1st Ashan 719
Rain fell light and gentle upon the cool stone pathway. All around there were small but artistically constructed buildings of stone and wood that glistened in the lamplight. Overhead, the thick grey clouds released a never-ending drizzle, the quiet sounds of the raindrops filling the peaceful atmosphere with one of nature’s oldest songs.
There had been only one umbrella, and though he’d offered, Fiona had insisted she had no need of it and that they’d be gone before a little bit of wet would even matter. That had been two breaks ago, and she was now thoroughly bedraggled. Mathias, on the other hand, was comfortably dry beneath the crimson, paper-like umbrella that he’d stopped attempting to offer to his stubbornly sodden companion a half break ago.
Little creatures watched them pass. They had round, bulbous heads, like a child’s ball, and rather than any recognizable features for a face, they had three holes of varying sizes: two for their eyes and one for a mouth. He’d decided upon that specific ratio about a break back, as the little creatures had a habit of singing short, haunting refrains from time to time. Two of their face holes would open and close in near unison, while their third remained open and gaping.
There was a very good possibility he was entirely wrong, of course, but he didn’t particularly care at that point.
The creatures had just finished, settling down into watchful silence, as he closed the distance between himself and Fiona, positioning his umbrella so that, should she finally wish it, she need only sidle just a bit close to find reprieve from the ubiquitous precipitation. “It would seem the path ends there.”
This particular dreamscape had a gestural, painterly quality. While the buildings and creatures and towering poles of bamboo were quite detailed, the farther into the distance something was, the more blurry and ultimately absent the object. For some time, it had seemed as though the path was never-ending, new buildings and plants gradually appearing before them and disappearing behind them.
Now, however, there loomed an ornately constructed tower before them that seemed to grow larger and more imposing with each step they took.
Fiona was… weirdly still, despite the rain making a mark on her, drenching her silk blouse, glistening her skin, soaking her short hair and hiding her eyes behind her matted bangs. There were no complaints, no fidgeting, none of the usual telltale signs that said she hated everything and absolutely didn’t want to be here if she had any other choice. She just walked on grimly, silently, and with no regard for his offered umbrella.
He exhaled slowly through his nose but didn’t press the issue. If she wanted to be wet then so be it.
The little creatures began their song again: a steady and regal triple meter in three fourths time. Though they formed words, of a kind, he couldn’t quite make out the individual syllables. The sound simply swelled and swayed and mingled with the peaceful patter of the raindrops. The closer they got to the tower, the louder the creatures’ song became until their voices were joined together in a booming, thunderous chorus.
Purple and white cracks appeared for a trill in the dark, starless sky, stark and blinding. The rain had become a deluge, tumbling down in large, heavy droplets that beat upon the ground like billions of leather boots headed into battle. The song swelled. The world seemed to shake. The tower loomed over them, its massive wooden doors stoically sealed shut behind a large, heavy wooden crossbeam.
Floop est insanum existimari velis!
Their words were clear now but loud enough that, even had they attempted to cover their ears - something which neither of them bothered doing anyway - they would have been unable to escape it.
Adjuva nos! Servo nobis!
With a final, deafening boom, the wooden crossbeam splintered and split. The rain stopped. The singing stopped. Everything just… stopped.
“This,” Fiona said. “Is a complete waste of time.”
He didn’t disagree, but neither did he feel the need to state it. Gesturing casually towards the now unsealed doors, he offered a disinterested, “Shall we?”
“We shall.” She began walking towards the doors, before turning her attention towards the frozen spectacle before her. “Do you think it’s a privilege to be able to see these sights?”
Though he’d fallen into step beside her, when she paused, so did he. The question set his lips in that familiar downward curve of confusion. “Are you referring to this dreamscape specifically or… Emea overall?”
“Both. There is ugliness in the common mind; smallness. Tiny wants, closeted fetishes, vulgar desires.” He didn’t need to see her eyes to see the memory of the fornicating carrots flashing before them. “But every once in awhile, a thousand different things that defy sense come together onto the canvas of the mind to create the sublime.”
“That is… quite poetically put.”
