A few moments passed in the calming and deliberation of thoughts. Mentation spun in that searching manner—seeking out overlooked data within his faculties. There were always things one was aware of yet unaware of. The gift of the caster's mind was the ability of the inward search. That and the total massiveness of the mental storage. Merrin sensed he could hold all knowledge within Eastos—every thought, every word, every action, every phenomenon—without suffering madness.
Things within things. He shivered. More and more, he realized the true alien nature of the Caster. Are they even human? He sighed with wonderment and observed the cavern below. A sprawl of jagged spires, massive square structures, and domes. A complete tapestry of constructs. Between them, often small, were lines—roads crisscrossing through said monuments. And there were figures.
Via the stretching of his ocular prowess, Merrin endured an unnerving visual closeness to the things below. The movings of the Aelmiren—mostly naked men and women; some stone-winged, three-eyed, caught in specious motions. Up and down the road, carrying holders of stone—others dragging boxes of stone. No destination was imprinted in their actions. Just the false cadence of movement. They stopped in odd pauses, moved in frantic bursts, only to return to said sudden halts. Almost manic.
They are all mad! A cold ran down his flesh, trembling his bones. He understood: Unlike the Brightones created by Auwale, yes, still limited to the pre-determined set of stimuli and reaction, they, in the end, exuded some measure of false sentience. These were the contrary. Their actions bore the traits of confusion, unawareness—a total set of mashed-up things. No unity. Total Discord!
He recalled: The Orvalen had not given intelligence or cogitation to these things. Only one. The whiteMother, and she had given it to another. Her Daughter: Enavro. Amazing in that creative manner. For a moment, there was pity for the sole Mother. Ah, the burden that rests on her solely, and here I am, about to steal her Daughter from her. He heaved, felt for stones, found some, and fiddled casually with them.
A need for distraction plagued his plans!
Occasionally, a few of the Wandering Aelmiren would peer up at the looming round walls—nothing to find, of course. Merrin, at the moment, had assumed the Ashman penchant for Shadows. He was hidden in it, thrived in it, and sensed that even if one were to stand inches from him, they, too, would feel little of his presence.
Shadows and darkness.
Indeed, the Ashmen were born to be veilCounsels. He wondered passively on this, tucking into his sparse clothes yet another stone. Their importance echoed within cogitation, and he felt the need to gather the totality of hundreds. Let it be too much, rather than too little.
Regardless
Time trickled like sand, slow, stitching into the inner timesense of the perils that await now, just below this cliff. Stone monsters, wide eyes of cold malice. He paused. No, not malice. That required the innate awareness, which these creatures lacked. If there was a need for comparison, the Aelmiren were like the trance state of a combatant. Battle-ready, all things ultimately faded away.
Perfect warriors. Unthinking wares.
What monsters the Orvalen had created, and furthermore, the words of Enavro revealed the potentiality of 'other experiments.' What other things did they make? He shivered at such thoughts, then chose to accept the future that awaited him. Somewhere there, his eyes narrowed on a particularly large tower. A spiral tower, its surface as though a solid vein had snaked over it. Towering. The thing, according to Auwale, was the home of Orvane. Stretching higher than the rest, almost like a spear that hungered for the sky above. The non-present sky, that is.
Odd, that Auwale knew such things without having been here, but Merrin knew this thing as an attribute of the Casting. Often, knowledge without origin was spewed into the mind. He, too, knew things, mostly useless, but things nonetheless never before told to him. The Casters bore the dual trait of Omniscient and Omnipotent. They did indeed—likely this was why the Church 'claimed' casterhood was granted by the Almighty.
Perhaps it was. Perhaps it wasn't.
He tucked in a stone, found the pounding of his heart—bloodcurdling. Fear slowly dripping into the mind. What am I even doing here? Saving some stone lady? I need to escape here! Who is she to demand such sacrifices?
SHUT IT! Merrin roared within, quelling the rising tides of defiance. Ah...no point waiting. If I keep waiting, I might suddenly find myself with a changed mind!
