scordatura (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scordatura) wrote2018-06-24 10:33 am
scordatura) wrote2018-06-24 10:33 am
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#CMRN Character Profile: Ash Larue
Name/Nickname/Pronouns: Ash Basil Larue, he/him (June calls him “AB,” ostensibly for his initials but really for “Accidental Brother”; he does not care for it from anyone else [and isn’t too wild about it from June either])
Magical Being Type: Hereditary witch; his family specialty is finding and fixing things, and he’s quite good at it, but he’s also extraordinarily sensitive to magic and magic users, which can prove either very beneficial or very harmful to said finding and fixing.
Age turned in 2019: 24
Gender/Sexuality: Cis male, probably bi/pan but pretty low-intensity about it
Profession: Too young to have one before he headed up north, and since then he’s mostly been learning how to control his magic better. As of late 2019, he’s been impersonating fae prince Cy Linwood.
Family: Unnamed parental Larues (both only children), and older sisters Willie and June (plus sister-in-law Greta). His relationship with his parents is fairly strained beneath the veneer of him being their baby that they want to protect and do right by (at least 50% due to their regrets about June) and his being grateful for their consistent support. He’s fairly close to Willie, given that she took on a sort of secondary maternal role for him growing up; he doesn’t have much of a relationship with June until his mid-teens, but once he does it runs fairly deep due to their similar temperaments and magical issues.
Important Relationships to Other Characters: Anyone who’s grown up in Hexham in the late ‘90s-early ‘00s probably at least knows of Ash or remembers him vaguely as a child, but once his magic started coming in properly he was kept pretty isolated, and since he ran off his parents don’t like to talk about him much, so he likely isn’t super familiar with or to most of the residents of town (though he does know Fox and Max and likes them very much, as most people do). Also, around the age of seventeen, he summoned one Chrysanthos Alden Laurentius Linwood to serve as his guide to Fa(k)e Canada, a move said fae was not exactly thrilled by. (After about five minutes in his company, Ash wasn’t too happy about it either.) Their journey up north spawned a pretty contentious relationship and Ash was pretty relieved when they parted ways and he wouldn’t ever have to interact with him again. (Ha.) He’s also good friends with Cy Linwood.
Other Relevant Character Notes: The way his magic works tends to make him feel a little strange to other magic users, like an object being drawn to a magnet. The effect’s especially strong when he’s actively working magic, but those of particularly strong magical ability are likely to sense it even when he’s not.
Rough Timeline of Their Story: Probably sometime in 2020-2021, following the other Fae Drama? Likely overlapping at least in part with Lucien/Benj.
Appearance: Ash is tall, right around six feet, long-limbed and lean almost to the point of outright skinniness. He has pale skin, dark, curly hair, and eyes of a particularly striking shade of grey; he shares June’s direct, unnerving stare, but he makes more frequent use of it, particularly when he’s aiming not to be underestimated or wants people to back off. His features are a little too sharp to be properly pretty and a little too delicate to be properly handsome, but they manage to come off pretty attractive on the whole. He can make an impression if he wants to, but he prefers to go unnoticed, so he tends to hold himself, both posture- and general-bearing-wise, in ways that make it easy to overlook him. He also tends to go barefoot whenever he can get away with it. (He... look, he pretty much looks like Harry Styles. I hate life.)
Personality: On the whole, Ash strives to cultivate, as mentioned, the persona of someone who can be very easily overlooked. He tends to make a pretty strong first impression; between spending years with the fae and the unique nature of his magic, he carries a bit of the ethereal nature that fae tend to have, so it’s hard for him to, say, sneak into a crowded room, because he tends to unintentionally draw eyes, but he’s pretty damn good at slipping into the background after that initial attention wears off. If he pulls it off, he’ll be the person you forgot was even in the room until he pops into the conversation with a simple but incisive remark, leaving everyone wondering just how long he’s been listening and how the hell he even knew to say such a thing. (He lives for those moments.)
The overwhelming majority of Ash’s personality—both the reserve and the focus—has been constructed around the assumption that control, of himself and his magic, is his single foremost priority in life. This means that he keeps his emotions pretty tightly locked down; it’s rare to see him fully engaged in a conversation (since his primary focus is almost always elsewhere), and it’s rare to see him unreservedly happy or upset, and it’s very rare that anything makes him lose his temper (but it’s pretty spectacular when it does happen). Even if he doesn’t show it, though, he’s always paying attention to everything (both because he’s spent his entire adult life in a place where he pretty much had to do so, and because he needs to account for everything around him when doing magic, lest something set it in an unexpected direction), so he’s almost never taken by surprise (and he’s not particularly happy about it when it does happen) and when need be, he can focus on a conversation or a task or a person with unnervingly intense single-mindedness.
