65 Ashan 719
Before Zarik
loomed the tallest building in the Arboreal. He was alone. Upon return to Quacia, he’d set the people of Helice who'd accompanied him onto the process of being recorded as migrants. The use of his Venora signet ring had been instrumental in such negotiation, but whether the Quacians would honor the agreement to allow the Helians inclusion in the city, he couldn’t be certain. It was likely, however, since a few had gone alongside Kyriakos to speak with King Arkenstone and the court about matters of the islands. Zarik was meant to attend such discussion, but instead he was here… in the Arboreal… staring at a decrepit stone building that was more decay than architecture. He would write the King a formal and notarized letter, describing certain and carefully selected information instead.
For now, his attention fixated on the building in front of him. The tallest, the largest, and it nearly touched a low misty cloud in the dim evening sky. It had been the Arboreal’s residential church for the Theocratum, but had fallen far out of repair when the neighborhood became abandoned. The stones had many cracks through them, dusted rubble falling off from the slightest bump or wind, but the architecture was also dense. Windows of stained glass had gotten smashed out, only the faint broken shards in the tall narrow frames remained. Through the wall, jutted stone and abandoned mantles of Wounded God icons had been left to rust and rot in the rain and cold. There was no care for this building. No one loved it. It was alone...
...but not for the moment. Zarik was with it. He placed a hand on the first stone, took a deep breath, and greeted the building itself in a quiet voice, "Hello, there. I'm going to climb you, if that's okay. Please, don't try to kill me?"
He hesitated, and though it remained silent beyond a faint wind and the far-off sound of the Quacian streets, he swore he could have heard an answer in his heart. Zarik smiled slightly. The Biqaj lifted himself up with the first stone, found his footing along a frame's edge, then started his climb up the magnificent Arboreal monument.
As he climbed, he focused mostly on the task at hand, but thoughts drifted through his mind regardless. Thoughts... and voices of a time not that long ago.
“Hello.”
Zarik placed a hand higher on the wall, lifted himself up with a small huffed exhale.
“Not very good at the whole climbing thing, are you?”
He scrambled up a few more nooks and crannies with swift maneuvering of his hands and feet, fast enough that when some stone crumbled, he didn’t fall with the rubble. Zarik made it to a small landing that used to house a gargoyle, but had long since corroded. For a brief respite, he sat on the edge and stared out at a few of the lower down rooftops. He had gotten past that window he'd jumped to... on the first morning of Ashan. He could see it, in the near distance, and he could almost see the ghostly afterimages of himself sprinting to leap from the roof, only for the window frame to break under his grip and his body to slip backward into a fall. A mistake that could have proven fatal in consequence, no matter how he'd tried to soften such recognition of recklessness at the time.
The voice continued, like an annoying pompous bird nestled deep inside his ear.
“I believe the common acrobat regards homes as an easy quarry, even for beginning climbers. But alas, we cannot all be so common as to meet standard expectations.”
Zarik returned to his feet. He jumped from the landing and grabbed the thin edge of a windowsill, above. The svelte Biqaj swung his body and made it to a partial skyway that connected the church's corner to the next adjacent rowhouse meant for the resident Tribunals. He crouched above a column and looked over the rooftops at the lower sections of the Arboreal again.
His own voice rang in his head alongside that of the Ryn nobleman...
“Thank you, sir.”
“You are welcome. Trying to catch the arc’s first sunrise? Me too, I guess. I could just use magic, but there’s no satisfaction in that.”
“If I could, I would.”
“Why don’t you, then?”
Zarik shook his head. He ran a hand over his face, rubbed his eyes, then pinched the bridge of his nose. A shaky breath escaped past his lips. He turned his gaze upward. The building inclined into a steep curve as the roof peaked into the Theocratic steeple with slick stone shingles. His breath quickened more so. A light sweat beaded on his forehead as he surveyed the challenge before him - and a challenge it was, the steepest and highest point he'd ever dared to attempt to climb.
”There are many ways up there, but nothing could be as satisfying than using my body to get so high up…”
“What’s your name, biqaj? I’m Alistair Venora.”
