• Graded • Life of Fi

[Robin Stark]

4th of Vhalar, 717

Night was giving way to the first light of day.

Robin reached over the boat, his stomach pushing against the burnt red iron railing. The river sang a song that was both strangely chilling yet somehow possessed of a warmth that he knew was there but couldn’t feel; a good friend waving at him behind a window he couldn’t open. Robin removed his hands from the railing, his hands stretching down as if to touch the river below. The water pushed up against the wooden boat, a rhythmic bump, bump bump that was a part of its distant symphony too. He was not its friend. Not yet. Just a spectator in the stands with her eye but not her heart.

“Don’t you think it’s strange? Would a tree float as well?” Robin asked the murky waters. It plopped and swayed and in it Robin found an answer. He shrugged in response. “I don’t care about the others.”

Their medium sized boat fit Ten people comfortably with some room to spare. Robin was number 1, the captain and crew were numbers 2 to 7. The other two of the remaining three, an old fat man and a one-handed blonde woman, stayed to themselves and the water. They were Defiers too. “You love them,” he said. It was an accusation and the water’s song retreated back into the depths of the river because of it. Shame or rejection? It was hard to tell.

Robin was upset. He turned his back to the silent river, turning away from the honey gold sunrise. He rubbed his eyes, yawning. Robin looked at the river banks, at the muddy shore, at the earth that he could feel but not touch. Its call was drowned by the loud water. He hadn’t been able to sleep at all. He was too far from the dirt to be able to do so.

He was not the only one who could not sleep. A figure had approached from from the other side of the boat, a shadow that had spent the whole night just staring out at the waves too.

“What do you want?” Robin asked, his voice cold. He was already in a bad mood.

Zipper, his superior officer in the Black Guard and the number 10 passenger on the boat, would only make it worse.

[Zip]

But Zipper didn’t seem to even hear him, didn’t even seem to recognize or acknowledge the insult in his tone. Her usual eyebags were more pronounced than ever, her hair lacked the usual lustre, and her facial expression suggested that she would rather be anywhere else but here. On this boat. Travelling down the river to a place she didn’t want to go. To execute a task that wasn’t even really hers to do.

“I need you to make it stop,” It was obvious she was trying to inject command into her words, but in the absence of sleep, her tone came out more of a plea than authority. “Make this fuckity swaying stop.”

“I can’t,”

“Can’t or won’t, you little fuck.”

“Both. I don’t speak the language.”

Zipper narrowed her eyes. “A recurring problem around you.”

The river lapped against the sides of the old boat. For Robin, there were questions in each wave that Robin wasn’t ready to answer, riddles that had barely begun to puzzle. For Zipper, the water promised only nightmares. Her first encounter with the great river that connected Etzos to Foster’s Landing ended in her smashing a river dolphin’s brains out against the rocks until the thing became still, blood all over its ruin of a head, its maw still stretched out in a toothy smile even in a painful death - but that wasn’t the scary part.

The scary part was that she couldn’t swim - and she never got the opportunity to learn.

That vicious brute of an animal could have dragged her into open waters, drowned her, and feasted on her bloated corpse. The thing clearly had no fear of humans, given the way it bounded up to her in sick mimicry of what a puppy would look like if had a dorsal fin and flippers, and it presumed to have its way with her as if they were old friends. It was dirty, felt like rubber, smelled of fish, and reeked of death.

And now she was on a boat. With three defiers. Three unstable, monstrous defiers in the middle of a vast amount of one of the four things they were very, very good at. The dolphin seemed preferable all of the sudden.

Robin crossed his arms and sighed. “Two that way,” he pointed at the cabins. They’d been provided hammocks, cradled by coarse netting and air. The whole world that was this boat had been moving and shaking and somehow everyone but them had managed to sleep.

“Ask other,” his tongue stumbled over the many constants, thick and heavy. His mouth refused to twist it’s way over the foreign words. Still, it was obvious he’d been learning Ithession. Or trying anyway.

