"You don't know what it is?" Weak attempt at hiding the satirizing.
"Human constructs are often not as mesmerizing as they appear to them." She said, eyes outwards, staring at the darkness. "I can only assume that this veilCounsel is some class humans have chosen to restrict themselves in…Always looking for labels."
"A limiting thing."
"Yes." She took something out of her clothes, origin unknown. A pebble-sized circle, flat, crude, and adorned with that fissured look of ancient things.
"Is that a coin?" Shamans once mentioned the old relic that cells were modelled after. This? How mundane. Cells sparked with a white central current; this was nothing. Just metal—bronze. Useless. Markings did ring the edge, a language, weathered beyond distinction. More like a loop of brown stone than metal.
She tossed it, spinning midair before landing back in her grasp. Repeated.
"Were those 'coins' used by those Orvalen?" Passive curiosity, the greyness, still churning with the forging. Shapes moving in and out—chains, dots of lights, an endless collection of constructs.
"Yes." She replied. "Not anymore."
As expected from an ancient race…or so her words hinted at.
A nod, and attention returns to the casting. Entropic to observe. Sparks tearing through, symbols grafted, threaded into unity. The inner mechanism that was to support the needed weaponry. Yet there was the warning. Not the knife. Never the knife.
The inner awareness.
If not it, what then? It's not like I can use my clothes, or hair—I have nothing. Brief wonder on the usability of those things.
Bootless.
Enavro tossed the coin into the air, spinning once, twice, thrice.
Contain, prompt, limit, restart!
Merrin surged the internal force—a vast wave of power spewing out from him. Not the other, these were of the mind. True domination. Enavro wouldn't see it, but ah, she felt it. Instinctively, a shudder quaked her. Merrin, pouring the totality of the fervent energy into the wholeness of the greyworld. Lording over the unseen world.
All symbols marshaled into a state of absolute obedience. Find and edit. Find and edit. The ocean vortexed through the unseen world, consuming the relevant symbols. Into one, into one structure. Finding, editing—grafting the necessary symbols into the mechanism to be created.
Then came the noctivore—the pool of gnawing darkness attempting resistance. It tided out, a wall of blackness met by a bastion of transient energy. The collision trembled the unseen world.
It failed.
El'shadie remained. Merrin breathed—moments had passed. To Enavro, the coin still fell slowly into her grasp.
Spun three times.
That was the trigger!
Now!
A whiteness overtook the greyworld, shuddering, reality echoing that event with slight tremors. He threaded in the symbol of the event: the thrice spinning of the coin.
The trigger!
Enavro startled, the coin fell to the ground, Merrin lunged, cradling the solid woman. A boom and darkness surged out from the coin, like a canopy of blackness drowning the earth, reaching for the sky, expanding, growing.
Hysteria powered the dashing motions.
Finding a deprecated building, Merrin hid, counting down. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
And he exhales.
It is done!
Enavro stared hard, "What did you do?"
"I made a weapon."
A creak at the side of her lips, almost imperceptible through the fissures. "You used my coin?"
Merrin smiled. "Observables."
"How arrogant for a hallucination."
"Yes. Yes, " Standing, unwrapping from the Aelmiren, Merrin spared a glance at the deprecated building. A high sphere, ruined by cracks, bent towers. Chaos.
Out from the wall, through the tear, acting like an entryway, apprehension lorded movement. Slow. Steady. The wondering of what might be discovered. Unique eyes peering in for the minute deviations.
Nothing.
The floor, crude, bore shades of pallid white, almost bleached. Stray stones were gone; no pebbles, rocks--Just flat, cracked earth.
Did it eat everything?
How scrupulous he moved, trailing finger over the whitened earth. No dust. Ahead, he found his price. A dull brown ring resting on blanched grounds. A contrast shade to the region.
Amazing that something so small had achieved this…Pride swelled within. He bent, picking up the coin—warm to the touch. Enavro sauntured close, said, "Interesting."
Merrin glanced to the murk; there, it remained, beneath the slope of earth. That was the thing about casting. Unless the wholeness of the symbol were used, its existence would remain. Consider the slumbering symbols—to cast them required a sleeping source. When used, the origin would abruptly be awoken, as though expelled from the original state—while the victim received the dose.
