapped away. Which he expected from the get-go.
Two, that ‘I love you’ was her putting a bandaid over her guilt as much as trying to buck him up.
Three, it was calculated. The same emotional drip-feeding that Thjazi kept Azune hooked on from day one. Whether it’s conscious or not, intentional or not, throwing out one little crumb of affection is enough to keep this young man following anyone like a dog. And Murray can’t feign unawareness of that, otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten 90% of this conversation in the first place.
Because Azune did not go straight to Bolaire’s apartment to ask Demodus himself.
He went to Murray.
To ask if he had permission to ask Demodus to come with him to Einfasen.
And she went automatically into dressing-down mode. Because whether she admits it or not, she knows what she is to Azune.
There’s been a lot of talk about Azune supposedly being the one to step into Thjazi Fang’s shoes. About the Schemers doing so as a whole. But Azune, for all that he’s accomplished and all he’s put into place, still made sure to highlight Murray as the point person to Varen in the meeting. The moment his mask comes off and he isn’t locked into the role of a weapon or a schemer, he is raw and miserable and wants nothing to do with the thing he’s had to mold himself into, even if it is for the cause, even if he knows that this moment of vulnerability only gets to be a moment because of course he has to close that shell back up and put the mask back on.
Nobody will tell him it’s okay to stop. Nobody will tell him he’s too young for this, that he’s unsafe and it’s wrong to have him be so. Nobody will tell him he can put down the hammer and the mask and try to belatedly scrape together a life where he gets to be happy and pursue his own passions; to figure out what a passion even is.
The kind of things Murray might say to anyone under thirty who isn’t Azune.
And I guarantee Thjazi held his tongue the exact same way. Because if there’s any inheritor among the Schemers, it isn’t the brother with the Liar’s Blade, it isn’t the sentient mask who hated his guts, and it isn’t the soldier more afraid of spoiling the mission and upsetting his superior commander friend than risking his own life. It’s the wizard who, just like a certain rebel leader, cherry picks who is and isn’t worth putting on the chopping block. Hal and his kids were off limits to one. Favorite students are the same to the other.
And I know it gets papered over at King Gus’ place. I know Murray donated her portent and everything was all smiles with everyone by the end of the episode.
But I also know in my gut that if or when Demodus gets put before Einfasen and that meeting ends with that grad student scratched, let alone dead, Murray will have as much fire and brimstone to spare for Azune as she will for whoever actually brought the hammer down.
