Noble Advice (Kala)

[Torin Kilvin]

Torin made a sad face, knowing nothing about vineyards, he hadn't even considered that mountains were probably terrible for growing them. Cloudberries, the tree fruit from the orchards, as well as the honey he hoped for, would be more than enough to get a brewery going, not even mentioning all the grain that could be turned into beer.

"It'll be something fun to work on over years, tasting each year's batches, adjusting them, working them through the 'forged barrels. Oh! I had an idea for a runed distiller, but it might be silly when alchemy can probably do it easier. I'm going to talk it over with Sivan and see what he thinks. Once we're done with the golems..."

And several other projects. There was so much to do. Torin loved that there was but trying to concentrate his effort on specific things, and choosing which things needed doing first, was a Problem.

"I'll send a letter to Starfall asking for a skilled architect and go from there. I don't know how to design a house but I know what I like when I see it."

Leading the way into the foundry itself he gave a similar tour to the one Sivan had received, walking through each section and explaining it briefly because Kala would have an idea about what most of it did already. There was very little that Kala seemed to know nothing about and, he supposed, it would become even less now. He demonstrated how the waterwheels could be used to run the bellows to create exceptionally hot fires or run the massive hammers that would allow him to create large projects in much less time. It was absolutely overkill for the tiny community and, knowing this, Torin was a little bashful, even as he was excited to show off.

[Kala Leukos]

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"If one of your farmers chooses to become a vintner," she hastened to amend, "I am certain that between Master Kavafis, myself, and whatever Negation-based wonders you create... Or Elementalism-based wonders? Hmm. However your mind parses the problem, there are ways to solve it. I believe the problem with grapes has been climate rather than soil, but rather than tumble down this rabbit-hole, I would suggest any such hypothetical farmer speak to Master Sunrunner about it. The magic is a tool. The knowledge of agriculture and viticulture are currently beyond my ken."

Kala smiled ruefully, commiserating with him. Her mother and even Aquilios these days complained of just how many details required their attention. Torin was learning on the job, and Kala had many hats to wear, one of which included hearing prayers of all things. The tour was enjoyable for her; she tried to listen more than she spoke, offering advice when requested or when it seemed it would be most helpful. At this point, she had a good idea when her friend would be most receptive to it and when he needed mere support.

Later, when he had showed her his domain and she had complimented it until he blushed and kicked at the dirt, she knelt in that same dirt.

"And now, as promised, I will show you how to warm the earth without blighting it. Observe."

Torin already knew that gestures only mattered if they helped the mage. Frequently, she made magic with little more than a glance and concentration, but sometimes it felt more art than science and the mind and body supported the will as best they could. Her hands moved almost as if they were dancing, and Fire answered her silent call.

It manifested in threads, drawn from ambient heat in the air, coaxed into being from secret places, perhaps even the core of her that was hotter than anything else on Ransera. But she wove those threads into intricate traceries spooling it out and sending it down into the Earth around her. He could sense how she wrote her will into the shape of things, but also bent when bending was more effective. She danced with the Fire, with the Earth, with the Water and the Air hidden in each.

He could see how her delicate touch began to raise the temperature below her by a few degrees, careful not to banish the Water and the Air that rooting things needed. It was a gentle thing rather than a matter of brute force. It required no more power than an apprentice might muster, but her mastery was evident in how efficiently, how elegantly that power was used.

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[Torin Kilvin]

The young lord contemplated her words, he remembered hearing farmers conversing often about the contents of their soil, particularly where sweet fruits like grapes were concerned. What they had said, he didn't remember but surely there were books on the subject, and, yes, Kala was right, Sivan would know more as well.

"Mine as well. Sad for a boy who grew up in a farming village." He laughed a little at himself, but his eyes wandered down his valley wondering if what he'd built would now be called a farming village.

