Renewal [Kala]

[Torin Kilvin]

The idea of deciphering ancient knowledge had always appealed deeply to Torin. Even if the legendary Grimoire of Garel was ancient knowledge of a kind that lay outside of his own talents, it still made him feel like he'd stepped into the pages of a faerytale. A grim one, perhaps, but nonetheless.

The idea of someone, even Kala, changing his body as Garel was said to have played with and experimented on the people who became the Avialae was quite terrifying. While the smith's physique might have led one to imagine he had the blood of the winged nobility of Kalzasi somewhere in his lineage he was of no mind to step even further from how he'd been raised than House Leukos had already raised him. He did not feel as though he had to explain this to her, as he didn't believe her words had been an offer, merely an explanation of what possibilities the grimoire might open to her.

"Are you immune to the cold now too, as he is?" Recalling their hike up to the Illumite field together, bundled up while Kaus flew ahead dressed as lightly as ever he wondered if being cold was something one could miss.

The dragonshards distracted him for probably longer than might have been polite with someone else, but Kala understood. When he did open his eyes, the glimmer of ideas gleaned from the shards filled his eyes for a moment before he really saw her. When he did all thought of the shards fled him and he leaned forward unconsciously. Her smile reassured him but he remained a little closer as though he could somehow lend her his physical strength.

Mouth opening to ask what had caused her distress turned into a gasp as he took in the tiny star shard that lay in her palm. It was beautiful, as all shards were, but it felt delicate in a way the others did not. Each type had their own characteristics, of course, and he had worked to learn them all by how their aether felt alone. Holding his one hand cupped in the other he accepted the treasure as though he thought it might be heavy, or that it might shatter if he dropped it.

The asterium felt much like Kala herself, beautiful, pale, delicate but somehow just as strong as it was bright. Listening to her he found himself unable to speak and wasn't sure if he was about to begin crying or not. For all the world he looked like a man who had just been handed his newborn child, terrified of breaking it and entirely in awe.

As she described recharging, or for this stone, first charging, a part of his mind, or perhaps his soul, made a connection. Reaching out in the way she had described recharging the stone with his aether, except it was to her he was reaching, not the shard, he pushed his aether out, offering it, opening himself for it to be absorbed. No thought was involved, only the desire to offer something of himself to the fledgling goddess in the hope that it might replenish something of what she had lost in the making of what he now held.

[Kala Leukos]

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For better or for worse, Garel had done the heavy lifting with regard to experimentation, trial and error, and his subjects had submitted to risk and pain - at least, she hoped they had all been volunteers, martyrs, and heroes. She shuddered to think that anyone had been coerced. Birth was painful; this second birth might be too. Hers hadn't been traumatic, but Naori had taken her into another realm to confer divinity and responsibility upon her. She had only had to learn to live in her new body.

"I am certain that at some level of cold, we would still die... Our blood could freeze solid. But the rarefied air where we fly is cold, and it does not slow us down. We feel it, but are hardened against it, I suppose. I will still prefer wool for long, high-flying travel.

Kala smiled at Torin's reaction, delighted to be able to work small miracles for those she loved. Not entirely sure how she did it, she accepted some of his aether, letting it find the pattern of her soul and strengthen it, but weaving some of it back into the asterium so he could see it sparkle the more brightly. She didn't take much - just enough so she wouldn't immediately need a nap and a hearty meal. The gift was accepted, but she would not take more than she needed, not without some dire necessity.

"It will have a similar effect upon the shadowspawn as the illumite or the lunicite," she explained, "but I will let you explore its potential as it grows for you." They weren't sentient, but she felt almost as if they had spirits much as the stars themselves were not sentient but had spirits. There were many things she knew now without having the words to articulate them. But Torin seemed to understand many ineffable things via his connection to the aether around him and his quiet, wise soul.

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[Torin Kilvin]

Torin did not enjoy the cold, but he was still relieved to learn that Kala could still feel it. Not being able to feel 'cold' when in reality it was not a singular thing but simple a section of a sliding scale that was individual to the creature feeling it was too bizarre to properly consider. If the winged race was entirely unaware of the dropping of the temperature they would be susceptible to, as Kala had mentioned, freezing solid without being aware of any danger.

The smith suddenly regretted having not made the Lady a cloak of comfort as he had made for her twin. The cloak he had made her had been to her specifications and more suited to her needs, but still, it was nice to think about his friends being warm (or cool) and dry wherever they went. He had read of ancient Runesmiths who had been able to adjust an item of their creation after its completion and in his heart of hearts he longed for such an ability. The desire was not caused by the missed opportunity to combine the two cloak types but if he ever did learn such a legendary skill he imagined Kala's cloak would be one of the first things he worked on.

Having worked with aether so long he felt when his offering was gently tugged from him and his smile became sunny in the knowledge that he too could contribute to something miraculous in his own small way.

"It's perfect." He murmured, realizing that he hadn't said anything at all since she had produced the little shard. "I wonder what would happen if you mixed their aether. Illumite and Asterium, I mean. They are the same in a way but then, they aren't." He spoke as he lifted the colossal sun shard in one hand and the diminutive star shard in the other, staring between them with his rune more than his eyes.

[Kala Leukos]

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"Thank you," she said with an amused smile. Kala's amusement was never at his expense. In time, she would get better at creating asterium, or perhaps she would be able to call it from the depths of the void to her. Divinity was still new to her; the breadth and depth of her growing power were as yet unknown.

