The Ever-Changing
Mist, fog, smoke, they pour from Ehfeyos in great rolling clouds that fill the village and cover her students and settle on the ground and dance around the fox spirits, clinging to them, mixing with them, even as the others who were not called watch the lesson there in the center of town--at some point they will need their own building, her students, and for that matter a name beyond her students, but that can come later. She has chosen well in her call, and by far the vast, vast majority made it back with, at worst, some minor bumps and bruises.
Good. That will be an important lesson for them all.
"Change is the only constant in this world, students. Change, change, and change. And so you must know how to match it, rather than try and make yourself a stone, easily carved away in the face of that change." Ehfeyos lets her will, her spirit, herself wander, her nature spreading outwards from her, shaping the Ulgu in ways not quite like any of the Shadowdancers or Gray Magisters or Bray Shamans but like her, with her touch and her nature forced upon it, the work of centuries to become a thing of all manner of magic. "Such will be your weapon. Becoming what you must be, as you must be it. If it needs be dread, then you shall be dread. If it needs be hope, you shall be hope. And if it needs be truth, then you shall be truth."
She does not let Ehfeyos the Accounting, Ehfeyos the Raging, Ehfeyos the Thundespeaker, Ehfeyos the Ending, Ehfeyos the Maker, Ehfeyos the Snarling, Ehfeyos the Balanced.
Not yet. They are not ready, yet.
She paces in front of them, prowling, seeming half-angered as she lets a long, long, long train of memories play through her, the adventures of an existence spent lying, deceiving, taking, and confusing for one reason or another from one end of the world to the next and back again, from Runelords seeking vengeance turned onto the wrong path to Bray Shamans played to kill Bray Shamans and a thousand other tales combined. "That last most of all. If all you ever speak is falsehood, then you become as predictable, as understood, as a plain road. The truth, deployed at the right time, can be just as disorienting, confusing, and mystifying as any--as every--lie. So you will learn to wield as a weapon, eventually."
"But for now I shall teach you to wield the wield shadows. Ulgu. Changing and ephemeral."
--
Ehfeyos sat on a rock, cross legged, watching her students work through the first of her lessons. They were able, not lacking, and so for that brief time she allowed herself the pleasure of cool water, until such a time as her presence was not more an impediment in their independence and was instead an aid to their knowledge.
"I'm not mad then, after all."
And the company of handsome men (Whether cunning, to be discerned a little later). She turned then to her intruder, her interloper, one of a scarce few equals she now had, Laqurnas, handsome in face, half nude, his ears twitching for some sign of danger, his tails swishing, Ulgu all driven to paroxysms around him. Mud, the sign of his own efforts working to create the signs of warding, covered his knees and his hands. "There are many reasons mortals might be mad, Laqurnas. You will have to be more specific."
"I think you and I both know we're no more mere mortals than the sun is a mere fire." He set himself on the rock next to her and stretched, and was either ignored or not seen at all by the masses of her new students. "I had to see for myself. Someone could call it bold, trying to teach them on the foundations of Ulgu when I am right here and we both know that it belongs to me more surely than a shadow belong to a mountain."
"Magic does not belong to any one man or group of people. Only a fool seeks to hoard it, hide, stuff it into a thousand little bags and let it die out of ignorant pride or paranoia." She stiffened at that.
"I'm sure there are plenty of people who would agree with that characterization of events...Drungnoli."
"Please." She waved her hand dismissively and drank a little more of her water even as she inwardly cursed as her too-clever-by-half students began pawing at the wards that had guarded her...visitor's nature for the time being, not even trying to, simply a result of their nature, of what they were, the Fox, the scavenger, the curious. There were at least a dozen ways to reinforce it, but most would at best...hurt. A lot. Too much for her tastes, in fact "I'm not sure any of use would survive if the Longbeards knew where to find us in the first place, not even Dererehan, and for anyone else, I earned that lore fair and square."
She did relax some at that. It was not a lie. She had contributed to the scholasticism of Zandri, sponsored their Liche Priests, acted as an emissary of their gods, until such a time as the poor boy had expired. Had explained to the creatures of Har Ganeth the ways of Hysh, the better to allow them to drive out the Daemons assailing their lands. Had instructed the Wizards of the Fire Spire until was destroyed, snuffed out, ended. Everything she had, she had gained fairly enough, in honest enough deals. She was no slinking, smirking liar, no thief, no cheater and no cheapskate.
But now to prove it to those who needed the proving.
And that turned her back to her companion (Handsome, she decided, but too, too cunning by half, as her students watching realized who she was speaking to and began to speak among themselves). "Besides, I think they would be much, much more interested in finding the Dammagor than the rest of us, don't you? He certainly seemed more aggressive in the matter than any of the rest of us could be if we tried, huh?"
He looked down, his face unreadable, covered in shadows as the Ulgu that was his soul seemed to whip around him, hide him; mere mortals may even have forgot who he was, but she was no mere mortal. "...it has been a very long time since the Dammagor has walked the mortal plains, Ehfeyos. Speak not too lightly of that, for both of our sakes."
She shrugged and took a little more water and tried to ignore how they were being watched, by her students of course but by others as well, marked by little silver sparks so different from the marks of Menleth. "We both have a past, Laqurnas. None of us can run from it forever, try as we might. No, I am much more interested in the future, and so I take it are you, being that you have your students watching us? Worried I may have made you redundant, are you?"
"Hardly." He relaxed a little, seemingly finally realizing they were, in fact, being watched. "You were quick and you claimed it fair and square. A Grudge is a sucker's salve. But it behooved me, knowing as we both do what we are hurtling towards, to know what path might be the most helpful. Besides, you may know Ulgu as one who's studied it, but I know it as one who breathes it, drinks it, lives it." A little portion of Him seemed to leak out from the Higher Place, the Coming Place, and she saw he spoke true; lesser than Menleth, lesser than Derererhan, lesser than Her, but in the way one might call the Grey Mountains lesser than the World's Edge: one might be mightier than the other, but both were damn mountains and so both towered over a little hill.
48
She trilled a little in satisfaction to realize it was so, though she had little doubt of his cunning. "And what have you decided, then, will be the most helpful way for you, the best thing for you to do?"
"I shall teach them, my students, what you have not taught yours. Things of Shadow and Mist and Silver. And of me."
"And one day, I shall teach mine of me." Ehfeyos got up, stretching, and began to walk towards her students, approaching them, planning on correcting the many, certain, errors they would make.
And when she turned around, Laqurnas of the Fox Spirits was gone, disappeared into the winds. The whispers he left behind, though, were not quite so quick to fade...
Breaking Point Gained:
The Scholar and the Shadow: "From the very beginning of their society, of course, the half-Daemons could not stand to bear each other for even a second without fighting, and the worst fighting of all was the fighting between Laqurnas, Daemon God of Ulgu, and Ehfeyos, Trickster Liar of Qhaysh."
-Imperial Witch Hunter Frederick Von Gruyden, Tome Liarum
+1 Organization Dice (Currently locked to Magical Infrastructure Tasks, current tags: Ulgu Spellcasters, Broad Wizards)
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Don't be too alarmed, you were always going to have a Breaking Point soon enough. They are an encapsulation of points of conflict in your society, causes of friction and conflict, such as the anti-Magic attitudes of the Empire, the Ice Witches' attempts to deny male magic users in Kislev, or the Dwarfs going out and starting fights for the Groodging. This is the most basic baby back little whatever Breaking Point possible, to be clear.
I will update the front page, then get started on the next turn. I will say front page updated by this weekend, and turn not long after.