Closed Truths (Kit Rowan)

[Wrenmae]

Summer 42, 513 AV

Mark by overlaying mark.

Wren pulled the charcoal over the paper, twisting it into a circle. In his apartment room in Ravok, there were few that would deign to disturb him. He connected the lines, frowned, and turned the paper over, starting again on the other side. Once again he worked on the basics of the glyphs he knew. He'd chosen today for the relative quiet of the outside. Not that it was any auspicious day that he knew, only that the usual dull roar of the throng had fallen away. Pausing over the paper, he brought down the charcoal and drew another circle, the basic shape of the glyph and its function to hold.

In a way, he had also been drawn, reshaped, erased and connected. The gods sought purpose for him, and in that purpose he was nothing more than a glyph sometimes. Pausing, hand hovering over the circle, he laid the charcoal aside and pushed away from the desk. Outside, the people passed by his window on their way to daily obligations. Each one was an unwitting tool for Rhysol, and even if they knew...what then? The people loved it here. The weather was perfect, the economy never struggled. Here, Rhysol provided everything his pawns would ever need.

The mark on his neck throbbed an appreciative thump, and Wren reached up to gently touch it. He felt nothing when he did, but knew the power within. It was hard, sometimes, to work out the way his various faiths intersected. Vayt promoted the strong over the weak, Rhysol promoted betrayal, chaos, and Sagallius called for manipulation and power. Putting both hands on the sill, he curled them just to feel the pressure of his skin against the masonry. For a long time he had devoted his life to the principles of whatever god marked him, whatever power found him worthy in their eyes.

There was something to that, wasn't there?

Deep down, he wanted to be loved and appreciated...the boy that shouted loud in the crowded square, only to be ignored. Sometimes it seemed he was less acting of his own accord and more acting in accordance with hidden lords. Would it not be more valuable of him to simply serve in the ways he best understood?

Following orders...was that really him? He'd called his alternate identity 'Hound' in Zeltiva...but what did that mean, really? It hadn't been anything at the time, but perhaps in some subconscious way, he had marked himself.

So who was he, really? What did he believe?

Turning back from the sill he returned the desk, drawing another circle around the other and a line that extended away from it in a wave...like a fuse, he drew it to represent the time it would take to trigger the glyph.

Had his life always been a struggle? In many ways, yes. He had endured shipwrecks, gods, and monsters to get here...and there was still so much farther to go.

Placing a hand against the glyph, he swept his Djed into the designs. First he filled the fuse with the djed that would slowly cycle, eventually triggering the reaction within the main part of the glyph.

He did believe in Vayt's philosophy. If Mizahar was ever to rise again, it would have to be on the backs of those that could carry it. Ravok wasn't actually all that powerful, no...instead it was sheltered, much like a predator might deign to let some of his prey live rather than indulging himself. The people followed because they knew nothing else...and in that way, Rhysol perpetuated Chaos as Order...a cunning illusion to be sure, certainly Ionu might have been impressed.

But those who deserved to live would be tested, and if they were found wanting...die so that another could take their place. Mizahar was a broken place, a world that had long stagnated. The only way to rebuild was to promote Order, but only in such a way as to demolish that Order that was already so strong in the land in the form of the individual city states.

He encoded the Void into the paper, a small one...nothing he needed to overtly worry about, and stepped back from it.

In a chime, the glyph would erupt...had he planned it correctly, and whirl into a small piece of the Void.

It would be a pleasant escape from such introspective thoughts...there was always something comforting about the nothingness beyond the portal.

[Kit Rowan]

It had been a while now since anyone in Ravok had called her 'Kit.' She thought now would be quite a brilliant time to disturb her uncle. The girl she became when she walked into his apartment was pretty-faced, blond and a little heavier around the bottom, but Kit left a special hole in the illusion, made Wrenmae an exception to her broadly-stroke illusion. To him, she would be Kit Rowan, though the same could not be said of everyone else.

At work it was always 'Shy do this, Shy do that' . . . She was beginning to get accosted to bowing her head, biting her tongue and taking orders as they came, and Kit felt it high time to wear a skin that she could flourish in! But it was one that she could only dare show to Wrenmae. Perhaps one day she could invent another, to serve the same purpose?

Until then, however, Wrenmae was the only one who would bear her being herself without looking down their nose and asking if she knew who she was talking too. Kit found his apartment, followed the steps that she had measured to his place, walked until she saw his door. She smiled, put a hand on her hip, tried the door and found it locked. 'Course. "Hey in there!" Kit called, rapping on the doorway with her knuckles. "Anybody home?"

oocAccording to Wren, I have permission from V to pull a grandfather on this thread. I wash my hands of culpability!

