Turn A--Part 1
The Display in Green
The display was a complicated affair to organize, and yet all Kiralo had to was show up. He'd been far too busy lately to enjoy himself, and yet even this wasn't really about enjoyment, so much as it was about figuring out his next move. Kuojah himself had several different Imperial Mages on his staff, and the ear of the most powerful of them.
So in a way, Kiralo thought, as he jostled through the crowd, his bodyguards glaring at the bodyguards of other notable figures, he was here to search for someone whose loyalty he could buy. But it was more than that. It had been a long year, and this would be, on top of the explosions and powerful magic, the demonstration of select projects and advancements. And so the cream of society, and curious onlookers, swarmed into a vast building just beyond the palace city. There was in fact a gate around it, and it was an area of lesser sacred exclusion. Liminal, as it were, and so on top of the nobles and court officials, and the local servants, merchants and other figures were allowed to enter, on this day alone. And so there were three sets of galleries, from top to bottom.
Kiralo sat at the top, overlooking a huge platform.
The room was big, and there were a set of curtains at the back, over a hundred feet high, separating the rest of the circle, and the three tiers, and the stage itself, from the back area. It was an amazing building, if oddly functional, lacking many of the frills he had expected. There were of course lion and serpent statues at the main entrance which were as well-crafted as he'd expected, and of course the spirits guarding this place were quite impressive, including one that was a towering pillar of shifting stone, and could likely devastate any unprepared formation of soldiers if left unchecked.
The seat was padded, and he stretched slightly as he glanced down at the two lower galleries. The one below had hard wooden seats, and the people there were well-dressed merchants and the friends and loved ones of some of the Imperial Mages. And so here and there, a person dressed in what was clearly their best, but which was just as clearly not equal to this high ceremony, would be standing with their family. Fathers and daughters and cousins, widowed mothers in polite veils, trying not to be jostled as they waited to see their only son, all that they had, go out and--
Maybe Kiralo was projecting.
The red curtain began to move, and then from behind it came streaming smoke, thick and forming strange shapes in the air. Red eyes flashed within the smoke, and Kiralo knew that this was one of the more intelligent spirits as a dozen men robed in green stepped out. The oldest was in his forties, the youngest barely sixteen, nervous and holding the scrolls that held their first contributions.
For that was the art of the Mage, that differed from those who pleaded with or tried to control spirits. They bound them, in scrolls and symbols, and with them commanded and shaped their actions.
And so what burst from the scrolls was a chaotic rush of spirits. Not too many, or it'd be religiously prohibited, but still, each scroll held a menagerie, and those were only the spirits that could be seen as they burst out. Columns of flames, snakes made of teeth, the loud sound of a gong deafening the world to all but the display as the feeling of excitement bubbled over them, pulling their emotions with its power. Fiery spirits clashed with spirits of water, or stranger things, and explosions and lights rocked the stage as a thousand colors clashed and mixed. It was strangely like some kind of...gestalt. There was something controlled about it, and yet there was also chaos.
The flash occasionally of something unexpected, a face or a shape as more Mage stepped out. One spirit looked for a moment like a naked woman, and then like an eagle, and then it was a single noise, a sort of chime that shook the body down to the bones, and all of this in a moment. More Mages strode out, including the oldest, grey beards down to their feet, carrying huge scrolls that seemed more like the prelude to tomes, chanting out pieces of names or fake names to hide the real ones that were embedded in the scrolls.
And then the individual demonstrations began. The spirits gibbered and moved, crowding out the Mages, almost, moving as one, according to long-planned directions, fighting and clashing and showing off their prowess. Bodyguards shifted forward. It was unlikely, but there had once been an assassination attempt using the demonstration as a cover. A sudden gout of flame had lashed out and fried the third most powerful man in the court (weaker, at the time, actually, than the Emperor, who was surprisingly dominant) into cinders.
The Emperor had ordered the Mage Academy decimated, especially when it turned out that several figures involved had been high-level.
