44th of Vhalar, Arc 719
Llyr hadn't slept. He hadn't eaten. He hadn't taken a single break from studying for the past however long it'd been - he'd lost count far into the session, nestled away in the restricted floor of the library with the arcana sections. Yet Llyr had agreed, upon Dean Rush's insistence, that he would give a lecture about Ether to a class of students at the Letter and Certificate levels. It could be about anything regarding ether, as long as it pertained to the Institute of Arcana's studies about magic. Llyr had agreed... but he hadn't realized how little he knew about what made a lecture, or how to structure such a thing around something like ether, when he'd done so. Dean Rush kept treating him like he knew a great deal, but Llyr did not see it this way. The biqaj was aware of the immense scope in which he remained ignorant of so much. What he knew felt like the tiniest and smallest speck in the great scheme of things that were out there to be known.
So, he had studied. He had made use of the Prime Atheneum. One of the main reasons why he'd enrolled to the Academy in the first place, was so that he could access the heavy tomes full of obscure texts about magic. Llyr devoted himself entirely to his research. He didn't even go and visit Doran. In fact, he didn't visit anyone - though one person had found him...
...but Llyr threw himself into his work more than he ever had before. Never had he focused so intently, for so long. In his youth, he might have if he hadn't been interrupted by the constant need to attend to chores and his father's business. In his marriage, he might have if he hadn't felt the need to delve into practical matters so that he could continue to expand his sparks and his application to the world around him. In Emea, he'd been far too mesmerized with experimentation and there seemed to be very few texts on the dreaming world. In his travels, he had been preoccupied with survival through being held captive to pirates from evading Lisirra's plagues. Finally, in Etzos, he was busy with means of earning coin and establishing a reputation that might serve him well in the arcs to come.
In Viden, though... things were different. Viden was a place that seemed to support such study by its very environment of cold weather. There was a bustling and complex society in the city, but he found himself able to hide away regardless. Only those in the Academy truly knew who he was, and why he was there, but only a select few actually were aware of his name and that he traveled between cities to attend the school.
Of course, the young mage's focus wasn't entirely natural.
He made use of a power he'd only started to realize he had. Llyr didn't know exactly from where it originated, but he assumed it had something to do with the interaction between his multiple sparks. There was, he realized the more that he studied arcana, a great deal happening inside of his soul. More than he'd ever thought... and at times, Llyr had to pause from everything to simply breathe and collect himself. So many thoughts would consume him; what had he done to his soul? Who had he turned into? Who would he have been if he'd never allowed the sparks into him? Was he a monster? An abomination? Mutated beyond hope and lost to the world of man? He wished to wear his Ring of Paradigm, but he worried that if he did, his magic might be needed and he wouldn't have access to his sparks in the case of emergency. It was this worry that kept him from putting the ring on, along with that he didn't want the Academy to know he possessed such an artifact. Not yet, anyway.
It wasn't only this power that aided in his hyperfocus, but also the sap of Ambrosia which he chewed on while studying...
...and which he smoked in the break leading up to his lecture. Rolled with tobacco and bug berry, the stick had left a bittersweet scent on his hair and clothes. Llyr had found a tiny abandoned closet between the Prime Atheneum and the room where he was meant to give his talk. He didn't get too far into it before he felt a momentary fear he might get caught, and snubbed the laced cigarette out to hide away in his messenger bag. Llyr knew the substance was illicit, but he enjoyed the sensation it gave him. It helped him forget all those doubts and fears, and focus on the subjects at hand, and remembering everything he'd read in the many, many books he'd gone over.
Llyr had the wherewithal to change his attire into a cleaner suit of black silk with silver adornments. As usual, his outfit covered almost all of him; from the pointed toes of his shiny black boots to the snug high collar that had a clasp holding it tight around his neck. His gloves were thin but opaque. He'd almost worn a hood... and... Llyr had gotten it in his head that maybe.... maybe it would be better if he gave the lecture while wearing a mask.
So, the dreamwalker slid into Emea to his dreamscape. Very briefly, so that he could craft and anchor a simple full-faced mask. When he anchored it however, upon the transfer, there were intricate engravings on the silver metal in the shape of various tiny symbols. Still, he secured it with a black velvet lacing that tucked behind his pointed ears. It hid his features from view, all except his eyes. He had wanted to cover his eyes also but did not think he could walk around blind without making a fool of himself. With the mask though, it meant that he didn't have to worry about what expression he made or the students - almost all of whom would be strangers to him - wouldn't see him.
