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Honestly, he’s glad to have this quiet time until dawn. Going from one thing to another has been rough, and for now he can just sit and think and drink. Mostly drink, admittedly. The think is starting to wear itself out.

Lucien has been making a lot of assumptions about a lot of things, but they’re not things he can come to a conclusion about by himself, either. If what Katarin says is true—another assumption—Shuni is at least having the dreams. He may or may not know more than what Lucien does. He may or may not want Lord Crow the way Lucien does.

Katarin accused him of being easily swayed, and maybe that’s extra reason not to buy everything she said at face value either. He’ll coax out information and form his own opinions.

He is about to pour himself another drink when he hears a light knocking, and he goes down the stairs carefully. He’s not drunk yet, not exactly, but he’s got a bit of fog around him and his legs are feeling weak.

He opens the door to find Shuni muddy—in streaks, and heavier on his hands, as if he’d fallen down at some point. He looks tired, and red-eyed, but remarkably lucid. “You said you wanted to talk to me,” Shuni says. “And here I am.”

“Come in,” Lucien says. “…You look beat. Can I pour you a bath? You can stay over tonight, not have to head all the way back after.”

“Ugh. I won’t say no. Sorry I just about ruined your clothes,” Shuni says, exaggerating the damage. “I’ll be grateful to have mine back after this.”

Lucien leads the way back up the stairs to his flat, sparing a moment to be a little self-conscious about the apparent differences in wealth. Shuni has a whole house; Lucien is renting a flat on the second floor of a house. But Shuni doesn’t seem to mind, sighing, following Lucien into the bathroom as he starts to draw the water and fires up the gas tank attached to the tub to heat it. “I warn you, hot water might knock me out. You’re right. I’m beat.”

“Still, you look in better condition than I expected, after meeting a Lord,” Lucien says. “I wasn’t half so together.”

“You didn’t seem so badly off,” Shuni says. He starts to strip down, lacking any shame. “Anyway, that’s just my curse, nothing gets to me too deeply these days. I’m unshakeable.”

“Hah,” Lucien says softly. “Did you meet him?”

“I met him,” Shuni says. “I suppose you’ll want to know what happened.”

“Fair’s fair,” Lucien points out. “I babbled my story out all over you.”

Shuni is just dropping Lucien’s clothes on the floor, and Lucien resolves to pick them up later to not be rude about it. “I met Lord Crow. He said he hadn’t been sure while we were on stage, but seeing me, he knew I wasn’t you. It was funny to him, I suppose. We talked.”

“A talk put you in the mud?”

“He startled me and I fell.”

The bath is about full, though not hot yet. Lucien gets a towel wet and offers it to Shuni so he can get the worst of the mud off first. “I’d been assuming you were into him, but it’s not sounding like that. Do you favor him in some other way?”

Shuni hesitates briefly, looking at the towel, then begins wiping his arms down. “…Yes. I thought I did, anyway. Something important to me was stolen from me not so long ago, and I’d do anything to get it back. Since Lord Crow is the patron of thieves, I thought perhaps he might be able to give me the power to find the thief and get it back.”

“He refused?’

“I wouldn’t say I’m his type,” Shuni says softly. He scrubs at his arms extra hard.

That’s interesting. Lucien puts that to one side for now, trying to get enough information to find where to put that puzzle piece. “…Have you been having strange dreams?”

“Oh, awful ones,” Shuni says. “You too, though, right? It’s just the stress of performance.”

“…Lord Crow asked me about my dreams,” Lucien says slowly. “It was something he, and maybe the other Lords, are aware of. I’ve started to wonder if you and I are dreaming of the same thing.”

Shuni looks at him blankly. “I mean, it seems like a standard stress dream. Empty land with no audience, nobody around, empty sky, cracked land.”

“It’s the same for me.”

“See?” The water’s warm enough for Shuni to at least get in now, and he slides in, spilling a little over the edge with a sigh as he settles, resting his head on the back of the tub. “Performance stress.”

“No, the exact same dream,” Lucien says, unable to hide his distress as he thinks about that dream. But he watches Shuni for a reaction.

Shuni stares blankly back, brows furrowed. “Huh. That’s odd. A scene of total desiccation?”