It had not happened again, but ever since precuations had been taken. It was all very impressive, and while some of it wasn't beyond him in a theoretical sense, a lot of it was outside his area of expertise. It would have taken weeks to look up the names and hunt down a lot of the spirits used, and it would have taken even longer to get used to them, to habituate them to his presence, since he didn't know the art of spirit-sealing.
The show got more wild as spirits lifted up weights and threw things around, and more and more Mages spilled out on the stage. First years were not allowed on, and second years only in rare instances, but there were now a few as young as fourteen or fifteen, and they all but shivered as they watched, looking into the crowd. The groundlings were the most numerous, and the display continued, though it did not build up into a big climax as expected.
Instead, no doubt to give the eyes a rest--and indeed, Kiralo's head ached with what he'd seen, the flashes of color and the strange sensations having all but driven his spirits wild--Mages began to step forward. Third, fourth years, fifth years and beyond, all of them eager to show off their research projects.
They spoke in loud voices and simplified the concepts, and if they could, they all seemed, sooner or later, to show it off in some direct way.
Sometimes even unrelated to what they were doing.
For instance, one that introduced himself as Hee-cae, who looked like he was probably a member of one of the minority groups from his accent, had done a project on examining the spirits that the farmers in a certain region used for their farming, to see if it could be adapted, but what he showed off were not so much the results, as a spirit of the scythe which he used to cut a table in half.
Others showed off mundane achievements, increases in mastery without any specific research, and one, who looked pure Csiritan but spoke in a moderately foreign accent, showed off his combat prowess, talking about how he had studied and planned to work with the army or as a bodyguard after he graduated. An interesting choice, and Ji'Le is certainly at least impressive when he leapt over the several guards he used as demonstrations and used the spirits and his skill with a sword to disarm five enemies without taking more than a single wound, and that mostly having glanced off his armor.
A young man, twenty-two or so, named Dingbae presented a rather interesting demonstration designed 'To learn about the enemy and their magic.' In this case, it was studies involving the tattoos that many in the far Southlands wore.
More and more came, and each had their own ideas or their accomplishments, some great and some small, and Kiralo wasn't the only person looking, judging.
Because he didn't need to see the grand finale, when some of the best Mages came to do practice duels and a spectacle or two. Not when he could perhaps talk to a few Mages, see just what they had to offer, and whether there was anything he could offer to them.
Who does Kiralo talk to? (Choose 2)
[] Dingbae's research of Southlander tattoos is interesting, or at least it might be, and while framed in an adversarial way, at the very least more knowledge could be used for other, rather less hostile, purposes.
[] Work on improving agriculture is very important, if sometimes boring. Hee-Cae could be talked about in this matter, and perhaps he'd have advice and ideas for local improvements. It wouldn't be an immediate gain, but setting up the seeds of larger reforms could be interesting. Though of course rural villagers are (quite reasonably) conservative, but there are always spirits that slip outside anyone's attention.
[] Ji'lae is a strong young man, and quite magically skilled. He could be talked with, to see if there's a network of Mages who might be interested in larger scale work. After all, if war comes, he'll need all the Mages he can get.
[] Tung, a short looking man in his early thirties, advertised a research project that had gotten its first round of experiments in looking at the way humans reacted to spirits when put in close proximity with more intelligence spirits. It was the sort of research that strayed dangerously close to the border between what is orthodox and what is not. In fact, he might have stepped over it, depending. That makes him dangerous...or interesting, take your pick.
[] Qiang is in his late twenties, but in other ways is older. A traditionalist, and apparently something of a philosopher, his works themselves weren't all that impressive when shown off, but what did catch Kiralo's attention was the mention of his loyalty to Kuojah. This could be a chance to gain a contact, after all.
[] Rather surprising was the entry from a third year student by the name of Hung, whose contribution was in some ways not magic at all. He had discovered a way to use spirits to track what he said was an illegal smuggling ring that dealt in spirit-haunted goods, which had apparently recently been busted, and so his research was in methods to find and track down such illicit dealings. Which was rather more than one usually expected to see out of a seventeen year old, honestly.
*****
A/N: I admit, I feel a bit blah right now. Eh, this was alright, I hope, but it definitely could have been better.
