[Please read the Instructions before jumping in]

Lucien freezes, unable to stop his instinctive reaction to that voice, that presence: a heady cocktail of fear, lust, and awe that keeps him unable to answer right away. His nerves strain in every direction under the weight of standing so close to one of the Lords, and it feels as though his heart is going to rip itself out of his chest and offer itself up.

Lord Crow waits patiently, still largely in shadow, only those hard, human-looking hands in their gloves visible where they overlap on his cane. They seem relaxed, as if he’s gripping it loosely only. The head of the cane is silver, an orb clutched in a crow’s claw.

One breath, another, and Lucien begins to come back together. Humans are resilient, both in what they are able to survive and in what they are able to deny, and both work together now to form a barrier of incredulity. This isn’t happening.

But it is happening, and Lord Crow is waiting for a reply. Lucien pulls together a character who can act in his place right now: while the real Lucien trembles, this show-Lucien is calm, confident: flattered, polite, but not so overeager that he will embarrass himself. “I would love to, Lord Crow,” he says, and bows. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time.”

A laugh like an entire flock of crows taking off at once. “Haaaave you?” Lord Crow steps forward into the light and offers Lucien his arm. Lucien cannot look directly at him—even if he focuses his eyes in that direction, he can’t quite see what’s there. Lord Crow is shaped approximately like a man: legs, torso, arms. It isn’t that his head is not human, and it’s not that his head is a crow’s head. It’s simply that all that Lucien can really register is feathers, and beaks, and glittering eyes, and wings, all crowding for space in his perception.

Lucien lowers his gaze. “If I may have a moment—”

He is going to ask to just excuse himself briefly, to go back and tell his fellow actors that something’s come up, but Lord Crow’s posture changes slightly, impatient, and Lucien changes his mind at once. It would be the polite thing to do, but he can tell right now it’s one thing or the other, and if he goes back inside, Lord Crow will be gone. 

Well, he knows where Shuni and Katarin are headed; if he survives the night, he can meet them there.

He draws the character around himself again. “—a moment to gather myself. I wasn’t expecting to encounter one of the exalted in an alley.” He tucks his hand into the proffered arm.

Another laugh at that, Lord Crow relaxing. “I’m an alley-dwelling sort of creature,” he rasps. “Let’s walk by the water, shall we?”

Lucien wonders what others will see, if they are able to see the two of them at all. “Of course,” he says, because there’s no other answer. This is what he’s wanted. 

They step out of the alley and down the street to walk along the riverside. The moon glitters off it like a watchful eye, and Lord Crow’s arm crunches and rustles under Lucien’s grip. Lucien draws a breath. One of them needs to start a conversation. “So, what brings you by my alley this evening?”

“Curiosity,” Lord Crow says, but there’s an odd tone to that crackling voice, as much as Lucien can tell such things. “You caught my eye, but you knew that, didn’t you? I suppose you must have questions.”

“I do,” he says, although he doesn’t know why he’s expected to have questions at all. “I’ve long wondered about you—about who you are, not what, I mean. I know the Lords are beyond my understanding.”

“Who…? You know my portfolio, I’m sure.”

Lucien pushes forward. He can pretend calm, at least. “I’ve as much idea as anyone, but is that it? You don’t have your own likes or dislikes? Hobbies?”

“I like…” Lord Crow’s head tilts, Lucien is fairly sure. “I like play. I like the discovery of fresh corpses, and the taste of flesh, and fascinating trinkets, and people who shine. I love a challenge, a puzzle. I hate when things are too easy, and people are too eager. I cannot be tamed. Is that what you mean?”

It isn’t a portfolio, even if it’s not what most people would answer. “I think it’s a place to start,” Lucien says with a smile.

“And what about you?” Lord Crow asks. He… ducks? Swoops? …and picks up a pebble, sending it skipping across the river. “What do you like? What do you dislike? What are your hobbies?” And then, oddly, “And do you think that dreams have meaning?”

[Please leave suggestions for Lucien in the comments.]

[Next Day]

[Previous Day]

[Please read the Instructions before jumping in]

When better to follow one’s heart than when a knife is in one’s hand? Lucien looks at the knife for a long moment, hearing the shuffling silence of the audience, and then flings it from him so it spins across the stage—the indicator that it’s his character Arcane who should get murdered. 

