[X] You speak with Methelian. A part of you is still angered about how he spoke to your friend, but another part would like a fellow paranoiac around for a bevy of reasons
[] You speak with Methelian. A part of you is still angered about how he spoke to your friend, but another part would like a fellow paranoiac around for a bevy of reasons
[] You speak with your parents. If anyone would know if Antheus is up to something, it would be your mother and your father
[X] You speak with Methelian. A part of you is still angered about how he spoke to your friend, but another part would like a fellow paranoiac around for a bevy of reasons
[X] You speak with Methelian. A part of you is still angered about how he spoke to your friend, but another part would like a fellow paranoiac around for a bevy of reasons
Thank you for breaking the tie, parents take it. Update up after the next Estalia Quest update, lest Rodrigo physically manifest and make me at swordpoint.
[X] You speak with your parents. If anyone would know if Antheus is up to something, it would be your mother and your father
—VIII 67, 4, 2—
"I don't like this," you say around the delicate cup of qulfi, letting the rich, aromatic blend, imported from Araby, play across your tongue. The caffeine invigorates you like nothing else, letting you cut through the fatigue of the little sleep you have enjoyed as you have worked on your sword, the fugue ending at last. You sit on one of the balconies overlooking the manor's courtyard, looking down on your brother and his new…friend. Supposedly you are meditating.
"What do you like?"
"Plenty. I like magic. I like Asuryan. I even like you when you aren't abandoning me because your hatred of the Druchii has driven you mad," you say to your mother who chokes at a simple, honest statement of fact, even as your lips quirk up as the Aqshy of mirth and hopes burns in your mother and father, the slightest willingness to believe that they have not, perhaps, alienated you irreparable. "I'd even like to like that Merel has finally found someone who can challenge him." Indeed, down below the two have begun a friendly archery challenge, their arrows striking true.
"Oh?" Your father's voice lilts with the slightest edge of teasing and humor. "Are you sure you should be judging anyone's romantic escapades, Avelorn boy?"
"Oh no no, did you not see dear?" Your mother takes on a faux sweet tone, and you feel your anger rise once more as she plays at having some understanding of you after abandoning you for a century, but you kill it. Judgment can come later. After Qulfi. "It takes a Caledorian to break our son's heart."
"You are lucky I still recover from the vast mystical energies that were channeled through me, the both of you, or I would turn the both of you into newts," you promise with the glower expected of a damn two-hundred-seventy year old mage. They grin, and you can almost feel the quivering chuckle as the two of them pat themselves on the back.
"Or are you jealous that your little brother is spending time with somebody else?"
Once again you glare, though more seriously and that seems to clear the air. "Hardly. I was, and am, desirous that my siblings should be happy. But I do not trust this somebody. For she smells of wisteria, hydrangea and oleander."
"Weak poisons for the appetite of the Druchii." Your father would be the expert, though in a pinch you expect either could provide a dissertation on the various concoctions the traitors spit out to assail you.
"I know what I smelled!" You snap from your seat at the table. "I caught them on the breeze in the form of a bear, and then I came upon the spring and it was attacked. This, and the time…it is too convenient."
"Perhaps." Your mother clasps her chin in her hand to think, even as below the two have begun a particularly blatant bout of flirting. "Cadai know the Druchii enjoy sending their spies, even if only Nagarythe will believe us when we speak of. But 'I found her stink unpalatable' is not the unimpeachable evidence you would need to accuse her, my son, not of something like that."
"It should be when it is backed by a predator's instincts," you mutter with a particularly sour tone. The skies, at least, seem to support you, for there is not but clouds in the sky.
"Perhaps, but even a predator does not invest themselves into a hunt until they know what they're hunting."
"Oh and, Vardanis?" Your mother speaks, tone hard as iron. "I do not hate the Druchii. Hate corrupts and degrades, and I will not let them have that victory. I mean simply to stop them."
"Oh I'm sure." You roll your eyes and get up from the table, though less dramatically than you do when you're really upset; why robes only flutter, rather than really billowing. "In any case, I have work to do."
—VIII 69, 4, 20—
(Liontamer: 92+25=117)
The high, thick grass of the plains crunches under foot, your bare sliding through the mud easily for you are the master of the wilds this day. Rather than robe and cloak, you have stripped down to your a simple pair of breeches and a deerskin cloak. Intricate, Ghur symbols have been painted on your flesh in amber paint by your own hand as you inhaled the smoke of Kurnous' Mark, and let that fill you, guide you, control you. On your right hand the rune of Asuryan, for with that you shall judge. On your left hand the mark of Isha, that you might be merciful. On your heart, the mark of Kurnous, for He is the Master of Lions.