Noctivore, however, was not such. Too vast, complicated to fully graft. But this was enough. Merrin tossed the coin, spinning once. Thrice, and it releases the darkness.
Then, once more in a solemn tone. "Enavro."
"Hmm." A sound.
"We move now to Auwale."
____________
Ivory rounded her trainer—Nail of Valor, pacing, blade in hand. Oredite sharpened. A dance was brewing. In the same trigonometric chamber, dark, the stage below, sucking in the drizzling rain. Nail stood, sparing a bored glance—a usual expression on the ladyCaptain.
"You plan on using those same motions?" said Nail.
"What use is stalling a weapon?"
"When you don't know the origin."
"Tell that to fighters warring with their deaths almost assured." Ivory maintained the calm breathing, eyes fixed on the Warrior caster—yes, that was what she was. "I come!"
A moment, and she stood before Nail, blade swinging up, cutting through the rain pearls, whistling in that frightening way metal often did. Nail countered, wind waving out with the piercing ring. They shared the subsequent silence—dark eyes staring back at each other. Odd, that Nail bore the metal hue, she was not a trueborn of Valor, veilStorm, instead. Those whores—as some often called their women. All female, they were.
A darkCrown would say, 'I bet my soul no man lives in that place…No. I bet more than my soul." But men did. They were just creatures for concubinage. Breeding horses—an old term.
She arched her left shoulder, hacking from the side. Nail parried, arm reeling with the joint pain.
Not even her true name, that; Nail. Hers was thaliven, old tongue, changed after her handler had been killed by Argon—hence inheriting her. A weird custom that was, inheritance. Death made the killer the owner of the agreed-upon item. What a problematic rule that could have been.
Imagine. Some Venerate caster challenging the highHeir for their position…Thank the theocracy for the creation of exception. That or the Valor clan would not be of that name.
Ivory flipped, landing in a split, slicing for Nail's ankles. Missed. The ladyCaptain vaulting into the air. Arched, landing feet-first, elegant. She pressed on.
Nail's dark eyes watched like a beast of sorts, prying for some hidden defect. How fitting that was to her. Ivory heard these things; Delney mentioned the Elmiren acquired by her took the form of a hound. A massive beast with once red eyes. Blue at the moment of ascension into sacred. Interesting, she thought, considering the internality of these living weapons. That was what they were, weapons of utter destruction.
Perhaps that was the required measure against the fallen—power against power.
I wonder if Zoroaster thought of this when he created the 11 orders.
Ivory earned a wooden slap to the cheeks, head snapping back from the wall-like collision. "Mist it!" The increasingly familiar word blurted out. "Why isn't it working?"
Nail maintained silence, flicked her elastic wooden sword—carved thin on the tip, like a nail. "You must be replaying the information from the last time you used it."
"Isn't that the way of the combat arts?" Ivory asked, rubbing the red, bruised cheeks. A cleanseWitch would have to mend it. "Even the darkCrowns—those in our army practice it. Learn the motions, replay the motions, perfect the motions."
"I suspect that's the flaw in it," Nail replied, wiping the rain drips on her hair, the duo strands of white clinging to the brow. "That time, you moved somewhat unaware of it, questioning…Almost unpredictable, now, you attempt to add reason to it, predictability. It's like a dance that mirrors the internal self—ever changing like that entropy within."
"You're talking like a deadEye."
"All casters will eventually reach that state." She said, "It's an Inevitability."
"I think Casters view all humans as inherently cynical."
"Some do."
Are you human, Argon? Ivory looked up, Nail wrapped around the breast by a silver metal bodice—an amor plate, non-caster, bizarre, given that the ladyCaptain could have herself the best Sacred Relics in Valor.
She stood, managed a breath, leveling the oredite blade on her arms, pointing at Nail. "Again!" They clashed, metal ringing out.
The restriction, even then, was not as easy as expected. A usual way of mentally imagined things. Ivory was a creature of repetition, to recall, to archive memories like files on a shelf. That was it. This dance, whatever it was, required a certain level of acceptance. To surrender oneself to the capricious nature of its waves.
That meant the relinquishment of control…An intolerable event.
She stepped back, nearly slipping on the wet floor, lightning slashing through the sky above. More background resonance. A dulled thing in her awareness. What lorded there was Argon; the different storm.