The other significant advantage of the assumed reserve is that it hides the fact that Ash is, at heart... well, kind of a weirdo. He spent a lot of his formative years fairly isolated from people in general, let alone those his own age, and the entirety of his adult life among fae, plus he’s quite anxious, so he’s not exactly what one might call well-socialized (small talk is his nightmare). Plus his years of study in learning how to hone and control his magic, both in Calyptura and in Fa(k)e Canada, have given him a healthy interest in and appreciation for more obscure and stranger forms of magic and magical theory, which are hardly fun or standard conversation topics. So when his attention is engaged by the bizarre and obscure, he can become very animated and passionate—the problem is, by that point, almost no one else is. So he’s definitely learned to modulate those aspects of his personality when they emerge, however rarely.
Apart from behaving as if he’s setting himself at a distance from everyone else, Ash does in general feel that way. He’s never quite fit in either among humans or among fae, and he doesn’t really feel like he has the knack for even forming strong connections with people, let alone showing that he might feel them. He’s definitely got untapped emotional depths; the degree of focus he’s dedicated to controlling his magic and his anxiety has left him unaccustomed to (and possibly sort of incapable of) feeling things anywhere but the extremes of 0 or 100, so when his emotions do get involved in something, they tend to run extremely deep, which makes him intensely uncomfortable. At the same time, he doesn’t really have the knack for casual involvement or acquaintanceship, either—he loves his family much more than he’ll usually let on, but most everyone else sort of sits at a surface level for him.
At heart, Ash is for sure a good person, but he’s not particularly nice; he’s not going to go out of his way to be either cruel or kind to the average person, his wit tends to be on the acerbic side, and he’s the type of person who would rather deliver blunt truths than gentle white lies. (He hates lying in general; living with the fae as he has, he’s definitely learned to walk a fine line around the truth, but while he’s quite a good liar, his distaste for it means he’s got a few very subtle tells that show up whenever he has to do it.) As such, he’s the type of person who—to put it mildly—is not exactly for everyone, but if you do end up, through whatever miracle, becoming One Of His People, you’re definitely going to be in for life.
Backstory: Ash was born over a decade after June, to parents who had thought they were long since finished with parenting and were constantly occupied dealing with their younger daughter’s unexpected magical mishaps. As such, Ash didn’t get a lot of parental attention until June left home, which contributed to him being an exceptionally self-contained child—as did the fact that his magic manifested later than it had for either of his sisters, and in a rather spectacular fashion.
When Ash was nine or so, his older sister Willie got married; June came back home for the ceremony and left early into the reception, so as to avoid causing drama between herself and the Larue parents. However, only a few minutes after that, a hole roughly half the size of a person was blown through the wall right next to the door through which June had left, causing minor injury to Ash (and, unfortunately, a premature end to said reception).
Some investigation of the incident revealed that Ash had been trying a simple summoning—attempting to reach his water glass from a distance—and instead of flying to him, the glass flew towards the door instead, with enough force to blast right through the wall. He tried to explain what had gone wrong, as far as he could tell: the glass had gotten diverted like a magnet to swerve toward the direction of the door, resisting his attempts to direct it towards him. It was a highly unusual mishap, especially for a Larue, for whom summoning spells were meant to be a particular strength, so the Larue parents wasted no time in investigating further. Between Ash trying to rework the spell—with results that were never that disastrous again, but still not ever quite right—and some examination of both the magical wreckage and the track of the spell, the conclusion was that Ash’s magic had, somehow, been drawn more to the residue of June’s own, as the strongest magical presence there, and had gravitated towards it instead of following Ash’s own will.
Given that this explanation also spoke of something unusual, the Larues began to bring on tutors, professors, investigators, and other experts with a wide variety of magical knowledge to examine Ash and figure out how his magic worked. After several years of thorough investigation from multiple avenues of inquiry—during which Ash was kept relatively isolated, since few things are as alarming as unknown or unpredictable magic—the answer was determined to be something along these lines: magic, for the most part, operates as an aspect of a person, like a muscle that can be strengthened with exercise or a talent with an initial aptitude that can be improved with practice. Of course it can be influenced by the presence of magic elsewhere—multiple witches being able to cast a stronger spell by working together, for example, or magic coming more easily in certain places infused with it—but it responds, primarily, to the will, practice, intent, and strength of the person to whom it belongs. Ash’s magic, by contrast, seemed more than anything to be drawn to the presence of other magic itself: a talent for finding, as is the Larue specialty, the strongest presence of magic in the room, then acting as both a chameleon—adapting to the magic in question—and a sponge—absorbing its particular properties and strengths (hence the summoning spell going so dramatically awry, thanks to June’s magic), bending away from the original intent and gaining often unpredictable strength and purpose.
