truemane
2010-11-30, 09:18 AM
INCEPTION
The Pasha, Lord Orlaan Gregorin VII, didn't believe in fate he didn't even find the question interesting. "Either I have free choice," he would say when the topic came up in conversation, "Or I have the perfect illusion of free choice. Am I fated to eat this salad? Drink this wine? Fine. But I still have to decide whether or not I want to reach down, pick it up and put it in my mouth. Fate or no fate, the debate is about as useful as whether or not a tree makes noise is no one is there to hear it."
All the same, much later, as he started to piece together what it was, exactly, that went so entirely and disastrously wrong that morning, the more he was impressed by how organized everything seemed under the chaotic surface. How directed. Every new thing he learned just seemed to reveal some manner of underlying order that made the events of that day seem to line up in a row. And like his philosophy teacher had once said, if you found a water-clock lying in the grass, you didn't assume it got there by accident, you assumed the existence of a watch-maker, no? And so, as a logical man, if the events of that day, events no man or woman could possibly have foreseen or influenced, seemed organized, did that not by extension require an organizer? And if you conceded that the decisions and revision of your own secret heart were not your own, was that not Fate then?
In the long, long, long hours and days of seclusion and meditation that followed the Incident, these were the questions and doubts that haunted the mind of Lord Pasha Gregorin, nipping at the heels of his thoughts like a pack of hungry dogs scenting blood on an injured deer.
But all of that was for later. At first, what the Pasha came to call 'The Incident' started the way so many things did: with a shifting mosaic of random events with as many truths as participants.
We will start with three of those participants, three of those truths. There are others, many others, but these three offer a beginning. Not the beginning, surely, for there are as many starting points as stars in the sky and leaves on the trees.
But a beginning.
RECEPTION
Eric Crest had heard it said once that talent hits a target no one else can hit and genius hits a target no one else can see. By that definition the Pasha was certainly a genius. The elite training school from which Eric had graduated accepted only a handful of students every year and of that handful, only the best and brightest managed to actually complete it. Eric was widely thought to be the most promising student in a generation and the training had taken everything he had and almost killed him in the process. The Pasha had breezed through it while simultaneously breezing through two other training schools, each as elite, each as exclusive, each as difficult.
And standing now in the Pasha’s Meditation Room, a member of his personal guard, watching him perform the final steps of the Ritual he'd been working at for almost three months now, Eric was once again struck by just how deep the man's knowledge and understanding of the magical arts was. He had no idea what it was, exactly, that this ritual was supposed to do, but whatever it was, it would certainly be something.
Everything the Pasha did was so easy for him, that to watch him actually have to work at something made you think very carefully about how hard that thing must be.
But, as the Pasha completed the final steps (and they were the final steps, Eric could tell that much), intoned the final syllables, performed the final movements, laid out the final components, a sound that was not quite a sound rose in the minds of those in the room, like a hum like a rush like a small child singing somewhere in the distance, and the air felt thick and heavy with the gathering energy.
And then ...
Nothing.
The Pasha's voice trailed off into silence and the feeling of something vast and inevitable impending popped and faded. And a moment of almost perfect stillness followed. The Pasha looked up like a man coming up from a deep, deep slumber, blinked, looked around and his brow furrowed in thought. Clearly, whatever it was that supposed to happen, did not.
And he closed his eyes again, this time calling upon the prescient powers of his mind. They stayed closed for no more than half a moment before they flew open again and he said two words, the confused tilt of his voice making them a question. And although every eye and ear in the room was focused on the Pasha, Eric was the only person in the room who knew what those words meant.
And what the Pasha said was this:
"Emily Crest?"
EXCEPTION
Like most people who had no real contact with the man, Emily couldn't have cared less if the Pasha (genius or not) farted or blew a tin whistle. She had more important things to worry about. Like, for example, no longer being the only person in her whole class who couldn't manage the simple trick of summoning a Familiar. And she wanted a Familiar. She did. Just as much as everyone else. More even, she just couldn't seem to do it the way they kept insisting she get it done. All the things she could do that no one else could do and did they care? Specifically, did Mr. High Maejus Anders Pierz care? No he did not. All he seemed to care about was that she couldn't manage the simple (to him!) trick of summoning a familiar.
Always the same. Everything they taught her she had to take home, break down into pieces and re-learn her own way. Even simple incantations took her hours and hours to translate into terms she could understand. She had to work three times as hard to get results one third as good as everyone else. All of this was, of course, made worse by the fact that she hated classrooms, hated studying, hated sitting inside all day, hated dusty old books and dusty old teachers and dusty old rules. They said she an attitude problem. But Emily thought that, just the fact she hadn't killed anyone yet meant she was showing far more tact than anyone gave her credit for.
