Turn 3 Results
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
- Location
- Ruritania Illinois
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Turn 3 Results
"Are you sure you want to go there?" Menleth cocks her head, the two of them in a secluded jungle pool. Flowers and trees frame the place, and his eyes are filled with concern for her friend, the Ghyran--compassion, nurturing kindness, care, more--sparking little green and blue around, at least when looked at through witch sight. Currents, channels, eddies of the manifestation of care within the Aethyr and, he allows herself, the Wind in truth most opposed to the senseless self-love and loss of control of Chaos. Let the Ceyla cling to Hysh; let the Astromancers believe only the order of heaven can withstand the fury of Four; let the Dwarfs loath it all with their hearts and minds and wills of stone and fire and hate. To care for another, that is the truest defiance of Chaos, that even should all the world say it is senseless one can still tend to their little garden and be satisfied. There is a reason Chamon, Ulgu, Shyish, Ghur, Aqshy, Azyr, even Hysh have been perverted by Chaos; and why Ghyran has not. Cannot be.
"Why would I not want to?" Ehfeyos brings him back to herself, back to that moment and that place, ending ruminations with a few words. She bears formal wear of Khuresh, "out of date don't you know," but good enough, a top of silk dyed blue threaded with intricate golden patterns that resemble nothing so much as the windy eddies of magic itself, appropriately; and below, a long skirt that reaches her feet, made of a bright and vivid green with imagery of the forest itself painted onto it, a material that Menleth cannot name. "It has been some time since the Hued Fox walked these places; but not that long that they would forget." Her form itself has shifted some, become more angular and sharper, harder, keener, her features, impressively, becoming somehow more foxish. Her nine tails undulate, shift and move and dance at her will, the colors duller but in turn more shades doppled along the tails, subtler, more glorious things fitting a mighty, wise wizard of a creature. She replaced her simple staff at some point with one more aesthetic, topped by a fox's head carved of the hard jungle wood by the simple artisans that have sprung up after the stone tools were disseminated among the people, not more functional but perhaps more fitting. Nine jewels of nine countries and nine stones cover all fingers but her left thumb, made by Dwarf and Man and Ogre and Elf alike seeking knowledge, old, old knowledge, knowledge beyond the counting and reckoning of merely mortal creatures with merely mortal concerns.
"That's exactly what I'm afraid of." Menleth lets himself slump some, for nobody is watching her now, and so for once he can allow herself that little thing for all he does not need it, for all her nature means he can quite simply go as long as any of the Foxes still survive, still remember her deeds, his trick towards the Bloody--and thunder bursts out through the Aethyr as she so much as thinks such a thing, but he is not afraid. Not of That. The fear is of something more immediate, something that seems to damn mortal and spirit alike in this world, bitter and brutal since the coming of Chaos: History.
"Hm. The humans of Khuresh are not the sort I dealed too unfairly with; not unfairly at all I would say, even. Their shamans desired a spirit that could protect them from the Naga Queens, and I was all too happy to provide, as long as they were willing to ply me with booze and books. Really, if anything, I'd say my reputation here should be a help. If anything the Hued Fox should be a boon to them."
Methlen sighs, shrugs, and plants herself into biggest pool of water, letting it wash away some of the tension if not all of it as she tries to consider wht to say to his friend as she plants sits down next to the water, magic keeping the mud and dirt and bugs and worse far from her clothing. The scum, the filth, what is wretched, flops out, landing in piles on the sides of the pool, piles that Ehfeyos burns away with her magic. "All well and good. But when they start speaking of Lingwen, I suppose you will have some plan to convince them not to burn you at the stake?"
"I did nothing as Lingwen that I would not just as happily have done as the Hued Fox. The Khureshi simply proved more amenable to reason than the Cathayans. Indeed, it's not as though the Cathayans have nothing good to say of my deed then, in those days. If they forget the lessons of Jia Cheng that seems like their folly, not mine."
"Some lessons, even good lessons, come at a high price, Ehfeyos. You and I know that well."
The grudges of mortals may be nonsensical, but they last long; and, he can acknowledge, if only in the peace of her own mind, that there may be some reason to some of them. Never the Dwarfs, of course; but the Elves, the Cathayans, others, they have reasons to have some very complicated feelings about Ehfeyos.
Very complicated, and very sharp.
