Chapters of a Long Life
Beginning - 597 to 627
Pure of blood, an infant was born screaming into the world upon the close of the 6th century to two Eidisi scholars, colleagues to one-another. They would christen this new child with the name Sorinar, and remain supportive until the ends of their lives. High hopes for their child, they made sure that their progeny attended both Primary and Secondary school.
Sevarin was the eldest of four children, two males and two females. He was thought to be the one who would bring the family pride, but it was his brother Sevarin who won Yvithia’s attention, and his sisters became valuable members of the Videnese Mariners. The eldest brother’s humble interest in anthropology and history abroad saw him buried in books instead of creating great revelations, discoveries, adventures, or achievements for the family to stroke their collective egos over.
Historian - 627 to 647
Sorinar became a student at the University of Viden, where he studied his interests, culminating in all he could afford: a Letter of Humanities in History, specifically the history of different races and cultures therein. Upon leaving the University, he journeyed across the sea and served as an adviser for racial relations to the governing body of Rharne, where he became more developed in philosophy and the intricacies of human politics.
Family - 647 to 677
Aeda, a female Eidisi colleague he deeply respected had garnered his admiration. This soon blossomed into an intellectual relationship, and these common interests culminated in marriage; they returned to Viden, where Sorinar became a racial relations adviser once more, his practice abroad more than qualifying him for the role.
Once there, he and his wife had two children. His first son Moriah was a child progeny, an absolute genius with the world eager to share its secrets should he simply reach for him. His second, Resvalt, showed interest in creating things to a fine degree, even if he was stunted mentally, to the point that his peers considered him ‘on par with a Human’, although the boy never let it get to him.
Lost Son - 677, Cylus 31st
Both children proved to be quite ambitious, but their rivalries saw them at each other’s throats. Moriah grew arrogant, and disliked the stain his brother left upon the family, failing to recognize his achievements. This arrogant ambition drove him further to become more and more, until he strayed from Sorinar’s humble teachings and sought magic, insatiable curiosity causing him to lead an expedition without input from his father. This expedition happened to be into a fracture near to Viden, and everyone who went with him vanished to the swirling Ether of Emea, presumed dead.
Decline - 677 to 687
Sorinar was shattered. He quit his job, and began to seek out help. His marriage to Aeda fragmented into a million pieces, and he sought help from Yvithia herself in his desperation, but that only resulted in academic humiliation that left him broken and confused. Some thought him to be driven mad with grief.
At the loss of his brother, the other son grew cold and distant, even more so than your typical Eidisi. He secluded himself with his studies, quietly learning the trade of a Tinkerer, creating little contraptions from gears, and understanding architecture. His achievement, a drawbridge for the city of Viden, was glossed over by Sorinar’s obsessions.
Hearing of a fracture nearby, Sorinar blindly raced towards it alone upon horseback, riding out into the snow towards a winking light. He was found in the snow at the foot of a bank. His horse had tripped upon a rocky path, causing them both to fall. It rolled at the bottom of the hill and ran, but Sorinar fell and cracked his head. He was lucky hunters happened to be along.
Remembrance - 687, Saun 2nd
Memories fragmented and confusingly distant, Sorinar brightened. His former wife and his son both cared for him as he recovered, and as he learned of his loss once more, he turned towards the worship of Ralaith to sort out his grief, believing he could not approach Yvithia with that pain that felt so ‘human’.
Occult - 687 to 690
Things changed for the better, and while Sorinar felt put down by his shattered mind, he began to seek a more logical approach to the issue at hand. He sought magical studies at the University of Viden where he began a long journey towards a Certificate of Arcana in Metaphysics.
Attuning - 690, Ashan 12th
None of the knowledge in the world could prepare him for the Spark. A colleague that respected him offered the coveted gift of Attunement in exchange for support in his projects. This was a secret between them, although mages practiced their craft in the open. The mage offering his talents, a human by the name of Mezo Olmsman, was a secretive man, and demanded as much from his elderly apprentice, and Sorinar was happy to assist in his studies on Fractures and Domain Magic, if cautionary of that human zeal.
The Initiation was mystifying, still clear in Sorinar’s memories. They left for a secluded place far from civilization on account of the Spark being shy, and volatile. Once in a cave, they began. Receiving the Spark, that horrifying hum left him rattled, the music never going away entirely, but remaining just distant enough that it becomes forgettable, creeping back into his consciousness seemingly at random intervals.
Seeking - 690-692
Sorinar’s life was changed, and he began a period of searching, using his new gift to understand as much as he could. In the end, he began to pursue Alchemy, trying to find ways to make materials that could resist the corrosive energies from a shattered Well. There was little success, but he learned much in his experiments, and his mentor was satisfied with what the Eidisi brought to the table.
