thecapitol | (no subject)

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Who| Merlyn and OPEN
What| A new arrival stalks around the place and grumps at people
Where| Training Center
When| A few days after the Crowning
Warnings/Notes| Aggressive snark?

"Archimedes! Archimedes! Drat it all, where is that bird?"

The voice had the resonance of age, but none of the weakness. It was audible through the halls of the Training Center long before its owner came into view. Even in the ridiculous pyjamas his new hosts seemed to have given him, Merlyn cut a striking figure, if a rather scruffy one; he strode through the place with an air of righteous indignation, flyaway white hair streaming behind him and eyes glittering with purpose.

They were, of course, entirely out of line to have brought him here. That, Merlyn had no question of, and he fully intended to bring it up with his... hosts? Captors? Whoever they might be, he intended to talk to them just as soon as possible. But other tasks currently took priority. Tasks such as finding his friend, and changing back into some clothes that fitted him better. They had taken his hat, for goodness' sake! What kind of civilised person took a man's hat? His head felt naked without it, his bald spot prominently on display. How was a man supposed to get any respect when he looked as if he'd just lost his way back from hospital? It was really very rude. Then again, what could one possibly expect from the kind of barbarians who considered any part of this to be in line with reason and civilisation?

Yes, he would certainly have a great deal to say to them later on. For now, though, he stalked through the unfamiliar corridors as if he owned them, glaring at the architecture as if the light fittings had personally insulted him. His priority, he had decided, had to be finding out whether Archimedes had managed to keep up with him in the journey here, and perhaps - while he was at it - just where "here" was.

It was in the pursuit of that second goal that, when he saw someone nearby, he strode over to them, a bony figure with a straight back, a very long beard, and frankly impressive eyebrows. He had the look to him of the schoolmaster, the professor, someone to be trusted and looked up to. Someone who could be relied upon to help the world make sense, if only somebody would have the common courtesy to give him the pieces to its puzzle.

"Sedemihcra ot srewsna, rethgilb yrenro. Lwo na nees uoy evah? Ereh regnarts a m'I."

It was very rude of them, he considered, not to have answered him already.

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Cullen was just returning from his morning exercise in the training room, still smelling faintly of sweat and soap, when he encountered the old man. He wasn't unused to hearing other languages, though he didn't actually know more than a few words of Orlesian, and one or two vague phrases of elvish himself. But he'd never heard any language that sounded more like utter gibberish than this.

Not that he would say that aloud, not to a man who seemed so genuinely annoyed already.

"I'm sorry, ser, I only speak the common speech," he said, his brows coming together in vague concern. He must've been a newcomer, Cullen decided. He had that air about him.

Merlyn was not easily startled, but that startled him. Blinking owlishly, he dug in the pocket of his pyjamas, pulling out a pair of brass spectacles, and settled them on his nose. "Hmph," he said, squinting at the younger man, irritation apparently giving away to curiosity. Then, again, "Hmph. Fascinating. I suppose, really, I should have seen this coming. Hm."

Shaking his head in some amazement, he removed his pince-nez again, polished them briefly on his sleeve, and slipped them back into his pocket. "Well. In any case, as I was saying. I'm a stranger here, and I'm looking for my friend. If you see a rather self-centred bundle of feathers who calls himself Archimedes, do point him in my direction, won't you? There's a good fellow." Then, apparently to himself: "Quite fascinating. My goodness."

The mention of birds is ironic, which is pleasing to Dave, because he's walking about the tribute tower with his pet bird perched on his head. It's small and red and chirping all manners of filthy words softly to itself as it rearranges his hair.

Dave is slouched, hands in his pockets as he shuffles along to his vague destination. Truthfully, he's long since forgotten where he was meant to be, but he generally finds something interesting along the way to nothing. Today he finds this guy. This guy who he assumes is crazy and his face reflects as much as his brows raise over his shades.

"Wha-" He starts, squinting behind his sunglasses. "Oh my god, Dumbledore? Big fan. Don't go anywhere, I have a question for you." He holds his hands out to stop the man, like he's going anywhere. "Look, I'm sixteen. I didn't get my letter when I was eleven, I'm just wondering- did it get lost? I had my bag packed for Hogwarts and everything, I'm not a muggle. I swear. I'm a Gryffindor, I think I could be Head Boy if you let me." He stops babbling for a moment, a brief moment, then he pipes up again.

"Wingardium Leviosa." He points at Merlyn, prompting his bird to fly from his head to perch on his finger instead with a soft chirp of shit.

Merlyn's eyes narrow a little, not on Dave, but on the bird. "Really, now," he tells it, with a shake of his head and a wag of his bony finger. "What on earth would your mother say? No, no, don't answer that. Just be a little more polite in future."

It's only then that he looks up at Dave, clearing his throat. "My dear boy, I'm afraid you have me mistaken for someone rather younger and almost certainly fictional. Dumbledore, indeed! I am Merlyn, thank you very much, and most certainly not one of these newfangled wand-waving dunderheads. Now, if you wouldn't mind, could you possibly tell me why in blue blazes everything is backwards?"