"Bah. What is passed is passed." Ehfeyos flicks her wrist like she's trying to shoo away some kind of bug, and out of respect for his friend, Menleth lets the way she peers over her shoulder--as though she expects a the glint of Slayer's ax, the soft tap of a magister's walking stick, or the bitter-cold gleam of an ice maiden's blade at any time--pass without comment, to instead turn to other matters.
"I can't imagine you'll let yourself only serve as the voice of Gurgran."
Ehfeyos simply chortles. But when she leaves, she is escorted by a handful of the better hunters.
--
Truth and Lie: You are in no position to fight off the real beasts of this world as yet, unarmed and unarmored and still reeling from losing so many, from going from numberless to so surely, utterly numbered. Laqurnas knows tricks, marks of deceit and hallucination that will make creatures approaching what you consider your territory at the moment suffer growing fright and terrors and nightmares, in proportion with how malevolent their will is.
-The mists, the fog, the shapes, they twist and melt and form and bend and come together for a simple command, offered to the whole of the Gurgran, all those with even the most passing interest in mysticism, aside of course from Menleth's Children:
Come.
And so they do, to that place, his place, the place of Laqurnas. A clearing, somehow both intimate enough that they all can hear him, as though he is right next to them, speaking directly to them, face to face in fact, even as it rains or thunders or pours; and yet large enough, grand enough, great enough, to contain the lot of them.
His message is simple.
"This is the weapon of the strong." Laqurnas hoists the ax up high, letting it gleam in the bright light of the sun, stolen from the body of some dead slave to the dark things. "It is the weapon of the mighty. Of the enduring." He sniffs, and tosses it over his shoulder. "It is also the weapon of the unsubtle, the ignorant, and the arrogant. Your weapons, our weapons, will be be better. More subtle, brighter, more useful for less effort. In time I will teach them all to you. But for you now, you will watch, and you will learn, and you will repeat until I am satisfied that there is nothing less for you to learn. There will be a time for creativety; but for now, you do as I say, and you do as I insist."
And Laqurnas takes a spiky red fruit from that great tree, so big and so grand, red as a ruby and hard as iron, and with the strength of nascent divinity--"though rest assured, I will teach you easier ways than the might of your thews for it"--smashes it, filling a hollowed gourd with the stuff, the final step of his concotion. He dips a stick in the stuff, and starts to scrawl the sigils, looping, whorling, soft and flowing things--similar, in some cases to the stuff of Dwarfs but there is always a flexibility, a motion to them that none of the stone souled could ever replicate, if they had a lifetime for the replication.
As he goes he chants. Syllables without meaning, words without comprehension, terms long dead to the rest of the world. Terms not used since before the Breaking of the world, a reminder that even among spirits their leaders are old, old things, dread things, the winds whipping around him, dust rising, dread stirring.
And at first, nothing happens. At first.
Then they realize something: for the first time since they got there, for the first time since the flight from what was wicked, for the first time since mortality, the jungle is absolutely, completely, and utterly silent, but for the rustle of leaves and the falling of water on the great trees that surround them, that binds them. They can hear each other's heartbeats, in fact, punctuated by the syncopated rhythm of shaking leaves and twitching branches and the fall of water droplets from the constant, never ending rain. And Windsight proves it, shows it, affirms it, for as they examine the foliage that bowls the tree they see no animals for a hundred yards in any direction, not even the gnats and stinging, biting things, for the sigil, they realize, has frightened them all away.
"Now you will find trees yourself, and you will trace as I did, and you will chant as I did, and I will guide you, and you will learn, and at last I will get a decent night's sleep without being eaten alive by crawling, flying, biting bugs." Laqurnas seems to grow in the sunlight even as his followers, and the children of Ehfeyos, turn to look at him, their eyes widening and then narrowing with comprehension. "Now find some fruit, and let's get started."
And they do. For all they can't smash the fruit apart with their bare hands, they manage to pulp it with hammers or slice into it with the stone knives, the hard skin giving way to tender flesh that oozes the juices onto leaves, into wooden bowls, into hollowed gourds, anything and everything that might act as a container or a palette of one sort or another and then they find trees and they start tracing themselves, their teacher, their guide, their instructor seemingly managing to speak into everyone's ears all at once. Broken straight sticks, fingers, claws, tails, anything and everything is used to get the sigils written, traced onto the living trees, and as they do more and more of the sigils seem to come to life. The great tree of Laqurnas proves to be exceptional for bugs still manage to endure around the lesser trees so marked and so claimed by the Gurgran, but they are lessened, their presence much reduced--and that, the insects that do not bite nor sting, at least not unless provoked, which is far, far, far from nothing.
