faderift | [ may catchall ]

"The matter’s grey enough to serve."

Not really. Death’s written in black - but words run thin of late. Isaac stoops up, folding the page upon itself; a flash briefly visible: Enchanter Sm -

(May well squeeze out his brains, at least the gore would theme.)

He pushes out a breath, vanishes letter into pocket.

"Making any friends out there?"

Edited 2024-05-09 05:51 (UTC)

Vlast isn't familiar enough with names yet to guess if the healer is writing to anyone of note beyond the glimpse of the title of Enchanter. Geography has been his main center of study for the past couple of weeks and enough history to know which cards to play close to his chest.

It's a enough to put a piece or two together.

He scoffs at the mention of friends and turns from Isaac to a shelf behind him, getting to work on putting away the sizable stack of books he borrowed. If his sparkling personality hasn't won him any in the last two and a half centuries, he doubts it will start now.

"The enchanter you write to. Were they a -" he frowns, the word as alien as the concept to him, " - friend...? ...In one of those prisons they keep mages?"

A deeper frown, his brow so tightly creased that the line is likely to become a permanent fixture.

"...Circles."

"No," The self-correction will do, they’re hardly fronting Vlast for Ambassador. "We were not of the same Circle."

(He didn’t keep friends in the Circle.)

"Riftwatch suffered losses beyond the city. Enchanter Smythe’s sister, mn," Books thump. Vlast frowns. Isaac looks - tired. Old, in the way of any worn thing. "I worked closely with her sister."

Past tense.

"Dead then," he says, ever the master of tact.

He isn't exactly good with expressions yet, but he can recognize that bone-deep weariness in Isaac that comes with the loss of a loved one.

The last book slots into place. He's familiar enough with death and loss and grief that he might venture some attempt at reassurance.

"I am... sorry for your loss."

That's the right turn of phrase, isn't it? Trite, he thinks. Empty. It leaves an ill taste on his tongue and it's a testament to how hard he's been studying that he doesn't just spit.

He tries again.

"Words are rarely adequate in conveying such things. I think your friend - Enchanter Smythe - will be satisfied enough she not alone in her mourning."

Edited 2024-05-13 11:41 (UTC)

"I doubt that," Satisfaction. "For twins, the cost must be... Few experts appreciate their mastery challenged. That there was a piece of her story which the Enchanter did not know?"

A shrug. Loneliness might strike the better comfort for its singularity, and unkind of him to write, to imply. Joselyn stretched for connections, but they wound ever about a missing space; what little Isaac can say of Miriam, she must resemble the tangle.

"But it’s good of you to try." Vlast is trying. Call it kindness, or perhaps he only cares to prove progress - balm in it, still. Words are rarely adequate, but Maker, has he starved for them of late. "Have you siblings?"

Edited 2024-05-18 06:23 (UTC)

Vlast runs a clawed finger over the spine of a book that looks promising. Brother Genitivi has proven insightful before.

He does not ask why Isaac is bothering to write at all if it gives Enchanter Smythe no comfort and him only frustration and ink stains.

It's probably polite, or something similarly inexplicable that humans twist themselves into knots trying to explain, and Isaac looks twisted up enough without Vlast pressing him for explanations on how he grieves.

When he asks about siblings, Vlast goes very still.

"Yes," he answers, but doesn't elaborate further. "...Have you?"

"Perhaps. Forty years," And a few wars. "Render it something of a question."

Vlast freezes. Isaac examines his stillness. Some piece of him, never very distant, registers: Ammunition.

Dead, then. Else something altogether thornier, and there a faulty tense again bears examination; present needn't signal alive. Is there any point at which one's brother, sister, escapes that definition?

(Forty years might do it.)

"Fortunately for our stores of ink," Paper, rather. Mostly the paper. "I can't imagine they read. What are you hunting for, there?"

Edited 2024-05-22 02:02 (UTC)

Had Vlast ever developed a sense of humour, he might describe his relation to his great uncle Mordremoth as thorny.

Alas, puns are still beyond him, and he instead scowls under Isaac's sharp-eyed scrutiny.

"Histories, mostly. I have much to learn, and little else but time for now."

Speaking of which...

"Forty years is not very long, is it? Have you any, surely there's a chance they live."

"How old do you think I am?"

A question with no good answer.

Vlast takes a moment to consider. Not out of any sense of propriety, no; why ask a question if you don't want to hear the answer to, after all? Rather, he has trouble gauging the age of humans. He can tell an infant from a child from an adolescent from the elderly, but any in-between adult years are one giant question mark for him.

Still, Isaac has given him a hint.

"Older than forty," he says with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer. "Younger than sixty. Perhaps close to fifty."

"Well done,"

He doesn't sound like it is - Isaac is, at this very moment, calculating whether he can work moisturizer into the Infirmary budget -

(Strange could use it. He's getting up there, himself.)