[Wrenmae]

Kit's voice was the very essence of nostalgia. Looking up sharply from his work, Wren blinked against the harsh knocking and leaned back in his chair. This was the first Kit had visited him since the last they spoke, when he had left her with the robe he had received from Sahova. Part of him had assumed he wouldn't see her again, wisp that she was, she'd only hide under other eyes and other faces.

Well. At least she could control it.

Before he could stand, Zan had already shimmered into human shape and threw open the door.

"Hello, hello, hello!" Zan greeted, grabbing the rapping hand and shaking it up and down vigorously, "Please, by the gods, come in! You won't believe it, truly I, myself, am staggered for words. Your Uncle has transcended. Truly he has become not unlike a god."

Yanking Kit inside, Wren watched from the desk, raising an eyebrow and pushing the glyphed paper away from him almost subconciously.

"See? SEE?" Zan said, gesticulating wildly, "Is it not splendor? Is it not divinity? All Hail Wren, God of Boredom and all that would be Boring willingly!"

Zan stumbled to his knees, raising his hands up and bringing them down, pausing on the way up from the first grovel to wink at Kit. "We were just thinking about you, really."

"We were not." Wrenmae countered with a sigh, "Zan simply feels cooped up."

Zan rolled his eyes and threw himself onto his back, stretching out and putting his hands beneath his head, "We were, he's being modernist."

"Modest." Wren corrected.

"Mine sounded better." Zan snapped back.

"So, Kit," Wren smiled at her, "What brings you over?" He folded both hands over each other, catching his nails on the small scars that traversed his flesh.

Behind him, the paper sparked and smoldered, a small point of nothing appearing over the glyph itself and growing to about the size of a fist swiftly. Wren followed Kit's eyes and quickly held his hands out around the Void, pushing in Djed and collapsing it back into nothing.

"Sorry...sorry," he muttered, shaking his head, "You caught me in the middle of something."

[Kit Rowan]

Kit saw her uncle throw open the door with tremendous energy, a big, dopey smile on his face. He practically yanked her inside, and Kit had little choice but to let herself be dragged bodily along into the room by her uncle. She staggered, flustered, and glanced surreptitiously around the room. And saw her uncle sitting behind a desk. Kit's eyes flickered between the pair for a moment, labeled the boisterous one 'Zan' and the subdued one 'Uncle.'

For a moment, while he wore a human face, Kit almost managed to forget that he was a magic otherworldly thing. She stroked at her chin and considered her uncle at Zan's behest. "I don't know," Kit said, shaking her head somberly. "I feel like he's missing a little special something." And Kit carved illusions over the breadth of Wrenmae's face, invisible to him but perfectly perceivable to Zan. An elaborate curving mustache. Enormous buck teeth like a squirrel. Big doe eyes. Kit couldn't keep from cracking a smile as she flickered through images over his face, just quickly enough for Zan to catch them before moving on to some other new face. "I just can't figure out what it is!"

Her smile shook like a ship in a storm when she saw the little circle of darkness open into existence above a sheet of paper. Kit had seen her uncle cast this magic before, when they were both younger, but it had been a long time. The empty blackness of the . . . thing, whatever it was, was haunting. Kit succumbed to curiosity, crept closer till she could see the glyph that her uncle had scripted his spell upon. The symbol seemed strange and very alien to her.

"Magic, huh?" A sorceress herself, she could scarcely point fingers. But when Kit peeked around at Zan and remembered what he was, what he really was, she couldn't help but be a bit intimidated. She rubbed at her arms. Shifted from foot to foot. "I don't think you ever actually told me what that one did."

[Wrenmae]

Zan would have helped Kit understand the Void, truly he would have.

But he was too busy rolling on the ground, crushed beneath the river of laughter pushing from his lips to fill the room around them. He hadn't even words to comment, just howling laughter, bringing forth tears to the corner of his eyes, which subsequently panicked Zan that he was leaking and promptly returned to Sarawanki form in a small hiccup of light.

Floating there, just off the ground, the globule of water spun around Kit's head and became a small bottle in mid-air, dropping into Wren's open hand. Without missing a beat, the wizard put his familiar on the desk.

He was smiling, resisting the urge to laugh himself at the illusions Kit had woven over him. He saw himself from Zan's eyes and shook his head, turning back to where the last of the glyph smoldered and where the Void he had brought was swiftly dwindling toward nothing again...well, something, anyways.