“They’re about as responsive as deadwood.” she said caustically. “Shouldn’t you be huddling up with your own kind?”

[Robin Stark]

Robin shook his head. He turned back towards the rust colored waters. “Love river they,” he muttered, muffling his voice purposely. He was proud, prouder than he thought, and speaking Ithession was like speaking with a mouth full of cotton. Everything felt wrong. “And what would I do with those two? They hardly even speak to each other. The river doesn’t want me,” he added in common. The waters called below, promising him fun before changing their tune and jeering at him. They echoed as they clashed against the boat. Sway, sway, they cried. You’re a cat fucker, they continued. Were the waves taking lessons from Zipper too?

“I want you,” Zipper said with enough of a pause that he thought she was going for something else. Heat rose up in his cheeks and in other more discrete places of his body. She was abrasive. She was eloquently vulgar. She was picky. She was a jerk covered in jerk-coated jerk. She was far too eager to go for the jugular in a fight… Yet, she was undeniably an attractive, vicious mess of a woman, everything that his smooth but superficial Hans was not.

Everything that he wanted to forget.

“To offer me a solution or buzz off.” she finished.
`
“Where?” He asked, his gaze still lingering on the horizon. The suns broke past the horizon and suddenly the river was liquid gold. Everything was temporary. As soon as the other two woke, if they hadn’t already, they’d steal the rivers attention. “Wake them up. That’s what they’re here for, isn’t it? Their kin is water and so their job is to make the ride, to wherever we’re being sent, as comfortable as it can be, right?”

She shrugged. She clearly wanted to talk to them even less than he did. The sand shined in the brilliance of morning. The shore caught the reflected light, dancing. He could imagined himself there, warm and safe and rested. The river, pressed to act, might offer him something -- but the other two defiers were clearly the priority.

They both didn’t say anything for awhile; just two mages who had tried to kill each other last season having what was the closest thing they were going to get to a civil conversation.

Surprisingly, Zipper extended herself pass that.

“You know,” she said, looking out at the sunrise. “I spent my whole childhood thinking of one day leaving this place, and you move in without a care in the world. Why?”

It might have been the first sentence he heard from her that didn’t have a single vulgarity, obscenity, slur, or some vicious put-down.

“That’s the thing though, isn’t?” Robin smiled softly, looking out there too, though his body language still read cold and cautious. He didn’t forget the threats Master Torvyn had lobbied against them: professionalism or death. “The grass is always greener. I don’t want the same,” he mumbled through a botched translation. He’d remembered what their assigned captain had managed against Zipper and her crumpled form held against the cold stone wall.

“When I met Finn,” Robin continued. “He said he wanted to go back to Etzos. I went along for the ride.” He conveniently left him out where he’d blackmailed Finn. She didn’t need to know that.

[Zip]

Zipper stared. “There’s that joke again: Uthaldria. Wasn’t very funny the first time.”

“It wasn’t a joke. I’m not laughing, am I?”

“You’re telling me my idiot brother made it past Hiladrath, crossed over the greens adjacent to your country, and made it to the land of Hordes and Monsters all on his own?”

“You’re saying you don’t believe he just really wanted to get away from you?” Robin asked, his lips curving into the slightest smirk.

Zipper considered a number of verbal and physical options as a follow-up to his little bit of snark, but in the end, she just didn’t have it in her to give power to that particular truth with aggression.

“Still doesn’t explain how he got there, how you met.”

“I don’t know how he got there,” Robin yawned, his hands on his back, behind, and he pushed until he cracked. “We met because he needed help getting back. I was working security at a merchant camp. He reminded me of my sister,” yes, he did blackmail Finn into paying him something; but he wasn’t lying, not completely. The kid was determined and gritty, a survivor. Felicia was the same. “He carried his own, if it makes you feel better. Finn did whatever he could to earn his keep. Impressed my boss.” Robin said, the river pushing against the boot. It called, still, for the two and him. It was cool and calm and perfect.