“Yes. I panic because nothing can live there, not even me, but it’s not somewhere to die in either.” 

“Oh, same. I mean, I don’t panic, it’s just depressing to me. I wonder why that is.”

Shuni seems confused about the similarity, perplexed and a bit perturbed, but nothing else. It doesn’t sound like the reaction of someone who knew about it already, but then, Shuni’s an actor. “I wonder too,” Lucien murmurs.

Sinking a little further, Shuni hmmms, the sound bubbling out of the water. He lifts his head again. “I mean, maybe it’s something the Lords are doing. You said Lord Crow asked you about it.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Lucien says. He’s still sitting beside the tub, where it was easier to adjust the heat settings, and he reaches up, putting a hand on Shuni’s where it’s hanging off the side of the tub. “Listen… I like you. I want to be your friend. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you… to either of us. If you know or find out anything about this, share with me?”

“…Sure,” Shuni says. “That’s a little intense, but fine.”

Lucien tries to laugh it off. “I guess I can be a little intense. I don’t mean to come on too strong, especially after yesterday. I know you can put up walls.”

“Can do that sometimes, yeah.” Shuni lets his arm fall further out of the tub, permissively.

“Have you had bad experiences with relationships before? You seem like someone who got hurt.” Lucien toys with Shuni’s hand and fingers, clasping them briefly, then running his fingers up to Shuni’s elbow, back down again. “I don’t want to, you know, bring up bad memories.”

Shuni snorts. “Ticklish. Sure I did. Got hurt bad, but who hasn’t been hurt by a lover?”

“Fair enough,” Lucien says. The water is hot, and Shuni is flushed, but Lucien realizes, as his fingers pass over Shuni’s wrist while he toys with it, that he does not feel a pulse.

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Actually, scratch that. Lucien realizes he has tons of questions. “Speaking of Shuni, how come he was the only one you approached about this?”

She winces. “Well. Shuni is… you know. I don’t mean it in a bad way, but he’s sharp, and good at getting what he wants. You’re…” She gestures a few times weakly with a hand, then takes a drink. “You’re not, or you haven’t seemed to be, anyway. You just do your work and go along with things that are suggested to you. You take direction well. So I figured that between the two of you, he’d be the one more likely to be up to something and be the one to confront.”

Ughhh. That’s fair. He doesn’t like it, but she’s not exactly wrong. He makes a face, mostly at himself, and pushes on. “You said something earlier in a weird language when you thought I was Shuni. What was it, and why did you expect him to recognize it?”

This time it’s Katarin’s turn to make a face. “It was faespeech, because. I don’t know. I was trying to make you, him, react. Like, you know, even if he didn’t speak it, the realization that I Knew Something might push him into making a mistake, and… It’s dumb. Sorry.”

Honestly, that embarrassed ramble makes him feel a little better. Like, maybe he isn’t the only one out of his depth about some kind of prophecy to end the world. Even so… he doesn’t know for sure that Katarin isn’t playing her own game. For all he knows, this could all be a lie to manipulate him into… well, something.

“Tell me more about this prophecy,” he says, shelling some bar nuts with slightly shaky fingers. If it is a lie, he can at least make her work for it, and if not, it’s useful information. “What is the exact wording?”

She huffs and takes another drink. “I’ll have to translate,” she says. “Let’s see… ‘a ritual shall begin to make a new Lord. It will use the standard vehicle of deliverance, but it will be started deliberately, with malevolence in heart. Those creatures marked by change who perform will experience symptoms of the potential ascendance through their dreams. The one who masters the finale can, if they know how, claim Lordhood, but if it is the one who started the ritual, they will become a Lord to destroy all other Lords, to corrupt and desiccate from the inside out, and devour the world along with it.’ That’s pretty close, I think, to what I remember.”

“That’s some prophecy,” he manages. It raises more questions than he already had. “So it sounds pretty certain it couldn’t be started accidentally if the prophecy says this specifically. Wow. Didn’t you ask the fae more about it?”

She sighs, doodling strange shapes on the table in condensation. “That’s the problem. They’re full of prophecies. I have hundreds of their bullshit pronouncements floating around in my head in more or less detail. That one stuck out, but it’s in translation and from memory and among things like ‘ware he who carries five pumpkins up the stairs at night.'”