"The Void," He told his sister, folding his arms across his chest, "A doorway to a realm of nothing." He stood and brushed away the remains of the smoldering paper, taking another piece and laying it on the table. "The symbol, however, was a glyph...a means of containing, even improving magic. In this case, the glyph was built to summon the Void on a rudimentary fuse...but glyphs can be used for all sorts of things...security, spell casting aid," his shoulders bobbed upward, as if he couldn't really explain more than that.

"Sometimes it's easy for me to forget that you're a mage of sorts as well, hmm?" he looked to the parchment, then back to her, and then to the parchment again. "I don't suppose you'd be interested in learning, would you?"

[Kit Rowan]

Kit gave a slight, startled yelp and jumping as Zan dissolved into water and revolved around her head before falling into place in her uncle's hands. Glowing blue liquid, that could talk, and take the form of a man. "Ha, ha . . ." Kit gave a twitchy little grin. "You've a neat . . . Twin."

A portal to nothing? Kit could think of little enough uses for something like that. Removing objects maybe? Magical disposal? Seemed a waste to her at least, but there was no accounting for taste. "I don't know what I would even do with a portal to nowhere," Kit said. And then uncle suggested that she could learn something.

A sharp intake of breath. Kit scratched at the back of her neck and frowned down at the burnt paper. The old push-pull her of want her father had introduced to her climbed out of its old hole and took roost in her ear. I know that spark in your eye when you cast a spell, when you find your grip on magic. She bit down on her lip and tap-tap-tapped her foot.

"I walk a thin enough line as it is," Kit admitted, with effort, pushing caution before curiosity. "I don't really wanna invite anything that might cause me to do myself more harm."

[Wrenmae]

Wren shrugged and offered a comforting little smile, accompanied by a wink. "You'd find no better instructor in the arcane arts than myself." He indicated the bottle, "Zan here is a branch of magic called familiary, by which you give a creature from a different world a chance to get out of their terrible little universe and bind to you for life, of course, that wouldn't be possible without knowing a little bit of Summoning, which is also opening doors...albeit to realms with a bit more 'something' than nothingness."

He held her within his gaze for a few moments before reaching into his pack and removing a book, placing it on the table. "Animation, the practice of ascribing life to the inanimate, Alchemy, the art of combining or changing the properties of various things, Maladiction, the art of using the remains of the dead to create objects of unpredictable power, you already know reimancy, Auristics, the study of seeing past the mein and examining the aura of a thing, and of course," He held out his hand and the skin shifted colors from bright red, to green, to blue, to his ordinary skin again, "Morphing, the manipulation of personal form."

Folding his arms again, he pushed back in his chair, leaning toward the bed and cracking his neck, "All magic is a risk, Kit, just as your acrobatics. The misuse of a single flip or tumble could end your life or do permanent damage to your body...such is the same with magic. It is a muscle, like any other, and it can be overused and underused. I would caution that if you already practice, to ease yourself of the stigma the world seems to hold on mystical practices."

Reaching into his cloak, he pulled out a starfish, carved with a circle and some crude depictions, dropping it on the table. "We have so much potential to create, control, destroy...it is no wonder that people fear the misuse...but if one is careful of their limits, they may be able to hold onto their sanity."

Dropping his hands to the table, he winced as his right rest paused, slightly floating above the table with a metal thud. The invisible manacle Rhysol had fashioned to fix his mind was sometimes easy to forget. He drew it back immediately.

"I will not pressure you to learn, Kit," he said to her, frowning, "But I wanted to give you the option. I also had...news." he paused, considering, "I will be leaving Ravok soon to go to Syliras. Perhaps it is a foolish choice considering that I'm basing this entirely on a dream, but it provides an opportunity for you to accompany me and get out of Ravok."

He offered her a brief smile and a wink, "Would that be something to interest you?"

[Kit Rowan]

Kit's eyes locked onto Zan, eyes furrowing as she began to process what her uncle had just said to her. The cheery glowing liquid, her uncle's new magic twin . . . "Bind for life?" She said, and there was a twinge of uneasiness in her voice. "You mean until he dies? Until you die? Or . . . ?" Is there no difference? She wanted to ask, but could not choke it out.

When he was finally finished, Kit crossed her arms and huffed. "I know that," she said. "But there's a difference between taking a tumble on dry sand and slippery stone. My djed, my soul takes enough abuse as it is." Kit elected not to share what she had already learned, that he had not simply . . . stumbled upon on the rooftops. How far she had slipped into that realm was not for uncle to see. "Just cause I put myself in danger doesn't mean I've gotta chase everything else mad down."

"It's cause I do practice it that I'm wary, uncle. I've pushed too far, sometimes. I know what it does to me. The only reason I'm still sane at all, is cause this is the one part of my life I treat carefully."

