Shantania/Supports/RaviSylviss

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Level ???

Ravi pushes himself off the floor with considerable effort, finding it difficult to control his legs as the room appears to weave to and fro. He grasps at the canvassed wall of the cart to support himself, and takes his scholar's coat to drape over his unclad form. He holds as still as he can, to listen for noises, before searching for his breeches on the cart floor. He finds a similarly unclad woman among them. "Oh, gods," he whispers to himself, but this is enough to wake her.

She props herself up on elbows, preserving her modesty with the hempen bedding. "You've awakened sooner than I thought you would," she muses with a half-smirk.

"Gods, what did I do last night?" The stifling heat suddenly leaves Ravi's body as he desperately searches his mind for any memory of the night's happenings.

"You made a married woman very happy...and you did a good job of it, too, considering your lack of experience." She fumbles beneath the covers a bit and retrieves her silk tabard, which she quickly dons before diving under to look for her leggings. "Incidentally, did you know that our nation does not have laws about this sort of thing?"

"I can scarcely believe you would joke about that right now." Ravi, who is still groping around for his breeches, accidentally brushes a hand against one of Sylviss's thighs. He retracts the hand as if burned by something. "I don't know how I managed to share a bed with the Marchioness of all people..."

Sylviss, meanwhile, has found her leggings under the covers and is now attempting to wrestle her way into them without dropping the blanket. "The gods work in strange ways, to be sure," comes her muffled voice from beneath the wool. Upon pulling the leggings up as far as they'll go, she throws the blanket to the side and pushes herself up. "Menlosha herself must have thought herself funny, this night in particular."

Menlosha...which god was that, again? The goddess of warmth? "No, no, this can't be the work of the gods. This is wrong! It's all wrong!" Ravi has only just secured his smallclothes. "To have bedded the Margrave's wife? Unforgivable! I don't care if we don't have laws about it, your husband will have me drawn and quartered before the war's end!"

"That will not happen." Sylviss puts one of her warming hands on Ravi's back. He stops his search for trousers for but a moment. "May Menlosha see me eternally chilled, should I be lying."

"Margrave Calayus must not know of this," Ravi warns with a falter to his voice, as Sylviss closes in for a tighter embrace.

"He must know. It's a vital task you've done for your nation, and I'm sure he'll be pleased to hear of it."

"What?" Ravi tenses up. "Don't tell me...Gods, could I have been that foolish?"

Sylviss pulls Ravi even tighter, binding his arms within hers. "You have helped me accomplish what even Calayus could not. The child I'll bear may be yours, but it will be a strong child, and an even stronger beacon to the people of Lestalia."

"Child? Child?" Just hearing the word leaves Ravi furious. "I've had far enough of children for one lifetime! Do not subject me to this again!"

"In time, you may find I'm right, Ravi Tirell." Sylviss Denivan exits the cart, leaving no trace. Ravi feels oddly cold for a moment.

"And that, milady Marchioness, is a right which few people should hear," Ravi mutters. "Gods...I just hope this doesn't spawn any ill rumors..."

level ?????

To anybody else, this would be an honor. Ravi tugs a bit at the restraints binding his arms together by the wrist. Neither restraint nor wrist will budge. He surrenders and relaxes on the bench beneath him, as much as a man in irons could relax, and peers forward at the two empty seats in front of him. Some moments later, the seats gain occupants: Margrave Calayus Denivan, and his wife, Marchioness Sylviss Denivan. Ravi, not particularly keen on disrespecting either one, immediately bows his head, in his closest hands-free imitation of a Lestalian salute.

"You may be at ease, Tirell," orders Calayus, his voice still bearing evidence of his harsh training with the Foreign Legion. "You have not been brought to trial."

"If this is not a trial, then explain my bindings!" Ravi elects to not be at ease.

"Just a precaution." Calayus assesses the man before him. Though Ravi is younger by some decades, and a Lestalian Elf at that, his face bears the marks of years of experience, coupled with frustration. The coat on his back...it must have been his father's; Calayus sees little reason why Ravi would have it, for a man of his status, if not as a gift from the late former Margrave. "I bring you before me, seeking information of a genealogical nature."

He must already know! Despite the tightness of the cuffs, Ravi can feel his hands shaking, but does his best not to break eye contact. "Of...birth and lineage? I am unsure how I'd be of assistance, sire. I am naught but a mechanick."

"Do not pretend to be humble, Tirell. I am well aware of your upbringing. I met your father, fifty years ago." I shudder to think of where he's going with this... "My dear, Sylviss, perhaps you could explain better than I."