“I’d also beware that. That sounds dangerous.”

“Right. You get me.” She grimaces. “So I didn’t know to ask more. I didn’t realize what was even happening at first until I was here, a changeling with two other actors with ‘change’ in their name, in a play, and the dreams were happening, and then I was like, fuck. I had to search my old diaries even to find the reference to it to jog my memory.”

Lucien rubs his forehead. “Before I go on, what’s ‘the standard vehicle of deliverance’ mean, exactly?”

“Plays. Lords are actors before they become Lords.”

That detail nearly blows all his other questions out of his mind. “What?”

Katarin gives him an impatient look. “That’s why plays get dedicated to them, and why that’s the main method of sacrifice they attend.” She sighs, then, losing her sting. “The number of them showing up for this one also helped make me realize something was wrong. …Honestly, though, I’m not surprised you don’t know. It’s not common information for anyone. If it was, everyone would try to do it, but a play that causes an ascension happens maybe once every few hundred years at best. The fae know about it, so I do. Most humans don’t, so you don’t. …I didn’t become an actor for that, though, being a changeling just made me well suited to playing roles, so why not make money doing what I’m good at?”

This is a lot to take in. Almost too much. He’d had an entire list of questions and it’s dissolving quickly. He tries to focus. “You mentioned symptoms?”

“I meant the dreams,” she says.

He’d originally thought that the dreams were just his, but… she’d asked ‘Shuni’ if he were dreaming. “You’re dreaming too?”

“Yeah. Shuni should be as well, I’d think, since he’s marked by change. Again, this had to be started by someone who would be marked by change and thus able to do the ritual. If it’s not me—and it’s not, why would I even be talking to you about this if so, I’d just pull it off while nobody suspected anything—and it’s not you, it’s probably Shuni. Not definitely,” she adds. “After all, I’m not as obviously marked as you two are by your names, so there might be others less obviously marked. But given the circumstances, doesn’t it seem like the most likely option is Shuni?”

Reluctantly, he finds his thoughts being drawn back to that strange box he found at Shuni’s place. Could it be involved? Something that triggered the ritual, perhaps? He wants to ask, but she’s already so convinced it’s Shuni that he doesn’t want to give her more evidence before he’s sure one way or the other. “So how do we stop it?”

She hesitates. “Well. Probably. We kill whoever it is who’s doing it.”

“We can’t kill people,” he hisses back, horrified.

“We can if it’s to save the world!” She throws up her hands. “Listen, good talk, but it’s not what I thought it was going to be. I’m going home.”

Lucien scrubs his hands over his face. Somehow they’ve drained the pitcher already. “Sure,” he says. “Listen, I do… I do want to help stop this. Can we talk again later?”

She nods briefly. “…Of course. I guess we’re conspirators now. I’ll try to think of a way to help catch Shuni out, to see if we can prove if it’s him or not. Obviously we’re not going to do anything until we have better evidence.”

“…Thanks.” He watches her go, then settles up and meanders his own way home.

The next few hours are spent in a haze, really, of questioning his own reality, looking through his scripts, wondering about how he’s always known about the power of them, and how that power is syphoned off to the Lords all the time, but how he’s never really questioned it. That’s just how things are. The Lords are, and plays help feed them.

But now there is more to it, and Shuni will be here very soon—likely in some kind of state if he did end up meeting Lord Crow—and Lucien needs to decide what to do once Shuni gets here.

[Please leave suggestions for Lucien in the comments.]

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Lucien only hesitates one brief moment over his decision. He truly doesn’t want to miss the chance to have one of the Lords speak with him, and knows it might be a once in a lifetime opportunity… 

But he wants to know what Katarin was talking about more than that. He just has no idea about any of the things she’s been saying, and the information might be important later, given that it’s tied to the dreams. Important for Lord Crow, for himself, even for Shuni. After all, he’s decided to talk to Shuni honestly later, and shouldn’t he get as much information as he can for that?

He sighs, flexing his arms now that the costumers have finished cramming him back into Shuni’s shirt and taking Logos’s costume away for cleaning. “I’ll go drinking with you, of course,” he says. “I agree, we should talk.”