Once this strange quirk of Ash’s magic became clearer, so did the fact that until he could learn better focus and control, Ash couldn’t be taught among other magical humans—it would be impossible to figure out how to target spells the way he wanted when other people’s magic was interfering. So his isolation from the world at large became intensified; he became fully homeschooled, in traditional education as well as magical (his tutors for the latter couldn’t even be in the same room as he was, given the pitfalls of magical interference). This meant, obviously, that he spent a great deal of his formative years entirely on his own, with the bulk of his in-person social interaction coming from his parents and oldest sister, as well as the rare foray into downtown Hexham. And as a result, he became extremely introverted and anxious, which meant he didn’t deal well with the prospect of people, resulting in said rare forays into downtown slowly becoming even more so.
As would be understandable for anyone under these circumstances, it didn’t take long for Ash to start chafing at the restrictions of this life. He didn’t mind the isolation so much; he felt uncomfortable around people, unsure of how to relate to them, and the sense of danger in his potential loss of control over his magic that had been deeply drummed into him only served to heighten his nerves. And while he didn’t love the fact that he genuinely didn’t do much in his days other than train and study his magic, or that his main company was his parents, none of that bothered him as much as the fact that none of it was working. He was getting a somewhat better control on his magic, of course—the sheer amount of time and effort he was putting into it had to have some results—but he was also slowly getting the distinct impression that whatever progress he’d made wasn’t enough—that it was the approaches themselves that just weren’t doing the trick. Whatever magical theory had been developed through centuries of scholarly thought, it just wasn’t quite suited to finding a real, permanent solution for him.
On top of that, it was beginning to seem as if his entire life was revolving around controlling his magic—that if he didn’t figure out a better way, it was never going to change. And while Ash didn’t know what he wanted out of life, he sure as hell would welcome the opportunity to find out, which wasn’t going to happen if he didn’t make some very serious changes. (This epiphany was mostly triggered by June’s return to town when he was sixteen, which was throwing his magic even more out of whack than usual, her being more dramatically powerful than anyone in town other than the fae.)
And speaking of whom, it didn’t take Ash much thought to decide the direction of the change he wanted to make. From the little theory he’d read about fae magic (it’s still not understood too well by humans), it seemed that his magic was more similar to theirs than to that of most human witches, and since human methods clearly weren’t working, maybe fae methods would. So he would travel to the fae homelands, and he would try to convince someone to teach him how to better control his magic. (He was well aware, of course, that this venture was fraught with the possibility of disaster, but given that none of his other options seemed even remotely hopeful, he was damn well going to jump on this one and make the most of it.)
Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that; there’s a reason humans don’t regularly travel to the fae homelands, after all. The only ways to enter on purpose are through being taken there by a fae (through summoning or kidnapping, depending on the temperament of said fae), direct invitation, or a guide, and the spell for the last of those is complex enough that it’s almost never attempted—one of the ingredients is a part of someone who’s already been to the fae homelands, which is, of course, almost impossible to obtain (the few humans who do go there tend to stick around rather than traveling back and forth). Ash could probably have solicited help from Lucien or June, but he was pretty sure neither of them would be on board, and he didn’t want to risk being talked out of this plan... so instead he turned to subterfuge, and obtained a hair from Fox Castle-Clemens, the half-fae co-owner of the downtown bookstore.
Having done this, he was able to pull together the rest of the spell with relative ease, and he worked hard to figure out exactly how he was going to cast it. Rather than ignoring the strong pull from the fae and his sister that would bend the direction of his magic, he decided to lean into it—using June to give the summoning more strength and using Lucien to aim it towards a strong fae. And when he was finally certain he had every detail just right, he cast the spell—and it worked.
The fae summoned as Ash’s guide was (as mentioned) one Chrysanthos Alden Laurentius Linwood, member of a royal family, and he was not even remotely happy to be pulled so suddenly to Calyptura by a barely-trained human child. Unfortunately, his feelings on the matter notwithstanding, he was indeed bound to serve as guide into the fae homelands. He was, however, not bound to do so with any sort of directness or simplicity, and thus began the several-month-long journey affectionately nicknamed Ash and Rys’s Terrible Adventure, full of twists and turns and obstacles in Rys’s increasingly desperate attempts to get rid of this obnoxious human already. But for the second time ever, the particulars of Ash’s magic became a help rather than a hindrance: Rys being fae royalty makes him practically a beacon of magic, so Ash’s own would inevitably be drawn to him, wherever they went, making it impossible for him not to know where Rys was at all times. (Though honestly, several days in, he would much rather not have known that, ever.) (It was a long few months for both of them.)
Eventually, though, the terrible adventure had to reach its end, and as guaranteed by the spell, Rys led Ash to the fae homelands—specifically, to the home of the royal family, much to his irritation. Before he could send Ash off to wherever the fuck he intended to go next, though, they happened to run into one Cyneric Aurelius Diarmait Linwood, prince royal, who was endlessly amused by his cousin being forced to serve as a guide for a human. Whether through a moment of sympathy or boredom or the intrigue of something new (or some combination thereof), Cy ended up offering Ash some guidance in terms of where to go next and offered to be in touch should he need further advice. Generally not a good bargain to accept from a fae, but something about Cy convinced Ash, even wary and antisocial as he tended to be, to trust him, and believing the offer to be in good faith (though not knowing if he’d ever make use of it), he accepted before going on his merry way (deeply relieved to be free of his reluctant guide).