When the tour was complete, he was offered one of his favorite things, education. Squatting down like a child he opened his Semblance senses more fully, taking in all that was around them in a rush of sensation and knowledge. It felt good, as though he had some mystical connection to the place. It was non-sense, Aurin and Sivan must feel the same things when they came here and used the rune, as Kala must. He felt it all the same.

Fire came to Kala's call as eagerly as it did for Torin, it was another thing they shared; the connection to Fire. The urge to reach out and touch it himself rose in him but he resisted with a level of intense, concentrated discipline. He could play with Fire any time now, and, to his amused embarrassment, he often did just play with it, distracting himself from his work.

Kala's weaving was complex, effecting all four elements though Fire was the medium with which she acted. The Valley had little of Fire in it, dividing itself nearly equally between the other three, but the foundry was quickly beginning to become attuned to that which had chosen Torin and Kala both. After watching for a few moments he closed his eyes, the better to 'see' what was being done through Elementalism and Semblance. Often he found that his physical sight only distracted his mind from his work. When he was runeforging, or when he was using Elementalism to do blacksmith work, he was beginning to do it more and more often with his eyes closed. If anyone ever caught him at it he was going to earn a silly nickname like 'the blind blacksmith' but his work was better when he let himself feel it fully.

"It's beautiful," He said, eyes still closed, face raised to the breeze while his mind was under the earth, "like lace. Your weaving is so delicate, you never force anything. So much of smithing is supposed to be forcing but I never like the idea. I'm lucky to have you to teach me."

He meant this, simply and fully enough that he didn't have to stop examining her gentle labor to say it.

[Kala Leukos]

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Kala held the delicate pattern in place whilst Torin examined it, making little sounds acknowledging what he said as he would be blind to a nod at this point.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "But some of the credit goes to my teachers. I was taught to seek efficiency, creative strategies over brute force. The idea behind it was that if the mage is always making the most of what power is available, by the time they can manage true power, what they can manage will be truly powerful."

She patted his hand. "You have the same instinct, I think. When I look at your work, I see it. Now... if we were to have a truly bone-snapping winter and the wards in the sky and in the earth were overpowered, you could still seek Fire. The Sun is the most obvious source in these mountains, but she is sometimes hidden as we know now better than ever before. But the land holds its own Fire."

Her hand still on his, she tugged at his mind with hers, letting her awareness sink down through the Earth to the depths where Fire ran like blood through the world's veins. It was true they could create Fire, and now she always had starfire within her. But it was often, as she had called it, a more creative strategy to borrow the power of the elements from the world around them, working with them rather than forcing them into submission.

"Do you feel it?" she asked, her voice likely seeming faint and faraway if his awareness had followed her down into the depths of the Earth below the valley.

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[Torin Kilvin]

Torin reached out, making a tiny version of Lady Kala's wide weaving for himself. It was not the same weaving, not the exact pattern, but a version of it. Like a musician playing a song written by another, it was the same song, but it was also the player's own in an ineffable way.

The concepts of conservation and knowledge fit well in the smith. His first master had taught him the same principles with metal and fire long before he'd dreamed of wielding the Elements in a much more, well, elemental, way himself. His aetheric senses spread through the space around him so thoroughly he forgot that his eyes were closed, forgot that he had eyes at all, as he teased and played with the lace-like pattern of Fire and Earth until it felt right. It was as if there was a place in his head, or perhaps his soul, or perhaps in Earth itself, that already knew the shape his weaving needed to be and so, when he found it, it slipped into place like a key into a lock. It clicked and he breathed in a sound of discovery and satiation not entirely unlike a quiet gasp.

He only came away from his admiration of the intricate latticework when the gentle pull of Kala's consciousness led him down deeper, into the lower places. Delving deeper than where metals and minerals lay was something he had not done. In those places there were sometimes caves and crevasse with no outlet to the sun-lit lands above and these frightened him. The primal terror of such places led back to his Semblance initiation in a way he did not like to examine so the depths, also, he left unexplored.