They finish up, and she smiles at him, tossing her hair back over her shoulder and offering him her arm. “Shall we, then?”

“Let’s,” he drawls, and takes it.

They head out into the night and he tries not to look around for anyone—anything—who might be watching from the shadows, concerned that he’d make eye contact with one of the Lords and then everything would go topsy-turvy from there. Katarin doesn’t start talking right away, and he himself waits until they’re well away from the theatre before clearing his throat. “You asked before if I was the… person you were looking for, or if it was Lucien.”

“Right,” she says softly. “Do you have more of an answer now?”

“Well, that’s complicated,” he says. “You see, I’m Lucien.”

He felt her tense, and she slowly turns her head to look at him. She squints, searching his features more closely. “What the fuck,” she says indelicately. “How in the world above and below—”

“It wasn’t easy,” he admits. “But we look so much alike and we’ve studied each other’s roles. I caught Lord Crow’s attention last night, and Shuni wanted to… defer extra attention from me.”

She lets out a breath between her teeth. “And you’re still sane? Never mind, I don’t want to know.” With her free hand, she rubs her face. “So is it you?”

“It’s not me. It might be Shuni, but if it is, I don’t know, because I don’t know what it is,” he says, trying to rein in his impatience. “Listen, though, you’ve revealed enough that you might as well come out with it. Please, Katarin, please. Explain.”

“…Let’s drink,” she says softly.

They get a private booth in the Fox’s Den, and Katarin orders a pitcher of beer, and the two of them pour. Katarin sighs, runs her hands through her hair, and says, “According to the symptoms given in the prophecy, I believe the play is being hijacked into a ritual to create a new Lord, and it may destroy the existing Lords in the process,” she says flatly. “Maybe even the world. The potentials are people marked for or by change, and the dreams, I think, are showing what the world may be like after this one person gains the power. They’re showing that it’s impending. I thought it might be Shuni who was doing it.”

He sat back in his seat, stunned. “Wait, what? How are Shuni or I marked for change?”

“It’s in your names,” she says. “Io-morphe. Shuni.”

“Shuni means ‘change’?”

“Changed, but yes,” she says gloomily. 

“What about you?”

“I’m a changeling,” she says bluntly. “I was switched at birth. That’s why I know about the prophecy. The folks underneath told it to me.”

“What the fuck, Kat.” He doesn’t know what else to even say to that.

“It is what it is,” she says, like that wasn’t a strange revelation even for an actor. “So the three of us are involved in change, in our names and in what we are. So if the one who’s started things in motion isn’t me, and if it isn’t you, it must be Shuni.”

Lucien stares at his mug, stomach clenched. “Wait, you think someone’s doing it deliberately? It’s not just …happening? Not just… the prophecy happening to us?”

“It can’t happen accidentally. Someone’s set it on this course,” Katarin says. She takes a long drink. “We’re caught up in it by our nature because we all have the potential, but someone has triggered this, and that someone will try to reap the benefits in the finale. So I guess it’s Shuni, like I thought.”

Lucien hesitates. Shuni obviously does have something going on, but… this? Why would he be so hungry for an existing Lord if so? Yet Lucien can’t disprove it, either, he doesn’t think. 

His mind is whirling. He needs more information, and has no idea what questions to even ask.

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A dedication to a Lord isn’t something that should be done without thought behind it, and is complicated even more now by Lucien pretending to be Shuni.

Of course, Lucien pretending to be Shuni is something he has already dedicated to Lord Crow—at least in his heart, even if he can’t announce it out loud. They’ve done it so Shuni can benefit from Lord Crow, so Lord Crow can be intrigued by their choices, so they can together present a different play to Lord Crow…

But it means he can’t just decide who to dedicate the duel scene to without considering who Shuni would dedicate it to, as he’s currently filling Shuni’s shoes. Certainly, Lord Crow is again an easy option, since Lucien already knows Shuni is interested in Lord Crow. But that’s what Shuni wants, not necessarily what Shuni would do. And Shuni already told Lucien once that he prefers to spread the dedications around during the performance, to not leave a lord out.