Becoming - Ashan 8th, 692
Mezo was so impressed that he shared yet another Spark, one that Sorinar was suspicious of. He knew the man was hiding some kind of power, but oh what power it was. To Become another creature, by taking its ‘Sovereign Substances’? Barbaric, or was it? Sorinar saw it as a tool, something to give him more energy when his body was beginning to fail him, and so he agreed to receive that second Spark.
This time, the initiation was far more difficult. The pain was something severe, unlike anything he’d ever felt. Where Attunement was terrifying to experience, Becoming was… arduous. Cutting off a finger at his old age proved to be risky in and of itself. Mezo warned him that he could become a Mimai, and so he rested and pressed on the following Trial, engaging in deep meditation over the concept of being something else, and then all things with oneself at the core at his Instructor’s behest.
Told to then meditate upon the form of himself, he grasped that wadded finger in his aching, wounded hand. When he received the Spark, there was no pain, at first. There was a tingle and he looked upon his sagging skin, admiring how it rippled and pulled taut, melting to the point it became like a thick sludge. The sight unnerved him, but he pressed on, until his soul and body were sufficiently adapted to this second Spark.
This harrowing experience culminated in the apex of pain, his entire body shifting and warping. When it ended, he was so utterly exhausted that he passed out, dreaming of his son, reaching for him in a nightmare that never ended in their union, or if it did, what remained was simply charred, blackened bones.
Betrayal - 692 to 718
When he came to, Mezo presented him with a totem. Another finger, this time not his own. At first he accepted the totem, thinking little of it. After all, it must have been acquired fairly, and legally. Nothing that would violate the law of Viden that he held in high esteem due to his faith in Yvithia.
This assumption proved not to be the case. The moment he assumed the form, he was overcome with exhilaration, as if he had truly begun to breathe again for the first time in Arcs. His musings extracted from Mezo a caveat: the form was from a man he had murdered.
Robbed of vindication, Sorinar reported his mentor to the authorities. They seized him, and he now remains quietly imprisoned somewhere within Viden, or so Sorinar thinks. With no mentor to guide him, he slowly began to experiment with the Spark, finding it could hint its new capabilities to him. In doing so, he garnered the totem of a young Videnese Bear from a hunter who felled one during its hibernation that Cylus, and began to experiment as any mage with a new field of exploration might.
Promise - Ashan, 718
At a crossroads, Sorinar promised Ralaith that he would use this magic without being overtaken by greed or arrogance. Logic and the idea of order would guide him, and his bitter memories of loss would help him to stay the course. With new life, he decided it was time to explore, that he had exhausted his resources in Viden. To truly defeat this problem of his missing son, he would need to do so in a wise and tested way: to utterly understand the world, arcana, and the worlds beyond. Hearing tales of Quacia's strange rituals and advanced technologies, he set out to begin his foreign studies, proclaiming that he did not worship the Immortals, which was true, as he merely respected them in a logical fashion, and that he was but a simple chemist seeking to assist with fighting the Creep, an issue of Quacia known in passing to the scholars of Viden.
The Blessing of RalaithArc 678, Ashan 8th
"I must move on from you," serenaded that sweet voice, too much for a broken man to hear.
Broody brow wilting in thought, slender digits rolled over the cold band of silver upon the Eidisi's ring finger. Lips quivered, and a heaviness bubbled up from his eye sockets. "Is it because I have failed our family?"
This slender Eidisi woman whom had aged far too well to be anything short of divinity, Aeda, a colleague he loved with as much of his heart he could spare, now gazed upon him in resentment. Brushing her hair to the side, she crossed her arms and looked over the chair, at the door. "You haven't moved on. I can't bare the thought of watching you like this. You hold on to hope so stubbornly when we both know the truth: he's gone, Sorinar. Our child is never coming back."
Sorinar fell silent, seething in his own bitterness too much to feel the pain any longer. "Then go, begone. I will find him myself, with or without your help." Moving hand to chin, he glared at the board he'd pinned notes and drawings to, making a sniffle. "I just need to find a Fracture."
A sigh burst the air. "You know, you were wise, once," she told him. Her presence lingered, but the old man winced when he heard the door shut with the heavy weight of finality.
"I'll always love you, Aeda," he whispered. Matching the earlier sigh, he brushed aside the papers at his desk and descended unto deep thought concerning matters he knew little about.
Just three Trials later, the city bells rang loudly for all to hear. "Mer?" he mumbled. Peering out his window, he watched the Mariners march by in uniform, before eventually wandering out in the snow in little but a thick-furred robe, hobbling through the crunchy ice to the city walls.
Down upon the foot of the mountain, a light twinkled so serenely. The historian's eyes tightened to slats cut in a sheet of blue paper, his wrinkled face stern and unforgiving. I'm going down there. He began his descent to the lower levels of the city, beseeching Mariners where he could. "My son is waiting for me!" he shouted above the howling wind. "Come! We mustn't fail him, he's waiting for us on the other side of that Fracture!"