While humans living in the fae homelands are few and far between, the long history between the two countries meant that there are certainly inroads made by the humans who had, over the years, crossed the border. While some humans was kidnapped or stumbled across by mistake, and some of those who came across on purpose were enamored of the idea of living among the fae, for whatever reason, many did so with magical intent of some kind—explorers, scholars, magical theorists, historians, or those, like Ash, whose magic was just different, somehow, and thus came seeking at least guidance if not answers. This meant that while the world of the fae was still somewhat of a mystery (and often dangerous) for humans to stumble through, there were enough resources in place—and enough humans present there, making lives for themselves—that Ash could manage to settle in, following the footsteps of prior magical theorists and scholars to find places and people that could teach him how to better understand and control his magic.
And, well, that’s what he was up to for the next few years—laying low among the fae, learning more about his magic and how to control and focus it, basically finding a happy medium between human and fae spellwork, taking from either what worked better for him. He tended to prefer fae methods, but for obvious reasons not all of them worked for him, so he had to learn how to blend them with those of human magic, cobbling together his own system of spellcasting. The ambience of the magic in the fae homelands helped his focus, too; when magic is everywhere, it’s hard to pinpoint the strongest source, so Ash’s tended to be easier to bend to his own intent rather than outside influence. He learned more about how to understand the workings of his magic, how to make it function properly and how to focus it, and he finally became comfortable viewing it as a part of himself—and using it as such—rather than controlling it as an adversary.
Finally understanding his magic and learning how best to use it was nothing but a blessing to Ash, but it did free his mind from what had been its primary task of keeping himself in control at all times, which allowed him to—finally—start thinking about what he actually wanted from his life, and what steps he could next take to begin to achieve that. And the truth was, after so much time dedicated to helping him reach the point where he could begin to contemplate that question... he didn’t have the slightest idea.
He knew he couldn’t stay in the fae homelands, of course; while he enjoyed his time there, it was hard for humans to make a life among fae, as they would never quite manage to earn status as equals. (Especially hard for someone like Ash, who—though he had earned the grudging respect of a lot of the fae academics and theoreticians he encountered on a regular basis, his determination, dedication, and skill being quite impressive for a human—was anxious and reserved enough to have trouble forming connections even with humans, let alone fae, with whom one can never really fully let their guard down. The one exception was Cy, with whom Ash had stayed in touch and managed to form a genuine friendship, the connection a surprise to both of them, but perhaps inevitable—Cy appreciated having someone unconnected to his brother’s banishment to talk to in the wake of that particular disaster, and Ash needed just one person in the fae homelands he could genuinely trust, so it was definitely a mutually beneficial relationship.) So he knew he’d have to go back to Calyptura eventually... but he didn’t have the first clue where to start, given that he wasn’t at all ready to come back to Hexham and he had no idea where else he might want to go.
He didn’t have to think about this too long, though, because a few years into their friendship, Cy came to him with an idea, born primarily of his lack of desire to ascend to the throne, but also knowing it would serve Ash’s longing for some kind of purpose in his life: he wanted to travel to Calyptura without anyone knowing he’d left or going after him. And the best way to make this happen, as it turned out, was a modified changeling spell that would allow him and Ash to switch places—Cy in disguise as a human and Ash in disguise as Cy. It was a tricky, risky proposition, but if they could pull it off, they would both get what they wanted, at least for a short time—it seemed a good temporary solution to both of their problems. While Ash was more than a little hesitant about casting such a complex spell, the rewards were too tempting to ignore, and so he agreed.
Of course, he dedicated a hell of a lot of time into researching the adjustments that would be needed for the spell and preparing to cast it; he was well aware of how much was on his shoulders in doing so, and he wanted to be absolutely positive that neither the changes necessary nor his own magic would fuck things up for him and Cy. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to him, his sister June had recently had a not-so-great trip to the fae homelands, resulting in her tearing a hole through the veil between human and fae realms—something that absolutely should have been accounted for in the spell, and that extremely was not. So when Ash actually cast it... between his magic, Cy’s magic, June’s magic, and the hole in the border, things went a tad awry. Cy was sent to Hexham in the guise of a human, and Ash appeared for all intents and purposes to be Cy, but neither of them had retained any memories of who they were, where they had come from, or why they were where they were.
So as of early winter 2019, all that Ash has is the knowledge that he’s impersonating a fae prince, the certainty that he can’t tell anyone he isn’t who he’s pretending to be, and a whole lot of instincts and buried knowledge that are surfacing as needed—as well as the suspicion of Rys Linwood, who isn’t sure what’s going on with his cousin, but feels absolutely positive that something is up. And meanwhile, also unbeknownst to him, Cy’s arrival in Hexham is setting certain other events in motion...