It will not stop evil, not real evil, not determined evil, not thinking evil. But it will dissuade, and it will distract, and it will weaken and annoy and perturb and frighten those with wicked intent and that is far from nothing, far, far, far from nothing. An ill-considered thought, an errant twitch, a thoughtless move brought about by the growth of nerves, the flourishing of fear, a little sparkling dread, may be all the difference between victory and defeat when He, when They, finally learn where the Gurgran have gone to flee their malice and cruelty.
Interested and ever curious, one of the Gurgran dips a stick into the mixture and presses it against his body, over his heart. Before he can start however, Laqurnas appears from the shadows and grips his wrist, stopping him before he can move, his grip like iron and yet mist. "Not so careless, and not so foolish neither. The time for that will come soon enough, but first we have trees to mark."
--
The Children of Menleth: Menleth has noticed some of her "Children"--that is to say, his followers--performing sacrifices in her name to thank him for saving them from the Aethyr, and from there to desiring to ask them questions. For instance, why they ended up following her so closely that they study only Ghyran when, by rights, they should be capable of wielding any magic given sufficient time. Or why they unironically worship him, and emulate her.
-You kids might have gotten used to these things with all the wanderers who come around looking to hire us nowadays, but it can be disquieting to have anyone appear out of nowhere, no matter how innocent, how unassuming, how well known they are to you. Consider then, how frightened I was when the Liberator cornered me seemingly melting out of the damn foliage.
Even if it was just to talk.
-Yanlern, recounting stories of youth to his grandchildren
Many children have rebelled against their parents. It is the way of things, at least for those who don't live in their grandparents' basements all their lives. Yet usually most children will not, at least, hide from their parents.
And yet that is what Menleth finds as he searches and searches for someone, anyone, that she can ask the relevant questions to. Oh for sure, their presence is still felt in foraging expeditions that return with bundles of fruit and vines for the fires, from wounds healed quick and near-painlessly to waters purified for drinking.
But they themselves? Hidden. Gone. Seemingly evaporated into thin air like mist and smoke, here for an instant then gone. For days hesearches, for days she looks, not catching more than a sight of hide and hair and fur before the Priest--his priests, really, which is the most annoying part of the entire endeavor-- manage to slink away, hiding, somewhere. At a certain point, it becomes a professional insult: A thing of Ghyran she may be, but there is Ghur, the Ghur of a hunter at that, threaded in him, and that means she can find, that he can locate, that she is a hunter.
And so he hunts. Not as some bumbling mortal might, but as a real spirit would, patiently, methodically, cunningly. She asks around, disguised as he can be given the circumstances, about where known Children of Menleth congregate when they aren't busy working, discovers there is a watering hole, they occsionally go to. With a great, many boughed, thickly-leafed tree hanging distinctly overhead.
So, when she has a moment of time to herself, he plants herself in that tree, and waits.
And waits.
And waits.
Until at last he hears speech, and she tenses until a voice is directly underneath him, and then with a huff of annoyance and not much effort she lets himself fall, landing none too hard on the balls of her feet, directly behind one of his erstwhile priests. The two others scatter immediately, afraid of their Liberator's potential anger--really, she's mildly miffed at worst, ignore how his knuckles are chalk-white as she grips the priest's shoulder, he is of Ghyran, she is not angry, anger is Aqshy nonsense and he's beyond that, really well and truly she is--but that's alright since he finally has somebody to ask some very important questions to.
"Hello."
"Liberator!" His voice is high and fearful and he finally manages to worm out of her grasp, though he at least has the good common courtesy, rather than running, to kneel low to his Liberator, putting his head to the dirt in front of Menleth. "It is an honor and a priviledge."
"Please, spare me the flattery, at least until I've ended up back in the Aethyr. I have questions, and you will answer them." He nods to his wayward follower. "And pick yourself up, have you not learned to look people in the eye when they talk to you?" The priest does, and indeed he does manage to make eye contact for a brief moment beore having to avert his eyes.
"Of course Liberator. As you request."