He's probably not helping the whole "crazy" assumption.

Cullen couldn't imagine what, apparently, was so fascinating about him. The scrutiny was somewhat disconcerting, as well, but he kept his composure - he'd had far worse, and continued to from the people of this world. His back was straight, and he made eye contact with the older man, not cowed by the air of authority he exuded.

"I'm afraid your, ah, feathered friend probably isn't here with you," he admitted with a frown. "They don't, as a rule, let us have anything from home."

"Well, firstly, Archimedes isn't a thing." Merlyn sniffed, clearly offended by the very idea. "And, for another, I should like to see how they would stop him from following me. I have personally found him remarkably difficult to shake." He frowned, looking down at himself, and quirked one eyebrow. "I suppose, then, that the chances of me finding my own clothes are rather slim. Well, it can't be helped. They could at least have left me my hat, though. I feel quite unlike myself without it, and besides, I was trying to incubate a sparrow egg in there."

"That... really doesn't seem to matter much to these people," Cullen admitted with a sigh. "Regardless of who or what he is, chances are, he's not here."

He didn't intend to argue about it, however, because he certainly was far from a perfect understanding of the circumstances of their arrival - it was beyond his comprehension how it was done, and Cullen wasn't a man in the habit of talking much about things he didn't understand.

"These... gamemakers, the ones who bring us here, seem to be decidedly lacking in compassion and empathy," he finished.

Somehow, the power of a stern finger waggle is enough to make even the most rebellious bird sheepish. It seems to shy away at the chiding, while Dave sort of just stands and stares with a bemused expression.

He tries not to look visibly disappointed by the elaboration, it's hardly Merlyn's fault that he isn't the illustrious Headmaster of Hogwarts Witchcraft and Wizardry. That said, he isn't denying being a wizard, and Dave zeroes in on that.

"Merlyn. No. You're definitely not made up." Everything about Camelot is, after all, historically accurate. He's assuming this is round-table, King Arthur friending Merlin anyway, but the question throws him for a loop. "Backwards? --Backwards. You were talking backwards? No. You've got it all turnways, dude. Everything here is normal- I mean. Other than the fact that we're all kind of pulled here to be murder-slaves." He just shrugs at that.

"I should say so!" Merlyn exclaimed, tsking in irritation. "I mean, good grief, they make those tin-canned dunderheads who call themselves knights seem quite sedate by comparison. I dread to think what kind of wrong-headed politics is behind this mess."

All things considered, he had to allow that if Archimedes wasn't here, perhaps that was for the best. The damnable bird would only have tried to stop him from ranting and railing at their captors, and Merlyn really did not have time for such foolishness.

He cleared his throat, smoothing his long beard down against his chest, and looked down at the younger man again. "I suppose you must have been here quite some time?"

Merlyn waves a hand dismissively. "Everything here is backwards, or I am. I don't suppose it much matters which, the practical upshot is the same. I suppose it does explain why I have no memory of this place," he adds thoughtfully, considering the unfamiliar surroundings with clear interest for a moment before his attention turns back to Dave.

"Well," he says, rather reproachfully, "if that's the direction time is going to run here, then I believe it's considered rather rude not to have introduced yourself yet." And he arches one spectacularly wispy eyebrow expectantly.

Now that the Crowning's been and gone, Iskierka's life has settled back into something more or less resembling a routine. Which is to say, she's mostly spending her time wandering wherever her interests should happen to take her. After all, most of the things in the training room aren't really built for quadripeds and short of that, there's not exactly a lot for her to do.

Conversation, on the other hand, is something that she's always willing to engage in, and if Merlyn is willing to casually walk up to something that's pretty clearly a dragon, that already puts him one up on some of the people she's met recently.

"If that is meant to be a language, it is not any that I know."

"How odd." The old wizard looks, not at her, but out of the window at the sky. Then, clearing his throat, he repeats, "Very odd indeed," and looks back at her. "Now, am I talking forwards, or are you hearing backwards? I assume the former, given the circumstances. Most curious."

If he's startled at seeing a dragon, he doesn't show it. He has, after all, lived a long and storied life. In the grand scheme of things, what's one dragon more or less? He has to admit, though, he's interested. It's been a while since he last heard tell of a dragon, and most of those he's read about have been decidedly larger than this.

But it seems very impolite to bring that up, and Merlyn is nothing if not polite. Well, actually, he is many things if not polite, primary among them being arrogant and sarcastic, but some beings have earned at least a veneer of manners, and he considers dragons among that class. So he reaches up to take his hat off to her, and, encountering only his own balding pate, scowls. "Blast it all! These fellows must have the manners of a gnat! You'll have to forgive me, I'm afraid. They've made it damnably difficult to be well-mannered around here."

