Llyr's Court

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Llyr's Court

A sprawling mansion stretching out over four acres. The estate's gardens, mazes and various other uncultivated aspects compose a further twenty-four acres. Most notable among these gardens is the Ivy Labyrinth, seven acres of interconnecting passages that converge upon various landmarks; statues, fountains, kiosks and various other works of architecture among them. The house of Llyr's Court itself is made up of twenty-one rooms, not counting the West Wing, which burned to the ground two years ago and has not yet been rebuilt.





The Calais Family



Erin Calais

Erin is the eldest brother, although not the most powerful and thus, consequently, relegated to a lesser position than he might otherwise have held. He has never quite forgiven Rynn for displacing him. He wanders the house as he will, but sometimes disappears into the remains of the burnt-out West Wing for long periods.



Cian Calais

Cian is the second-oldest brother, a notorious wildcard around the manor. Before the fire, he was infamous for his (often successful) attempts upon the various housemaids's chastity. He rarely enters into his sibling's quarrels unless, by doing so, he will serve himself. Most of the time, Cian can be found roaming the grounds, or in the observatory, where he sleeps.



Aedan Calais

The third son. Although he is not the oldest, he carries himself with a sense of both physical and mental maturity. Were he stronger than Rynn, he would be considered, hands-down, the best choice for leader of the Calais household. Aed appears to hold no grudge against any of siblings, but it is difficult to tell what his opinions of their actions are. He spends most of his time in the library, researching methods of creating simulacra. Reads Tarot cards.



Rynn Calais

The head of the family. He has something of a reckless streak, and a temper that is not readily apparent. He is the only one who ventures regularly outside the Calais manor. He is sixteen, and Liesse's younger twin.



Liesse Calais

The 'Princess of Llyr's Court'. She is not very gifted, but has been placed under Rynn's protection as long as he remains alive. She prefers to spend most of her time in the hedge maze of Llyr's Court, or in her greenhouse at the center of the labyrinth.



Mary Calais

The youngest of the Calais household, now deceased. Died at thirteen.



Faye Calais

Wife of Aleric Calais. Now deceased.



Aleric Calais

Former head of the Calais household. Now deceased. The cat is Astor & the boy is Rynn.

Family Timeline

Faye and Aleric are married at a relatively young age (17 and 20, respectively.) It is an arranged marriaged; Faye is brought over from an Irish witching family as per arranged by Aleric Sr.
(Aleric's father is not relevant for our purposes, save that he was a cruel man and several of our children's uncles did not make it to adulthood for this reason. His death was long and painful and well-deserved.)
Aleric was determined that they should have a large family. He himself was a seventh son, and fantasized of fulfilling an old legend. In the same year of their marriage, Faye gave birth to a male child, Erin. The next year, Cian; two years beyond, Aedan. The children were prodigies in all areas of study, and Aleric was determined to raise them in all of the correct traditions of the Calais family.
All of this changed when Liesse and Rynn were born. The process of carrying twins ripped Faye apart. The birth was premature, and for weeks afterwards the father would not see his children. They were cared for by the midwife that Faye had enlisted.
Then, abruptly and without warning, Aleric abandoned his family. He was gone for several weeks. When he returned, he had a woman with him.
He did not acknowledge his own children. Their rooms were relegated to the east wing of Llyr's Court. Occasionally, the two lovers could be seen walking in the flowering, then-bountiful gardens or flitting through the well-kept hedge maze. Then, the woman gave birth to a child. They named her Mary. Erin and Cian swore to hate her instantly. It didn't matter; for three years, they hardly saw her. Three years is a long time for your only contact to be a nursemaid. The children formed a sort of war-like alliance against the West Wing of the House. They were pleasantly surprised when they awoke one night to smell it burning. (The children didn't alert anyone--they all gathered around the window to watch the flames until they heard screams, and the nursemaid finally came to fetch them.) They were rushed out of the house, but it didn't matter; the building's architecture had been long ago with wards in such a way that the house had certain 'cut-off' sections with the intent to contain damage in the event of earthquake or fire. The West Wing was one of these 'cut-offs'.

A year later Mary Calais perished in unspecified circumstances.

First Floor

Second Floor

 

[Rynn Calais]

Liesse was in the gardens.
It was the first time she had been outside the house in months, and only because of her brother's absence. Aedan, her caretaker while Rynn was gone, hated being inside all day. He was out in the gazebo now, watching her from a distance while laying out his Tarot deck. He'd been throwing down spreads for almost two hours now, shaking his head and frowning over each one.
Liesse gathered her tattered, muddy skirts around her and waited in the grass.  