"Now, perhaps you can explain to me why my priests, who call themselves my children, are running away from me? It's inconvenient, you know." Magic whips around her, roiling a bit at his frustration, Ghyran agitated by a nascent avatar. The Wind heeds the call of its champions, and there are precious few champions yet that can challenge her.
"Shame, Liberator. Our...shame." The priest manages to bite the words out, his face scrunching up with distaste and displeasure. "That we have already failed you, and the work you sought for us to achieve."
Menleth plants his palm on his forehead, irritation seeping through her body, annoyance and aggravation. "I can already tell this is going to annoy me...but I'm going to be more annoyed if you don't explain what the devil is going on. So tell me, how is it the lot of you think you've already failed me, and be sure to be very detailed."
"The Children of Ehfeyos. Their mere existence that we failed to heed the call you made, that we failed to follow your teachings, that the Oath we made to you has already passed from our shoulders in disgrace; how then could we look at you without some measure of guilt, and of shame, and of loss?"
Menleth sighs.
He breathes in deeply once.
She breathes out deeply once.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
"I was right. I'm annoyed." Then he pauses, what was said finally catching up to her brain as he parses everything the priest said. "Wait. Oath?"
"Yes. As we transitioned from spirit to flesh, to mortality, we heard your voice ask us to promise that we would protect the people from the evils of the flesh, and of the Aethyr, from daemon and disease alike. And if we are so incapable that you need to call up others to fulfill that duty, that you need spread the mysticism even beyond us, to the children of Ehfeyos, then what good are we?"
"...Please, tell me this is not some nascent nonsense as lies between Ehfeyos and Laqurnas, please tell me I am not going to have to fear more glares, pointed glances, and insults tossed between people I do not need insulting each other." Her voice is low, tired, exhausted even, at the mere thought. "I will break down, I swear."
"Oh no, Liberator, no such thing. Our failures are ours, not the failings of those who too, heed the call."
He sighs again. "...Please, for the sake of both of us, just call me Menleth."
[X] Plan Conceal Ourselves
-[X] Truth and Lie (1 Leader Die + 1 Organization Die)
-[X] The Children of Menleth (1 Menleth Die)
[X] Ehfeyos, Teacher, Wizard, Sage, outcast.
-[X] Truth and Lie (1 Leader Die + 1 Organization Die)
-[X] The Children of Menleth (1 Menleth Die)
[X] Ehfeyos, Teacher, Wizard, Sage, outcast.
"Are you sure you want to go there?" Menleth cocks her head, the two of them in a secluded jungle pool. Flowers and trees frame the place, and his eyes are filled with concern for her friend, the Ghyran--compassion, nurturing kindness, care, more--sparking little green and blue around, at least when looked at through witch sight. Currents, channels, eddies of the manifestation of care within the Aethyr and, he allows herself, the Wind in truth most opposed to the senseless self-love and loss of control of Chaos. Let the Ceyla cling to Hysh; let the Astromancers believe only the order of heaven can withstand the fury of Four; let the Dwarfs loath it all with their hearts and minds and wills of stone and fire and hate. To care for another, that is the truest defiance of Chaos, that even should all the world say it is senseless one can still tend to their little garden and be satisfied. There is a reason Chamon, Ulgu, Shyish, Ghur, Aqshy, Azyr, even Hysh have been perverted by Chaos; and why Ghyran has not. Cannot be.
"Why would I not want to?" Ehfeyos brings him back to herself, back to that moment and that place, ending ruminations with a few words. She bears formal wear of Khuresh, "out of date don't you know," but good enough, a top of silk dyed blue threaded with intricate golden patterns that resemble nothing so much as the windy eddies of magic itself, appropriately; and below, a long skirt that reaches her feet, made of a bright and vivid green with imagery of the forest itself painted onto it, a material that Menleth cannot name. "It has been some time since the Hued Fox walked these places; but not that long that they would forget." Her form itself has shifted some, become more angular and sharper, harder, keener, her features, impressively, becoming somehow more foxish. Her nine tails undulate, shift and move and dance at her will, the colors duller but in turn more shades doppled along the tails, subtler, more glorious things fitting a mighty, wise wizard of a creature. She replaced her simple staff at some point with one more aesthetic, topped by a fox's head carved of the hard jungle wood by the simple artisans that have sprung up after the stone tools were disseminated among the people, not more functional but perhaps more fitting. Nine jewels of nine countries and nine stones cover all fingers but her left thumb, made by Dwarf and Man and Ogre and Elf alike seeking knowledge, old, old knowledge, knowledge beyond the counting and reckoning of merely mortal creatures with merely mortal concerns.