“And really fuckin’ pointless.” Whatever reverie in her voice had turned to dismissal. “The beauty is superficial. Purely aesthetic. It’s style, not substance, and it too will pass. Now Emea itself on the other hand…” She sighed. “Possibility, imagination, potential. Standing unfixed in contrast to rigid Idalos. You live in a city where you worship a god who has given no blessings, who has done nothing to avail you of the many hazards encroaching upon your city. Is that ideal? Would you change that if you could draw power from the primordial fuckin’ womb of the world and remake that flawed premise?”
He stared at her for several trills, eyes empty but mind weighing what it was she’d said. “...no.” Before she could, no doubt, reprimand him for what was assuredly his inability to conceive of a goal beyond what was before him, he calmly elaborated. “If I could draw power from the ‘primordial fucking womb of the world’, as you call it, I believe I would simply… remove it.”
His grey-green gaze slowly moved from her face to settle on the scene around him. “All of it.” Frozen, it really did seem like a painting. “You have been asking me to find a purpose; a reason for being,” he continued, tone just slightly more invested than it usually was. “Whatever I decide upon. Whatever I… discover,” His face turned, eyes locking with Fiona’s. “I would not waste my time or effort remaking something that is fundamentally flawed.” He shrugged, the umbrella bobbing slightly. “I would make something... new.”
“Careful. You’re dangerously close to having a hint of an aspiration there.”
“That is sarcas-”
“YES. FUCK YOU, YES.”
Mathias nodded, indifferent to Fiona’s mood. “Then I am on the correct path, it would seem.”
“Sure.” Fiona said. She seemed to have lost interest in going through the door and much more intent on continuing the conversation. “What was your people’s word for a field mage? Hexer?”
“Are you referring to a... hexaceiro?” He’d never heard the term “field mage” before, but there were plenty of things Fiona said that he hadn’t studied. At the very least, it wasn’t too difficult to draw a general definition from the two words separately. “A hexhawker?”
“Your nation has no organized mage corps?”
“It does not.”
“How does anything get done?”
Mathias blinked. “When you say ‘anything’... what are you referring to specifically?” Did the mages of Etzos replace the general populace as the city’s specialized workforce? Reimancers as engineers? Etherists as smiths and other artisans? Empaths soothing the mundane citizens into placid roles of general and stupid labor?
Rain fell light and gentle upon the cool stone pathway. All around there were small but artistically constructed buildings of stone and wood that glistened in the lamplight. Overhead, the thick grey clouds released a never-ending drizzle, the quiet sounds of the raindrops filling the peaceful atmosphere with one of nature’s oldest songs.
There had been only one umbrella, and though he’d offered, Fiona had insisted she had no need of it and that they’d be gone before a little bit of wet would even matter. That had been two breaks ago, and she was now thoroughly bedraggled. Mathias, on the other hand, was comfortably dry beneath the crimson, paper-like umbrella that he’d stopped attempting to offer to his stubbornly sodden companion a half break ago.
Little creatures watched them pass. They had round, bulbous heads, like a child’s ball, and rather than any recognizable features for a face, they had three holes of varying sizes: two for their eyes and one for a mouth. He’d decided upon that specific ratio about a break back, as the little creatures had a habit of singing short, haunting refrains from time to time. Two of their face holes would open and close in near unison, while their third remained open and gaping.
There was a very good possibility he was entirely wrong, of course, but he didn’t particularly care at that point.
The creatures had just finished, settling down into watchful silence, as he closed the distance between himself and Fiona, positioning his umbrella so that, should she finally wish it, she need only sidle just a bit close to find reprieve from the ubiquitous precipitation. “It would seem the path ends there.”
This particular dreamscape had a gestural, painterly quality. While the buildings and creatures and towering poles of bamboo were quite detailed, the farther into the distance something was, the more blurry and ultimately absent the object. For some time, it had seemed as though the path was never-ending, new buildings and plants gradually appearing before them and disappearing behind them.
Now, however, there loomed an ornately constructed tower before them that seemed to grow larger and more imposing with each step they took.
Fiona was… weirdly still, despite the rain making a mark on her, drenching her silk blouse, glistening her skin, soaking her short hair and hiding her eyes behind her matted bangs. There were no complaints, no fidgeting, none of the usual telltale signs that said she hated everything and absolutely didn’t want to be here if she had any other choice. She just walked on grimly, silently, and with no regard for his offered umbrella.