“Zarik. My name. It’s Zarik.”
“…men like you are a breath of fresh air, in this city. Its native people may well be cycled out and replaced with less miserable souls entirely, by the time my aspirations here are resolved. We will see. And there it is. The first sunrise of the arc. Cheers to that.”
He backed up a few steps on the skyway, then ran forward. His ether lashed out. His witchmark eyes glowed white with violet tint, leaving trails of light in his wake. The Biqaj forced the stone along with him, without care for the element within. It was matter like all the rest of existence that bent and morphed to his Transmuter's will. He created a ramp that he sprinted along as he crafted it in time with his pace. His wings folded alongside his back, to not slow him down.
The stone flattened before his foot landed, risking a delay and that he might land on pure air or a loose shingle instead. Instead, he reached the top of the steeple where there was no place for him to stand alongside the rusted iron-wrought spike that needled the sky. Zarik shapecrafted a thin platform around the peak and on his balcony, he stood at the very top of the entire Arboreal neighborhood.
The air was thinner, this high up. He felt a humid Ashan wind blow past. His pale hair ruffled. He stared farther out at Quacia proper, the sprawling city of decayed stone: his home. From this vantage, he could see Shanty and the hints of Lair. He could see his home in the Gleam, where he'd found his father dead only breaks ago. He could see the battlement walls of Fortress, and near them, he could see the space where he knew Ashvane Estate remained on the Riovara. Was Alistair there? Looking for him? Did the Paragon even care for such sentimental things as the husband he'd come to know did?
Zarik sat on the platform edge and watched the setting sun. His eyes watered. He brought his knees up to his chest, and buried his face against them. His heart ached. His emotions flurried in a mess of chaotic confusion. He wondered if his husband had even noticed his disappearance yet. If so, it was likely only because he'd taken a ship and people with him - not because of... Zarik placed a hand against his lower stomach. He grimaced and glanced at the totem rings on his fingers alongside the signet ring he still wore, then looked down at the far drop to the hard stone streets of the Arboreal.
Why had he fallen for such a man?, he considered. There were plenty of men in Quacia, of all sorts, rich, poor, foreign, native, handsome or otherwise. In retrospect, he recalled what likely had been interest from other men but he’d been too daft to recognize them at the time. It’d taken someone as forceful as Alistair to make him confront his own desires instead of hiding in shadowed corners from the nature of his heart. Someone who took what they wanted, without regard to how anyone else felt about it.
But what for?
Here he sat, alone and yet… he had already felt alone while in Miletos. Marcovera, a little less so, due to the affectionate populace there. He had felt alone in Ashvane estate though. No matter how many words the nobleman had spoken about how he wanted Zarik to feel proper in the household that was meant to also be his, Zarik never belonged. He would’ve never belonged either, he figured. How could he? He was Biqaj, and a Quacian who loved his city - he could never despise or resent it like those other men could - and he was a peasantry Heap who found the meager business of scrounging coins through operation of a terrible business as the pinnacle of success compared to the banditry of the wilderness. He was weak and powerless and daft as a mewling kitten going out in the world for the first time. His father had been right enough, about everything. He should have listened to the man, but now it was too late. Still, he felt a new sense of ease that he didn’t have to worry about it anymore, any of it. He didn't have to care for his father's business, didn't have to enable the inherent sadism anymore. He didn't have to fight so hard to fill the role that his husband had placed him in. Nor did he have to worry about his husband's dangerous perchance to seek to rule over other people, no matter the cost; the ominous signs of what Zarik had begun to identify, from his studies, as tyrannical urges that the young biqaj knew not how to mitigate nor temper.
With his father dead, and his husband left to his ways, Zarik found himself... happy. It was a burden lifted from his shoulders. He could breathe normally again. He smiled slightly, wiped the tears from his eyes, and nodded at the city before him. He knew it wouldn't be simple or easy. He knew that the world of Idalos was a dangerous place with even stronger and crueler people than the Protean and the Paragon, but it was the world he had before him - in all its infinite glory. He could do anything, within reason, and become anyone. It was likely he'd have to leave Quacia... and he considered that perhaps he might go north and explore the lands he'd heard so much about, but had never set foot near.