There’s something else he has to consider, too: if it would upset Lord Crow to be shunned? Lucien is sure that Lord Crow must have already figured out the deception, and he doesn’t know how Lord Crow would react to his dedicating it to someone else. And yet—Lucien can’t think it would offend him. That’s why he agreed to this plan in the first place, isn’t it? Backing out halfway through might even be more offensive, since it would show a lack of commitment to the role, to the game.

The best thing would be to dedicate it to another Lord, then. And who knows—given the things he’s been hearing, and the strange cracked and empty landscape of his dreams, maybe having Lord Vine’s attention is a good idea.

Katarin has finished Revelle’s shouted speech at Logos, and he sneers, raising his sword. “Oh, you speak big words now, Lady,” he says. “But I’ll best you. To first blood! Whoever’s blood first hits this dirt, may it water the flowers and blossom new beginnings.” That last is said lewdly, with a thrust of his hips, implying the underlying nature of Logos’s desire.

They fight; it’s choreographed, and while he hasn’t gone through Shuni’s steps before, he finds he’s doing it preternaturally well. He’s watched them often enough, he supposes, that he’s managed to memorize it without even trying.

Logos is stabbed in the arm, and withdraws, glowering. Either can be the winner of this duel, depending on how the audience is reacting; Katarin is in fine form today, and the crowd was clearly rooting for Revelle. He snarls Logos’s threats to have her eventually, one way or another, and limps off.

Soon enough, it moves on to the murder scene; it’s played differently, this time, and Arcane slays Logos—dedicating it, of course, to Lord Crow. Lucien is sort of relieved; the hundreds of potential scene combinations after this are only ones he’s practiced as Arcane, so his learning them well largely relied on Arcane’s survival. He’d sat in on rehearsals, of course, so he could have muddled through if things had gone differently, but he isn’t sure he could manage two layers of roles past this point in the play.

He returns to the green room, and although he’s currently alone there, he tries to think of what Shuni does in his down time. There’s a book he’s been reading, Lucien remembers, and goes to pick it up; he’s launched into a story in progress where he doesn’t know anybody’s motivations or backstory, but reading it at least won’t raise any doubts from any other cast members who come and go.

And it’s just as well; Frederik comes in, and seems to hover around, trying to get his attention without demanding it, but Lucien has no idea about Frederik and Shuni’s relationship to each other, and keeps his nose in the book. He’s just pretending to read it at this point, lost in thought instead. He’s worried about Shuni. After the strange things Katarin was saying, and her implication that other people might be having dreams as well, Shuni may have more going on than Lucien previously knew.

He wants to help if he can, and decides that he’ll make sure to talk to Shuni about all of this.

Finally, the play is done; he is called down for his bows, and as they’re hustled off stage after, Lucien catches Shuni’s arm. “I need to talk to you soon,” he whispers. “Alone.”

Shuni gives him a slightly wild expression. “Sure,” he says, “But later, okay? I can come by your place around dawn? I want to go out and see if Lord Crow does show up.”

That’s fair enough, Lucien supposes, letting Shuni’s sleeve slide through his fingers and staring after him. From Shuni’s perspective, that’s what they’ve done this for. But… Lucien wants to see Lord Crow too, and if Lord Crow has figured out the switch, it might be either of them that Lord Crow approaches tonight. Or, if Shuni gets rejected, might he not want comfort?

He’s watching Shuni hurriedly get out of costume and into Lucien’s old clothes, almost hindering the costumers with his attempts to help, when Katarin also comes up on him. “We should talk more,” she says, smiling, seeming more relaxed now the play’s done. “Want to go get a drink again?”

Lucien holds his arms out, letting the costumers work at stripping him out of Logos’s clothes, and hesitates. He still sort of wants to wait for Shuni or Lord Crow. And also… what if Lord Vine wants to talk to him now? Sure, it isn’t common for any Lord to call someone aside, of course, but after last night, what if they do choose to? Could Lucien afford to miss that chance?

Still, he is curious about what Katarin had been asking about, and he can probably reveal the switch once they’ve left the theatre, since they’re doing this only for the one night. If he’s himself again, he may be able to talk to her honestly.