"That's exactly what I'm afraid of." Menleth lets himself slump some, for nobody is watching her now, and so for once he can allow herself that little thing for all he does not need it, for all her nature means he can quite simply go as long as any of the Foxes still survive, still remember her deeds, his trick towards the Bloody--and thunder bursts out through the Aethyr as she so much as thinks such a thing, but he is not afraid. Not of That. The fear is of something more immediate, something that seems to damn mortal and spirit alike in this world, bitter and brutal since the coming of Chaos: History.
"Hm. The humans of Khuresh are not the sort I dealed too unfairly with; not unfairly at all I would say, even. Their shamans desired a spirit that could protect them from the Naga Queens, and I was all too happy to provide, as long as they were willing to ply me with booze and books. Really, if anything, I'd say my reputation here should be a help. If anything the Hued Fox should be a boon to them."
Methlen sighs, shrugs, and plants herself into biggest pool of water, letting it wash away some of the tension if not all of it as she tries to consider wht to say to his friend as she plants sits down next to the water, magic keeping the mud and dirt and bugs and worse far from her clothing. The scum, the filth, what is wretched, flops out, landing in piles on the sides of the pool, piles that Ehfeyos burns away with her magic. "All well and good. But when they start speaking of Lingwen, I suppose you will have some plan to convince them not to burn you at the stake?"
"I did nothing as Lingwen that I would not just as happily have done as the Hued Fox. The Khureshi simply proved more amenable to reason than the Cathayans. Indeed, it's not as though the Cathayans have nothing good to say of my deed then, in those days. If they forget the lessons of Jia Cheng that seems like their folly, not mine."
"Some lessons, even good lessons, come at a high price, Ehfeyos. You and I know that well."
The grudges of mortals may be nonsensical, but they last long; and, he can acknowledge, if only in the peace of her own mind, that there may be some reason to some of them. Never the Dwarfs, of course; but the Elves, the Cathayans, others, they have reasons to have some very complicated feelings about Ehfeyos.
Very complicated, and very sharp.
"Bah. What is passed is passed." Ehfeyos flicks her wrist like she's trying to shoo away some kind of bug, and out of respect for his friend, Menleth lets the way she peers over her shoulder--as though she expects a the glint of Slayer's ax, the soft tap of a magister's walking stick, or the bitter-cold gleam of an ice maiden's blade at any time--pass without comment, to instead turn to other matters.
"I can't imagine you'll let yourself only serve as the voice of Gurgran."
Ehfeyos simply chortles. But when she leaves, she is escorted by a handful of the better hunters.
--
Truth and Lie: You are in no position to fight off the real beasts of this world as yet, unarmed and unarmored and still reeling from losing so many, from going from numberless to so surely, utterly numbered. Laqurnas knows tricks, marks of deceit and hallucination that will make creatures approaching what you consider your territory at the moment suffer growing fright and terrors and nightmares, in proportion with how malevolent their will is.
-The mists, the fog, the shapes, they twist and melt and form and bend and come together for a simple command, offered to the whole of the Gurgran, all those with even the most passing interest in mysticism, aside of course from Menleth's Children:
Come.
And so they do, to that place, his place, the place of Laqurnas. A clearing, somehow both intimate enough that they all can hear him, as though he is right next to them, speaking directly to them, face to face in fact, even as it rains or thunders or pours; and yet large enough, grand enough, great enough, to contain the lot of them.
His message is simple.
"This is the weapon of the strong." Laqurnas hoists the ax up high, letting it gleam in the bright light of the sun, stolen from the body of some dead slave to the dark things. "It is the weapon of the mighty. Of the enduring." He sniffs, and tosses it over his shoulder. "It is also the weapon of the unsubtle, the ignorant, and the arrogant. Your weapons, our weapons, will be be better. More subtle, brighter, more useful for less effort. In time I will teach them all to you. But for you now, you will watch, and you will learn, and you will repeat until I am satisfied that there is nothing less for you to learn. There will be a time for creativety; but for now, you do as I say, and you do as I insist."