But all that aside, here she was, in her room, everything all laid out proper-like. Her teachers would have taken a single look at the mess she'd made of their time-honoured ritual and turned white and fainted, but Emily was actually quite proud of herself. She'd made it work for her. And that took more talent than all the studying and memorizing there ever was.
As she completed the final steps of the ritual she cast her mind and her power out into the world and called out for whatever was primed to answer her. Secretly she was hoping for a bunny. But she knew she'd take whatever she got, so long as the damned ritual worked.
And then, just as she was completing the summoning, she felt a massive jolt of power tear through her mind and there was a giant painless THUMP that knocked her flat on her back, smearing the carefully (if eccentrically) drawn summoning circle and scattering her reagents all over the floor. She lay there for a moment, stunned, before sitting back up, shaking her head, anxious to see what she had done. She'd certainly done something. Already she could feel a whisper in the back of her mind, like someone tickling her brain with a feather.
But as she stood, and looked, there was no bunny there. Or owl. Or weasel. Or even a stupid snake. Instead, there was a tiny tiny tiny little elfin-looking creature. Like a little woman. With wings. Lying in the middle of her circle, looking just as stunned and as confused as Emily herself felt. And then the little thing opened its eyes and sat up and in her mind Emily could feel it doing so.
And that meant that this, whatever it is, belonged to her.
CONCEPTION
And the third? What of the third participant? The third truth? The third point of contact to balance out the other two and make this structure stable? That third is lying on the cold stone floor of Emily Crest’s bedchamber, her mind and body wracked and numb and stunned with the force of the power that had torn her from her place in the universe and placed her… here.
Wherever here was.
The third truth is Irelia. And although there are many places where we could stick a pin into the infinite fabric of creation and say ‘the story starts here,’ the appearance, the intrusion, of Irelia’s point of view into the on-going mosaic is perhaps better than most.
And we begin our story here in this small darkened room, with a young girl and an otherworldly creature regarding each other for the first time, while all around them the seeds of their story drifted on the winds of Fate, needing only time and circumstance to take root and grow into legend.
The Pasha, Lord Orlaan Gregorin VII, didn't believe in fate he didn't even find the question interesting. "Either I have free choice," he would say when the topic came up in conversation, "Or I have the perfect illusion of free choice. Am I fated to eat this salad? Drink this wine? Fine. But I still have to decide whether or not I want to reach down, pick it up and put it in my mouth. Fate or no fate, the debate is about as useful as whether or not a tree makes noise is no one is there to hear it."
All the same, much later, as he started to piece together what it was, exactly, that went so entirely and disastrously wrong that morning, the more he was impressed by how organized everything seemed under the chaotic surface. How directed. Every new thing he learned just seemed to reveal some manner of underlying order that made the events of that day seem to line up in a row. And like his philosophy teacher had once said, if you found a water-clock lying in the grass, you didn't assume it got there by accident, you assumed the existence of a watch-maker, no? And so, as a logical man, if the events of that day, events no man or woman could possibly have foreseen or influenced, seemed organized, did that not by extension require an organizer? And if you conceded that the decisions and revision of your own secret heart were not your own, was that not Fate then?
In the long, long, long hours and days of seclusion and meditation that followed the Incident, these were the questions and doubts that haunted the mind of Lord Pasha Gregorin, nipping at the heels of his thoughts like a pack of hungry dogs scenting blood on an injured deer.
But all of that was for later. At first, what the Pasha came to call 'The Incident' started the way so many things did: with a shifting mosaic of random events with as many truths as participants.
We will start with three of those participants, three of those truths. There are others, many others, but these three offer a beginning. Not the beginning, surely, for there are as many starting points as stars in the sky and leaves on the trees.
But a beginning.
RECEPTION
Eric Crest had heard it said once that talent hits a target no one else can hit and genius hits a target no one else can see. By that definition the Pasha was certainly a genius. The elite training school from which Eric had graduated accepted only a handful of students every year and of that handful, only the best and brightest managed to actually complete it. Eric was widely thought to be the most promising student in a generation and the training had taken everything he had and almost killed him in the process. The Pasha had breezed through it while simultaneously breezing through two other training schools, each as elite, each as exclusive, each as difficult.