“From mercenary to wage slave. How’s that working out for you?”

“Good, I guess. You’re only a notch higher than me.”

“A big notch.”

“Really? I wasn’t the one they magicked to a wall.”

She shrugged. “Always neutralize the dangerous ones first.”

“I guess,” he offered a quick smile. “Why didn’t you follow him to Ulthadria? He mentioned something about a letter.”

“He’s done this before. “Dearest sister, I’m off to Hiladrath to find my fortune and earn my place in the world.” Caught him trying to hiding out somewhere in the Underground, that little shite”

Robin laughed, “Sounds like me and my sister. Our guardian wasn’t a great parent,” he said, mixing the two languages. “We are close but different. I ran to the wilds.” he leaned against the iron railings. “She spent most of her time with the dead-”

“It’s not working, Stark.” A necromancer? She regretted the edge she took to the next line of the conversation even before she said it. Now that she wanted to know. “This whole ‘ooooh we have troublesome siblings and i know how you feel and really empathize’ garbage is better served on some gullible lass in a tavern.”

He snorted in response. “You know what your problem is, Zipper? You don’t listen.” The world was saturated with morning color. “I don’t empathize with you. I ran away, like Finn. If I understand anyone, it’s him.”

“All you understand then is irresponsibility, anarchy, and indiscipline. The official creed of the defier’s handbook, I wager.”

“Probably. Maybe one day you’ll understand it too and Finn won’t have to run off to strangers anymore,” he clapped back. He noticed the river moving towards the cabin-end of the boat. The other two were probably waking up now.

“Or maybe he’ll grow up.”

[Robin Stark]

Robin sighed, loud and defeated. She was worse than stone, more capricious than the wind, meaner than a torrent. “Why did they send us out here, anyway. Those two,” he motioned to the cabin, “They should be able to take out any pirate on the sea. What are we supposed to do?” There wasn’t any point in talking about Finn, or anything else personal. Zipper was Zipper was Zipper.

“What are you supposed to do, you mean.” Zipper said, still looking out at the sunrise. Maybe she just didn’t want to make eye contact. “I am not here in the official capacity as a Black Guard caster. I’m your handler, your partner, your interpreter -cultural and linguistic- but nothing more. Your job, on the other hand, will be to substitute for our utter and complete lack of an organized fleet in defense of Foster’s. I’ve already said you’re too in love with Earth for literal wetwork, they seem to disagree.”

“So you’re my babysitter.”

“That is exactly how I would describe it.”

He considered Zipper for a bit. “Why do you fight for Etzos, if you want to leave?” It was a genuine question; he fought because they paid him. Zipper, he assumed, was made of a sterner morality - even if that morality didn’t seen to extend to anything but the city.

“Now who’s not listening? I said I wanted to leave as a child. As a woman, I see now that as bad as we got it, it could be a whole lot worse - we could be Rharne, for example. Ruled by a drunken immortal overlord and rancid with fuckin’ addiction. We could be Rhakros.”

“Ne’haer isn’t dictated by an immortal; there are other cities, better ones, maybe,” Robin shrugged, not committed to either idea. The immortals, bad or good, hadn’t affected him in this life. “Why stay in Etzos?”

She shrugged and would say no more on that.

“Don’t translate for me with the other two. I don’t care what they say.” He said, turning his back away from Zipper. He looked to the river and sighed.

“Something we have in common.” Zipper said. “Not very fond of sharing your toys, are you?”

“And you are?” he snapped.

[Zip]

“I am, actually. That’s all I’ve been told to do ever since they put me into the army: sharing my toys.” she said. “Moving to the Black Guard hasn’t changed that much.”

Zipper downplayed the scope of what she could do, of course, kept the Qualities on her items lower than they should, projected her arcane position as competent but still in need of much growth. But it was damage control at this point. The moment she was caught and drafted from that seeker cell, the secret was out. Ironic that turning to a hidden coven of mages was the thing that let the cat out of the bag.