“I cannot kill,” he cries, sinking to his knees and putting his face in his hands. “No jealousy could lead me to harm Revelle, nor my brother Logos. I will try to make amends with them both, and if I succeed, all will be well. But if I fail, and if it means that crows will peck my flesh—” He draws a deep breath. Here is the meaning to it, the ritual, the sacrifice. He tilts his head up, as if Arcane is looking to the heavens, and he sees a glint of light from Lord Crow’s booth that tells him they have made eye contact. His heart is pounding. “—then so must it be, and at least my body will do at least some good, though my heart could not.”

But it doesn’t feel right to leave it at that. If there’s a death on stage, it feels like not giving something to the End will just be an insult. He adds another line: “And if I die, let Logos not celebrate my death! If he does, let him meet his end likewise—” Another electric moment, a chill, a sense of impending calamity. He pushes on. “This is the curse I lay upon him. I will not kill him myself, but if my death brings him joy, I pray that death will come for him in the end.” He’s horribly aware that he’s leaving Lord Vine out, and adds a brief, “Yet if I live, may we all grow from here.” It’s not enough to be a true dedication, not knowing they’ve just planned a double murder on stage, but perhaps it will prevent offense…

Perhaps it will not. That too might be fun, in some masochistic sense.

With that line done, Lucien assumes a position of prayer, and the play moves on. Revelle enters, spots Arcane in prayer, and condemns him for a weak man, one who will not stand up to Logos, and if he will not, then she will have to free herself from him. There is a horrible tearing sensation as the stage knife strikes him. It doesn’t pierce him—they are designed to retract into the hilt—but it feels like his flesh is being ripped from him, and as he falls over he sees the strange, inhuman face of Lord Crow, revealed from its cover of darkness, craning over the edge of his box seat to watch the murder happen.

Revelle laments her fate, but is not able to dispose of Arcane’s body before Logos enters. Logos is ecstatic to see this—he takes it as proof that Revelle loves him, and was eliminating the rival—and attempts to woo her until Revelle, in rage, kills him as well. It sounds to Lucien that she picked up Lucien’s hints and dedicated this death to Lord the End, and he hopes that later in the play, now that Revelle is in the lead role, her actress Katarin thinks to steer things toward Vine so one of the Lords isn’t entirely left out.

Revelle drags both bodies off stage, and Lucien and Shuni give each other pleased nods, then head to the green room. Shuni picks up a book and curls up in a chair to read it, so Lucien gives him space, takes up his prop sword and practices a fight scene that will appear in a later scene, should the play get to it in another run. He gets the sense he’s being watched, but when he looks around, there’s just Shuni deep in his book, and birds backlit by the moon on the rooftop across the way, and he tries to ignore the sensation.

Finally, when the second last act has finished and the play has reached its climactic pause that will be the final scene until the last day, they receive the call for their bows. Both head back in to take the stage again before a cheering crowd. The box seats are empty at this point, to Lucien’s relief; he’s never seen a time when one of the Lords stayed around once the acting is finished.

The show now over, they return again to the dressing rooms, and let the costumers peel them out of their clothes, scrub the makeup from them. Katarin leans over and says, “Good job tonight. I wasn’t entirely expecting to be handed the lead in front of three Lords, of course.”

Lucien winces. “Sorry.”

“No, it makes sense we’d need a double murder when those two are in attendance.” She stretches. The costumers have ripped her gown from her, and are uninterested in her day clothes, so she begins applying those to herself. “Shuni, Lucien, you want to go out for drinks after this? The Fox’s Den is serving until dawn.”

“I’m game,” Shuni says easily. “I missed the last half of the show. Perhaps you can fill us in.”

Lucien finds himself afraid she will. When he knows the details of a show he had no control over, he obsesses over how the next one should go, and it interferes with his sleep. He knows it’d be a good idea, however, so he puts off deciding. “I’m not sure how another drink will settle right now,” he says. “I’ll get some air in the back alley, then let you know.” 

“Suit yourself! You know it’ll take me a while to dress.”

Lucien gives the others a nod, and puts his hat on, then opens the door into the alley out back and leans against the wall, staring up at the moon and drawing a deep breath.

He very quickly realizes he’s not alone, and for a moment, incredulous, he fears a mugging. But the man swathed in shadow is an odd shape, too tall, inhuman, and the cane that he taps on the cobbles as he steps forward is familiar. So, although Lucien hasn’t heard it before, is his voice: A raucous, hoarse caw of a voice.

“Are you free?” Lord Crow asks. “Would you care to take a walk with me on this fine night?”

[Please leave a suggestion for Lucien in the comments.]