[Rynn Calais]

In the gazebo, Aedan looked up and sighed at the sight of Liesse playing on the lawn, like a small child. He stood, swept his cards gracefully into one hand, and called to her. "Liesse, come inside. It's getting dark." His tone was coaxing and gentle; out of all his brothers, he was the only one who remained capable of such softness. Turning her head towards him, Liesse got to her feet and padded along, up onto the walkway and towards Aedan. He took her hand when she reached him, and led her inside.  

[Rynn Calais]

She was in her rooms when the storm hit.
The sky had been perfectly clear only moments before, when Aedan had led her up the stairs and locked her, carefully, into her quarters. They didn't dare leave the door open anymore, not after the last incident. She was lucky they hadn't boarded up the windows, or so Erin had said. She had heard him snarling at night, at Aedan and Cian, when Rynn was gone.
Wind lashed out at her windows, buffeting the antique glass like it wanted in.
Liesse closed her mind and listened to the music.
She listened to the blood of the red-haired girl and her companions, her would-be lovers--and Rynn--as it dripped upon the floor.
She listened as Mary made her way through. She had hated Rynn when she was alive, and nothing had changed; only that both of them were more civil about expressing themselves while in company.
She listened to Mary's laughter, mocking and cruel, as she was fed into the man's eye. As she left Liesse, with a taunting whisper--

i'mnot that easy togetrid ofsisterlovedearestsweetheart...  

[Rynn Calais]

In the torrent of rain, unheard beneath a crash of thunder, Rynn entered his home again. He strode across the checkered floor of the massive entrance hall, the chandeliers bursting into light as he progressed. Above, Liesse stilled.
She was not stupid, no matter how weak she was compared to the rest of her family. And, mutedly, she could sense her twin.
She rushed to her locked door, struggled with the brass knob futilely.
Rynn began to climb the right staircase, pulling his soaking wet kidskin gloves from his fingers with his teeth as he did so.
Liesse screamed. She had not spoken comprehensibly in nearly two months; the syllable tore from her throat like an animal's cry.
"Don't!"
Her sibling paused upon the staircase. She could see him in her mind's eye, those elegantly carved alabaster features, those finely etched brows knitting in sudden unease. His bloodless lips parting, as if to speak, as if in sudden doubt.
"Rynn," she croaked, uselessly.
He had felt Mary leave his twin, though. He had felt the lines between them untangle, her spirit dissolving like chains of smoke from his sister's soul.
Surely, his dead sibling had not the power to return so soon...!
He hurried up the stairs, the gloves dropping from his hands as he did so. They lay there, discarded, on the wide velvet runner of the staircase.
And as he reached the hall, turned to the wing of his home that his sister and he inhabited, he stopped in shock.
For certainly, Mary's ghost was no longer possessing his twin.
How could she, when she had manifested at the end of the hall, between himself and the great antique grandfather clock there?
His little sister smiled.
"Brother," she purred. "You're home."
Another scream from behind the door. His name, this time, barely recognizable.
Lightning lit the windows with a crack of thunder, illuminating Rynn's expressionless countenance.
"What do you want?"
The girl, a preternaturally aware conscience in the body of a thirteen-year-old, shook back her soft brown hair and laughed.
"To live, my dear brother, as you have denied me. But in lieu of that..." she paused, and her mouth quirked into a strange smile. "...I have come to warn you. You have three days, you and all my kin. Three days to save yourselves, or end your own thrice-damned lives in a method of your choosing. For when I am strong enough, that choice will seem like a blessing."
She paused, the smile vanishing as quickly as it came.
"As you did unto your sister, Rynn Calais, I shall show no mercy."

Two hours later, in the wrought-iron finery of the East Parlor, a fire blazing in the marble hearth and rain battering the high arched windows, the family met. Liesse sat in one of the delicate mahogany chairs, her tangled hair loose about her shoulders, her tattered skirts arranged demurely about her. Her eyes were downcast. Aedan stood, looking out the window into the grey downpour, while Cian lounged on the couch, idly stroking the carved wooden lion's heads that adorned the seat's armrests. At one end of the parlor, Erin leaned, his face enigmatic, against the mantlepiece of the fireplace. At the other, behind his sibling's seat, stood Rynn.
Cian began with a yawn, and an acid comment.
"I thought you were leaving the grounds to get rid of the damned b***h," he said scornfully. "How in hellfire's name did you come back with her stronger?"
"The only thing I can think of," Aedan said carefully, "is that perhaps Liesse may have been limiting her while she was...mad. Obviously she was chosen because she is closest to you, Rynn, and perhaps her lack of thaumaturgical talent may have inhibited some of Mary's activities."
Rynn pressed a hand into his twin's.
"I'll have to go back," he said quietly. "She's given us three days. That's enough, perhaps, to enlist assistance."  