And standing now in the Pasha’s Meditation Room, a member of his personal guard, watching him perform the final steps of the Ritual he'd been working at for almost three months now, Eric was once again struck by just how deep the man's knowledge and understanding of the magical arts was. He had no idea what it was, exactly, that this ritual was supposed to do, but whatever it was, it would certainly be something.
Everything the Pasha did was so easy for him, that to watch him actually have to work at something made you think very carefully about how hard that thing must be.
But, as the Pasha completed the final steps (and they were the final steps, Eric could tell that much), intoned the final syllables, performed the final movements, laid out the final components, a sound that was not quite a sound rose in the minds of those in the room, like a hum like a rush like a small child singing somewhere in the distance, and the air felt thick and heavy with the gathering energy.
And then ...
Nothing.
The Pasha's voice trailed off into silence and the feeling of something vast and inevitable impending popped and faded. And a moment of almost perfect stillness followed. The Pasha looked up like a man coming up from a deep, deep slumber, blinked, looked around and his brow furrowed in thought. Clearly, whatever it was that supposed to happen, did not.
And he closed his eyes again, this time calling upon the prescient powers of his mind. They stayed closed for no more than half a moment before they flew open again and he said two words, the confused tilt of his voice making them a question. And although every eye and ear in the room was focused on the Pasha, Eric was the only person in the room who knew what those words meant.
And what the Pasha said was this:
"Emily Crest?"
EXCEPTION
Like most people who had no real contact with the man, Emily couldn't have cared less if the Pasha (genius or not) farted or blew a tin whistle. She had more important things to worry about. Like, for example, no longer being the only person in her whole class who couldn't manage the simple trick of summoning a Familiar. And she wanted a Familiar. She did. Just as much as everyone else. More even, she just couldn't seem to do it the way they kept insisting she get it done. All the things she could do that no one else could do and did they care? Specifically, did Mr. High Maejus Anders Pierz care? No he did not. All he seemed to care about was that she couldn't manage the simple (to him!) trick of summoning a familiar.
Always the same. Everything they taught her she had to take home, break down into pieces and re-learn her own way. Even simple incantations took her hours and hours to translate into terms she could understand. She had to work three times as hard to get results one third as good as everyone else. All of this was, of course, made worse by the fact that she hated classrooms, hated studying, hated sitting inside all day, hated dusty old books and dusty old teachers and dusty old rules. They said she an attitude problem. But Emily thought that, just the fact she hadn't killed anyone yet meant she was showing far more tact than anyone gave her credit for.
But all that aside, here she was, in her room, everything all laid out proper-like. Her teachers would have taken a single look at the mess she'd made of their time-honoured ritual and turned white and fainted, but Emily was actually quite proud of herself. She'd made it work for her. And that took more talent than all the studying and memorizing there ever was.
As she completed the final steps of the ritual she cast her mind and her power out into the world and called out for whatever was primed to answer her. Secretly she was hoping for a bunny. But she knew she'd take whatever she got, so long as the damned ritual worked.
And then, just as she was completing the summoning, she felt a massive jolt of power tear through her mind and there was a giant painless THUMP that knocked her flat on her back, smearing the carefully (if eccentrically) drawn summoning circle and scattering her reagents all over the floor. She lay there for a moment, stunned, before sitting back up, shaking her head, anxious to see what she had done. She'd certainly done something. Already she could feel a whisper in the back of her mind, like someone tickling her brain with a feather.
But as she stood, and looked, there was no bunny there. Or owl. Or weasel. Or even a stupid snake. Instead, there was a tiny tiny tiny little elfin-looking creature. Like a little woman. With wings. Lying in the middle of her circle, looking just as stunned and as confused as Emily herself felt. And then the little thing opened its eyes and sat up and in her mind Emily could feel it doing so.
And that meant that this, whatever it is, belonged to her.
CONCEPTION
And the third? What of the third participant? The third truth? The third point of contact to balance out the other two and make this structure stable? That third is lying on the cold stone floor of Emily Crest’s bedchamber, her mind and body wracked and numb and stunned with the force of the power that had torn her from her place in the universe and placed her… here.
Wherever here was.
The third truth is Irelia. And although there are many places where we could stick a pin into the infinite fabric of creation and say ‘the story starts here,’ the appearance, the intrusion, of Irelia’s point of view into the on-going mosaic is perhaps better than most.
And we begin our story here in this small darkened room, with a young girl and an otherworldly creature regarding each other for the first time, while all around them the seeds of their story drifted on the winds of Fate, needing only time and circumstance to take root and grow into legend.