He exhaled slowly through his nose but didn’t press the issue. If she wanted to be wet then so be it.
The little creatures began their song again: a steady and regal triple meter in three fourths time. Though they formed words, of a kind, he couldn’t quite make out the individual syllables. The sound simply swelled and swayed and mingled with the peaceful patter of the raindrops. The closer they got to the tower, the louder the creatures’ song became until their voices were joined together in a booming, thunderous chorus.
Purple and white cracks appeared for a trill in the dark, starless sky, stark and blinding. The rain had become a deluge, tumbling down in large, heavy droplets that beat upon the ground like billions of leather boots headed into battle. The song swelled. The world seemed to shake. The tower loomed over them, its massive wooden doors stoically sealed shut behind a large, heavy wooden crossbeam.
Floop est insanum existimari velis!
Their words were clear now but loud enough that, even had they attempted to cover their ears - something which neither of them bothered doing anyway - they would have been unable to escape it.
Adjuva nos! Servo nobis!
With a final, deafening boom, the wooden crossbeam splintered and split. The rain stopped. The singing stopped. Everything just… stopped.
“This,” Fiona said. “Is a complete waste of time.”
He didn’t disagree, but neither did he feel the need to state it. Gesturing casually towards the now unsealed doors, he offered a disinterested, “Shall we?”
“We shall.” She began walking towards the doors, before turning her attention towards the frozen spectacle before her. “Do you think it’s a privilege to be able to see these sights?”
Though he’d fallen into step beside her, when she paused, so did he. The question set his lips in that familiar downward curve of confusion. “Are you referring to this dreamscape specifically or… Emea overall?”
“Both. There is ugliness in the common mind; smallness. Tiny wants, closeted fetishes, vulgar desires.” He didn’t need to see her eyes to see the memory of the fornicating carrots flashing before them. “But every once in awhile, a thousand different things that defy sense come together onto the canvas of the mind to create the sublime.”
“That is… quite poetically put.”
“And really fuckin’ pointless.” Whatever reverie in her voice had turned to dismissal. “The beauty is superficial. Purely aesthetic. It’s style, not substance, and it too will pass. Now Emea itself on the other hand…” She sighed. “Possibility, imagination, potential. Standing unfixed in contrast to rigid Idalos. You live in a city where you worship a god who has given no blessings, who has done nothing to avail you of the many hazards encroaching upon your city. Is that ideal? Would you change that if you could draw power from the primordial fuckin’ womb of the world and remake that flawed premise?”
He stared at her for several trills, eyes empty but mind weighing what it was she’d said. “...no.” Before she could, no doubt, reprimand him for what was assuredly his inability to conceive of a goal beyond what was before him, he calmly elaborated. “If I could draw power from the ‘primordial fucking womb of the world’, as you call it, I believe I would simply… remove it.”
His grey-green gaze slowly moved from her face to settle on the scene around him. “All of it.” Frozen, it really did seem like a painting. “You have been asking me to find a purpose; a reason for being,” he continued, tone just slightly more invested than it usually was. “Whatever I decide upon. Whatever I… discover,” His face turned, eyes locking with Fiona’s. “I would not waste my time or effort remaking something that is fundamentally flawed.” He shrugged, the umbrella bobbing slightly. “I would make something... new.”
“Careful. You’re dangerously close to having a hint of an aspiration there.”
“That is sarcas-”
“YES. FUCK YOU, YES.”
Mathias nodded, indifferent to Fiona’s mood. “Then I am on the correct path, it would seem.”
“Sure.” Fiona said. She seemed to have lost interest in going through the door and much more intent on continuing the conversation. “What was your people’s word for a field mage? Hexer?”
“Are you referring to a... hexaceiro?” He’d never heard the term “field mage” before, but there were plenty of things Fiona said that he hadn’t studied. At the very least, it wasn’t too difficult to draw a general definition from the two words separately. “A hexhawker?”
“Your nation has no organized mage corps?”
“It does not.”
“How does anything get done?”
Mathias blinked. “When you say ‘anything’... what are you referring to specifically?” Did the mages of Etzos replace the general populace as the city’s specialized workforce? Reimancers as engineers? Etherists as smiths and other artisans? Empaths soothing the mundane citizens into placid roles of general and stupid labor?