Kit propped herself on her uncle's desk in the absence of other nearby seating at the mention of Wrenmae's getaway plan, and she was suddenly all smiles again. "Sounds keen," she said. "And I'd be the first one out the door, but there's something that the slavers took from me when they put me in irons I'm itching to get back. I wanna take a good long while to look for it before I head out." There was something steel in her voice, something hard in her smile. They took from me and I will take everything back. "But that aside, I'd love to travel with you, uncle."

[Wrenmae]

He elected not to answer her curiosity, calmly listening as her demeanor shifted and changed with his news. The edges of his mouth offered her the suggestion of a smile, but a preternatural coldness settled in his veins. Much like before, and their entire lives, Kit avoided contact with Wren. Perhaps it was that she somehow sensed he was marked of Vayt, perhaps she subconsciously registered that those who fell ill around him had a common link.

But he had been nothing but supportive and helpful to her in the years they interacted, and she treated that with an almost flippant disregard and casual coldness.

Wren stood and walked around Kit to the door, placing a hand against it before turning. "Your caution for the mystical arts is admirable, Kit, well thought out. But I wonder." He turned back to address her and crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow. "Do you believe me to be mad? I practice many of the magic practices and yet I don't seem to show the signs of insanity that you're so quick to point out." Her eyes followed him at the door and as if to show he wasn't barring her from leaving, he stepped away from it.

"But this isn't a matter of magical practice, more a curiosity. You hesitate to touch me, you avoid prolonged activity with me, and I don't find it a coincidence that you have politely turned down my offer to accompany you out of the city that, not days ago, you would do anything to be rid of."

Pulling back the sleeves on his robe, he held out his hands and arms to her, brandishing them. "Am I diseased, Kit? Is there some terrifying reason you fear to be close to me?" He was calm, collected, but there was an almost growl to the back of his voice. Wren was frustrated.

"You'd held me at arms length since we met...and only seem to seek me out when I can perhaps do something for you." Looking away from her, he checked the window, saw no soldiers standing in the street looking up and turned back.

"Do you have an explanation for that?"

[Kit Rowan]

So he wanted to be serious, did he? Kit let her smile slide away, sloughed off the desk and crossed her arms. She closed her eyes, rubbed her forehead and sighed. Kit had supposed that there was some sort of understand between them about this . . . But it had been a long time since Kit had spoken with her Uncle. Years since they had both left Alvadas. Maybe time had helped him forget. She didn't want to just lay it out like this, in a way that might end up hurting him.

But . . . She supposed now he had asked for it. "Uncle," she said, and she tried to make her voice soft, to steal any edge from her words. "Why don't you tell me?"

"I'm not stupid," she said. "Maybe this has changed since, but . . . People always got sick around you. Always. Remember?" She did not mention Wrenmae's adopted parents. That was a point she thought did not want to hammer home. "Kids get sick, but they always got more sick around you. You're my uncle, and I don't mind a bit of ill fortune floating around you sometimes, but you can't expect me to just ignore it."

"It's not just them. I got sick too. Nothing too nasty, mind. A cough here, a fever for a few days there . . . Remember when you found me practicing reimancy on the rooftops? I scraped my leg on something on the way home, and I had to have it cleaned. I had to stay off of it for a week."

"Maybe you've been sick before? I've never seen it." She leaned forward. "It's awful. One day you're jumping and leaping, running and laughing, and then you spend a little while in the rain or the cold or some asshole coughs on you and then . . ." Kit grimaced. "If I'm sick, I'm miserable. There's not much else that can make you so helpless. It takes me from feeling so strong to so weak. And I've never even gotten super sick before! When my papa came to live with us, he could still carry me.Then he got sick, and I had to carry him. Can you blame me, really, for being wary?"

"And . . . Think hard, Wrenmae. You've given me a lot, and I'm thankful, but there's not a thing I've taken that you didn't offer first." She breathed in deep. "Call me a bitch if you want, or a bad niece. You wouldn't be wrong. But don't talk to me like I'm a petching leech. It's just nice to have someone who actually knows who Kit Rowan is. You're the only person in the city who knows what I am behind illusion and tricks. You wanna know what I visit you for, here? It's not fancy magic cloaks or gold. It's that. Someone who can remind me I'm an actual person."

She leaned backwards, let herself fall against the side wall. "If you wanna know why I'm waffling on the trip out. It's . . . Remember my Dad?" He had died of a wasting sickness. This she also did not elaborate on. "He had a book, last thing he ever left me. Slavers took it up north and did something with it, I dunno what. I can't let Ravok take anything more from me. Ravok's taken too much already. I'll have that book back." She bit on the last word like it was steel. "Remembering that is what's so so conveniently leaving my questioning."