His sisters would likely wish to return to Ne'haer and he would facilitate that for them, the best he could. His resources were about to get tight, but then, he'd always had to make do with a few nels here and there. He had more contacts now though, wealthier ones too, and people like Lahew and Lucretia. He had nobility still sending him gifts in congratulations for becoming a citizen, and he wondered if they might not like to talk with him and negotiate certain arrangements... but he wondered if he'd even wish to bother with such a thing. It'd been like a surreal dream, his fleeting trials as a lord. It had cost him a lot: his innocence, his sense of self, his dear father's sanity and then life. He'd gained much though in return, of wisdom and the reunion with his sisters, and knowledge of his son. It had felt right in so many ways... but also wrong in many others. Zarik didn't have to wear that mask anymore or figure out the costume of it all. He didn't have to perform anymore. He could simply be himself, in pure and unrelenting truth of whoever he was.
Zarik stood on the stone balcony of his own creation. He placed a hand on the iron-wrought spire of the abandoned Arboreal church. The Biqaj leaned aside, grinned, then spun about the circular platform. The steeple creaked and threatened to snap. His wings flared outward, and fluttered.
For the first time, in all of Zarik's life - even when he'd been a young boy climbing on top of the masts of his family's ship - he felt the glorious sensation of absolute freedom. His halo shone blindingly bright in competition with the sun that lowered past the horizon, and from his back, spindly limbs erupted from his spine. The ethereal appendages, made of shimmering white light, effortlessly slid through his clothing without tearing the fabric. The thin needle-like points landed on the stone and lifted his body up and up, higher than the spire.
He placed his scarred palms lightly on the very tip of the spire's point. Zarik set a iridescent orb of brilliance on top to hover like a bound star for all near the Arboreal to see. He let the shapecrafted balcony recede, then backflipped away through the air. His body sped past the curved incline of the steeple roof.
The ethereal limbs stabbed outward, lodging into the stone church walls. His body easily followed along, not limp but not rigid, a perfect balance. He pressed off with the ethereal spider-like legs, flipped, then repeated the motion until he sped close toward the street. The sharp points of the limbs impaled the ground fiercely, cracking apart any stonework that might've remained at each spot. He slowly lowered his physical body, to land in a graceful slide of his feet as if he were merely a wisp of a dandelion seed floating down to land for a rest.
For now, his attention fixated on the building in front of him. The tallest, the largest, and it nearly touched a low misty cloud in the dim evening sky. It had been the Arboreal’s residential church for the Theocratum, but had fallen far out of repair when the neighborhood became abandoned. The stones had many cracks through them, dusted rubble falling off from the slightest bump or wind, but the architecture was also dense. Windows of stained glass had gotten smashed out, only the faint broken shards in the tall narrow frames remained. Through the wall, jutted stone and abandoned mantles of Wounded God icons had been left to rust and rot in the rain and cold. There was no care for this building. No one loved it. It was alone...
...but not for the moment. Zarik was with it. He placed a hand on the first stone, took a deep breath, and greeted the building itself in a quiet voice, "Hello, there. I'm going to climb you, if that's okay. Please, don't try to kill me?"
He hesitated, and though it remained silent beyond a faint wind and the far-off sound of the Quacian streets, he swore he could have heard an answer in his heart. Zarik smiled slightly. The Biqaj lifted himself up with the first stone, found his footing along a frame's edge, then started his climb up the magnificent Arboreal monument.
As he climbed, he focused mostly on the task at hand, but thoughts drifted through his mind regardless. Thoughts... and voices of a time not that long ago.
“Hello.”
Zarik placed a hand higher on the wall, lifted himself up with a small huffed exhale.
“Not very good at the whole climbing thing, are you?”