Magical Being Type: Hereditary witch; his family specialty is finding and fixing things, and he’s quite good at it, but he’s also extraordinarily sensitive to magic and magic users, which can prove either very beneficial or very harmful to said finding and fixing.
Age turned in 2019: 24
Gender/Sexuality: Cis male, probably bi/pan but pretty low-intensity about it
Profession: Too young to have one before he headed up north, and since then he’s mostly been learning how to control his magic better. As of late 2019, he’s been impersonating fae prince Cy Linwood.
Family: Unnamed parental Larues (both only children), and older sisters Willie and June (plus sister-in-law Greta). His relationship with his parents is fairly strained beneath the veneer of him being their baby that they want to protect and do right by (at least 50% due to their regrets about June) and his being grateful for their consistent support. He’s fairly close to Willie, given that she took on a sort of secondary maternal role for him growing up; he doesn’t have much of a relationship with June until his mid-teens, but once he does it runs fairly deep due to their similar temperaments and magical issues.
Important Relationships to Other Characters: Anyone who’s grown up in Hexham in the late ‘90s-early ‘00s probably at least knows of Ash or remembers him vaguely as a child, but once his magic started coming in properly he was kept pretty isolated, and since he ran off his parents don’t like to talk about him much, so he likely isn’t super familiar with or to most of the residents of town (though he does know Fox and Max and likes them very much, as most people do). Also, around the age of seventeen, he summoned one Chrysanthos Alden Laurentius Linwood to serve as his guide to Fa(k)e Canada, a move said fae was not exactly thrilled by. (After about five minutes in his company, Ash wasn’t too happy about it either.) Their journey up north spawned a pretty contentious relationship and Ash was pretty relieved when they parted ways and he wouldn’t ever have to interact with him again. (Ha.) He’s also good friends with Cy Linwood.
Other Relevant Character Notes: The way his magic works tends to make him feel a little strange to other magic users, like an object being drawn to a magnet. The effect’s especially strong when he’s actively working magic, but those of particularly strong magical ability are likely to sense it even when he’s not.
Rough Timeline of Their Story: Probably sometime in 2020-2021, following the other Fae Drama? Likely overlapping at least in part with Lucien/Benj.
Appearance: Ash is tall, right around six feet, long-limbed and lean almost to the point of outright skinniness. He has pale skin, dark, curly hair, and eyes of a particularly striking shade of grey; he shares June’s direct, unnerving stare, but he makes more frequent use of it, particularly when he’s aiming not to be underestimated or wants people to back off. His features are a little too sharp to be properly pretty and a little too delicate to be properly handsome, but they manage to come off pretty attractive on the whole. He can make an impression if he wants to, but he prefers to go unnoticed, so he tends to hold himself, both posture- and general-bearing-wise, in ways that make it easy to overlook him. He also tends to go barefoot whenever he can get away with it. (He... look, he pretty much looks like Harry Styles. I hate life.)
Personality: On the whole, Ash strives to cultivate, as mentioned, the persona of someone who can be very easily overlooked. He tends to make a pretty strong first impression; between spending years with the fae and the unique nature of his magic, he carries a bit of the ethereal nature that fae tend to have, so it’s hard for him to, say, sneak into a crowded room, because he tends to unintentionally draw eyes, but he’s pretty damn good at slipping into the background after that initial attention wears off. If he pulls it off, he’ll be the person you forgot was even in the room until he pops into the conversation with a simple but incisive remark, leaving everyone wondering just how long he’s been listening and how the hell he even knew to say such a thing. (He lives for those moments.)
The overwhelming majority of Ash’s personality—both the reserve and the focus—has been constructed around the assumption that control, of himself and his magic, is his single foremost priority in life. This means that he keeps his emotions pretty tightly locked down; it’s rare to see him fully engaged in a conversation (since his primary focus is almost always elsewhere), and it’s rare to see him unreservedly happy or upset, and it’s very rare that anything makes him lose his temper (but it’s pretty spectacular when it does happen). Even if he doesn’t show it, though, he’s always paying attention to everything (both because he’s spent his entire adult life in a place where he pretty much had to do so, and because he needs to account for everything around him when doing magic, lest something set it in an unexpected direction), so he’s almost never taken by surprise (and he’s not particularly happy about it when it does happen) and when need be, he can focus on a conversation or a task or a person with unnervingly intense single-mindedness.