Because in the trials leading up to the arranged lecture, Llyr had gotten increasingly nervous about being seen. It would have seemed ridiculous to most anyone who realized that Llyr couldn't not be seen - with the various mutations that spotlighted the tall biqaj in a crowd of hundreds. To Llyr though, it was a pervasive anxiety born from his younger arcs, from before he'd ever been a mage. Many times, he considered simply telling Dean Rush that he couldn't... that he couldn't teach, couldn't lecture, that he would have to drop out of school instead.
In those moments where he seriously considered this course of action, Llyr had feverishly copied as much as he could from the arcana tomes - in the case he might lose his access to the library. He had scrolls upon scrolls, journals upon journals. He was starting to run out of supplies too, and felt the strain of it, though he didn't want to ask Doran for any more. The alchemist had agreed to the patronage of his education, but Llyr felt awkward having to ask for more parchment and ink so frequently and in such mass quantities. With his tuition covered by his lover and initiate, he wanted to try and figure out how to handle the rest of his expenses on his own... but so much of his money was tied up with his new business in Etzos. His loans from the bank and less-reputable sorts in the Etzori underground were only one part of the greater picture that was turning into an exceedingly complicated life for the young biqaj who'd finally set out on his own for the first time in his short existence.
These pressures, therefore, weighed heavily on Llyr. More than he could have complete awareness over.
Despite it all, Llyr walked through the door where he was meant to lecture... about forty bits before the scheduled time. He found the place empty. For a few brief bits, he wondered if he might have confused things or gotten the time or date wrong. He referenced his notes and found it to not be the case. So, Llyr settled into a seat and simply waited...
...he stared ahead, and he just... waited... and for once his mind mellowed. He breathed quietly, slowly, and he relaxed some. Maybe he should have gone to see Doran first. He thought about the alchemist some, in a pleasant daydream encouraged by the Ambrosia that stirred in his body.
When the first students arrived, Llyr remained where he was. He watched them, from behind his mask, with ice blue eyes. Though he didn't recognize them, the students most definitely seemed to identify him - as they nodded and murmured awkward greetings before claiming some of the seats in the fair-sized room.
Llyr stood then, and he shook his head. He pointed at them and said, "No! Wait! Not there!"
One of the young women stared back at him with wide eyes, then let go of the chair that she'd been about to sit in.
The biqaj hurried past, grabbed the chair, then pulled it over. He grabbed another chair, then another, and he said, "In a circle! We must be in a circle. Not this... whatever this wall formation is..." He gestured at how the student desks were set to face the front of the room where a teacher's desk and board had been set.
The students started to help with picking up the chairs and changing the formation of it. Llyr felt glad that they hadn't been assigned to one of the halls with the permanent rows of benches, though he'd only seen one of those and that had been for Dean Rush's lecture on Attunement.
By the time they'd rearranged the classroom, other students had arrived. Llyr made the circle slightly wider, then paced around the inside to see how it felt to him. He nodded a few times, in approval, then walked over to recover his messenger bag. The biqaj set it down on the teacher's desk, then started to take out all his many and varied notes. He heard the other students muttering to one another, but he ignored whatever it was they were saying.
He couldn't listen. He needed to focus.
Llyr caught sight of Dean Rush momentarily peeking in, but the man seemed to just be checking that Llyr had actually shown up. From the door, Rush pointed at Llyr then at his own face with a confused expression - in obvious gesture to ask about the mask. Llyr shrugged. Whatever Rush decided the shrug meant, it seemed to work as the dean seemed to leave with only the slightest of glances at the students and without interruption.
It stood to reason that most likely one of the students wasn't actually a student, but someone set to take notes for the dean - to see how Llyr would do. This made sense to Llyr, anyway.
He took a deep breath, checked the time dial, then picked up his notes. The loose-leaf vellum slid about and he sorted through them, uncaring for how messy it looked or how frantic it must have seemed to the Arcana students who patiently waited for him to begin... though they kept whispering behind hands and murmuring with pointed looks toward Llyr. What were they sayin-- no, no, he needed to focus!
The young mage stepped around the outside of the circled chairs. He cleared his throat. He had seen Doran address a class, he'd attended a few classes of his own already, he'd taught his own initiates before. He could do this. He could do it. He just needed to start.