“So share then. Tell me your story,” Robin dared, watching as the river pushed their boat downstream. They moved faster now because the old fat man and the one-handed woman were awake and casting, making water resistance butter for the knife of the hull to slice through.

“I was born and I’ve yet to die. What more do you need to know, Stark?”

“What magic do you know?”

“I make stuff. I shoot energy. I kick the asses of lesser breeds of sorcery like yourself.”

“My sister did that,” Robin said, his lips coiling into a half-smile. “You raise the dead too?”

“I know we tried to end each no less than 15 trials ago, but that’s no excuse to resort to calling me a necromancer.” She smiled a little. Just a little.

“I wasn’t trained in magic, you know?” Robin offered her a truth, hopefully not in vain. “I won’t guess it unless its defiance or necromancy.”

“You want a crash apprenticeship in the myriad of ways the world can fuck you up? Becoming - self-esteem challenged cunts who want to be everyone but themselves. Aberrants - Addicts. Powerful addicts, but complete tools nonetheless. Empaths - arses too weak to do anything but attack the mind. Attuners - also arses. Necromancy - even bigger arses.” There was something in her inflection when she said it. She was thinking about Neronin. “Defiance - you know my opinion. Transmutation-” she jerked her head stiffly, as if imitating a small bow. “-The greatest of this sorry lot. Got a whole lot more than that, but that’s the ones I’m acquainted with, violently or otherwise.”

[Robin Stark]

“So transmutation. You change things, you make things.” He wondered, silently, if she could change her attitude. “Can you talk to them? The things you affect?”

“Sure.” she put her hand to the rusted rails. “It tells me this boat is dangerously old for a return trip and I will be picking another one to get back.” It was hard to tell whether she was being facetious or not.

“And what else?” Facetious or not, he believed her. He wanted to.

“It’s weak. It tells the story of iron turned to rust, and now it is weak. It hates itself, as much as something inanimate can hate itself anyway.”

Maybe she was just humoring him. Maybe she was waxing poetic. Maybe this was just her way of poking fun at Defiance. Maybe she was just messing with him at this point, but he listened on. Maybe he wanted to believe other magicks could hear the song too, weren’t alone with a cold, unresponsive spark.

“I can hear iron, when it’s in the earth. It sings, but you knew that,” he said, gently laying his right hand on the rusting pole. “In the under, it begs for the open air. It begs for fire,” his hand curled around, tight. “Does it tell you about the under?”

She shrugged. “I touch, I comprehend.”

She pressed her hands to the rails. Slowly, and before his very eyes, the rust began to recede from the metal, as if time were being rewinded on it

“I warp,” she said. “And I better fix this rail before it fuckin’ spills us over,” she added, ruining the
Moment.

Sculpting’s power in action. It took a bit, then two, but the area she laid her hands upon became brand new.

“That’s beautiful,” he said, his hand touching the smooth, glossy surface. “I can’t hear it.” His lips twitched, his smile hesitant. His eyes were sad. “Sometimes they forget how to sing. They’ve grown use to mortal touch.” It was a theory that was largely unproven. Robin didn’t understand how something so loud and bright in the under lost everything in the up top. Not for the first time to-trial, he considered sinking the ship.

[Zip]

“What good is anything without the fuckin’ ‘mortal touch’” she responded. “Self-actualization, Stark, only matters when it is a boon to society itself. A defier in the wilds? A becomer in a forest? A transmutator in a lab hidden away from the world? None of them are good for anything. It’s indulgence without productivity.”

“Self-actualization matters because if it doesn’t, none of us do,” he countered, his tone sharper, a blade to fight her words. “Self-actualization matters because it is sentience. It matters because it shows the ability to choose. It matters because it deserves to be asked.” Robin stood still and solid. The wind whipped around him, wet with river humidity. “Mortals think the world is their slave, a given in their lives to be conquered. If they only listened, if they only tried --,” he breathed in through his nose, deeply.