The other significant advantage of the assumed reserve is that it hides the fact that Ash is, at heart... well, kind of a weirdo. He spent a lot of his formative years fairly isolated from people in general, let alone those his own age, and the entirety of his adult life among fae, plus he’s quite anxious, so he’s not exactly what one might call well-socialized (small talk is his nightmare). Plus his years of study in learning how to hone and control his magic, both in Calyptura and in Fa(k)e Canada, have given him a healthy interest in and appreciation for more obscure and stranger forms of magic and magical theory, which are hardly fun or standard conversation topics. So when his attention is engaged by the bizarre and obscure, he can become very animated and passionate—the problem is, by that point, almost no one else is. So he’s definitely learned to modulate those aspects of his personality when they emerge, however rarely.
Apart from behaving as if he’s setting himself at a distance from everyone else, Ash does in general feel that way. He’s never quite fit in either among humans or among fae, and he doesn’t really feel like he has the knack for even forming strong connections with people, let alone showing that he might feel them. He’s definitely got untapped emotional depths; the degree of focus he’s dedicated to controlling his magic and his anxiety has left him unaccustomed to (and possibly sort of incapable of) feeling things anywhere but the extremes of 0 or 100, so when his emotions do get involved in something, they tend to run extremely deep, which makes him intensely uncomfortable. At the same time, he doesn’t really have the knack for casual involvement or acquaintanceship, either—he loves his family much more than he’ll usually let on, but most everyone else sort of sits at a surface level for him.
At heart, Ash is for sure a good person, but he’s not particularly nice; he’s not going to go out of his way to be either cruel or kind to the average person, his wit tends to be on the acerbic side, and he’s the type of person who would rather deliver blunt truths than gentle white lies. (He hates lying in general; living with the fae as he has, he’s definitely learned to walk a fine line around the truth, but while he’s quite a good liar, his distaste for it means he’s got a few very subtle tells that show up whenever he has to do it.) As such, he’s the type of person who—to put it mildly—is not exactly for everyone, but if you do end up, through whatever miracle, becoming One Of His People, you’re definitely going to be in for life.
Backstory: Ash was born over a decade after June, to parents who had thought they were long since finished with parenting and were constantly occupied dealing with their younger daughter’s unexpected magical mishaps. As such, Ash didn’t get a lot of parental attention until June left home, which contributed to him being an exceptionally self-contained child—as did the fact that his magic manifested later than it had for either of his sisters, and in a rather spectacular fashion.
When Ash was nine or so, his older sister Willie got married; June came back home for the ceremony and left early into the reception, so as to avoid causing drama between herself and the Larue parents. However, only a few minutes after that, a hole roughly half the size of a person was blown through the wall right next to the door through which June had left, causing minor injury to Ash (and, unfortunately, a premature end to said reception).
Some investigation of the incident revealed that Ash had been trying a simple summoning—attempting to reach his water glass from a distance—and instead of flying to him, the glass flew towards the door instead, with enough force to blast right through the wall. He tried to explain what had gone wrong, as far as he could tell: the glass had gotten diverted like a magnet to swerve toward the direction of the door, resisting his attempts to direct it towards him. It was a highly unusual mishap, especially for a Larue, for whom summoning spells were meant to be a particular strength, so the Larue parents wasted no time in investigating further. Between Ash trying to rework the spell—with results that were never that disastrous again, but still not ever quite right—and some examination of both the magical wreckage and the track of the spell, the conclusion was that Ash’s magic had, somehow, been drawn more to the residue of June’s own, as the strongest magical presence there, and had gravitated towards it instead of following Ash’s own will.
Given that this explanation also spoke of something unusual, the Larues began to bring on tutors, professors, investigators, and other experts with a wide variety of magical knowledge to examine Ash and figure out how his magic worked. After several years of thorough investigation from multiple avenues of inquiry—during which Ash was kept relatively isolated, since few things are as alarming as unknown or unpredictable magic—the answer was determined to be something along these lines: magic, for the most part, operates as an aspect of a person, like a muscle that can be strengthened with exercise or a talent with an initial aptitude that can be improved with practice. Of course it can be influenced by the presence of magic elsewhere—multiple witches being able to cast a stronger spell by working together, for example, or magic coming more easily in certain places infused with it—but it responds, primarily, to the will, practice, intent, and strength of the person to whom it belongs. Ash’s magic, by contrast, seemed more than anything to be drawn to the presence of other magic itself: a talent for finding, as is the Larue specialty, the strongest presence of magic in the room, then acting as both a chameleon—adapting to the magic in question—and a sponge—absorbing its particular properties and strengths (hence the summoning spell going so dramatically awry, thanks to June’s magic), bending away from the original intent and gaining often unpredictable strength and purpose.
Once this strange quirk of Ash’s magic became clearer, so did the fact that until he could learn better focus and control, Ash couldn’t be taught among other magical humans—it would be impossible to figure out how to target spells the way he wanted when other people’s magic was interfering. So his isolation from the world at large became intensified; he became fully homeschooled, in traditional education as well as magical (his tutors for the latter couldn’t even be in the same room as he was, given the pitfalls of magical interference). This meant, obviously, that he spent a great deal of his formative years entirely on his own, with the bulk of his in-person social interaction coming from his parents and oldest sister, as well as the rare foray into downtown Hexham. And as a result, he became extremely introverted and anxious, which meant he didn’t deal well with the prospect of people, resulting in said rare forays into downtown slowly becoming even more so.