[Next Day]

[Previous Day]

[Please read the Instructions before jumping in]

Which of the Lords…? Normal folk try to avoid their attention, but normal folk don’t get on stage before them. Lucien bites his lower lip. He knows where his heart is drawn—to Lord Crow the Carrion Eater. Lord Crow has always been of interest to someone like Lucien: a night lord, a lord of lurking in places where one shouldn’t, of cleaning up others’ messes and laughing about it too loud for others’ comfort.

Still, it wasn’t as if the other Lords weren’t fascinating in their own right. Lord Vine was a wild and driven force of nature, and he’d always been intrigued by Lord the End in ways that scared him to think about. He wanted to know more about that mysterious masked figure, whether or not he wanted their attention.  

Shuni has led him to the dressing room, where the centipede-like creatures who work backstage undress them both and pull costume pieces onto them, whispering to each other as they work. Lucien tries to ignore the scratching feeling of their hands all over him. “What about you?” he asks, putting the question back instead of answering it. “Whose eyes will you try to meet as you give your lines tonight?”

Shuni laughs, the sound harsh. “Me? I’m not the lead,” he reminds Lucien, but there is an edge to his voice, hungry. “I don’t know who. It’s easier when just one shows up, isn’t it? Then it’s only natural to act to one of them. It’s not a choice. Perhaps I’ll try to spread myself thin. That’s the safest option, isn’t it?”

“You know it is,” Lucien says, and he knows he won’t do it. Trying to please too many can result in displeasing all.

The costumers finish their work and the bell chimes. The audience is being let into the theater. Lucien’s anxiety swells, and is swallowed into that peace that comes over him. It’s time.

“Well, whatever you pick, break a leg,” Shuni says. He whisks himself backstage where the others are mingling already, and Lucien follows.

They can’t talk back here, not with the audience already filling the seats outside. Instead, he focuses on the line of light where the curtain does not quite meet the stage, and steps out onto it to take his position.

The play is an odd thing, as all plays are, a mishmash of planned story beats and studied lines, and of pure improvisation to move the story between the beats. It has to be like that when Lords can be in the audience at any time, where everything that happens becomes something you can offer to them as a sacrifice or, alternately, which might offend their sensibilities. An actor needs to be able to adjust on the fly, not perform praises to the sun when the Moonlit Lord is present, blinding all from her booth; not speak longingly of the coldness of the earth if Lord the Endless is here instead of her sibling. 

The actors are needles, their characters the thread whose motivations stitch these patches of potential scenes together, so that each performance makes sense and has meaning regardless of the differences from one to another.

The curtain rises and Lucien launches into his character Arcane’s opening lament, his gaze searching past the lights. The audience on the lower levels is like a single living beast, shifting and breathing, occasionally coughing or whispering. And on the upper level—

As Shuni had told him, three of the four boxes are occupied. Lord Crow sits far left, hard to see in the shadows there, but Lucien makes out feathered hands folded casually over the head of a cane, lights reflecting off a long, black beak. Lord Vine is in the center left, figure completely buried behind all the greenery spilling out, flowers open to the stage like hearing trumpets. The center right box is empty, and the rightmost box is full of something that Lucien cannot look at directly, teeth and packed dirt and a presence that almost makes him falter his lines.

Almost.

It goes well. For monologues or asides, he focuses on that figure he can nearly see in the leftmost box. Arcane’s twin, Logos, reveals the dread news of their father’s passing, and Arcane attempts to negotiate the budding love affair between himself and the beautiful Revelle, while Logos longs to seize her for his own.

There are many ways these scenes can go. And so, when the knife appears, and it is time for the murder, Lucien is left with a decision. Will Arcane be the murderer—and which character will Arcane murder if so—or will Arcane be the one murdered? And which Lord should he dedicate the death to? 

His heart says Crow, of course, but any of the three might enjoy it the murder, depending on how it is done.

[Please leave a suggestion for Lucien in the comments.]

[Next Day]

[Previous Day]

[Please read the Instructions before jumping in]

He hasn’t done enough to calm down, Lucien can see that much as he looks at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t even look like himself. Oh, the physical is there — his soft red hair, the hard angles of his face, the dark, dark circles under his eyes, too heavy for how young he is. He’s only in his twenties; how long, he wonders, can he live like this?

No, he can’t let himself think that. He needs confidence. He’s about to step out on stage, where every eye—so, so many eyes—will be on him. He pulls a face in the mirror and is slightly relieved when it pulls the same one back. It’s him, but it needs to become a better him.