Sylviss nods at her husband, then locks eyes with Ravi. "I have consulted with my husband over a...certain event...from a few days past." Oh gods. "We figured that some explanation was due. You recently donated something of significant importance to the Grand March Lestalia, and today was decided to be the day that you learn of its importance yourself."

Calayus takes over. "Though I am certain that it's obvious from looking at me, I am not exactly young. With age, comes loss of certain things...vital to the progression of one's bloodline. Now, my wife here..." I don't like the way he emphasized "wife," just then... "...decided that you would be an ideal candidate to help sire an heir to Lestalia."

"I was never consulted on this!" Ravi exclaims, struggling in his handcuffs.

"Yes, well," Sylviss begins, "unfortunately, the only way I could manage to get close to you was by means of...I suppose I could call it liquid coercion."

"Alcohol? You could very well have killed me!" It's no wonder I blacked out, that night! "Is this really what constitutes birthing an heir? Poisoning, potentially killing, and then seducing one of your own?"

Calayus holds a wrinkled hand aloft. "Perhaps the means of engagement were a bit risky, but neither of us are any stranger to risk."

"I can scarcely say you're any stranger to defaming my family, either!"

"Calm yourself, Ravi," warns Sylviss. "While I'm aware you weren't exactly acting on your own volition, what you and I did together could be an important step in the future of Lestalian civil rights."

"Why didn't you ask me first?"

"You forget, Ravi, that I did. And you refused outright."

"Doesn't 'no' mean 'no' anymore?" Ravi attempts a gesture, forgetting that he is handcuffed.

Calayus raises his hand again, silencing the two. "What you ought to realize, Ravi, is that this was my attempt at coming up with a way to reconcile you as the son of a Margrave. Your father's policies may have been dangerous to the survival of our nation, but that gives me no business to deny you what your father would have left to you."

"So you sent your wife to seduce me and bear an illegitimate child by me?"

"When you put it that way, it sounds so uncivilized," Sylviss remarks. "Haven't you thought about what this child means? Lestalia was once a nation of xenophobes. If one was a Lestalian, they were Elven. Humans had no place here. Your father was on the cusp of delivering an order to cave in the only way in or out of the Great Cavernous City, to keep Lestalia 'pure.' Then he disappeared. Have you considered why he might have disappeared?"

"It's a shame he went when he did," Ravi growls.

"Someone, somewhere...some higher power, perhaps...had decided that isolation was bad for us. The order was canceled, vetoed by the Senate out of fear after Kaze's disappearance was made public."

"I would call that cowardice."

"What has kept Lestalia alive over those fifty years? New blood. As a nation of miners and mechanicks, what good are our wares if we already have everything that is being sold? But what we're running out of is steady food and provisions. This is obviously not the ideal climate for farming, and most creatures that can be hunted are growing stronger and more dangerous every year. We would die out if all contact with other nations was severed. The presence of humans in Lestalia may not be something that your late father would agree with, but like it or not, Ravi, they're the only thing preserving us."

"I'm afraid that doesn't clarify anything to me. What do the needs of our nation have to do with our future child?"

"The child I'll bear will be as much an heir to the March as a symbol of union between man and elf."

"And what about me?"

"You will be compensated, of course."

"Compensated, how? I've no need for your money or your sympathy."

"Then perhaps a position as an advisor to the March?"

"Oh, please!" Ravi spits at their feet. "You think executive power will right the wrongs against me and my family? I'd much rather have been left to my own from the beginning. Nothing will simply correct the problems I've had since my father's disappearance. My schematics were stolen, my whore of a mother foisted a half-sister on me that I never asked for, I've been drafted into a rebellion that I have no stake in, and now I'm expected to father a child that I was duped into having!"

Sylviss gives a sigh of finality. "There is no pleasing you."

Calayus glances at her, then back at Ravi, observing him as he continues struggling with his bindings, a pained grimace on his face. "If nothing else, all we've managed to prove is that he is every bit his father's son."

Sylviss leans towards her husband and replies in a hushed tone. "He won't accept power, he won't accept money. I think all we can do at this point is absolve him of his responsibility and leave him be."

Calayus whispers back. "Truly, Sylviss? He seems like a man of strong character. Are you sure you'd be able to handle a child without a father?"

"I'd have you, wouldn't I?"

"You are optimistic to a fault, my dear...you seem to be ignoring that I am not long for this world."

Ravi, growing tired of his restraints, tries to stand from his chair and trips over himself. He begins shouting from the floor, instead. "If you're finished with me, then release me! Let me go! I've better things to do than sit here and be patronized!"