As would be understandable for anyone under these circumstances, it didn’t take long for Ash to start chafing at the restrictions of this life. He didn’t mind the isolation so much; he felt uncomfortable around people, unsure of how to relate to them, and the sense of danger in his potential loss of control over his magic that had been deeply drummed into him only served to heighten his nerves. And while he didn’t love the fact that he genuinely didn’t do much in his days other than train and study his magic, or that his main company was his parents, none of that bothered him as much as the fact that none of it was working. He was getting a somewhat better control on his magic, of course—the sheer amount of time and effort he was putting into it had to have some results—but he was also slowly getting the distinct impression that whatever progress he’d made wasn’t enough—that it was the approaches themselves that just weren’t doing the trick. Whatever magical theory had been developed through centuries of scholarly thought, it just wasn’t quite suited to finding a real, permanent solution for him.
On top of that, it was beginning to seem as if his entire life was revolving around controlling his magic—that if he didn’t figure out a better way, it was never going to change. And while Ash didn’t know what he wanted out of life, he sure as hell would welcome the opportunity to find out, which wasn’t going to happen if he didn’t make some very serious changes. (This epiphany was mostly triggered by June’s return to town when he was sixteen, which was throwing his magic even more out of whack than usual, her being more dramatically powerful than anyone in town other than the fae.)
And speaking of whom, it didn’t take Ash much thought to decide the direction of the change he wanted to make. From the little theory he’d read about fae magic (it’s still not understood too well by humans), it seemed that his magic was more similar to theirs than to that of most human witches, and since human methods clearly weren’t working, maybe fae methods would. So he would travel to the fae homelands, and he would try to convince someone to teach him how to better control his magic. (He was well aware, of course, that this venture was fraught with the possibility of disaster, but given that none of his other options seemed even remotely hopeful, he was damn well going to jump on this one and make the most of it.)
Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that; there’s a reason humans don’t regularly travel to the fae homelands, after all. The only ways to enter on purpose are through being taken there by a fae (through summoning or kidnapping, depending on the temperament of said fae), direct invitation, or a guide, and the spell for the last of those is complex enough that it’s almost never attempted—one of the ingredients is a part of someone who’s already been to the fae homelands, which is, of course, almost impossible to obtain (the few humans who do go there tend to stick around rather than traveling back and forth). Ash could probably have solicited help from Lucien or June, but he was pretty sure neither of them would be on board, and he didn’t want to risk being talked out of this plan... so instead he turned to subterfuge, and obtained a hair from Fox Castle-Clemens, the half-fae co-owner of the downtown bookstore.
Having done this, he was able to pull together the rest of the spell with relative ease, and he worked hard to figure out exactly how he was going to cast it. Rather than ignoring the strong pull from the fae and his sister that would bend the direction of his magic, he decided to lean into it—using June to give the summoning more strength and using Lucien to aim it towards a strong fae. And when he was finally certain he had every detail just right, he cast the spell—and it worked.
The fae summoned as Ash’s guide was (as mentioned) one Chrysanthos Alden Laurentius Linwood, member of a royal family, and he was not even remotely happy to be pulled so suddenly to Calyptura by a barely-trained human child. Unfortunately, his feelings on the matter notwithstanding, he was indeed bound to serve as guide into the fae homelands. He was, however, not bound to do so with any sort of directness or simplicity, and thus began the several-month-long journey affectionately nicknamed Ash and Rys’s Terrible Adventure, full of twists and turns and obstacles in Rys’s increasingly desperate attempts to get rid of this obnoxious human already. But for the second time ever, the particulars of Ash’s magic became a help rather than a hindrance: Rys being fae royalty makes him practically a beacon of magic, so Ash’s own would inevitably be drawn to him, wherever they went, making it impossible for him not to know where Rys was at all times. (Though honestly, several days in, he would much rather not have known that, ever.) (It was a long few months for both of them.)
Eventually, though, the terrible adventure had to reach its end, and as guaranteed by the spell, Rys led Ash to the fae homelands—specifically, to the home of the royal family, much to his irritation. Before he could send Ash off to wherever the fuck he intended to go next, though, they happened to run into one Cyneric Aurelius Diarmait Linwood, prince royal, who was endlessly amused by his cousin being forced to serve as a guide for a human. Whether through a moment of sympathy or boredom or the intrigue of something new (or some combination thereof), Cy ended up offering Ash some guidance in terms of where to go next and offered to be in touch should he need further advice. Generally not a good bargain to accept from a fae, but something about Cy convinced Ash, even wary and antisocial as he tended to be, to trust him, and believing the offer to be in good faith (though not knowing if he’d ever make use of it), he accepted before going on his merry way (deeply relieved to be free of his reluctant guide).