But he knows he can really only pick one option tonight: Go out separately in the hopes of attracting one of the Lords, follow Shuni to see what happens with Lord Crow and comfort him in case of rejection, or go with Katarin.

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Well, this is awkward at best, Lucien thinks frantically even as he lifts his brow with Shuni’s practiced insouciance. He has no idea what Katarin’s prying question even means, and that would be fine if he were Lucien tonight. But he’s having to pretend to be Shuni instead.

The easiest option is just to let her in on what’s going on. And perhaps she deserves it; she is his costar as much as Shuni is, after all, and they are building this play to its inevitable and unrevealed end together.

But he’s already committed to be Shuni, and revealing himself to her would run counter to their agreed plan in its very nature. Besides, he’s not sure Shuni would reveal the truth if asked so directly. So he cannot tell her the truth, either.

Lucien eyes her thoughtfully. She’s fully costumed, in Revelle’s breeches and beautifully embroidered blue and gold coat that she wears in the first scene, when she tries to fight the duel against Logos on her own behalf. (He, as Logos, is far less fancy in a simple black long coat and trousers, ever the lurking villain.) Her long brown hair is tied back in a queue, to stay out of the way during the fight—Katarin’s actual hair is blond, but they have several wigs backstage to help style her to match the script. He makes her wait, watches her impatience grow, and then murmurs, “What if it is me?”

Her eyes narrow. “Then I need to know what you’re doing here.”

One way or another, he needs more details about what she’s asking about. Even if he manages to put her off entirely, that’ll just make her his problem tomorrow, when she goes to ask the same question of Lucien—in other words, himself, again. And if he doesn’t put her off, she’ll keep on after Shuni, and he at least owes Shuni an informed warning.

“I’m performing in the play, of course,” he says, gesturing at the curtain. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Have you been having the dreams?” she asks, intent.

“I may have,” he says. He’s certainly been having odd dreams, and he wonders for the first time if Shuni is too. “Have you?”

“I think anyone involved in this should be having it,” she hisses softly. “Listen, I just need to know which side you’re on about this. Are you infiltrating to stop it, or infiltrating to cause it?”

Shit. This is getting into too many questions that he can’t begin to answer. “Stop what? And what about you?”

“The change,” she says. “You know. The change.”

He wants to respond ‘what change?’, but knows that it will give away that he doesn’t know anything. And she’s so adamant that ‘it’ is one of them, so if she is right, it must be Shuni. He casts around for an excuse to end the conversation— 

And finds one. His and Shuni’s understudy, Frederik, is eyeing them suspiciously. And no wonder—he might not usually be onstage (after all, he doesn’t look enough like either of them for the director to want to work in a full twist with a triplet), but he has studied both his and Shuni’s performances nonstop. If anyone’s likely to recognize something is wrong, it’s Frederik.

Lucien nods towards Frederik, as subtly as he can. “Not now. Prying eyes. Besides, we have to get started.”

She looks frustrated, but does not retort, just throws her hands up and walks away. He turns and looks directly at Frederik, giving him a smile and a shrug, like who knows what’s bothering her now?

Frederik shrugs back, turning to watch her go.

And then it’s time for the play to begin. While the first scene goes on, he runs through Logos’s lines in his head, trying to get into a character he’s only observed and played off of before, not one whose interiority he’s tried to live. Soon enough, the second scene begins. Katarin is on first, Revelle entering and monologuing to the audience about her freedom, and wanting to prove herself against Logos, and then it’s his turn to stride on with a sneer, facing the audience.

“It’s a duel she wants, and it’s a duel she’ll get,” he announces, staring up at the boxed seats. To his surprise, three of them are full again, the fourth once again empty. Lord Crow has returned, and is watching with apparent interest. So has Lord Vine, who is visible this time, hair like ivy spilling out of the booth, a split smile with little baby’s breath teeth, eyes bright like fireflies, their skin’s texture all wrong. Lord the End has not returned, however; instead, the Moonlit Lord is there, glowing from her booth like a spotlight, pale and brilliant.

It occurs to him with surprise that even if he is not currently the lead, he can—and should—still dedicate his scene, his duel, to one of them. Their showing up for performances is rare enough that he had not thought any except Lord Crow would be here a second time, and has not planned what to do as a result.

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