milliways_bar | (no subject)

Elrond has just fetched himself a mug of tea. He was headed for the couch - Glorfindel has rubbed off on him - but when he sees that it is occupied, he hesitates.

The Man looks tired. It is likely that he would rather not have any company.

He is tired, but he's also been on the move for centuries. Being under threat from every Morganian who is out to make a name for himself for that amount of time gives you a pretty good instinct for when you're being watched.

Thus, Elrond's scrutiny is returned, in spades. If he's really paying attention, Elrond might note Balthazar has already half-started a defensive spell to counter attack, the green of the only ring on his fingers that counts gleaming in the bar's light. Someone's a bit on-edge after seeing his battered apprentice.

Elrond does notice the ring.

It's a thing. With rings.

He lifts one hand in a peaceful gesture. He certainly means no harm.

The half-formed shield swirls away to nothing in a heartbeat, and he relaxes back against the couch. He's not entirely sure who (or what) this is, but it doesn't seem that an attack is in the cards tonight.

Just as well. Keeping Dave from half-killing himself with his own spellwork takes a lot of energy.

The crisis seems to have been averted and so Elrond asks, "Is that seat free?" Indicating the non-occupied half of the couch.

It is a very nice couch. And he would not be comfortable sitting somewhere where he could not see the Man. And his ring of power.

"Yes, yes it is." His voice is rough (though that's mostly down to lack of sleep and quite a lot of shouting 'No, Dave don't do...' all day), and his accent might be placed among the other American accents in the bar, except for an odd inflection that pops up here and there, the echos of an older accent that he never quite bothered to eradicate completely.

"Sorry. It's... been a very long night."

"Do not trouble yourself," Elrond answers, kindly. "I think we have all tried coming here with too many things on our minds, weighing us down."

He sits down and places his mug on the table.

Up close, he does definitely not look human.

From any distance, he doesn't feel human, and it's enough to have the sorcerer's metaphorical antennae going. He can usually identify, roughly, who or what he is talking to...

But this is something different. Something new.

New is.... very unusual, for Balthazar Blake.

"And then there is here, which is a whole new layer of fun and joy all by itself." Or, you know, bloodied apprentices holed up in cells across from vampires.

"Yes, Milliways can be unsettling at times," Elrond agrees. "And yet I often find that for me it also quiet frequently offers a way find some peace and quiet.And time to think."

He smiles, a wry self-amused smile that his apprentices have learned to hate.

"Yes, yes I am quite definite in this place's ability to provide that."

Rae is getting the super deluxe package in peace, quiet, and time to think!

"I know that it is one of the main draws for me," Elrond remarks, casually.

"My name is Elrond. Elrond Half-elven."

...

His first thought (somewhat inanely) is that Dave would love this.

His second is that a certain Merlinian he knew, not-so-long ago (at least to him) would love this even more.

His third is that he already knows from personal experience that people who pretend to know you from a story in a book are, as a whole, uniquely annoying, so he really ought not do that.

"Balthazar Blake, Merlinian."

"Merlinian?" Elrond asks. It is not a term he is familiar and the way the man says it makes him think it is a title of sorts.

He nods, and distantly wishes he had gotten some tea. It would, at least, give him something to do with his hands.

"There were once two great and powerful sorcerers, with utterly contrasting views, so long ago now most people believe them to be only myth and legend - Merlin, and Morgana le Fay."

Elrond nods.

From that lead-up he can almost guess where this will go.

"Merlin believed sorcerers should be servants to mankind, to aid in their growth and prosperity." He also believed in making young troublemaking apprentices scrub every inch of the castle keep floor for their crimes, but that is a different subject entirely. "Morgana... believed otherwise."

"In power for its own sake?"

It seem sa fair guess.

"In general, yes." More like power for her own sake, but it isn't that marked a variance. "The resulting devastation was terrible."

Is terrible.

Hopefully will be over soon.

"And has lead to opposing - sides in a conflict?"

"For nearly fifteen hundred years." Though really, the conflict has been a bit more like a manhunt, on both sides. Certainly groups of Merlinians and Morganians have formed and managed to become equally code-bound, but there have always been those who have gunned specifically for him, and he has always been looking for the Prime.

Doing something different will be a nice change of pace, if nothing else.