Llyr remained on the outside of the circle. He slowly paced. The students drew quiet, then silent. All that could be heard was the click of his bootheels against the polished floor. Because he remained at the backs of the students, they only saw him when he hovered behind another student. His wings fluttered. His halo brightened, then dimmed into a dull candlelight sheen. As he looked between the students, he noticed not a single one had any visible mutations of any sort. Were they all students of theory? Dean Rush had mentioned that was ordinary as they didn't encourage practical magic in the Institute.
A bit of silence passed by. The students grew increasingly uncomfortable. They'd started to give incredibly expressive looks toward each other, as if their discomfort might be allayed by their shared experience of what was happening - of the confusion they felt - a camaraderie of uncertainty.
"Ether is the foundation," said Llyr finally. He didn't say hello. He didn't greet them. He didn't even preface the statement. He said it and then he paused. When the expressions turned bemused, and a couple students even dryly laughed, he repeated in a firmer tone of voice, "Ether. IS the foundation for everything we know."
"Without ether, we would be nothing. Mages or not, but you are here to learn about Arcana, are you not? So let us speak about mages then. While some might make the case that the ordinary mortal has no direct need or relation to ether, this cannot even be attempted as an argument against those who harbor sparks within them."
Llyr spoke with little pause, a clip in his voice that matched his bootheels against the floor while he continued to pace around the outside of the circle. A few of the students had gotten out notebooks and hurriedly scribbled in them to try and keep up. He didn't care if they succeeded or not. What he'd said had been nothing but basic sense, in his opinion. They should already know it.
"While individuality is understood to a certain extent already, this odd uniqueness of self is exacerbated the moment that a spark is introduced to the soul of a mage. Through the inundation of ether sourced from the dreaming realms into our waking world, the mage is changed from the inside to the outside. What you see of awakenings, or mutations, such as my own..."
He paused here, if only because he gracefully slid between two of the chairs and stepped to the inside of the circle so that all the students could see him at the same time. Though he was covered almost in entirety, and he hid behind his silver mask, his wings and halo were still visible. He outstretched his insectoid wings to make a display of them. His halo brightened above his head. Light refracted off the gossamer veins of his wings, sending multicolors over the floor and students. He ignored a few noises that escaped some of them.
"...these are not the beginning signs but the end results of ether channeled through the soul in order to craft and manifest disciplined spells into our world. What warps the individual, what colors them, what breeds inside of them, by the time one recognizes it, the spark has already bloated itself on ether. We can look at these as a source of decay, not unlike plague sores that alert observers to the sickness that festers inside a person... or we might see a more optimistic view in that maybe it is more like the developed muscles of a warrior, who has spent the time to practice that which runs through his flesh whenever he performs feats of strength."
"However you prefer to look at it, there is one fact that remains. It is ether which causes this. It is ether that feeds a spark and it is ether that deforms a mage. But what is ether and why is it so variable within us and our world?"
Llyr stopped pacing around the inner circle. He lifted his stack of messy loose-leaf notes, and sorted through them. A few papers fell to the floor but he didn't bother to even pick them up. He narrowed his ice blue eyes, glanced over some of the notes while he heard the fierce scratches of the students writing. No one attempted to answer his obviously rhetorical question.
He cleared his throat. His wings folded to neatly lay against his backside again. His halo returned to its dimmer light. He spoke up, his voice slightly echoed by the metal of the mask he wore.
"To ask what ether is... is like to ask what air is. To ask what breath is. To inquire as to what it is that we suck into our lungs every trill of every trial. Do you know what air is?" he gestured the stack of notes at one of the students randomly.
The blue-skinned Eidisi scoffed, then adjusted their posture with a glance to the other Eidisi next to them.
Llyr didn't give any more time for consideration of the question. "Yet we can still learn of air, and its effects on the world around us, and in us. We know that for many of us, if we are denied air, we might not survive! Now imagine that... without air, we die. What then of ether? Without ether, a spark might die... but something worse would occur if ether was to vanish or be gotten rid of... Our very minds would die!"