You smell it on the wind. Something has broken the natural cycle. A predator has slain not to survive, and not even to feast, but for the joy of slaughter. Shyish and Dhar mingle together as the trumpeting, braying ass of a hunter lurks in wait near the duo's corpse, even as the Azyr of potential found in all youth is dimmed as creatures lose their parents.
You advance forward stealthily, allowing Ulgu and Ghur together to make you a predator yourself. You see it, a giant wolf, red of fur and black of heart. Touched by Khorne, touched by Dhar, touched by Slaanesh, does it really even matter? It smiles as it sees the lion cubs, a male and a female, advance towards what they think is their parents. It intends to make them a meal as the moons rise and the sun falls.
Instead you bark in Anoqeyån, not so much casting as forcing Claws of Fury into reality, the Winds shaking as you bring them into shape. Its eyes widen as it sees you and it moves, but you move the faster, sinking the sharp knives that your fingers have become into the thing's body and forcing it to the ground. Then with one savage blow you strike the heart, and that, as they say, is the end of that.
The two sniff at the corpses that were their kin, not even a day ago. Many lose their young and their parents in the Wild, you are not so naive as to think otherwise; but there was a cruelty, a treachery, to this particular deed, beyond the usual. A wolf mutated, one way or another.
You simply sit, long into the night. Eventually the cubs start sniffing at you, once they are done pawing at their parents. You take out a bit of jerky and slowly hand it to the beasts and they start to chew at it.
You'll cast the spells of binding eventually. For now you would let the beasts grow. It won't be too long until they are full matured, after all. What's a mere decade to one like you?
—VIII, 73, 2, 10—
After far, far too many years, you finally return to the temple of Asuryan. The bodies of the enemy have been removed, not by your hands but by the will of Asuryan. The magical enchantments still lie thick and expert crafted and strong and full of magic, but you can see them more clearly now. Can see how they inter—
Your thoughts are interrupted by a nuzzle at your hand. Looking down, one of the lions, the boy, has begun nuzzling at you, even as the girl continues to chew on the fish you caught for her. "Glutton."
Your mind returns to the gate, and to the magic therein. It is, written, inscribed, in Anoqeyån if you leave behind merest eyes and look with your soul, now that you can do that without risking your very sanity. Like one made ink of the Winds, and then sheafs of parchment, and then wrote the one on the other. You…could do it, if you had two-hundred years worth of focusing on nothing but it. Daunting, to realize what your forebears were capable of. But tellingly, they are not simply enchantments. Each tells a story. But for all you called the language Anoqeyån it is…not off, but different? Strange. Almost like comparing Fan-Eltharin, Druhir, or Tar-Eltharin to Eltharin from before the Sundering.
Except, of course, that that is nonsense because what kind of ancient thing would have spoken Anoqeyån of an even older branch than that they teach at the White Tower? On Ulthuan of all places? The Slaan before their dementia, their degradation, their senescence, perhaps, but you are far, far from Lustria, and far from the Southlands. The Snakemen of Khuresh? Unlikely.
Then who?
In either case you unerringly put what you can on parchment. Though much of it is nonsense, you can at least translate three terms, for they have changed little:
Draugnir.
Phoenix.
Hope.
—
Ulthuan affairs:
Standardization: After many decades and much yelling and fighting and debating and the other signs of a vigorous academic community, the White Tower has formalized that all students from now on shall begin their studies with the Wind of Aqshy, the Wind which most fits the soul of the Asur.
—
Results:
+1 Progress to The Temple, now 1/6
-Gain 1 Snazzy Wolf Cloak (No mechanical effect, but extremely fashionable)
-Finish Taming a Beast, gain two White Lion cubs
Name 1: [] Write in
Name 2: [] Write in
Shorter turn this time, simply because there was only the one thing. Hope the embiggened social makes up for it.
"Plenty. I like magic. I like Asuryan. I even like you when you aren't abandoning me because your hatred of the Druchii has driven you mad," you say to your mother who chokes at a simple, honest statement of fact, even as your lips quirk up as the Aqshy of mirth and hopes burns in your mother and father, the slightest willingness to believe that they have not, perhaps, alienated you irreparable. "I'd even like to like that Merel has finally found someone who can challenge him." Indeed, down below the two have begun a friendly archery challenge, their arrows striking true.
This is from Google. I doubt Vardanis is so far gone as to call them Lion (masculine) and Lion (feminine), but I don't know how these would translate to Eltharin.