His trust in the fledgling goddess who had always been good and kind to him was stronger than his fear, at least, it was while she guided him, so Torin followed her mind, down, and down and deeper until he saw the flows of Earth so overwhelmed by fire that they became liquid.

"Yes." He answered, though whether it was aloud or simply into the space of consciousness and Semblance they had created between themselves, he could not have told. "It's beautiful. There are metals there too, already melted. It's like a great kiln in the earth."

[Kala Leukos]

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Two master semblers could easily communicate telepathically, and so they did. Likely Torin could sense Kaus in her consciousness, and hints of her other, more tenuous bonds. But deep in the earth, there was more than enough to engage his mind.

"Yes," she said, either with words or with her mind, "and Earth and Metal are the same, really. Or Earth includes Metal. These divisions are only real because of consciousness. I can't quite articulate it yet. Don't let me confuse you, though..."

Her consciousness seemed to take on some of that Fire they found, and some Air, and she began to rise like a balloon, tugging him back toward himself.

When she blinked back to life, she saw him doing the same and smiled.

"It would be best to have someone to tug you back into your body when you plan on exploring like that," she warned. "The hidden world is fascinating in the best and the worst ways. Think of it similarly to your time in the Aetherium. Remember that you remain something part spirit and part flesh. Don't forget the body you leave behind."

She patted his hand, then placed it on his shoulder, using him to steady herself as she rose and began to stretch out the kinks in her muscles. Time had passed since she had woven her enchantment and taken him on a brief tour of the elemental underpinnings of his valley.

"But being able to do this ought to make your conversations with Master Sivan and the gritaeri more fruitful."

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[Torin Kilvin]

Torin nodded, not sure if it was with his body or not.

"I can feel Earth in the metals I work with. Some of the books I've read say that Metal is it's own Element but I don't think they're correct. So much seems..."

He hesitated, floundering over the newfound concepts that the combinations of his runes had been slowly feeding him. Some of them he suspected he'd always known in a part of himself he didn't have conscious access to.

"I think everything might be the same thing and our minds, or all minds, make them seem different." It was terrifying to say it, even in the privacy of their shared thoughts. He wouldn't have been able to talk about it with anyone else but Kala seemed like she too was stretching toward the realizations that were perhaps not meant for mortal minds.

"I'm afraid." His 'voice' was quiet now. "Because, if the only thing separating any one thing from another is its concept and the belief in that concept and I slip to far and stop believing..."

There was no real end to this sentence, not that he could face. In one way the idea that he was the same as the trees and the metal and his friends was nice, comforting even. But the idea that if enough people stopped believing in something, or believed it was something else, it might actually unravel fundamental parts of reality was beyond his ability to process. It ended up being far, far too big; a massive something lurking behind his mind where he couldn't ever really see it no matter how he turned to try but he knew it was there.

It was a relief when Kala pulled them back, both up above the ground and into their own bodies again. Such things were always easier to accept, easier to ignore, when he could feel his own form wrapped around him with all its sensations.

Nodding to Kala's gentle warning he said,

"I don't think I'm brave enough to go exploring such places without you yet. Maybe with Sivan and the gritaeri of the valley, they know it so well."

Once they had both found their feet they continued their walk, stretching out the kinks of sitting so still for so long as the smith finished the tour with his aetheric orchards.

[Kala Leukos]

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"I think," she posited quietly, "that is one reason people have demigods, and demigods have the Dragon Gods and Mistlords--something to hold the place where logic leads to revelations impossible to hold. Someone safe." She patted his hand. She was learning to be that for mortals, while looking to those greater than herself for the same service.

But even she could only hold these ineffable concepts for so long, and so she was happy to chat about more solid things as they toured the rest of the valley.

fin.

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[Finn]

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Notes: Love the philosophical questions wrapped up in exploring magic while on a mundane tour. Layers! Like an onion!