Tin-canned dunderheads. Well, in all fairness, some of the knights Cullen has known in his life have absolutely fit that description. He certainly did at one time, though he likes to think he's a little less of a dunderhead these days.

"I believe several months, though it's difficult to be exactly certain. The arenas we're forced to fight in tend to - make one lose track of time, after a while."

"Oh, I am certain it is the first," Iskierka answers. True, she's only saying that because she's almost positive that it's quite impossible to hear backwards. Fortunately, she manages to scrape together enough dregs of politeness to not actually say as much this time, at least.

Instead, she turns quite happily to the rest of the conversation, offering a bob of her head in return at Merlyn's abortive tip of the hat.

"They have made it hard to be much of anything here, most of the time. It is not as if we cannot live, but there's ever so much change that needs to be made, if one means to make the most of it."

"Hm. Time does tend to slip away from one, I've found." Merly considered for a moment, then added dryly, "Whichever direction it happens to be slipping in. Goodness, how do you people live in just one direction? It's quite unreasonable."

"Oh, quite." Merlyn looks at their surroundings, clicking his tongue in irritation. "It seems quite thoroughly barbaric. I mean, really. What manner of crude so-and-so bureaucrat decided that deathmatches were a suitable solution to, well... anything? One can scarcely say it worked well for Rome." He shakes his head, smoothing his beard as if his irritation might have damaged it, and bows a little. "Merlyn, by the by. And you are?"

"I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, but you're definitely not right." Which is basically the same as telling someone they're wrong and he knows it, but it's better he breaks the news to him now before someone worse does it. Like Capitol scum or something, he knows he hates it when they tell him things anyway.

"Alright there, Captain Passive Aggression." He holds his hands up in surrender, bird still perched on his fingers when he does. "Dave Strider. I originate from Texas, did a little time in space and now I'm here and I represent District Nine or grain or whatever. I'm the Lord and Savior of wheat thins, you're welcome." He pauses to let that soak in before he continues. "Did they assign you to a District?"

Cullen raises an eyebrow at the man, carefully. "I think I've had my fill of time magic. Going in one direction is complicated enough."

"Apparently." Not that anyone has explained to him exactly what that means. He shakes his head, that simple movement somehow managing to convey all his weighty disdain for the concept. "District Two was the description I was given, and so District Two, I imagine, it is. For whatever it's worth, which, given the state of this place, I don't imagine is much." That subject dealt with to his satisfaction, he takes another look at Dave, squinting at him, then at the bird, then at Dave again. "Hm. Texas, eh? But you are certainly not of Native extraction, by the look of you. Nineteenth century? Perhaps not with a name like Dave. Twentieth? Twenty-first? Or am I entirely mistaken? It's so dashedly hard to tell, in a place as out of time as this, but you do remind me of the Americans of my youth."

"Well, of course you would think so. You were born that way." Merlyn, on the other hand, has never lived in just one direction before, and finds it extremely disorienting not to know what's going to happen. "A blind man will get used to living in the dark, too, but that doesn't mean the rest of us won't stub our toes if someone turns out the lights."

Cullen raises his eyebrows a little, but doesn't say anything. "As you say, ser. My name is Cullen - if you require any assistance, well - I'm far from an expert myself but I have been here a few months. I know my way around, at least."

"It is not too different from what we should have been doing at home," Iskierka answers. "Although I cannot say that it is a well-matched sort of thing, and I cannot see any war that it is meant to be helping besides."

But she can tolerate being asked to fight, even if she'd much rather not have to put up with the repeatedly dying. That's the worst part. Knowing that she should be able to win, should have won long ago and still hasn't. Victory snatched out of her claws when it should have been hers to claim.

But that's her own burden to bear for the time being.

"You may call me Iskierka."

"Splendid." Merlyn stroked his beard again, looking distant for a moment, then appeared to snap back to reality. "Yes, well, quite. I must say, this is a veritable maze of a place. Would you be so good as to direct me to whoever is in charge of it, Cullen?"

"Ah, well, here we fall into Orwell's world, I fear." Merlyn has that expression on his face, the one that says he's about to launch into a lecture if nobody stops him. "The perpetual war, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, really, if one stops to think about it in a dispassionate light, I suppose it's quite ingenious. A perpetual war without any loss to the working population. Importing your combatants from all sides, giving the people someone to love and someone to hate and some excuse for where all the money is going. Frame it all in pretty language and clever politics, and voilà, one Ingsoc society. The question is, to what end? What happened here, to make mass murder seem the more appealing? Or is it merely the natural end product of social evolution? I do believe there's a paper in that."

Shaking his head, he clears his throat and appears to pull himself back to reality. "Do excuse me. I am, I'm afraid, growing a little old and overused to my own company. My mind does tend to wander rather."

Cullen raises an eyebrow. "The man on top, as it were, isn't accessible to those of us brought here to fight," he points out quietly. "There is Lady Blackwood, in charge of, ahem, our comfort. Ser Falxvale, head of security."

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