"There's... hm..." Instead of using words, she tried to show him with her sembling. "Do you see...?"

When he seemed to catch her drift, she found some words.

"On another world, our illumite would merely be another form of asterium. Our sun is our star. The warmth of illumite's energy comes from our star, and from how generations of us have ascribed meaning to it. It carries the warmth and hope of dawn instead of the blazing of, say, the desert sun. The light in lunicite is the same light reflected from our moons. They are all different, and yet the same. The same energy, different patterns. Different resonances. Do you ken?"

It seemed he did, the concept if not the words to articulate it.

"I know many things now that I don't know how to explain." For a moment, she considered how ice, water, and vapor were all the same thing in different forms, how there were even more mutable forms in the heart of a star. Perhaps someday, she would wear armor and raiment of asterium that moved with her like water or mercury. She knew that if her power grew too great, her vision to keen, her mortality would fall away and she would be other. She would be sacred - set apart.

For now, she treasured the warmth and transience of mortal life. It was all she knew.

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[Torin Kilvin]

Torin saw, and he listened, matched to the way that Kala was showing and speaking, more than anything, it was the way that they communicated when they were working together, Scrivening, or going over Runeforging ideas, examining shards that reminded him of their friendship and settled him back into it with thoughtless ease. A part of him understood the irony of feeling most comfortable with Kala's sustained humanity when they were using powers that few mortals were able to access, let alone master. No part of him saw the additional irony that came from feeling most comfortable with the humanity of someone expressed in the way that was least human about him; the part that had always been able to hear the aether songs in strong magic, particularly raw magic. It might come to him someday, but that was not this day.

He had know, had read, that the sun and the stars were the same, with the stars only being further away. In his studies he had also come across the theories about aether taking on the forms that conscious minds, and even less conscious ones believed that it would, or believed that it did. The distinction was greater than it seemed at first glance and while his Runeforger's mind had absorbed it, accepting the concepts easily, the country boy that still lived in his heart was uncomfortable with both the knowledge and the power it implied.

If Kala started a new religion (Well, as she was a new goddess he supposed she had already started one whether she intended to or not.) could she gather enough followers to change the nature of the way certain aspects of aether worked? If the religion lasted long enough, became prolific enough, could it change aether itself? At least in the way it worked on their world?

These sorts of questions felt like stepping too close to the forge fire, fascinating, but dangerous enough that he should know better.

The smith nodded, again belatedly, as his mind felt like it split apart, each side taking in the essence of one of the two shards he held and then sliding back together like when he intentionally doubled his vision and then slowly let it come back together. For an instant that dragged out in his head he thought he saw what Kala must see. The two types of aether being one kind of energy emitted by two sources, like pools of light from two lamps overlapping so they a general illumination. The part of him that kept itself locked away bloomed out from his chest in a way he had no other way to explain and reached out to know them. In that elongated moment that part of him turned to take in the lunicite also, somehow touching each. When he 'touched' them each began emit a soft, bright, individual tone. Separating his mind again, this time into three parts he took in each of the tones, far outside the ability of human ears to hear naturally, and brought them gently closer together until, suddenly, for the briefest measure of time, they harmonized. The tone became the same and each of the three stones filled with a single throb of warm, visible light.

Knowing that, in a moment, the state of mind would fall away from him and he would not know how to explain what he had done he shared it through his rune with Kala, hoping that perhaps she would be able to retain it outside the strange drifting mind place that Torin could never keep hold of.

[Kala Leukos]

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Kala nodded. He understood, was even able to wrap his mind, albeit briefly, over one of the mysteries of creation that she struggled with.

Next, she spread her hands and created a delicate bubble of a warding. Within it, she kindled Fire. But what answered her was not the flame of a candle, nor a torch, nor a bonfire—instead, she kindled stellar fire. It shone brightly, white and hot, though her ward protected them from the heat, the light, and the strange phenomenon she struggled to explain.

"There are types of fire in a star... one that... combines... one that splits... but fire... it's... it's still the thing that is burning. A flame is mostly... air and water..." She laughed. "Imagine that... flame being made up of things that can extinguish it. But star fire... it sustains itself for... Stars last longer than life has existed, but they too die."

Her words ran out. She wished Stefan Dornkirk was here; there were elements of science involved, she thought, and he was another one who understood the science of magic. But Torin was more esoteric; he understood things without having words for them—like she did. Kala maintained the tiny mote of star fire. It wouldn't sustain itself without her will focused upon it, not like a true star. All the same, it had all the same characteristics of the thing itself. She had felt it when Zalkyriax took her to the home of his people, lit by an entirely different star—sun—that shone a different color, was made up of different things than this, their sun.

Torin hadn't spoken. She didn't know if he would speak after this. But she observed him observing her carefully caged star, perhaps learning something indirectly. In any case, he would have the Rune of the Elements, even though that, too, was categorizing the nature of the world incorrectly. Consciousness and will, they changed the nature of reality in some ways. She didn't know how to explain that either, though having been to the Pantheon, she understood that the greater gods understood this in a more fundamental way, hence their will altered reality.

It was a terrifying reality.

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[Rune]

R E V I E W

Points: 10 each, may be used for Magic

Injuries/Ailments: None

Loot:

Torin: 1 Minor Asterium dragonshard

Notes:

Mod XP: None