Better Prepared [Kala]

[Torin Kilvin]

Circled by the wings of his guardian angels the new Elementalist felt safe. He tried to keep himself to the same even calm that they were projecting for him, with some success.

When food was brought by a servant Torin did not want to eat, as often he did not when he was going through a change, but, as soon as his body caught scent of what was being offered the fire inside him seemed to leap up and reach for it. Taking the plate that was offered without paying that much attention to what was on it he listened to Kala explaining his own thoughts and then asked,

"Will I know, about other people? All people? What elements they feel connected to?" It was something he hadn't considered, knowing things about other people from this new rune. Knowing things about other people hadn't been his goal in gaining his first either, but it now came to him as naturally as any other study of aether. That there might be things about others that Semblance did not show him was an unexpected surprise but it immediately made sense. Just because it felt like he was absorbing all the information about someone did not make it true.

He did not remember specifically eating but, by the time the story about the water sprite was finished the platter was empty and he was not.

When it was time to rest he let himself be put to bed like a child, feeling no shame between himself and the twins. His dreams were fiery and welcome rather than frightening, but as he fell into them his tentative control over the balance of the elements inside him fell away and his body temperature rose rapidly. The first night was the worst, Kala and Kaus having to monitor and lower his raging fever over and over again, but, eventually, it released him enough for him to wake and reassert his own control.

It was good practice, easing and balancing the elements inside himself, allowing him to touch on each in turn and learn to quiet or strengthen them as was needed. He did let himself be warmer than was probably typical for himself, balancing just a little on the hot side, but that was likely to be normal for him from then on. The problem arose when, due to being warmer, he felt colder, so poured more tendrils of fire into himself to warm up. This was a cycle which he learned to recognize but not before one of other of the twins had to catch it and correct him several times.

[Kala Leukos]

.

Kaus set the remains of Torin's meal aside, near the door, so a passing servant might pick it up and take it away. Then he returned to their ward, stretching and popping various joints along the way. Kala might have been the dancer, but he was at least an athlete, and his body needed constant attention.

His question elicited a sigh from Kala.

"Perhaps. There are... affinities. And there are strong desires. The literature varies when discussing what truly makes a difference when it comes to Runes. I wanted Air more than anything because I wanted wings... I wanted to fly. I felt incomplete, not myself, without wings. But Fire chose me. I understand now the wisdom in that, but I have also been granted wings and the skies..." She smiled and shrugged. "Also, there are planes for other elements that... even though they exist on our plane... for some reason, an elementalist must travel to those planes to attune themselves. Wood, Metal, Darkness, Light, and pure Aether. If you know a talented traverser..."

She gave him a knowing look, then laughed quietly.

As Torin slept, woke, lived, and recovered, the twins did what they could to minimize his threshold sickness. Yea, the food was balanced, and they taught him how to balance his own humors, but also, if he felt a fever, it was often more efficient to place a hand upon his brow and draw the Fire out of him than get a cool washcloth and lay it upon his brow. But they did both, the magical and the mundane. One might be more effective than the other, but still, symbolic actions held great power in the psyche, and much of magic was the will shaping the aether, and so...

They took turns with him and, once Kala deemed the danger past, they allowed others to sit with him while he napped or peered at the world around him like a newborn chick. Sivan, at least, could understand. He spoke to elemental spirits in their own sort of language. To Aurin, it was a bit of a mystery, though he could parse some of it through his sembling trick.

In any case, it seemed as though Torin's transition into the life of an elementalist would not be so terrifying as his first initiation, thanks be to the Dragon Gods.

.

[Torin Kilvin]

Over the next several days Torin was alright, most of the time. There were a few instances in which he had required one, or both, of the twins to take control as one element or another tried to fight for dominance of him, and there were a few moments when it had felt like he'd been about to lose to himself to them.

Gaining a whole new set of senses that was really four separate senses was an experience unlike even gaining Semblance. Where his first rune had felt like opening a new set of eyes that one had never been aware of having before, his second felt like gaining new eyes, ears, nose, and tongue. Even, as he found out when Fire attempted to burn through him from the inside, new skin.