And Laqurnas takes a spiky red fruit from that great tree, so big and so grand, red as a ruby and hard as iron, and with the strength of nascent divinity--"though rest assured, I will teach you easier ways than the might of your thews for it"--smashes it, filling a hollowed gourd with the stuff, the final step of his concotion. He dips a stick in the stuff, and starts to scrawl the sigils, looping, whorling, soft and flowing things--similar, in some cases to the stuff of Dwarfs but there is always a flexibility, a motion to them that none of the stone souled could ever replicate, if they had a lifetime for the replication.
As he goes he chants. Syllables without meaning, words without comprehension, terms long dead to the rest of the world. Terms not used since before the Breaking of the world, a reminder that even among spirits their leaders are old, old things, dread things, the winds whipping around him, dust rising, dread stirring.
And at first, nothing happens. At first.
Then they realize something: for the first time since they got there, for the first time since the flight from what was wicked, for the first time since mortality, the jungle is absolutely, completely, and utterly silent, but for the rustle of leaves and the falling of water on the great trees that surround them, that binds them. They can hear each other's heartbeats, in fact, punctuated by the syncopated rhythm of shaking leaves and twitching branches and the fall of water droplets from the constant, never ending rain. And Windsight proves it, shows it, affirms it, for as they examine the foliage that bowls the tree they see no animals for a hundred yards in any direction, not even the gnats and stinging, biting things, for the sigil, they realize, has frightened them all away.
"Now you will find trees yourself, and you will trace as I did, and you will chant as I did, and I will guide you, and you will learn, and at last I will get a decent night's sleep without being eaten alive by crawling, flying, biting bugs." Laqurnas seems to grow in the sunlight even as his followers, and the children of Ehfeyos, turn to look at him, their eyes widening and then narrowing with comprehension. "Now find some fruit, and let's get started."
And they do. For all they can't smash the fruit apart with their bare hands, they manage to pulp it with hammers or slice into it with the stone knives, the hard skin giving way to tender flesh that oozes the juices onto leaves, into wooden bowls, into hollowed gourds, anything and everything that might act as a container or a palette of one sort or another and then they find trees and they start tracing themselves, their teacher, their guide, their instructor seemingly managing to speak into everyone's ears all at once. Broken straight sticks, fingers, claws, tails, anything and everything is used to get the sigils written, traced onto the living trees, and as they do more and more of the sigils seem to come to life. The great tree of Laqurnas proves to be exceptional for bugs still manage to endure around the lesser trees so marked and so claimed by the Gurgran, but they are lessened, their presence much reduced--and that, the insects that do not bite nor sting, at least not unless provoked, which is far, far, far from nothing.
It will not stop evil, not real evil, not determined evil, not thinking evil. But it will dissuade, and it will distract, and it will weaken and annoy and perturb and frighten those with wicked intent and that is far from nothing, far, far, far from nothing. An ill-considered thought, an errant twitch, a thoughtless move brought about by the growth of nerves, the flourishing of fear, a little sparkling dread, may be all the difference between victory and defeat when He, when They, finally learn where the Gurgran have gone to flee their malice and cruelty.
Interested and ever curious, one of the Gurgran dips a stick into the mixture and presses it against his body, over his heart. Before he can start however, Laqurnas appears from the shadows and grips his wrist, stopping him before he can move, his grip like iron and yet mist. "Not so careless, and not so foolish neither. The time for that will come soon enough, but first we have trees to mark."
--
The Children of Menleth: Menleth has noticed some of her "Children"--that is to say, his followers--performing sacrifices in her name to thank him for saving them from the Aethyr, and from there to desiring to ask them questions. For instance, why they ended up following her so closely that they study only Ghyran when, by rights, they should be capable of wielding any magic given sufficient time. Or why they unironically worship him, and emulate her.
-You kids might have gotten used to these things with all the wanderers who come around looking to hire us nowadays, but it can be disquieting to have anyone appear out of nowhere, no matter how innocent, how unassuming, how well known they are to you. Consider then, how frightened I was when the Liberator cornered me seemingly melting out of the damn foliage.
Even if it was just to talk.
-Yanlern, recounting stories of youth to his grandchildren
Many children have rebelled against their parents. It is the way of things, at least for those who don't live in their grandparents' basements all their lives. Yet usually most children will not, at least, hide from their parents.