The men and women of Viden gave him that look. The look of judgement, painting him as some kind of lunatic. Sorinar was desperate, and when he could not procure help, he walked into the stables, mounted a horse, and ushered it out the door full gallop. The lowered drawbridge made his escape easy, his equine charge making great haste through the contingent of hunters returning to the city for safety.
Throngs of people shouted at him, but he did not tarry. He worked his stolen horse hard, and the light dimmed beyond the rise of a hill. Up that icy path, he was getting close. Hoof slipping, a rock tumbled down the hill, ...and then his horse. The old man careened down the side of the mountain through the whipping air, hitting the stony ice several times before his mangled form came to a stand-still.
He was awake for every crunch and snap of his bones, but he grew dizzy and everything faded to a whitish-red fog, ears screaming with the tinny song of blood rushing through his mind...
Slowly, Sorinar awoke to a small room, his eyes blurry, his mind distant and blank. He couldn't remember why he was like this, and none of the accident, but there was a man standing silently in the corner of the room as his eyes gazed up at the ceiling, neck unable to move and see this looming presence due to the brace that held him still.
All he could remember was what he had lost, and bits and pieces at that. A cough, and daggers erupted through his chest with such magnificent pain that he regretted so much as breathing. It was necessary. "I'm s-sorry... Moriah," his voice croaked. Tears streamed down his eyes, both from the pain he now felt, and the pain in his heart.
More information streamed back to him, tiny little slivers of the narrative. In his mind, he could remember dashing through the snow, a one-horse odyssey meant to solve his regrets. As he remembered, he swallowed, opening his white eyes again to try and get a glimpse at the figure now standing over him. Human? Oh, Yvithia, I'm being treated by a human. No.
The tick-tick-tick of a watch began to thrum as the bearded man came into focus. "You were a fool, as we all were until we made our mistakes," tumbled those throaty words. They reverberated through his body, the pain alleviating just enough for the wounded to turn his neck and stare into those eyes with confusion.
"I am the fool," Sorinar repeated, blinking and squeezing an eye, trying to pinpoint that incessant sound. "Is that a pocketwatch?"
Metal clonked together, and Ralaith lifted the timepiece from his neck, showing it in palm. "Perceptive for a mortal in your condition." Its brass was decorated in all manner of homage to time, with a depiction of a bear.
Although Sorinar could no longer remember where he had learned, his mind pieced together the iconography: "Ralaith," he wheezed. "Surely you are not..."
"I am," the timeless one confessed.
"Then do you have proof you are who - " That was when he saw that time had gone still. A nurse stood by the side of his bed, motionless over a table she was sorting. "I think that is enough for me to believe, yes," he said, humbled. "Am I dead, then? Are you here to see me pass on?"
Ralaith swayed, as if considering something. "Time has taken much from you, and your regret drew me here, to you. No, you are not dead." He lifted his hand, the ghostly visage of a translucent bear appearing beneath it and stalking around the bed.
Sorinar coughed again, the pain lessened this time. "Hmh, I may as well be, my body could be smashed to bits and I would still yearn. I wish I wasn't such an emotional ...creature."
Nodding slowly, the Immortal offered some kind of condolence. "It never gets easier. The bitterness will always stay, a permanent fixture. Those who are most favored by time are those who think most often to the past, but also to the future, as you do." He held his hand above, the tone of his voice shifting, the bear at his side rising weightlessly to gaze down upon him just as well. "I will offer you something to better hone this understanding your Soul uncommonly possesses."
Weariness plagued Sorinar's thoughts, and after a long pause he relented, nodding in agreement. "Very well, Ralaith. Do you expect me to pray to you?" The comment was flippant, but the wise man knew little about faith. He'd spent much of his life studying it, but not from the perspective he now experienced.
"We can hear you," Ralaith said simply. "That should be reason enough."
Sorinar undulated his fingers, waiving the sound reasoning on through. "So be it, Ralaith. I will do as I can for you and use these gifts well as you intend, so that I may one day be reunited with my son." For the first time in a long while, the crease of his lips shakily drew upwards into a smile.
Ralaith's broad palm descended, covering the injured Eidisi's chest. "I leave to you one of my bears, to guide you in your journeys." The bear at his side seemed to shimmer, and Sorinar managed to draw his eyes away from the God to meet its gaze, feeling a strange connection as the ticking suddenly stopped.
The sound of air filled the room, and that nurse from before suddenly broke through the apparition of the bear, jolting Sorinar to reality. "Oh, you're awake," she observed. "How are you feeling?" Sorinar remained silent, lost in thought as the lady checked his temperature.
His jaw trembled as he muttered "Ralaith, thank you..." to the Immortal who made him feel like he could make a difference in the impossible task of someday being reunited with his son.