While humans living in the fae homelands are few and far between, the long history between the two countries meant that there are certainly inroads made by the humans who had, over the years, crossed the border. While some humans was kidnapped or stumbled across by mistake, and some of those who came across on purpose were enamored of the idea of living among the fae, for whatever reason, many did so with magical intent of some kind—explorers, scholars, magical theorists, historians, or those, like Ash, whose magic was just different, somehow, and thus came seeking at least guidance if not answers. This meant that while the world of the fae was still somewhat of a mystery (and often dangerous) for humans to stumble through, there were enough resources in place—and enough humans present there, making lives for themselves—that Ash could manage to settle in, following the footsteps of prior magical theorists and scholars to find places and people that could teach him how to better understand and control his magic.
And, well, that’s what he was up to for the next few years—laying low among the fae, learning more about his magic and how to control and focus it, basically finding a happy medium between human and fae spellwork, taking from either what worked better for him. He tended to prefer fae methods, but for obvious reasons not all of them worked for him, so he had to learn how to blend them with those of human magic, cobbling together his own system of spellcasting. The ambience of the magic in the fae homelands helped his focus, too; when magic is everywhere, it’s hard to pinpoint the strongest source, so Ash’s tended to be easier to bend to his own intent rather than outside influence. He learned more about how to understand the workings of his magic, how to make it function properly and how to focus it, and he finally became comfortable viewing it as a part of himself—and using it as such—rather than controlling it as an adversary.
Finally understanding his magic and learning how best to use it was nothing but a blessing to Ash, but it did free his mind from what had been its primary task of keeping himself in control at all times, which allowed him to—finally—start thinking about what he actually wanted from his life, and what steps he could next take to begin to achieve that. And the truth was, after so much time dedicated to helping him reach the point where he could begin to contemplate that question... he didn’t have the slightest idea.
He knew he couldn’t stay in the fae homelands, of course; while he enjoyed his time there, it was hard for humans to make a life among fae, as they would never quite manage to earn status as equals. (Especially hard for someone like Ash, who—though he had earned the grudging respect of a lot of the fae academics and theoreticians he encountered on a regular basis, his determination, dedication, and skill being quite impressive for a human—was anxious and reserved enough to have trouble forming connections even with humans, let alone fae, with whom one can never really fully let their guard down. The one exception was Cy, with whom Ash had stayed in touch and managed to form a genuine friendship, the connection a surprise to both of them, but perhaps inevitable—Cy appreciated having someone unconnected to his brother’s banishment to talk to in the wake of that particular disaster, and Ash needed just one person in the fae homelands he could genuinely trust, so it was definitely a mutually beneficial relationship.) So he knew he’d have to go back to Calyptura eventually... but he didn’t have the first clue where to start, given that he wasn’t at all ready to come back to Hexham and he had no idea where else he might want to go.
He didn’t have to think about this too long, though, because a few years into their friendship, Cy came to him with an idea, born primarily of his lack of desire to ascend to the throne, but also knowing it would serve Ash’s longing for some kind of purpose in his life: he wanted to travel to Calyptura without anyone knowing he’d left or going after him. And the best way to make this happen, as it turned out, was a modified changeling spell that would allow him and Ash to switch places—Cy in disguise as a human and Ash in disguise as Cy. It was a tricky, risky proposition, but if they could pull it off, they would both get what they wanted, at least for a short time—it seemed a good temporary solution to both of their problems. While Ash was more than a little hesitant about casting such a complex spell, the rewards were too tempting to ignore, and so he agreed.
Of course, he dedicated a hell of a lot of time into researching the adjustments that would be needed for the spell and preparing to cast it; he was well aware of how much was on his shoulders in doing so, and he wanted to be absolutely positive that neither the changes necessary nor his own magic would fuck things up for him and Cy. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to him, his sister June had recently had a not-so-great trip to the fae homelands, resulting in her tearing a hole through the veil between human and fae realms—something that absolutely should have been accounted for in the spell, and that extremely was not. So when Ash actually cast it... between his magic, Cy’s magic, June’s magic, and the hole in the border, things went a tad awry. Cy was sent to Hexham in the guise of a human, and Ash appeared for all intents and purposes to be Cy, but neither of them had retained any memories of who they were, where they had come from, or why they were where they were.
So as of early winter 2019, all that Ash has is the knowledge that he’s impersonating a fae prince, the certainty that he can’t tell anyone he isn’t who he’s pretending to be, and a whole lot of instincts and buried knowledge that are surfacing as needed—as well as the suspicion of Rys Linwood, who isn’t sure what’s going on with his cousin, but feels absolutely positive that something is up. And meanwhile, also unbeknownst to him, Cy’s arrival in Hexham is setting certain other events in motion...