He stood up, took in a whiff of the warm, froststone-chilled breath, and knew, soon, that one of the Aelmiren would notice the glowing stone from afar. Like a dot of light. Hence, before then, Merrin cocked his head, stretched his hands, and said, "Thus I return to my roots!"
And jumped into the cavern, stirring the wind, listening to its warning howls.
Note that the Seat of each Clan, such as Clan Noctis, is Nightfell; this does not mean they are, in truth, limited to said territories. As a Great Clan, they rule many—Eastorain Culture.
An Almiren turned to an Alley, dark, narrow. No reason, as usual, had lorded this action; it was just the constant repetition of motions. A different monster would have wondered at the significance of this act...Why move in the darkness? Why wander alone? Fools are the creatures that seldom did not do this...It was no fool. Or maybe it was.
Who knew?
There was certainly no way to find out. But it walked nonetheless—one step at a time, drawing towards the end of the Alley. A wall there. A crude face of stone. Part of the cavern, as the city was built from and within it. However, there was a rather bizarre oddity to the ambiance of the lane. Darkness ahead—different somehow. Deeper. As though before it was a pit of endless tenebrosity.
Just there.
The Aelmiren paused—there was no fear, caution, or sensation imprinted in that action. Only the predetermined set of responses to an alien occurrence. It raked the air. With grey, splintered claws, its talons dragged at the emptiness—"Come here," said the action. "Come here, whatever is hiding in the shadows."
It waited, and repeated. Took a step, paused, and persisted in the dragging action. Yet the darkness was silent, but it watched it. Unaware, yes, but it knew the sensation of the prying thing. Something was in the darkness, and ah, it studied it. Like a hunter. Like a predator, it wondered on the body's weakness—on the point of quick deactivation. It sought to learn.
A step, suddenly, two orbs of light—eyes opened in the darkness. Pale whiteness in the veil of almost swarming darkness. The Aelmiren stepped back, still powered by the set of encoded actions. It saw an intruder, hence the outcry of warnings was the logical follow-up.
Except.
A glimmer of silver flashed in the darkness, and the Aelmiren found the world tipped on its edge. Rolling. The floor strangely closer than it once was. What was it? It wondered. If it could. But it couldn't—thus, as the short, slender man stepped out from the shadows, hair, dark but sprinkled with tinges of ash. His body—well, that was a mosaic of scars, charred skin, lines of burnt flesh crossing over the form. The Aelmiren were creatures of shattered skin, but this—the man seemed an Aelmiren of the Flesh.
So it bore witness to the bare skin of the one with shattered flesh as his legs hovered above its head, pressing down, crushing it to gravel.
Merrin stood above the dead thing—the stone body slumped on the earth. Headless. It was surprising how easily the creature was killed. Either that, or he remarked on the exceptional sharpness of the stone knife. No resistance. He recalled the smoothness of the blade through stone. Almost like cleaving the air.
He heaved, thought before blending into the Shadows. Onwards!
The only necessary path.
The next minutes were a collection of swift assassinations. None to alert the wider collective of the Aelmiren. Good. Merrin bore little belief he could take on a city of such perfect warriors. None could. Perhaps Auwale, but he wasn't here. Just him. Currently, he dashed on the roof of a flat building, pacing, noting the growing closeness to the great tower. To the place Orvane held Enavro.
For now, although he sensed the true distractiveness within these actions, he enjoyed the wind in his hair—in his clothes, as sparse as they were. He reveled in the silence of the world. The intimacy he enjoyed now with the quietude and darkness. Be it the Ashman within or veilCounsel, the internal awareness found bliss in these motions. Often, he heard of brightCrowns and their 'Excursions.' Picnics, some would call them. Moments for relaxation.
Odd.
Ashmen never had that, but he found the current moment as a likely reenactment of the supposed enjoyment. Ecstatic. Taking in a mouthful of air, Merrin dipped, landing atop an oblivious Aelmiren—his knife, cleaving the head clean off. Well, outside the shards of stone, nothing of blood existed in these creatures.
He contemplated whether this allowed the true perception of these creatures as merely... Beasts. Inhuman.
Idiotic.
Bootless in the end.