Work Text:
The contrast still isn’t right. Ignatz has tried everything, from sketching in graphite to the starkness of black ink against the page, from abstracted shadows to the glimmer of unnatural lighting, yet nothing manages to capture the ephemeral otherness of his subject. The princely cheekbones, that furrowed philosopher’s brow, the thin sniper’s bow of lips so often twisted in measured distaste — the moment Ignatz puts them to paper, they become as mundane as their materials. He can capture likeness but not spirit, and it plagues him, damns him even into his dreams.
He slumps back to his dormitory after even the frail light of dusk has forsaken him. Something about the sunset, the rings of color all purple and red, funneling in towards that brutality too bright to look at directly... Best to try again come morning.
Ignatz drops his sketchbook on the desk, props the easel against the corner of his bookshelf, then reaches for a candle. Not to light another six hours of sketching or anything, just to make sure he doesn’t crack his head against the wardrobe when he changes his clothes, but there isn’t a candle to be found. He frowns. The box isn’t empty, but gone entirely. Leonie’s frugality run amok? Or is Lysithea burning even greater casks of midnight oil than he is these days. No matter. He can always go next door to—
The door shuts of its own accord, snuffing out the dim rays of moonlight. The lock clicks.
A hand erupts in purple flame.
Ignatz jolts and screams just as Silence stops up his throat like a bottle, every word a frothing pressure in his chest. His hands close on the back of his chair, as if he can easily wield a solid oak frame against his mystery foe, but if he has to bash someone with an armrest to win his life then that’s just the kind of man he’ll be! He’s definitely not trembling!
“Show yourself!” he demands with aggressive enunciation so that the words can be read from his lips.
A low chuckle spreads through the darkness like butter, rich and terrible in large quantities. Ignatz freezes at once. He has partaken in large quantities, you see. He has dreamed this. He chokes on a name.
The flame that writhes along those long, white-gloved fingers slowly coalesces into a singular mass in the caster’s palm, then rises to cast a ghostly, guttering glow over the room. A face comes into view with astonishing clarity, but all Ignatz can focus on are those thin, virulent lips.
“You’ve been watching me,” purrs his Muse. “Ineptly.”
The chair will not defend Ignatz from a mage of this caliber, but Good Goddess, may it shield his tunic’s rising menace from sight. Trembling, he tilts up his chin as though to answer, So what?
The Muse drifts forward to the desk, supremely unbothered by the way Ignatz jolts back and takes the chair with him. Below the man’s hand the sketchbook opens of its own accord and flips traitorously through page after page of worship at his very own feet. He peruses the many sides and angles of his own features, his brow quirking in the precise way that leaves Ignatz breathless with gothic vapors, and then the whole of Ignatz’s work bursts into crackling flame.
He cries out, not for his work but for the fatal wound of rejection, and it goes unheard with all the rest.
When the fire dies down to pitiful embers, the Muse turns and tucks his hands behind his back in a prim servant’s demeanor. “You are not Adrestian,” he says, “So I will grant you a single pardon. But heed this wisdom known by every craftsman of the Empire: Put a Vestra’s guise to paper, and he will put you in the ground.”
And with that dread warning, Hubert von Vestra recedes back into the shadows. One last sputter of violet light catches the golden rings of his eyes with perfect, brilliant fury, and hurtles over the chair to trap the masterpiece in place.
Hubert freezes. Ignatz, too, freezes in place, teetering halfway on the chair, suddenly certain he has never had more knives pointed at him in his life even though Hubert has not twitched a muscle.
Through the now-faded Silence he yells, “It’s not about Vestras!”
The other man blinks ominously. Which is ridiculous, of course, but Ignatz feels the full force of that gaze with all its momentous pause and incredulous surprise.
“It’s you. Your…” Clarity of purpose, exquisitely honed poise, breathtaking beauty. Ignatz swallows hard. “…Angles.”
“My angles.”
“And! And—logically, if I don’t notate my model or title it with Vestra, how would anyone ever know? If there are, um, no other…survivals.”
Hubert’s lips part in a slow smile, needle-sharp. “Are you bargaining for your art of your life?”
Ignatz has imagined all manner of interrogations over the years: from his parents, from the Church, and from his shadowy Muse most of all. None has ever involved questions as easy as this. He plants his feet firmly on the ground and balls his fists at his side, then declares, “They’re the same thing!”
The words strike Hubert with the force of a kitten batting at a dead sardine. He lifts one brow, then the other, and Ignatz shivers at the way the muscles of his face twist from glory to glory. He could sketch each sliver of emotion for hours—if he has that long left to live.
It was a simple answer, yes, but wildly insufficient. What was he thinking?!
The Muse takes a step forward. Although Ignatz holds his ground, it only puts him in a more precarious position, staring up those long extra inches of stature to try and meet Hubert’s terrifyingly intimate gaze. It is only the two of them here in the private glow of potential murder. It takes his breath away.
Something breaks in Hubert’s visage, the slightest shift of the armor, not a crack but a joint where the plates connect, and he runs a hand over his face in…mirth?
Laughter.
This is much worse than murder. Ignatz will never recover. Rejection does not even factor this time, only that he has been so privileged to see something beyond the dread derision his Muse projects to the rest of the world. He is so swept up in his rush of awe that he nearly misses Hubert’s next words, whispered with soured softness.
“Is your imagination truly so meager that you must seek references for your demons?”
“Demons?” Ignatz repeats in shock. Of all his imaginings, his Muse has represented something far more divine. “What? No, I thought…the Suffering of St. Macuil, maybe, or Cichol Vanquishing Ignorance…”
“Yes,” Hubert blurts, “That one.”
“You…”
The Muse clears his throat, and all at once he is no longer a looming shadow, just dashing marble carved from the depths of dream. He taps at the desk where the ashes of the sketchbook still linger. “I have a vested interest in the extermination of ignorance, so your project has a certain appeal. Very well. Consider me convinced.”
Ignatz cannot begin to answer that, let alone close his gaping mouth.
“Any sketch you make for this purpose, I will allow.” His eyes sweep the meager furnishings of the room. “I may even compensate you should the work be of exceptional quality.”
“That w-won’t be necessary!” Ignatz squeaks.
“Is it not the customary practice of patronage?”
“Well, yes, but, you see, the honor of capturing the unfathomable subject is payment enough, so I really couldn’t—would you model for me instead?”
The words leave him with the force of an arrow, the bowstring twanging in his ears. This is it. He’s dared too far.
“I must admit I am not accustomed to eyes upon me.”
Is. Is he…blushing?
Eyes wide, Ignatz leans in to memorize the precise shade of pink evening primrose dusting those distant cheekbones. The longer he looks, the deeper the stain.
At length, the Muse clears his throat once more and turns away. He vanishes into the darkness without a rush of magic, but nor does the door grant him passage. His voice rings with one last tone of malevolent warning, like a kiss at the base of Ignatz’s ear.
“Learn to observe more circumspectly, and I will consider it.”
Cichol Vanquishing Ignorance. Hubert cannot put the thought—the painter—from his mind. If all their plans come to ruin, for his face to shine victorious from a church relic, still willing future rebellion after his fall…what a poetic masterpiece of ironic justice it would be. And when Her Majesty’s victory rings glorious and all the Saints have been pulled from their pedestals, they will need new portraits to line the imperial galleries. Vanquisher of Ignorance…
Perhaps he is an aficionado of art after all.