Title: Masters of the Universe
Canon: Down By the Water
Colors: Harvest Gold 1 (falling leaves), Fire Opal 2 (insatiable), Mouse Grey 3 (are you in or out)
Supplies: charcoal (Caius Wray at the very least), canvas (takes place four months before Jemesk loses his memory), pastels (family)
Characters: John Hardy (the Smoking Faeborn), Armand Carron, Caius Wray, Patriarch Errol Wells
Rating: PG
Word count: 1119
Summary: The shadowy elite of New Kaddar meet under a gaslight to discuss the fate of the nation.
Notes: Beta read by isana.

Four men met beneath a misty gaslight, silhouettes dyed blue in the gloaming. It was a fair night, dark and cold but lit by a thousand stars burning from so many miles away that its precise number had no name. John Hardy saw nothing beautiful in them, points of white hot fire too distant to reach or warm oneself by. It was the distance that gave them the illusion of magnificence, he thought. Humans were self-destructively desirous of what they couldn't touch.

Two arrived together, heads bent together in civil discourse. The shorter of the two was as pale as the wings of a dove and seemed as fragile and pure, the sole points of darkness on his person the two black insignia that signified priesthood. His brows were bent low in concern, but the timbre of his whispering held a threat that rang all the more strange and sinister costumed in his sweetness. The dark gentleman was unimpressed with the dove-like man. Perhaps he was confident in his strength, for he radiated an effortless power that seemed to command such respect that even a king's knees might bend to him. He answered the dove-like man's arguments laconically, his eyes focused unerringly on some point in the distance only he could see.

"What is the meaning of this? I should like to fine you all for my time if this amounts to nothing, and my time is worth more than even any of you could pay," spoke the last to arrive, his voice snappish with well-practiced vitriol. He was beady-eyed and broad-shouldered, his face weathered and leathery, but his hands were silken with privilege. There had been a time when he would have been happy to mingle with friends, when his business was not all that was keeping him alive; but this was not that time, and time had proven his fellows no friends.

"Oh, Mr. Wray, I am the last man in this world who would dare waste your time," John Hardy smiled. It did not reach his eyes, but very little did. John Hardy had a face for every person he had ever met and names enough to fill a history textbook, it was whispered, but his gaze was unchanging, as blue as the ocean on a clear day and just as pitiless, just as unfathomable. "I have a proposition that will change the rather tired stakes in our long little game very thrillingly."

Mr. Wray frowned, but nodded for John Hardy to go on. The stakes didn't matter anymore and the heavens knew that he did not play for amusement, but he had come too far and lost too much to not win.

"I am sure you are all acquainted with Mr. Wray's corporation, Miratech, yes?" John Hardy said, his lips forming a polite host's smile, carefully concealing his mouthful of long, terrible incisors. "As I am sure you all know that every empire has its great fall. Well, we are all betting men, and I have here the profiles of the coming revolution. Place your bets well. As with all revolutions, backing the wrong man - or woman - has a catastrophic price."

Mr. Wray reddened magnificently, his face twitching against the force of his grimace. "What are you doing?"

"Is something the matter, Mr. Wray?" John Hardy said. "If you no longer wish to play, you must be prepared to pay your forfeit."

Mr. Wray's face was a fine canvas of dismay, and it was beautiful to watch his color change from red, flaring anger to strangled, violet embarassment to ashen despair, and then to watch all of that wash away to the sullen acceptance of those who know when they are doomed as he joined the other two men, who as ever had paid him no mind. Kaddarsi thought Caius Wray a masterful puppeteer, and John Hardy supposed it might be true, supposed he was the one Wray ought to be thanking. It was ever so much easier to play a man when one knew the agony of his strings.

The dark gentleman, who called himself Mr. Carron, staked his bet on Annie Tark, and there was a certain sense to that. She was smart as a tack, that one, and had an all-consuming determination to see Miratech fall. Some might have called her hair fiery, a blaze of red curling around an angry, treasonous head. John Hardy saw only the reddest leaf of autumn grasping its lonely bower, convincing itself that it must not fall. Gravity was a tricky thing to outmaneuver, especially when falling was in one's nature.

Patriarch Wells decided, after some lengthy dithering, upon Theophilius Wray to succeed his father, which was not unexpected. Patriarch Wells was a ruthless man when there was no one precious to him to bet against, but in the face of those he cared for, he was a man ruled by his heart. There was little doubt his son-in-law would find himself the mysterious benefactor of some terribly lucky accidents in the coming months, and that was fine. Luck was as much about what you cultivated as what you received.

"I tell you what. I will cast my lot in with none of these young fools," said Caius Wray. "My bet is that I shall be triumphant against all of those children, that I shall remain the hidden emperor of Kaddarsi. I thank you for giving me the faces of my foes."

"Have I?" John Hardy said. "Tell me, without looking at them, what they look like."

Mr. Wray said nothing, but the frustration in his face was more difficult to erase than it had been earlier.

"Well then," said John Hardy. "If that is all, then I say you are all wrong. I cast my lot with Jemesk Graymarch. We shall convene when Mr. Wray is no longer welcome among us. Or, perhaps, if after five years he remains CEO of Miratech. Farewell, gentlemen."

Disappearing was harder since augmenting his blood with iron. It was painful, even more painful than transmogrification, but John Hardy was not averse to a little pain to get what he wanted, and right now he wanted to be as far away from humanity as he could manage. Enduring their presence, pretending that they were in any way his equal, these were things that stung worse than a little iron. His long game was nearing its end, however, and he knew it. Jemesk Graymarch did not have Annie's following nor the ability to lead, nor the Wrays' connections, but he was curious, and just ambitious enough that he would do incredible things to see the Wrays brought down. He was as bendable as clay, and John Hardy was a fine sculptor. Jemesk would be his masterwork.

In the solitude of his shadows, John Hardy plotted.