And yet that is what Menleth finds as he searches and searches for someone, anyone, that she can ask the relevant questions to. Oh for sure, their presence is still felt in foraging expeditions that return with bundles of fruit and vines for the fires, from wounds healed quick and near-painlessly to waters purified for drinking.
But they themselves? Hidden. Gone. Seemingly evaporated into thin air like mist and smoke, here for an instant then gone. For days hesearches, for days she looks, not catching more than a sight of hide and hair and fur before the Priest--his priests, really, which is the most annoying part of the entire endeavor-- manage to slink away, hiding, somewhere. At a certain point, it becomes a professional insult: A thing of Ghyran she may be, but there is Ghur, the Ghur of a hunter at that, threaded in him, and that means she can find, that he can locate, that she is a hunter.
And so he hunts. Not as some bumbling mortal might, but as a real spirit would, patiently, methodically, cunningly. She asks around, disguised as he can be given the circumstances, about where known Children of Menleth congregate when they aren't busy working, discovers there is a watering hole, they occsionally go to. With a great, many boughed, thickly-leafed tree hanging distinctly overhead.
So, when she has a moment of time to herself, he plants herself in that tree, and waits.
And waits.
And waits.
Until at last he hears speech, and she tenses until a voice is directly underneath him, and then with a huff of annoyance and not much effort she lets himself fall, landing none too hard on the balls of her feet, directly behind one of his erstwhile priests. The two others scatter immediately, afraid of their Liberator's potential anger--really, she's mildly miffed at worst, ignore how his knuckles are chalk-white as she grips the priest's shoulder, he is of Ghyran, she is not angry, anger is Aqshy nonsense and he's beyond that, really well and truly she is--but that's alright since he finally has somebody to ask some very important questions to.
"Hello."
"Liberator!" His voice is high and fearful and he finally manages to worm out of her grasp, though he at least has the good common courtesy, rather than running, to kneel low to his Liberator, putting his head to the dirt in front of Menleth. "It is an honor and a priviledge."
"Please, spare me the flattery, at least until I've ended up back in the Aethyr. I have questions, and you will answer them." He nods to his wayward follower. "And pick yourself up, have you not learned to look people in the eye when they talk to you?" The priest does, and indeed he does manage to make eye contact for a brief moment beore having to avert his eyes.
"Of course Liberator. As you request."
"Now, perhaps you can explain to me why my priests, who call themselves my children, are running away from me? It's inconvenient, you know." Magic whips around her, roiling a bit at his frustration, Ghyran agitated by a nascent avatar. The Wind heeds the call of its champions, and there are precious few champions yet that can challenge her.
"Shame, Liberator. Our...shame." The priest manages to bite the words out, his face scrunching up with distaste and displeasure. "That we have already failed you, and the work you sought for us to achieve."
Menleth plants his palm on his forehead, irritation seeping through her body, annoyance and aggravation. "I can already tell this is going to annoy me...but I'm going to be more annoyed if you don't explain what the devil is going on. So tell me, how is it the lot of you think you've already failed me, and be sure to be very detailed."
"The Children of Ehfeyos. Their mere existence that we failed to heed the call you made, that we failed to follow your teachings, that the Oath we made to you has already passed from our shoulders in disgrace; how then could we look at you without some measure of guilt, and of shame, and of loss?"
Menleth sighs.
He breathes in deeply once.
She breathes out deeply once.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
"I was right. I'm annoyed." Then he pauses, what was said finally catching up to her brain as he parses everything the priest said. "Wait. Oath?"
"Yes. As we transitioned from spirit to flesh, to mortality, we heard your voice ask us to promise that we would protect the people from the evils of the flesh, and of the Aethyr, from daemon and disease alike. And if we are so incapable that you need to call up others to fulfill that duty, that you need spread the mysticism even beyond us, to the children of Ehfeyos, then what good are we?"
"...Please, tell me this is not some nascent nonsense as lies between Ehfeyos and Laqurnas, please tell me I am not going to have to fear more glares, pointed glances, and insults tossed between people I do not need insulting each other." Her voice is low, tired, exhausted even, at the mere thought. "I will break down, I swear."
"Oh no, Liberator, no such thing. Our failures are ours, not the failings of those who too, heed the call."
He sighs again. "...Please, for the sake of both of us, just call me Menleth."
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