[Rynn Calais]

Cian was dosed to the gills on laudanum, but the other three siblings watched in silence from the porch as he left. He took one of the sleek, dark cars that had been one of his father's few concessions to the advance of technology in Llyr's Court. Aleric had said that he wanted it to be a place pure of modern progress. As though progress was something wicked.
He couldn't see his twin's face, but he could feel her in his mind. Her weariness--and, like an inestimable weight--her guilt.
Even as he drove away from the centuries-old manse, the gaping scar of the annihilated West Wing, Cian's laughter ringing like steel in the distance, it did not leave him. He knew that she blamed herself for what had happened.
Rynn gritted his teeth and gunned the motor, as his tires left the rain-slick drive of cobblestones that marked the path to the manor.

Come Mary or no, come all the demons in hell, he would protect his family.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Even so far away, Antha did her best to reach out to Rynn, to speak to him. She still haunts you, doesn't she? she spoke to him in his mind, her voice soft, faint. She knew it was true, of course, because Atticus had seen it and through him, so had she, so she did not wait for an answer. I want to help. Any way that I can, I want to help you be rid of her.

 

[Rynn Calais]

+Rotting Lunacy+

Even so far away, Antha did her best to reach out to Rynn, to speak to him. She still haunts you, doesn't she? she spoke to him in his mind, her voice soft, faint. She knew it was true, of course, because Atticus had seen it and through him, so had she, so she did not wait for an answer. I want to help. Any way that I can, I want to help you be rid of her.

Within the black metal shell of the car--like the carapace of a beetle--Rynn was silent, his hands white-knuckled on the wheel.
My family is indebted to you already. But--I can think of no better alternative--it seems like there is no way to avoid dragging you into this further.

There was no stronger witch in the city than Antha Mayfair, he knew.
He was silent for a few moments longer, and then--I must extend a formal invitation to you, Antha. Familiar, he knew, to address her by her first name, but there was little such thing as familiarity in the linking of minds. I think, perhaps, whatever it is that you might plan should be conducted on the grounds of my family's ancestral home. It is where she died, you see, and it is where she must be purged if she is ever to truly leave us.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha took the effort to work her way a little closer to his mind, finding flashes of his sight, of the car he was in. Return to your home, she instructed, I can track you there. And, assuming that you don't mind, I'll bring a few of my cousins to assist, and Atticus as well. She almost withdrew then, leaving him to himself so that she could dash off to join him, but she hesitated, whispering a sigh through his mind like an errant, wordless thought. A mere ghost has never eluded me before. Nothing has ever eluded me before. So while this may predominantly be your problem, it has suddenly become very personal to me. And with that, she was gone, back into her own mind and Mayfair Manor.

 

[Rynn Calais]

Liesse was in the labyrinth with Cian when she felt her brother return to the manor.
The labyrinth, a massive, twining hedge maze that stretched out behind the court for most of seven acres, had been Liesse's place of refuge before the possession. When it had happened, her brothers had forbidden her from entering it again. She'd had to beg Cian to accompany her inside, to the heart of the maze. Her roses were nearly overgrown, leaping the high ivy-strewn walls with abandon, a crush of gold and ivory petals, waxy green leaves, drugging her with their scent.
In the corner, creeping out upon the neat grass, were the scarlet roses, nearly overcome by their paler brethren; a speck of blood among those angelic flowers.
Cian was carelessly arrayed across the nearest garden bench, staring at the sun through his linked fingers. He was not paying attention to her. None of her brothers liked the heart of the maze. As children they had played there together, around the wide-tiled circle surrounding the pit--what had once been an old, old well. Liesse herself had always given it a wide berth, but not wide enough to prevent her from tending to her roses. They needed her.
When she felt her brother come home, she rose immediately, dropping the heavy garden shears on the grass. Stripping her gloves from her fingers, she picked up her white skirts and headed towards the entrance. Cian blinked, roused himself, and followed after.
"Liesse?"

"Rynn's back."

She came in through the back, brushing off her slippers hastily at the door, and arrived in time to see Rynn shucking his coat from his shoulders at the opposite end of the hall.
They came together, embraced briefly.
From the stairwell came Erin's familiar, condescending drawl. "That was fast. Couldn't find her?"
Rynn paused, stepping forward to half-shield Liesse from his vision. "She found me, actually. The Mayfair family has agreed to aid us; she will bring her cousins and attempt another dispersement."
Erin raised his eyebrows. "Oh? That's generous of them."