"And you have fought?"

Perhaps, he is not a Man then.

"Yes." It... truly does not need elaboration - not on the years pinned in the cell of a truly inventive Spanish Inquisitor, the rise and collapse of civilizations, the scores of Morganians who have tracked him down over the centuries and have been trapped or displaced or thrust into the Grimhold.

"At times."

Elrond nods. "It seems as if this is the common denominator for those who come here. That we enter from worlds filled with strife and conflict."

He sounds sad.

"Better those who fight it, than those who seek it." He'd... really be having a bad day if Horvath came here.

Or Abigail Williams.

Or Sun Lok.

Or, fates forbid, Morgana le Fay.

(Drake Stone could be amusing. For a while.)

"That is true," Elrond agrees and takes another sip of his tea.

"I doubt this place would particular enjoy the excitement." A full-out sorcerer's battle tends to be...

...

Electrifying.

"Where you here when this world ended?"

Yes, this is the kind of conversation one has at Milliways.

"No, but I heard of it." It is, in his opinion, just as well he wasn't here. He wasn't on the best of terms with his apprentice here at the time, and he is on a tight schedule with the apprentice at home. Trying to sort that mess out would have been...

Distinctly unpleasant.

"It almost made me thankful for the battles I have fought at home. They at least made some sort of sense. Most of the time."

"That must be nice." His battles... very frequently fail to make sense on an epic scale. It's only by accepting that sometimes that lack of sense refuses to make sense in some sort of pattern that he can survive.

"You look troubled, sorcerer," comes Finvarra's voice, soft but no less distinct, from behind Balthazar. It isn't that he's trying to sneak up on the man, but he's hardly going out of his way just to be seen first.

"I take it you've seen your apprentice lately."

He starts, his nerves already a bit shot after dealing with Sunshine on top of dealing with Dave (the boy had disappeared into the subway station, and didn't come back in the amount of time reasonable for a boy seeing is not-at-all girlfriend off to the train. So he'd panicked. A little.

(A lot.)

"She will be fine." Because the fairy king doesn't know about Dave, as far as Balthazar knows, and the sorcerer is definitely fine about that. The half-formed shield dissolves into the air it came from, his ring dimming as he tries to relax.

He isn't perturbed about the shield. Finn merely comes around the couch, and with a move more graceful than a cat perches himself on the arm of a nearby chair.

"And your other?" He remembers hearing Balthazar tossing back advice as he listened to the boy scream, not that he's met Dave yet.

That only earns a very banal raised eyebrow.

Why yes, of course he was just waiting to tell the king of the fairies details about the training of the sole hope of defeating Morgana! That is exactly why he came in today.

Except, no.

"I'm sure Rae will be glad to hear you showed so much interest in her."

"I'm sure she wouldn't be surprised at all, really."

He merely rests in his position, with the piercing stare no human could hope to surpass, not even this sorcerer of so many years. His toes curl against the fabric of the chair upholstery, and as he watches the magician the smell of grass and, inexplicably, apples fills the immediate space. "One wonders how you stand them--or perhaps how they stand you."

Since he is not one to get into staring contests (except when he was six, with a cat, and it didn't go well) he doesn't even try in this case.

Besides, the fish in the fireplace are interesting.

"Wouldn't know - why don't you ask her?"

"Because I'm asking you," he answers simply. Finvarra doesn't look behind him at the fish--he's seen them dozens of times by now.

"How unfortunate for you. Languishing in ignorance cannot be pleasant." Balthazar is solicitous, but rather uninformative.

Huh, there's a new little fish. He had no idea the things were reproducing.

"I hardly languish," he tosses back with a tiny quirk of his mouth, not enough to expose a smile. "And last I recall you did not much like seeing us talk."

"And yet, here you are." He notes, dryly. "Amazing."

"You liked even less my talking to your apprentice," he says, whispering out the word. It carries such possibilities of evil things when he does that, Finn knows.

"I am glad that point got across." Balthazar replies blandly.

"You have little to fear," he murmurs. "She has seen my realm, and no harm came to her."

"And yet, I do not appreciate it any more than I did a minute ago. Fascinating."

Though he can't help wondering why, exactly, the fairy king would care. He certainly didn't before.