The first major incident had occurred when he'd fallen asleep the first night and Fire had made its claim. The second had been the first time he'd left the comfortable room that had been his sanctuary and stepped outside. The bright, if weak, sunlight had felt amazing on his skin, and the soft hints of moisture in the air had almost tickled, causing him to close his eyes and grin just to feel them. It had been when he'd opened his eyes and looked at the courtyard, noticing little streams of Air flowing through, and then followed them with his gaze up into the sky that...

Air was Vast. Even having learned a little of currents and weather patterns nothing at all could have prepared his mind for what he saw. The ski shifted as if something alive and so massive the human mind can't wrap around it had suddenly moved above you and you realize that it was the sky. Not only was the creature a living thing but it had always been the sky, always been there, above, moving constant and unseen. It felt like his mind, confronted by something far too immense to exist in reality had started to break and, to protect itself, had turned itself off.

Later, the twins had told him he'd gone utterly still and then fallen over screaming what might have been words but not in any language either of them knew. They had moved him back inside as soon as they realized something was wrong but it had been a full day before the mind that had fled him in abject rejection of reality had been coaxed to return.

Coming out of the catatonia had been like waking from a very long dream where the mind isn't sure if the world it is leaving is the real one or if it is the one that it is coming into. It had taken some time for the smith to understand where he was or what was happening but, eventually, he did fully return to himself. Though he never fully remembered what he had seen, and tried his very best not to even approach where the memory of it was stored, a part of him knew.

Air was gentler with him afterward, only coming in wisps and trickles to make itself known while seeming, somehow, to understand that it had gone much, much too far in its first real greeting.

Ever after, through all the years of his life, he would sometimes see a great river of Air moving through the sky and a part of him would sort of drift. It was never more than an hour but when he returned he would have no memory of anything that had happened or been said to him during.

After Fire and Air's attempts to claim him (one expected and more welcome than he should have allowed, the other wholly unexpected and dangerously attempted) Water and Earth were both mild by comparison. The former was not indifferent to him, but it saw him as he saw it, a utility that might be made use of when it was needed, appreciated, but not personal. The latter was a closer connection, like an old friend whom one has only had time to greet in passing for some time but whom one still feels warmly about and is always happy to see.

When his fever stopped raging and his mind returned he was allowed to begin to practice in tiny ways. He learned to condense water into the palm of his hand, to gold fire in the same place, just far enough away not to burn him, to move enough air to blow out a single candle, and to make little furrows in a planter of earth.

Others visited him, Sivan, to discuss the differences between elemental spirits and elementalism, Timon, to bring him his favorite foods and eye him until he ate them, and, finally, Aurin. The smith had shown the redhead his progress, but mostly he had simply opened up his aura and let himself be Sembled from head to toe, as well as the inside of his head, as much as his man wanted. His man needed to know that Torin was safe, that he would be safe and that he would be around from then on and Torin was as far from begrudging him that as he could be.

In the end it was almost ten full days before he was able to demonstrate his novice level abilities and control to the satisfaction of the twins, and then Timon, and then Aurin, well enough that he was allowed to go home. He loved spending time with Kala and Kaus, staying with them, and all that that had entailed, had brought them closer than ever, but he missed his work and the steady rhythm of his life. There was a lot of work left to be done in t he Valley, and his real final push to get back to it had come when Timon had brought word that the builders had finished his foundry.

The process had been far from painless but with the excellent care of his friends Torin had come out of it with relative ease compared to some of the eventualities that all of them had known were possible. When he had laid down in his own bed his first night home, pulled the covers over himself and, with the helpless grin of a child had snuffed the room's candle with a flick of Fire, he felt, for the first time in his life, like an honest-to-the-gods wizard.

[Finn]

Review

Experience: 10 xp, available for magic.

Injuries: Threshold sickness continues beyond this thread, but it's up to Rune to play out.

Loot: +1 Rune of Elementalism for Torin!

Notes: I'm sad this wasn't entitled Come On, Kala, Light My Fire.