Confidence, as always, comes from the outside. He gets the kettle on, and sits back down in front of his mirror. Normally he’d wait until he was at the theatre to put on his stage makeup, but he does it now instead: rouges his cheeks and his lips, lines his eyes to make them stand out. Human features blur on the stage without measures like this. He could be anyone without it, but he must be his character.

Lucien slicks his hair back and puts his hat back on top of it. The kettle is boiling, and so he pours it over into a cup to make his coffee. He stirs sugar in, hesitates, and then adds a splash of something harder. Not too much, but he needs to relax, needs to feel inspired. Besides, depending on which of the Lords are there, he might please them by appearing with just an edge of intoxication. Poisons fall under the portfolio of several Lords, after all.

He drinks his coffee and imagines the peace of the stage, the moment when he steps on and all the pre-stage fear falls away. The lights will be bright and hot; the crowd will be one living creature, breathing and recoiling on his command. And everything will be right. He trusts the other actors, trusts them to do their part as always.

Finishing his drink, Lucien smacks his cheeks, the rouge hiding the flush he knows the drink has brought to them. He slicks his lucky charm into a pocket—an old brass key that he has never found the use for, but which he held onto through that terrible time and so has become some sort of symbol to him—and heads out the door.

When he walks in through the actors’ entrance, he is greeted by what he first takes as another mirror, but when it raises its hand and he doesn’t, he realizes it’s just Shuni. He’s still not sure which of them was cast first, him or Shuni, but Shuni looks enough like him that they could be twins. Of course, that’s useful in the show, but it’s never stopped being slightly strange.

Shuni comes over, draping his arms over Lucien’s shoulders and kissing both his cheeks. “Cutting it close, aren’t you?” he murmurs. “Let’s move along quickly, now. You should know that there are going to be three Lords watching today.”

“Three of them?” Lucien murmurs back. Everything worked; his heart is calm. “Which ones?”

“Lord Crow the Carrion Eater, Lord Vine of the New Growth, and Lord the End,” Shuni says. He slides his grip into a casual arm around Lucien’s shoulders, leading him back. “Is there one of them you want to please most? To speak to? You’re spoiled for choices tonight, but I suppose that has its own risks.”

[Please leave a suggestion for Lucien in the comments.]

[Next Day]

[Previous Day]

[Please read the Instructions before jumping in]

Lucien Iomorphe wakes with a start, alone in his narrow room. For a moment, he doesn’t know where he is. The air is heavy, the sky dark. Long shadows crawl across his room as the moon stares in through his curtainless window, creating shapes that seem too real, too solid.

Trying to calm his racing heart, Lucien scrubs sleep from his eyes. He cannot fully remember the dream he was having, but he knows it was a dry dream, a cracked dream, a dream where nothing could grow, and because nothing could grow nothing could live, and because nothing could live, nothing could die.

An unpleasant dream. 

He dismisses it from his mind. Tonight is going to be busy; the play opens tonight. It will run unfinished every night until the conditions are met and the final act can be performed. It’s going to be such a run, he thinks, trying to distract himself. It’s full of things the audience will adore. Mistaken identities, betrayal, love, monsters—always monsters, of course. What’s a play without a monster? And more besides, things he won’t know about until it’s time for them to happen.

He needs to get dressed. He needs to get ready—from what he’s heard, several of the Lords might even be in attendance, and he does not dare put on a poor show in front of them due to something as commonplace as dreams. He is an actor; the play must go on.

Still he hesitates on doing the things he’ll need to do—food, drink, even clothing all seem like something for someone else right now, not him. He walks naked to the window, throws it open so he can see out properly. The lack of curtains might let the moonlight in, but the thick distorted glass makes it impossible to see the outside world.

The lamps are being lit outside, the faint smell of gas fumes and ozone almost lost in the heavy, smog-tinted scent of drizzling rain. The moon hides its face, clouds traveling back across it and carrying a thicker drizzle with it; he leans out almost far enough to fall onto the slate shingles beneath him and lets the dirty rain trickle down his skin, bead in his hair. For a moment, he is only balancing on his hands, on the tension of his extended arms and tensed muscles, and if he leans any further he will tumble straight down into the streets, naked and, presumably, broken.

He eases himself back into his room and dresses in a suit of reasonable quality. He drinks some water, eats a cold meal, and then takes his time doing up his necktie, finding a hat. 

Lucien’s heart still hasn’t calmed. He stares at himself in the mirror, convincing himself it is time to go.

[Please leave a suggestion for Lucien in the comments. If nothing else, please
describe him:  one physical trait, and/or one emotional one.
For example, I might suggest: He has curly brown hair and is reckless.]

[Next Day]