Sworn to the State: A Magical Quest

As the young painter will not notice the smears of ink on his arms and clothes as he works, the student of Zurahna will not notice the intrusive thoughts that enter their mind as they think. These thoughts are often inane, confusing, or bizarre. They can be violent, but are often the opposite; simple pieces of meditative wisdom, or nonsense dressed as a poetic truism. Six eggs in the air are better than three in the basket, the moa is larger when it is seen from an angle, and to be a master is to see three yards under the enemy. Whatever the real meanings of these half-remembered phrases, they carry for the student nothing more than the false air of knowledge. It doesn't matter that it doesn't make any sense, or when you repeat it to someone else they look at you as though you're a bit insane. It's about the experience of saying them and getting them out there. An infant begins to speak by uttering gibberish disguised as coherent words, and a student of Zurahna begins to learn by uttering gibberish disguised as coherent thoughts.

Every now and then, though, there is a thought which breaks into the mind like the terrible force of a cannonball. It charges through the breach and slaughters every other thought, every other instinct, every other idea. The denizens of your mind beg for mercy, but this frightening proposal has no interest in sparing the enemy. The thought gives you a confidence bordering on mania, and like a boulder that rolls down a hill towards a village its delivery to the highest levels of your decision making was never in doubt. It is at this stage, after frustration, after uttering and reading gibberish, that the student of Zurahna is possessed by a monomania around this boulder in their mind. Around them, their teachers, friends, and peers will step away, knowing the student is a volatile keg of gunpowder ready to explode. Then, with a single phrase, the fuse is lit.

"I have a plan."

Tala's wide eyes linger on the creases of your forehead, the furrow of your brow, the way in which your lips tremble like two taut strings ready to snap. She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it, as if she's lost in thought about how to respond to your extreme concentration. "Okay," Is all she can manage.

"I have a plan," you repeat, slower this time, emphasizing specific words as if there is some secret power held in enunciating. Your hands begin to shake with an excitement that must seem feverish to her as you both crouch in the underbrush, the monastery above you and the soldiers terrifyingly close, the bushes, tall grass and sapling trees your only cover. Not for long, you say to yourself. Not for long.

"Okay."

"It's a good plan. You'll be part of it." You are so excited you can barely get out the words. All the fear about the siege, the soldiers, the imperative of the nuts, is lost. A cocktail of determination and insanity has penetrated the fog of your mind and given you a shining light to follow. There is nothing else but the light, and you reach out to it.

"I would hope so," Tala whispers, care and concern peppered through her voice, strangely even, as though you have sapped the mania from her. She must think you're broken, that you've gone mad. You half-expect to start giggling any minute, so she must be right.

"I'm not- I'm not afraid, you know", you say, crouching in the grass with her, eyes on the soldiers laughing at bawdy jokes only fifty meters away, "I'm excited." A wide smile forms on your face.

Tala provides a fake smile that doesn't reach her eyes and nods, taking a few steps to the side, her body tense, as if you're going to start foaming at the mouth and bite her hand off. "Sure," she says, creeping anxiety evident in her voice.

You sigh, and realize you've gone too far. Your excitement is madness to others, breeding fear in the place of awe. If you are to be a leader you must control it to sooth them, let them see confidence rather than lunacy. You let the wide vessel of your soul fill with a cloud of tranquility, allowing the thought to fly to the top of this blanket of peace. It is an eagle riding the calm currents of your mind, and the storm has passed. Now you must provide the wind in its wings and direction to its journey.

So you explain your plan to Tala. As you talk, her brows smooth, the creases on her forehead soften, and her lips curl upwards. Her numerous hesitations are overcome by the sheer excitement and will with which you put forward your arguments, her objections deftly countered by your enunciations and emphases, which you pepper throughout your explanation with the skill of a true rhetorician. When you're done, a single mad giggle escapes her, and it's intoxicating to your sense of anticipation.

"You are Meshuga. Absolutely crazy." She says as she tries to stifle further giggles.

"But...?"

"I knew that already and it's part of why I even came with you. Too boring otherwise. Although, If I die, that stupid parrot is going to be really mad, but…" she pauses for what seems like an hour to you, before finally nodding. "You know what, let's do it."


