Astrid's Rambling Writings

[Miath]

I write a lot. Most of it nonsense that'll never see the light of day. In the mean time, have a few lines about how immortality (which is semi-common) works in my fictional alternate universe.

"Consider the timeless, the ageless, the deathless.

Consider the Immortal (title).

Ask not of them "Shall they be lonely?"

Ask instead "What keeps them in a place?"

Ask what loves, what lies and what gentle truths so compel them to dwell where they would see those they care for so deeply to fade again and again?

Ask what ghosts so dwell in that place as to make it so sacred as to root them to the spot.

Then shall you come a single step closer to understanding the greatest of the curses of the gods."

I'll add more stuff to this thread at some point, I promise!

 

[Miath]

Tea and Conversation
Astrid H. Fornhoff​

"When was this picture even taken?" The old looking man set the battered photo down on a table, black and white, only slightly faded yet still captivating. It was of course, enchanted. The twinkle in the subject's eyes proved that much.

"Oh… I don't quite remember, I still have that hat, you know. I'm very fond of it. One of the very first bonnets made by machina." Why she said it in Latin still confused him, though only slightly.

"Yes, I remember. Still in perfect condition as well. You remain ever impressive." He lifted the photo of his relative and held it aloft to her, it was within her own hand but a second later.

"You know, my dear brother, you don't need to look like that." She pointed at his visage from behind her silk fan, he shrugged.

"I choose this, I find it fitting. I am nearly three millennia old, and so my dearest Camilla, are you." He did not say the words with cruelty, nor did he assault her vanity. She looked young because it fit her, she did not feel the chains of age like he did. She had clawed so many back from Eirene's grasp and perhaps, though he doubted it, she took some of what was theirs.

"Why, darling Cornelius, how dare you?" Likewise, there were no barbs in her voice, though he knew from experience she could wield words like a sword.

"How long has it been, again?" Cornelius questioned as he picked up a kettle and offered her tea.

"Oh, two hundred? No no, three hundred years." Camilla flashed him what could be taken to be a smile, though it was a shadow of a thing gone as soon as he'd lifted his cup.

"Here's to three hundred more." Cornelius was blunt, cruel occasionally but Camilla appreciated however silently that he was a wholly different man with his family.

"Yes, yes, I hardly visit. Ormessia is just so pleasant when you don't have these Etai invading every generation or so." Camilla frowned and poked a scone.

"At least the rain isn't black there, my dear." There was a quiver of warmth in her brother's voice, a tremble that did not exist for anyone not dearly related to him in ways that mattered to his madness.

"Indeed." Camilla's own reply was by comparison, curt, stiff and she shuddered physically at the invasive thought. "Praise the gods, the rain isn't black there." Poor Camilla had been in Agieafina when the Alisonians had leveled the city to fine particles of ash a century prior.

"Praise that the curse of our line is one so everlasting that even when eternal fire is doused, ours survives." There was a morose tremor in Cornelius's voice with that statement as he poured the tea once more into emptied cups. A fine and pale green one from the markets of distant and mighty Lian.

"Where is everyone? Why is my brother's house so empty?" Camilla frowned as she gestured around the vastness of Amberfield's central castle, though it was a stretch to call the magical architecture fortified in any way.

"Because, my dear, my children are grown, with children and grandchildren of their own and have been for centuries." He was oddly lucid today and Camilla was thankful for that.

"Surely that is no excuse to have such grand space to yourself." She poked another scone.

"There are the servants, of course." Cornelius remarked plainly.

"Well paid, I hope." She refilled the cups that time.
"Of course, I have no use for the shining metals of the ground. Your namesake visits occasionally, more than you do. Kjell was here last year." He motioned to a portrait on one of the walls of a young looking man with striking golden eyes. That too of course was enchanted.

"Oh that's… Gwyn's boy, yes?" Another scone, this one she bounced off a shelf before it floated back into her hand as though it had never been tossed.