"Forty years is a span for all you'll encounter."

The surly response gets a curious tilt of Vlast's head.

"You dislike your age?"

In fairness, he's only been around five measly decades. Vlast is five times that and the Exalted would chastise him for the impatience of youth.

"...Do people dismiss your thoughts because you are so young?"

"Yes. Entirely. Should anyone express to you a less than glowing opinion, it is only due an envy of my young, spritely mind. Templars are particularly prone to such folly."

Isaac's overstatement soars over Vlast's head, but there's a low rumble that escapes as a contemptuous scoff at the mention of Templars.

"Buffoons that would try to cage the ocean for fear of its waves, had they the power," he grouses. "Fear not. I have no tolerance for such idiocy."

"You must try for pity. They lose their wits of the work, many before fifty," He shakes his head. Wow, what a shame. "Thoughts slow, memories vanish. A tragedy. Speak very carefully, that they may clearly understand you. Our present conversation,"

He draws it out, painfully-languid:

"Would be much too fast."

Edited 2024-05-23 02:20 (UTC)

Vlast has never been inclined towards pity, and he's really not about to start now. As far as he can tell, even from the most biased historical accounts, the Chantry and the Templars made their bed.

"Of course they lose their minds. Humans are ill-suited to consuming magic."

He sounds almost indignant at the prospect.

"One may as well drink poison and be done with it."

Isaac’s fishing for a cigarette - exchanging page for paper - when he looks back up.

"Humans?"

Mild. They’ve established, by now, this body is foreign to Vlast. But he’s now implied a more particular exception.

"Yes."

Vlast sounds almost absent-minded; his attention is partially occupied by a promising looking tome.

"I cannot speak for Elves or Qunari - they do not exist in Tyria, and too many sources about their physiology are biased to the point it beggars belief. And Dwarves of my world are so very different from the Dwarves of Thedas, they may as well be entirely different entities."

He flips through the first pages, scowling down at the forward, before snapping the book shut and grudgingly adding it to the growing stack in his arms.

"Humans, however, remain unchanged. ...As far as I can tell."

"No," Redirection. He snaps his fingers - focus - but that’s primarily to light a spark, smoke. "Humans eating magic. You’ve implied others capable."

"I believe that was the gist of my statement."

A sidelong glance at the mage, before his gaze returns hastily to the rows of books. Whatever Vlast's malcontent, he is hungry for knowledge.

...Hungry, perhaps, for magic as well, with the way he watches the spell as it tugs at the ambient magic in the orbit of his own passive consumption.

"There are the Chak; enormous insects that dwell close to exposed lines of ley energy from which they feed. There are also the lesser dragons; saltsprays, wyverns and the like. Though I suppose I have never witnessed a hydra consume magic. The little pests can certainly wield it though."

A dismissive cross between a huff and a snort escapes him. The desert always yielded such an interesting array of life.

"...Then there are the six Elder Dragons and whatever scions they have sired. For the most part, they are... troublesome."

Dragon and wyvern pick out, the rest ripple over his ears and out again: So much water. For all that Isaac scolds rifters to mind this world, he's little patience for the details of their own.

(Perhaps that’s a good thing. No one enjoyed him keeping track of what he did, before -)

"Elder dragons?"

The old gods an obvious comparison.

There is trepidation from Vlast at the question. However he was opposed to his grandfather and his siblings, they are still his kind, something he could have become.

Something his mother set him on the path to become.

(Though he wonders now if that was ever truly his intended purpose, or if she had looked upon the death of her first son and thought it only a stepping stone for her daughter...)

Laying bare all their secrets to some stranger chafes at him.

"Old dragons. Very old."

He huffs. It's all there in the name, isn't it?

"I can hazard a guess at what you are thinking, and yes, there are a concerning number of similarities. But you have killed five of the seven, and your world remains scarred but intact. I do not think they are pillars of your reality."

A dark frown thins his mouth as his eyes settle on an accounting of the fifth blight.

"Though I wonder if they champion beings that are."

Edited 2024-06-28 01:09 (UTC)

Eye to book:

"The accepted theology is that the Old Gods, as with other spirits, once served the Maker."

So much as the matter is ever accepted, settled; only clerics bicker more than mages.

He snorts dismissively.

"I care little for what gods and their sycophants accept."

On the rare occasions it's the truth, reverence twists it to some agenda. Even his own mother had become alien to him in the hymns the Exalted sang of her.

"What do you think?"

"I think you’d do well not to voice that opinion beyond our walls,"

Dull. Distracted: He's thinking of Joselyn, of her stubborn faith; he's wondering whether she reached for a spell in those final moments.

(Had she even the time? He doesn’t know how she died.)

"But I’ve seen enough of the Fade to not put my faith in the Maker’s children." First or second, thanks. "You might do to inquire with our Wardens. We've lost our firsthand witnesses to the Blight, but they ever hoard information."

[ may catchall ]

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