Soldiers are creatures of habit. Drawn from the peasantry, the average soldier is propelled forward by a mixture of greed and fear until he is no longer a peasant, not truly. Unlike his noble, professional officers, the soldier is a fairweather fighter, forced into his circumstances by the ambition of his Melik and the tax exemptions on his village. Veterans do not eliminate these attributes, but hone them into weapons to be used like any others. His fear becomes a rabid rage on the battlefield, his greed a skill at looting and reaving that would put an angel of death to shame. The questions at the back of his mind about what he is fighting for or why are subsumed by the demands of the campaign. Although he may be exhausted or exasperated by the failures of his superiors, he does not hate war: he thinks of it as an activity as simple as tilling the field. The soldiers that slaughtered your village, put it to the torch, and smashed every valuable they could find did so on an animal instinct, as if destruction is their hobby and murder their substitute for entertainment. They are not human.

You have little sympathy for them and little doubt of what they could do to you if given the chance. But you know they are predictable, and so when a young girl of noble heritage and an extremely proper accent approaches them and starts to speak about her family fortune she has been trying to find in these very hills, the shining excitement in their beady eyes is nothing less than what you would expect. Ideas flow through their head of an imaginary treasure that they would get to themselves, and the more romantic and pathetic among them even see the girl as a potential bride, an avenue to nobility. Tala does her part, the nervous fidgets of her hands and little bounces giving her an air of vulnerability that the soldiers lap up without question. That air does not reach up to her contempt-filled eyes, but their hopes have blinded them to what is right in front of them.

Or behind them, for that matter.

You sneak through the forest floor with a stealth learnt from months of hiding in a countryside devastated by men just like these scum. Wrath boils hot under your skin. The tall conifers afford no disguise, but tall grass and mountain bushes, and the undivided attention Tala is commanding so expertly, keep you safe. You sneak around their camp, bush to bush, occasionally locking eyes with Tala, if only for a moment. She talks easily, but you see she has tucked one of her hands into her sleeve where her nails have dug so hard into her palm it has started to bleed. It's okay, you want to tell her. You'll handle this. You'll protect her and make sure she's safe, just like your Baba, the monastery, Godei…

A snort makes you stop in your tracks. A Moa stands only three feet away. Its huge black eyes are trained on you, sniffing your vicar's hat. You curse your own lack of attention to the moa; of course you shouldn't have forgotten about them, but you were too absorbed in what Tala was doing. You stop all movement and meet it in the eye. The Moa looks half about to make a noise, but in the nick of time you expertly grab it by its black beak, clapping it shut, and start to pet its head. The Moa tries to move away, but with your petting hand you grip its huge head at the back, pulling the feather lightly. It begins to coo, and you surmise it hasn't received this kind of attention in a long time. You can't resist cracking a smile as you think back to the new village moa, to replace the one killed by a great eagle.

Then you remember that it was probably slaughtered by soldiers, and your smile disappears. The moa goes back to grazing, and you are safe again, and then you are ready and in position. One of the soldiers, his face still filled with mirth from a joke Tala told him, spots you too late, standing up in your vicar's uniform behind the group, eyes narrowed and mouth moving with ancient words. He doesn't even have time to grasp the situation before the utterance escapes your lips.

"Fall now, into the spirit abyss." It is a simple command that escapes you, said so quietly that only the wind listens. But that is all the audience you need, for in that second a tremendous cyclone engulfs you and the four soldiers, cutting short of trapping Tala, and then you are falling.

Buffeted by the wind, the black cloak of your Vicar's uniform flaps around you as you plummet vertically, eyes closed in pure concentration. Below you, the soldiers fall, screaming in confusion and horror as they flail their arms around, and even further below that a little dot on the side of a mountain indicates the eagle's nest you call home in this realm. You have no time or energy to craft a kite or wings for yourself as you rapidly approach it, and no interest. This is not a protracted battle, or a war of wills. This is the triumph of a single idea. The idea that soldiers cannot loot and reave with impunity, that they cannot put villages to the sword with ease. That they will face consequences, that they cannot kill you, or Tala, or your Baba, or anyone else.