"Sure that you didn't have to offer to sleep with her?"  

[.David Talbot.]

Courtland pulled up close to the house and cut the engine. "You sure this is a good idea Evie?" he asked as he hopped out.
He rounded the car still looking up at the house and opened the passenger door for Antha. "We don't have any obligations to these people. We could just step back and watch from the sidelines." He held a hand out to help her out. Mayfair boys were trained to be gentleman.

 

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha took a moment to run her fingers through her crimson curls and fix her make-up, which had been mussed and smudged in her sleep, before taking Courtland's hand and stepping out of the car. "You are wrong, mon ami," she said softly, smoothing the frock coat down along the line of her body, "Though we have no obligations to this family, I cannot step back and just watch." She closed the door with a small sound and turned to face her cousin, her eyes very sharp, "She ******** with me, Courtland, and now she must pay. I will get rid of her."

 

[Rynn Calais]

Rynn held up one hand, trying with difficulty to control his temper. "Erin, if you cannot be civil, then leave. I will not have you insulting our guests."

"Why?" he said lazily, curling one hand around the smooth banister possessively. "It isn't as though it will much affect the great name of our family. Hardly anyone knows we exist anymore, my darling brother." He didn't need to mention it. Even the Talamasca doesn't remember us.

Liesse turned suddenly, her bell-like skirts swirling around her. "Rynn, they're here."

Her twin sighed, fixed Erin with a glare.
"Try not to make trouble."
Then he turned, and took Liesse's hand in his. Together they exited to the front porch.
The mansion was grand, to be sure, if one temporarily blocked out the skeletal charred remains of the West Wing. Most of it was still standing, but the wide and elegant windows were shattered, the brick scorched black, and in some places it had completely collapsed into ruin. Ivy had begun to creep over the ruins possessively. In some ways, it made a beautiful contrast with the rest of Llyr's Court.
Rynn stepped out onto the paving-stone walkway, which had served as the Mayfair's disembarking point for their automobile. Again, those perfect features served as a perfect mask; he let a smile curve his lips as he approached, Liesse a few steps behind him, picking up her long skirts to keep them immaculate. What features were charming and sweetly serene on her were starkly brilliant on his face; she had a softness to her that he did not. One almost got the sensation that Rynn was his sister refined, shaped into dazzling hardness. Both of them were beautiful, but hers was a somehow subtler grace.
They stopped in unison, a few feet from Antha and her entourage. "Miss Mayfair," Rynn said, extending a hand in formal greeting, like a business partner. "We are honored."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha had done well to control herself for so long. Since she had woken up, she had kept herself calm---normal, for lack of a better word. But Antha's control was not infinite and the moment she saw Rynn emerge onto the porch, something in her mind flipped like a switch that had been straining against her hold for hours, from sane to insane, just like that.
"Behave yourself," she whispered to Courtland as the twins approached, tugging on the sleeve of his shirt and glancing at him just long enough that he could see that faint glimmer in her eyes, the touch of dark humor in her smile, all the little signs that he knew better than anyone.
It was when the twins had stopped, when Rynn held his hand out to Antha, that she laughed that all too familiar witch's laugh that, although never physically loud, echoed across impossible distances. "Why so formal, Rynn?" she asked sweetly, her wicked little smile broader than before, "But then, what did I expect? Ghosts tend to cause a strain on the psyche." She laughed again, softer this time, and made a small, informal curtsy before closing the distance between them to kiss his cheeks in turn, as she had long been taught to do. She lingered a moment there, whispering in his ear so that the others would not hear her. "Never offer your skin to a witch, mon ami. In the flesh you hold your darkest secrets, and through the flesh, I can find them."
She withdrew with that, standing politely beside Courtland with her deceptively sweet smile and glancing between him and Felix. "Courtland, Felix," she said softly, chiding them, "Do not be rude."

 

[.David Talbot.]

Courtland obeyed quietly. He knew that most men didn't like other men kissing their cheeks like they did in the Mayfair family so he just bowed. "It's a pleasure to meet you." His voice was dry.
Atticus smiled at him. "It is good to see you again Rynn," he said and his voice was very warm. "Aaron and Singe wanted to come with us too. I believe Aaron was curious about your family and Singe liked you a great deal. But they were frightened so they stayed at the motherhouse." He smiled.
It was Courtland that groaned. "If we're here to get rid of a ghost then let's get the ******** rid of it and go home." He looked down at Antha. "This is stupid Evie. Let them deal with whatever they did to make her this mad. Let someone else have to deal with their own damm metaphysical mess for once. Why should we be the only ones?"
He looked up to the strangers in front of him. "No offense."