"Ether is what gives us thoughts, it is what gives us the ability to recognize and understand everything," Llyr dreamily sighed for a moment, and he moved across the center of the inner circle with an almost dancerly motion while he outstretched his arm in a poetic gesture. More notes fell from the stack. The floor at his feet was getting littered in his notes - the vellum filled to the brim with his tiny scrawled writing. "Without ether, magic wouldn't exist! And without magic, this world would not exist!"
There was a trade of mutters between the students. One of the human students even stood, picked up their bag, and left the room in a huff.
Llyr waved a hand at them in momentary dismissal but otherwise ignored it. He continued, "So few seem to grasp the immensity that is ether. It goes far beyond, and magic is the cornerstone of our world, it is the reason for so much if you start to look at it truly. Wait!"
He held up a hand when he saw a couple more students stand. They paused though and glanced over him. Perhaps they'd gotten uncomfortable with the direction of the subject? Of his mutations? Llyr didn't know, he couldn't read their minds.
The biqaj tried to explain and he ran his gloved fingers over the silver mask that hid his face from view. "Look, look! I created this very mask using ether! Pure ether!"
One of the students returned to their seat with a frown darkly set on their features.
"And see, if I can create with ether, then... then everything could be created with ether! Everything! You and I and this floor and these chairs," he picked up the empty chair abandoned by the prior student. He tossed it into the center of the circle, and it landed with a bit more impact than he'd intended. Some of the students startled and slid their own chairs back to gain some distance from it.
Llyr walked over. He threw his notes in a flurry to the side, uncaring that they were all on the floor now. The blond biqaj placed his hands on the chair. Ether gathered in them. He Corroded through the wood, the material moldering and decaying in accelerated time. It melted away under his touch. He heard a few gasps.
"Don't you understand? It's all ether!" he told them in an enthusiastic tone. His eyes glowed a vivid iridescent color, the light of which drifted out around the mask's eye slits. "Ether can destroy anything given the correct discipline, with a mage to control it! It can destroy, but it can also create. Give me your chair!"
He pointed at a student next to him. They quickly stood and handed over the chair. Llyr grabbed hold of it. He set it beside the melted away chair, then knelt in front of it. Llyr closed his eyes, placed his hands on the seat... the back of the chair started to grow. He Shapecrafted the wood into a lattice design that resembled an intricate replica of a filigree tree.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that it'd nearly reached the ceiling. The students had all moved to the far side of the room, and all of them were staring up with wide eyes at the display.
"Ether can destroy. It can create. It's all a matter of who wields it, of who controls it and how! Ether is neither good nor bad, but it is all and it i-"
"Enough," said one of the students, an Eidisi woman. "That's enough. Everyone leave."
The students hurriedly collected their belongings, with deferential nods to the Eidisi who'd spoken, then they filed out of the classroom.
Llyr retracted the shapecraft, though the chair didn't return entirely to normal. He slowly stood and looked at the woman. The biqaj blinked, his eyes returned to their ice blue color, and he said in a low voice, "So you're the watcher. I should have known, yes?"
She pursed her lips. "We don't perform practical displays of magic in the Institute, not like that."
"But how else are they to learn how ether influences the world?" asked Llyr. He glanced at the papers littered over the floor and the mess of the chairs.
"We don't risk the lives of our students for knowledge easily obtained through reading or speaking," she insisted. She shook her head, looked at the chairs also, then added, "Dean Rush will be hearing of this. You will likely receive a letter soon."
"What?" Llyr's eyes widened when the woman left the room. "Wait! What do you mean by a letter?"
He hurried, slipping slightly on the papers. His wings fluttered. He lifted off his feet, then landed at the door. He ducked, barely managing to avoid hitting his head at the top of the frame. He looked down the hall. The woman had already gotten a far distance away. She walked fast. He called out in desperate confusion, "What do you mean a letter?!"
He sighed. Llyr glanced down the other end of the hall, saw a couple students peeking at him. They quickly ducked around a corner and disappeared from sight.
The biqaj returned to the classroom. Empty again, but there was now a mess to clean up. He started with the papers, picking them up one by one, and trying to recall what had happened and what he had said. What would the Eidisi woman tell Dean Rush? He could hardly even remember the lecture he'd given. Llyr knelt next to the corroded chair with a handful of papers clutched in his fist. He took off his mask, and neatly set it aside. Llyr rubbed at his eyes, then pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd messed up his lecture, hadn't he?
Llyr kept his eyes shut tight and he muttered to himself, "Daft. daft. daft. daft."