They are already falling, but it is not enough of a punishment, you don't think. They'll hit the ground of your Zurah Realm and be knocked out for a little bit, maybe have a headache when they wake up. That's not the lesson you want to impart on them. This isn't a bad dream. It's a nightmare, and you are its host. You may as well ensure that they receive the proper hospitality.

Just as they fall towards the cliffside it opens up and becomes the ceiling for a new sky, and then they are falling all over again. Vertigo will make them delirious, send them into shock, as the anticipation of the landing tortures their senses. You land in mid-air, catching a cloud, and watch them fall with an excitement a part of you finds eerie. But that part is quickly suppressed, and they fall again. Then again. Then again. They are driven into unconsciousness, and yet still you make them fall, letting them crumple and crash to the ground and them letting them fall again.

Then, after too little time, you are interrupted. A sharp pain in your head, and a rip in the sky in the corner of your eye, disrupt your triumph. That isn't supposed to happen. You stare at the rip, and then start to shake, off-balance on the cloud. Your feet lose their grip, and then you are falling too. You scream, but the air starts to disappear, replaced by a black void, and your scream stops in your throat.

Oh no.

You know this. You've seen it described in the books of Zurahna. You know this void, know what the consequences are. You're slipping now, falling, and your entire realm disappears like dust to the wind, leaving nothing behind. The soldiers are gone and it is just you, falling in endless blackness. You've overextended your mind and when you try to get out, to re-enter the physical world, the door is closed to you. You let your anger and wrath against the soldiers overwhelm your mind and now…

Now you don't know what to do. You're falling but it hardly even feels like falling; there is no wind, just a feeling of downwards movement in an endless void. For a second, one second, you begin to think you might die, or worse. Emotions drained by the blackness, the only thing left in you is a distant sadness as you realize how bad your Baba will feel when you don't come back. You only wish you could have made it up to her. Oh well.

But then there is a sudden rush of air and light. A massive, ethereal hand of wood catches you, and you are bathed in a blanket of motherly love and reassurance. Your soul is filled with a calming, soothing melody, and caught by the mysterious hand, you drift to sleep.


You wake up amidst a fading pillar of wind, a searing headache afflicting your head. As you groan and massage your temple, you glance around. The soldiers are arranged in a circle around you, all prone, contorted and twisted, their eyes rolled into the backs of their heads. The Moas are cawing and screeching, but otherwise the forest is as you left it. As for Tala, she stands a few feet ahead of you, knife out and pointed at something you can only barely see out of the corner of your vision, eyes still blurry.

"Tala...?"

"Hello," comes a new, feminine voice.

As your eyes clear up and you push yourself up to see the figure of a nun, looking out of place in these wide open woods. She has a long blue dress sweeping down below her feet the color of lapis lazuli, beautifully embroidered with gold lacing. Her hands are clasped together, hidden under her long sleeves, and she is taller than both you and Tala. She has dark, almost charred skin, and a warm, inviting face. Her large, brown eyes glow with an otherworldly light even in the midday sun, and her teeth are clean and white. Her hair is black and short, barely seen under her close-fitting white coif. In the center of her forehead, there is a single bullet hole, cracking the surrounding skin as if she was a porcelain doll.

Even with your incredible ignorance in Tologda, you know. She is a spirit.

The spirit's mouth makes an "o" shape as she glances between you and Tala, and then she laughs. As she speaks, her soothing words are heavenly, her laugh the sound of wind chimes. "Oh come now, you two look like I'm about to eat you up. Calm down a bit, girls. I have always endeavored to help young women in need, especially when soldiers are involved. Call it a force of habit." A wry grin forms on her face.

Article:

Your plan to attack the soldiers with the use of your Zurah Realm appears to have worked despite the fact that your overextension almost trapped you within the Zurah, saved only by the mysterious intervention of a motherly presence. However, now, exhausted and tired, you are facing a spirit of unknown power in the form of a nun. She appears to be affable, but that is no guarantee with spirits. What should you do?

[] Run away, right now.
[] Talk to the spirit.