“Indulgent, entitled,” she said, the scorn less in her tone than in her voice. “Senile. The only thing worse than a tyrant is an anarchist. There’s no unity without order, there’s no order without society, there’s no ideal society without talents being used to their full potential for the sake of the state.”

“And what is the state but a collection of individuals?” Robin said, his voice bubbling with something like excitement. “Individuals who have their own desires, their own dreams. Why should they move for the state if that’s against their ideals? Why is the state the ultimate authority in what is right and purposeful?” he asked, finally turning away from the river to look at her, brown eyes focused. “Why would you limit freedom for the sake of order?”

“Because freedom loses,” she said, staring right back now, the Sunrise abandoned. “Freedom unchecked is the equivalent of an ant colony with no direction: it will starve, it will die, it will wallow when rain comes and nobody knows what to do. It will crumble when a rival colony comes looting. Because even though Etzos is a complete fuckity crapfest with a thousand and one problems, it’s civilization. Flawed, inefficient, corrupt, and powered by monsters literal and metaphorical and a shit ton of secrets, but still civilization - and I will pick that over the insecure joyfest that is freedom any day.”

“You’re sad.”

“Better sad than unfocused.”

“I was close to liking you, just then,” Robin muttered, turning away.

The silence weighed heavily between them.

“Well, fuck you too.” she said to his departing back, and walked to the other side of the boat.

[Pash Raj'oriq]

Thread Rewards

The antagonistic dialogue interlaced with magical shop talk is both amusing and irritating. Both of you get under each other’s skin in a way that is both crass and poetic all while managing to ... almost like each other. Yep. I enjoyed it.

Robin

Points

XP:
15 | These points cannot be used for magic.

Fame:
N/A

Loot

N/A

Injuries + Overstepping

N/A

Knowledge

Skill Knowledge:
Discipline: Not Pulling Hair
Discipline: Curbing Behavior
Discipline: Not Yelling
Discipline: Talking to Zipper
Endurance: Surviving unfamiliarity
Negotiation: A Truth for a Truth
Negotiation: Knowing When to Speak
Negotiation: Knowing When to Listen
Persuasion: More Flies with Honey

Other Knowledge:
PC - Zipper
Zipper: Hates Boats
Zipper: Attractive yet horrifying
Zipper: Wanted to leave Etzos as a child
Zipper: Stubborn as stone
Zipper: Your babysitter
Zipper: Crazy fascist bitch
Necromancy: Discussing Felicia's magic
Attunement: Arses
Empathy: Arses
Becoming: Self-esteem challenged cunts wanting to be anyone else
Transmutation: Senses, comprehends, warps
Transmutation: Make things, shoot energy, kicks arse

Zipper

Points

XP:
15 | These points cannot be used for magic.

Fame:
N/A

Loot

N/A

Injuries + Overstepping

N/A

Knowledge

Skill Knowledge:
Transmutation: Sculpting
Transmutation: Restoring rusted metal
Deception: Offering half-truths about your magic
Deception: Lying with the truth
Deception: Deflecting questions
Discipline: Tolerating people you despise
Endurance: Suffering a sleepless night on a rocking boat
Intelligence: Gathering information by making them ask the questions
Intelligence: Provoking information with hard questions

Other Knowledge:
PC - Robin
Robin: Has a necromancer sister
Robin: Rescued Finn
Robin: Is ignorant of most Domain Magic
Robin: Has less power over water
Robin: Can’t stand other Defiers
Robin: Inexplicably believes in freedom over order and structure
Defiance: Listen and speak to the elements
Defiance: Defiers have elemental preferences
Ne’haer: Not under Immortal rule
Uthaldria: Land of Hordes and Monsters
Hiladrith: Bordering Etzos
Aberration: Addicts with power
Necromancy: Raises dead bodies

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