He scrambled up a few more nooks and crannies with swift maneuvering of his hands and feet, fast enough that when some stone crumbled, he didn’t fall with the rubble. Zarik made it to a small landing that used to house a gargoyle, but had long since corroded. For a brief respite, he sat on the edge and stared out at a few of the lower down rooftops. He had gotten past that window he'd jumped to... on the first morning of Ashan. He could see it, in the near distance, and he could almost see the ghostly afterimages of himself sprinting to leap from the roof, only for the window frame to break under his grip and his body to slip backward into a fall. A mistake that could have proven fatal in consequence, no matter how he'd tried to soften such recognition of recklessness at the time.
The voice continued, like an annoying pompous bird nestled deep inside his ear.
“I believe the common acrobat regards homes as an easy quarry, even for beginning climbers. But alas, we cannot all be so common as to meet standard expectations.”
Zarik returned to his feet. He jumped from the landing and grabbed the thin edge of a windowsill, above. The svelte Biqaj swung his body and made it to a partial skyway that connected the church's corner to the next adjacent rowhouse meant for the resident Tribunals. He crouched above a column and looked over the rooftops at the lower sections of the Arboreal again.
His own voice rang in his head alongside that of the Ryn nobleman...
“Thank you, sir.”
“You are welcome. Trying to catch the arc’s first sunrise? Me too, I guess. I could just use magic, but there’s no satisfaction in that.”
“If I could, I would.”
“Why don’t you, then?”
Zarik shook his head. He ran a hand over his face, rubbed his eyes, then pinched the bridge of his nose. A shaky breath escaped past his lips. He turned his gaze upward. The building inclined into a steep curve as the roof peaked into the Theocratic steeple with slick stone shingles. His breath quickened more so. A light sweat beaded on his forehead as he surveyed the challenge before him - and a challenge it was, the steepest and highest point he'd ever dared to attempt to climb.
”There are many ways up there, but nothing could be as satisfying than using my body to get so high up…”
“What’s your name, biqaj? I’m Alistair Venora.”
“Zarik. My name. It’s Zarik.”
“…men like you are a breath of fresh air, in this city. Its native people may well be cycled out and replaced with less miserable souls entirely, by the time my aspirations here are resolved. We will see. And there it is. The first sunrise of the arc. Cheers to that.”
He backed up a few steps on the skyway, then ran forward. His ether lashed out. His witchmark eyes glowed white with violet tint, leaving trails of light in his wake. The Biqaj forced the stone along with him, without care for the element within. It was matter like all the rest of existence that bent and morphed to his Transmuter's will. He created a ramp that he sprinted along as he crafted it in time with his pace. His wings folded alongside his back, to not slow him down.
The stone flattened before his foot landed, risking a delay and that he might land on pure air or a loose shingle instead. Instead, he reached the top of the steeple where there was no place for him to stand alongside the rusted iron-wrought spike that needled the sky. Zarik shapecrafted a thin platform around the peak and on his balcony, he stood at the very top of the entire Arboreal neighborhood.
The air was thinner, this high up. He felt a humid Ashan wind blow past. His pale hair ruffled. He stared farther out at Quacia proper, the sprawling city of decayed stone: his home. From this vantage, he could see Shanty and the hints of Lair. He could see his home in the Gleam, where he'd found his father dead only breaks ago. He could see the battlement walls of Fortress, and near them, he could see the space where he knew Ashvane Estate remained on the Riovara. Was Alistair there? Looking for him? Did the Paragon even care for such sentimental things as the husband he'd come to know did?
Zarik sat on the platform edge and watched the setting sun. His eyes watered. He brought his knees up to his chest, and buried his face against them. His heart ached. His emotions flurried in a mess of chaotic confusion. He wondered if his husband had even noticed his disappearance yet. If so, it was likely only because he'd taken a ship and people with him - not because of... Zarik placed a hand against his lower stomach. He grimaced and glanced at the totem rings on his fingers alongside the signet ring he still wore, then looked down at the far drop to the hard stone streets of the Arboreal.
Why had he fallen for such a man?, he considered. There were plenty of men in Quacia, of all sorts, rich, poor, foreign, native, handsome or otherwise. In retrospect, he recalled what likely had been interest from other men but he’d been too daft to recognize them at the time. It’d taken someone as forceful as Alistair to make him confront his own desires instead of hiding in shadowed corners from the nature of his heart. Someone who took what they wanted, without regard to how anyone else felt about it.