"Aye, his sister was around during the Revolt." Cornelius lifted the tea pot to pour out a rich Ormessian blend.

"Dear brother, that was itself decades ago." Camilla had a smile in her voice with that one.

"What is a decade to us, my dear?" He remained as blunt as ever, it was but a passing moment at best.

"I try to keep appraised of the fact I have friends and people I care for very dearly who are not nearly as indestructible as we are, brother dearest." She leveled her silk fan at him pointedly. "You had friends once, you know."

"I still do." Cornelius defended with a chuckle.

"Who? Lucretius? You've been worse for him than he has been good for you, I'd say." She leveled her fan again with a stare.

"Yes, I suspect I have been worse for her than she has been for me. Of course there's that youthful lad in the capital." Her brother replied with a noncommittal shrug.

"You're not friends with the man who wants to stab you, my dearest." Her mirth faded just a little.

"Of course I am, I find it easier to know where they stand that way." He stared at her with those violet eyes nearly identical to her own and Camilla looked away.

It wasn't proper to see someone else's ghost in your brother's eyes…

A few minutes of amicable silence fell between the two mismatched siblings. One looking old enough to predate mountains, the other looking young enough to be junior to the growth of spring and both of them old enough to have seen the rise and fall of whole peoples and their empires.

"I suppose I should go, we appear to have run out of tea." Camilla tilted the empty teapot onto its side. It was enchanted only to last as long as the quality of the conversation.

"Nonsense, you are always welcome. You should bring your boy around one of these days. Agrippa was it?" Cornelius stood as he spoke and Camilla did likewise with a perpetually warm smile on her face. It was a stark contrast to her brother's perpetually somber mood.

"Agrippa, dearest brother, is currently sitting in the senate." Camilla lifted her umbrella, a fine silk and paper one older than the Archon of the Empire.

"You don't say? Now there's success, Imperator one of these days, mark my words." The elder by three hours pushed open his door to a courtyard filled with all manner of life imaginable as well as a few things beyond imagination.

"Hardly, he likes helping people, I'm very proud of him that he doesn't want to conquer nations or enslave."

"Camilla, my dearest, he's a Roman senator." Cornelius chuckled, it was a dark sound that almost sounded healthy.

"Yes?" She opened her parasol and stepped into the sunlight beyond the doorway. "It has been a pleasure, my dearest brother. I shall try and visit again before too long. Healing is demanding work."

"Oh yes, beyond words. May you have the utmost fortune in your conquest of death." Her brother smiled, a rare sight indeed. A thousand puppies died simultaneously from the paradox of it, surely.

"May you be well, my dearest Cornelius." Camilla twirled on the spot and vanished in a column of light…

 

[Miath]

Regarding Magic: Possession​

Specters, ghosts and spirits and souls are preternatural beings, primarily energy based, which exist in the corners of the world where the natural eye does not see. Most spirits are bound to the land, some are bound to family lines, others are the result of magical experimentation gone wrong, and in rare cases, gone right.

The foremost ability of a spiritual being is possession. The strength of a possession depends upon the strength of the spirit. A fragmentary memory bound to a hotel room is much less terrifying in its might than a disembodied and complete soul.

The weakest form of possession barely registers with the possessed or those around them, it is often benign and ends shortly after it begins, within minutes, hours or days at longest. These possessions are the result of accidental bonding as opposed to malevolent (or benevolent) intent.

The strongest form of possession is the rarest, it is the result of a disembodied soul possessing an embodied soul, i.e. two souls per one body. It is a violent melding, usually the result of spellcraft, though natural phenomenon have also been recorded as leading to it. Generally speaking, the stronger the bonds that the possessed has to the possessor, the stronger and less violent the possession. Very few people have been known to survive spirit melding, no vessel crafted by Heuris the Creator, is designed to hold more than one fire.

Miath threw 1 6-faced dice. Total: 1