A Lurid Eternity

Chapter 4

The thrumming of Sullivan's impatience bled into his fingers as they tapped atop the long metal conference table. Just when he thought that things were going to go smoothly, inconvenience always has to rear its ugly little head. Marriage was so much easier in the Old World as the templates were defined mostly by the humans that governed such trivialities. Everything went to the husband, usually, and for Sullivan that would've been far too easy; therefore something had to be amiss.

He seethed in annoyance to himself, not wanting his small council before him to be privy to his malcontent mood. They chittered vapidly amongst themselves like little birds. Their ambitions and overzealous grabs for influence had bored Sullivan to tears. It was the same old song and dance that he's heard time and time again. People never changed, not really. Same problems, just in a different time with different faces.

His ceaseless time on Earth had drained much of his interest in the people who inhabit it. All he has now are his own inconsequential ambitions for power and his thirst to know more about the inner workings of his universe.

What else does one as old as he do with their limitless time?

What more could he do to curb the boredom that plagued him so?

"Do you really think she'll be gullible enough to sign it?" Sullivan had been taken out of his musings as one of his subordinates addressed him over the matter at hand.

He wiped at his mouth, his appetite resurfacing with inconvenient timing as his eyes shifted between the eight blood bags in the room before him. "I'm sure I can find some way to convince her to sign." He stated, leaving it at that so they could continue chittering amongst themselves again.

What a frustrating little dilemma he's having to deal with.

Sullivan had just come to find that he had absolutely no claim to any of his pretty new wife's estate. Not her lands, not her wealth, not anything, and she, by laws set in place by powers unbeknownst to him, could not relinquish her claim to anyone but those of her house. He could do nothing without the approval of his mute little wife.

Couriers he had sent to her home had disappeared into the wilderness of that territory. Contact with the residents is nigh impossible at this point. Neither he nor his council knew how to proceed at that moment, and nothing bothered him more than not being able to solve what seemed to be a simple problem.

He felt the prickling in his hands start to manifest as he continued to strum, the tapping aggravating his charred wounds through his gloves. Although painful, he continued, wondering if Oliver had finally found the little witch he so despised.

Well... it really wasn't so much her that he hated, but her household. It was a family just as old as his own, bearing witness to the same rise and folly of man and kine alike. The Moeraes were a reclusive sort, but rumors were a terrible roaming virus. It's been said that they were witches and necromancers, a family able to discern, at the time, the will of God and could change the course of fate if they so wished. They were known as seers and fortune tellers, but mere showmen they were not. At least, that's what he's been told.

Sullivan did not believe in such nonsense as card or palm readings. The future is what you make it to be. Either you pave your own path or you allow others to trample you in their wake. You are the captain of your own ship, so to speak, and to say that you can simply change your course or will a solution by flipping a card or lighting a candle was absolutely insulting.

He had sought powers beyond mortal comprehension, he had amassed an empire beneath his shadow reign, he has lived for forty-nine long centuries, and he most certainly doesn't need a little fortune teller to sell him her snake oil lies.