W H O • A R E • Y O U
Ash 6, 121 Age of Steel
Time was already beginning to slip away from Anton, the realization that he was beginning to risk choices being made for him instead of by him putting a fire in his step and a pit of anxiety in his stomach. In his father's house were many rooms, but none were more beloved by the perennially ill scion than its library. It was here that he retreated during the doldrums of his life, and it was here that he came now. A long desk typically covered in tomes had been swiftly cleared, a strange medley of objects dumped upon its surface in their stead. He was not here for comfort or to expand his knowledge, but to instead engage in an interrogation of himself. To that end, the objects in question - a beaker, a sword, and a magnifying lens - were laid out end to end, the lordling taking a shuddering breath as he opened his Cardinal Rune to study them in the finest of detail.
All objects possessed an aura, an ineffable truth that seemed to radiate from Aetherium itself. He knew that his conception of their auras was modified by his knowledge of the thing itself, the song a thing produced both changing in response to as well as changing his understanding of that thing. Were he looking for the truth at the heart of the objects, that knowledge would give him a measure of concern, that his entire approach was fatally undermined by his own biases. On the contrary though, on this occasion that was exactly what he was counting upon. Each was a symbol, potent with meaning and representing the paths that lay before him, one of which had to be chosen before the time of choosing passed him by.
From the beaker resounded an ordered and beautiful strain, the purity of the glasswork's construction immediately clear through Semblance in a way that he supposed only a skilled glassmaker would have been able to determine. Or perhaps that was simply his idea of it, his assumptions, creating such an association in his mind. Nonetheless, its song whispered to him of potential and discovery, and he found it hard to pull his attention from it after focusing for so long. The sword next to it was his father condensed and concentrated, a soaring martial hymn, a keening note slicing through his mind trumpeting the sharpness of its edge. It, too, had an order, its rhythm threatening to spread such far and wide so that all would adhere to its will. Such was a path of power that generations of his family had taken, and it was intoxicating in its simplicity and might.
Where he had lingered upon the beaker for its beauty, he dallied upon the sword out of dread for the final object upon the table. It was an absurd thing to be afraid of one piece of glass when he adored another, he knew that, but a blind man had no need of this particular shape and such mundane materials did not work upon his Semblance. By winding and torturous logic they had become associated with something far worse than merely gazing upon things from afar. They were tools one used to see the unseen, to gain knowledge that was hidden, and for a man with a secret as deadly as Anton those had a potent symbolism. A peculiar air emanated from it, never once granting any stability or certainty as it shifted from note to note, inviting him to tread a far different path of discovery one undercut by a constant threat.
Anton drew another breath as he stepped back to examine the three at once, in an attempt to select the one that sung closest to his own heart. He had done little such introspection before now, but his inability to make a decision had finally forced him to turn his arcane sight upon himself, a prospect he was not always a fan of. Semblance would not lie to him about what he was after all. Sitting himself down, he lowered his head slowly, the faintest notes of his own song entering into his consciousness as he quieted all other sensations and then-
"What are you doing, Antin?" burst through his concentration, the sound of his younger sister failing to say his name correctly slicing through his mind like a knife through butter.
"I am trying to make a decision," he replied, doing his best to keep his annoyance at having been interrupted out of his voice.
"You're being weird," the young girl triumphantly deduced. "Looking but not looking." Amelia was over a decade his junior, but she was clever enough at such a young age to have realized some of the truth of her elder brother despite not being explicitly told.
"Something like that," Anton murmured, setting himself down in a chair as he watched his sister approach the table, a book tucked under her arm. He felt a surge of disappointment at himself for not just failing to hear her enter, but being able to determine if she had entered the library with the book or had been inside long enough to grab it from the shelves without him noticing. Her own aura was resplendent with the energy and innocence of youth, her body made of flutes and strings that seemed to never tire, layered with an undercurrent of complex melodies that belied the expectations of the simple central theme.
"Does it help?" she pressed, picking up the lens that had so frightened her brother and bringing it to her eye, peering at him through it without the faintest idea of what it meant to him.
"Yes," her brother breathed out in reply, turning his arcane attentions to the low woodwinds of the stacks and shelves to distract himself from the disconcerting sight.
"Why?" she continued, as he knew she would. Six year olds in general were not particularly well known for their tact, and Amelia specifically was loathe to let a confusing moment pass without gaining some measure of understanding from it.
"I'm looking at what they mean," he answered, already knowing that would only invite yet another question. He had time to put his thoughts in order however, the girl currently busying herself opening her book and pressing the lens against its pages with a childlike curiosity. "I have to pick one."
"Dad picked the sword," she said in the same voice of triumph she had when she declared him to be 'weird', her face splitting into a wide smile as she began to realize just what her brother was up to. Had his eyes been able to see, Anton would've seen that her smile was a mirror of his own, the brother finding her happiness infectious. "Dad or not dad?" she asked, putting the lens down to dramatically rub her chin as she had seen their father do when deep in thought. "You aren't dad," she decided, in a very serious voice, peering over her nose - somehow conveying the idea of looking down at him despite being far shorter. "Don't worry Antin, I can be dad if you and Karl can't," she finished with a satisfied nod, grasping the hilt of the sword and feeling its weight before leaving it upon the table.
"That's very kind of you, Amelia," Anton said, doing his best to treat her seriously despite how adorable he found the entire situation. She was serious after all, and what was more, she was right. He was not his father, and his father's path would never sit well with him. Rising from his seat, he gently moved the sword aside, discarding it from his options, and picked up the beaker and the lens. He would discover things, one way or the other, and in his heart he already knew which one he had to choose if he wanted to be able to live with himself. Still, doubt nagged at him if he was making the correct choice, and he turned towards his sister, proffering the objects like icons of forgotten gods. "Which of these, then?"
"You boil stuff in that one, and look at stuff with that one. But you can't look look so it must not mean that," Amelia answered, swiftly taking Anton's vacated seat and looking up at her brother with a frustrated expression. "I don't get it," she admitted with a kick of her legs, sinking into the - relatively - oversized chair with a sigh.
"Do I focus on how the world works, or on how people work?" Anton replied, deciding to not bother her with a full explanation of what the lens meant. Ideally she wouldn't have to know until she was already his age.
With a roll of her eyes, Amelia picked herself back up to sit properly in the chair. "Just say that then," she muttered with an exaggerated sigh before tapping the beaker without a second thought. "You like that," she said flatly, as if restraining herself from calling her older brother an idiot for making it this difficult in the first place.
"I guess you're right. I should just do what I want then?" Anton said with a soft smile, putting both beaker and lens down as he thought about his next steps. She was, again, right, but he would have to start working now if he wanted to secure entry into the College of Sciences. They did not just take anyone after all.
"'course you should, Antin. You're too serious and grumpy when you don't."
"Alright, alright. You win. I'll try to be less grumpy too," he relented, a soft smile on his face as he turned to the book, picking it up gently. "But you only helped me so I'd read to you. Is that right?"
"Yep," Amelia immediately admitted, finding nothing weird with the idea of her blind brother reading her a story. Anton simply sighed as he joined her upon the chair, brother and sister joining one another as he flipped the book back to its first page, sighing to himself as his magic settled and he could begin.
"Once upon a time..."