But what for?
Here he sat, alone and yet… he had already felt alone while in Miletos. Marcovera, a little less so, due to the affectionate populace there. He had felt alone in Ashvane estate though. No matter how many words the nobleman had spoken about how he wanted Zarik to feel proper in the household that was meant to also be his, Zarik never belonged. He would’ve never belonged either, he figured. How could he? He was Biqaj, and a Quacian who loved his city - he could never despise or resent it like those other men could - and he was a peasantry Heap who found the meager business of scrounging coins through operation of a terrible business as the pinnacle of success compared to the banditry of the wilderness. He was weak and powerless and daft as a mewling kitten going out in the world for the first time. His father had been right enough, about everything. He should have listened to the man, but now it was too late. Still, he felt a new sense of ease that he didn’t have to worry about it anymore, any of it. He didn't have to care for his father's business, didn't have to enable the inherent sadism anymore. He didn't have to fight so hard to fill the role that his husband had placed him in. Nor did he have to worry about his husband's dangerous perchance to seek to rule over other people, no matter the cost; the ominous signs of what Zarik had begun to identify, from his studies, as tyrannical urges that the young biqaj knew not how to mitigate nor temper.
With his father dead, and his husband left to his ways, Zarik found himself... happy. It was a burden lifted from his shoulders. He could breathe normally again. He smiled slightly, wiped the tears from his eyes, and nodded at the city before him. He knew it wouldn't be simple or easy. He knew that the world of Idalos was a dangerous place with even stronger and crueler people than the Protean and the Paragon, but it was the world he had before him - in all its infinite glory. He could do anything, within reason, and become anyone. It was likely he'd have to leave Quacia... and he considered that perhaps he might go north and explore the lands he'd heard so much about, but had never set foot near.
His sisters would likely wish to return to Ne'haer and he would facilitate that for them, the best he could. His resources were about to get tight, but then, he'd always had to make do with a few nels here and there. He had more contacts now though, wealthier ones too, and people like Lahew and Lucretia. He had nobility still sending him gifts in congratulations for becoming a citizen, and he wondered if they might not like to talk with him and negotiate certain arrangements... but he wondered if he'd even wish to bother with such a thing. It'd been like a surreal dream, his fleeting trials as a lord. It had cost him a lot: his innocence, his sense of self, his dear father's sanity and then life. He'd gained much though in return, of wisdom and the reunion with his sisters, and knowledge of his son. It had felt right in so many ways... but also wrong in many others. Zarik didn't have to wear that mask anymore or figure out the costume of it all. He didn't have to perform anymore. He could simply be himself, in pure and unrelenting truth of whoever he was.
Zarik stood on the stone balcony of his own creation. He placed a hand on the iron-wrought spire of the abandoned Arboreal church. The Biqaj leaned aside, grinned, then spun about the circular platform. The steeple creaked and threatened to snap. His wings flared outward, and fluttered.
For the first time, in all of Zarik's life - even when he'd been a young boy climbing on top of the masts of his family's ship - he felt the glorious sensation of absolute freedom. His halo shone blindingly bright in competition with the sun that lowered past the horizon, and from his back, spindly limbs erupted from his spine. The ethereal appendages, made of shimmering white light, effortlessly slid through his clothing without tearing the fabric. The thin needle-like points landed on the stone and lifted his body up and up, higher than the spire.
He placed his scarred palms lightly on the very tip of the spire's point. Zarik set a iridescent orb of brilliance on top to hover like a bound star for all near the Arboreal to see. He let the shapecrafted balcony recede, then backflipped away through the air. His body sped past the curved incline of the steeple roof.
The ethereal limbs stabbed outward, lodging into the stone church walls. His body easily followed along, not limp but not rigid, a perfect balance. He pressed off with the ethereal spider-like legs, flipped, then repeated the motion until he sped close toward the street. The sharp points of the limbs impaled the ground fiercely, cracking apart any stonework that might've remained at each spot. He slowly lowered his physical body, to land in a graceful slide of his feet as if he were merely a wisp of a dandelion seed floating down to land for a rest.
