milliways_bar | (no subject)

The front door of Milliways shimmers and not so much opens as unfolds. Beyond, a ragged crowd boiling in the Arrakeen sunlight. A cloaked figure groans and staggers backward, clutching his chest, as another buries a crysknife in it. As the hooded one reaches the doorway, he seems to divide in half, with one part slumping to the dusty ground and another taking a teetering step across the threshhold. The door shimmers again and is closed. Another dead messiah has walked into the bar.

Rather than falling like his vanished twin, the cloaked man turns, revealing that the crysknife has also disappeared. Realizing that he isn't injured after all, he finds with a shock that he's no longer blind, either. Searching the room with his blue-in-blue eyes, he mutters, "I don't know this place." Its smell is too clean, too wet, and completely devoid of the Spice. He instinctively searches within for the future pathways that he knows shouldn't be there, and sees no future. Pathways abound, but all of them end beyond these walls or curve upon themselves into the past. For a minute that stretches into several, he marvels at this.

Utterly lost, Paul Atreides goes to the nearest empty table and sits, staring at the menagerie around him with a measured awe. Somebody buy this man a spiced beer.

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Eska smiles and shakes her head.

"No, we've not developed magic strong enough to leave Great A'Tuin. Besides, I'm not sure the bets way to avoid conflict is to kick people off the world. As you've observed, eventually you run otu of places to run to."

"Indeed. My father believed moving the family to the desert planet would make us safer. Instead, he was assasinated and our House overthrown. Even the Padishah Emperor had his hand in it. So I took his throne."

He is looking away, absently. If there are threats here, they would be petty and personal. And if he's as anonymous as it seems, maybe the past can be left there.

Oh, a hero.

Eska nods, trying to look sympathetic. "That's the disadvantage of Kinging, of course. People want to assassinate you."

Now his smile is for the great irony.

"It is the bones that sharpen your blade. But I didn't feel that sting until I was but a blind preacher yelling blasphemies at my own shrine.

"I abdicated the throne out of shame a sorrow for what my movement had become and sacrificed myself so that my son could lead the Empire out of my darkness. It's that sacrifice that brought me here, I think." Or punishment he hasn't begun to feel yet.

Eska didn't understand a word of that, but she doesn't need to. Politics were never anything she was interested in.

"That's a noble sacrifice," she allows. "Very... heroic."

That word is usually an insult in Eska's mouth. It's still not a very sincere compliment, just a statemtent of fact.

"A hero. My trainers would be proud to hear that. But all I did I did for revenge first, then stability, the last because I could not take the path my son chose. His was more heroic, but no doubt more blood has been shed in both our names than for anyone else in any universe."

He gives the word all the contempt he means for himself. He looks directly into her eyes.

"Mistress, I don't wish to be short with you, but I think I need to spend some time to understand what has happened to me. May we meet again here?"

She nods.

"Of course we may, and do feel free to call me Eska. Everyone else here does."

She stands to give him space to himself.

"It was good to meet you, Paul."

He stands quickly, if more stiffly than before, and sees her off with a small bow. He sits again and pulls up the cowl of his cloak. He definitely has much to think about.