Solo Lowlife and Wise Books

[Belugnir]

Summer 14th, 517 AV, Fifth Bell of Morning:

‘’Sod off, you horses ass!’’, a moment after yelling those words, Einar realized he was sitting up in his poor excuse for a bed. In his room, at the Quarter. His recently acquired injuries ached badly, and his head did so even more, filled with foggy images of a great, winged serpent that spoke to the lad in his nightmare. He couldn’t recall a damn thing more from his dream, yet he could feel cold sweat rolling down his forehead and back. His breath was heavy, out of control. It took the man a good while to calm down and shake his head away when causeless fear and shock finally melted into frustration. He laid back down, closed his eyes and tried to relax as only the truly lazy can. Yet sleep would not come.

‘’Am I startin’ to go fuckin’ mad now?’’, Ein mumbled, putting on his just barely stitched up shirt. ‘’Bloody mages…’’, it must have been their fault. He didn’t know how some prick’s fuckery with magic could mess up his sleep, but it must have been some mage’s fault. Man shut the door behind him as he left the room, with a mind to aimlessly walk the halls. While the wounds on his back and hands weren’t at all serious, they were still a pain in the arse, and would become even more so if he stressed his body before they healed properly. So training wasn’t an option. Going on a warden errand wasn’t an option… carrying around a fuckin’ crate of supplies for a lazy sorcerer was barely an option… Ack, what’s a man supposed to do on this bloody island when they can’t slave off or sleep? Ein was just barely resisting the rising urge to reach for his back and scratch at the wounds. I ought to get myself some ploughing armor the next time I go off to that wasteland… The thought idly came to him, as did the fact that he left his room unarmed, yet he dismissed that under the thought that no eight-legged, three-headed direwolf monstrosity was going to pop out behind the first corner to try and eat his arse off.

[Belugnir]

Sixth Bell, the Great Library:

‘’Oi!’’, Ein struck a bump across the ‘head’ of a waist-tall golem that stood beside one of the bookshelves at the entrance. ‘’Oi! You fuckin’ broken or something?’’, another bump, a light slap to the side of the thing’s frame, weaving in front of its one improvised glassy eye, a couple poorly composed, demanding phrases in Nader-Canoch. Nothing. ‘’Stupid useless tin can…’’

Ein left the golem alone with a dismissive swing of his hand and went down the hallway, giving perhaps only half his sour attention to the bookshelves that lined up beside him. Man wasn’t a scholar, he didn’t care one bit for the sorcerers and their sodding research. Yet he recalled reading, albeit on very few occasions, was probably his least hated pastime when he was yet a child. Nobody ever tried to barge in and gut a man while they were relaxing and reading a book. Certainly no fuckin’ mass of living, man-eating dung or a man-sized, mad-starved scavenger bird ever tried to chew a man down while he was relaxing and reading a book... Would be sodding lovely if every godsdamn book in this place wasn’t written in their ancient tongue. At the thought of the words, Ein stuck his tongue out and made a grimace not unlike that of a displeased child. Part of him still didn’t quite believe that he ended walking into the Library of all places… then again, where was he to go? No brothels, no taverns, no bloody anything for folk of beating hearts on this secluded rock. Pulser, his tongue stuck out again, every Nuit he heard speak the word did so with such an obvious tone of arrogance that it was simply revolting. Passing by a reading niche, he spotted a human girl, probably some blindly dedicated apprentice, sound asleep over some papers on the desk in front of her. After that came only more wooden and leather bound, named spines whose titles he could just barely make out with what knowledge of the ancient tongue he had.

After a couple chimes of walking through the Library without proper purpose, he decided to simply go and take one wood-cased book off a shelf, completely at random. Man had to do a slight hop to reach it, and almost ended up dropping the damn thing. Almost. As he staggered slightly to the side to reestablish his balance, Einar wondered if every wizard, golem, ghost, monster and rabbit on this godsdamn island would come to lynch him should he have actually let the book hit the floor. After about two chimes of loosely reading the thing, he decided that the self-important preaching about the proper conjuring and binding of ungodly monstrosities written by some probably long-gone bugger was of no interest to him. Giving a glance to the book’s empty slot up on the shelf, then up and down the corridor to see if any golem was gawking at him, and after supposing that the coast was clear, Ein went and took a leather bound, slightly thinner book off a lower shelf, and stuck the wood-cased monstrosity in its place.

[Belugnir]

‘’The Runed Lexicon’’, he figured after gawking at the title for a chime’s length. Thing appeared a manual of some sort... Glyphing, eh? That’s what you call their scribbling and magic words? While he did struggle to read everything to its full meaning, most of the book’s first couple of pages yielded fairly quickly across several chimes of standing by the bookshelf, buried into the pages, more out of spite towards his slightly hindered ability to read the damn thing rather than of actual curiosity.

The entry to this thin manual consisted pretty much out of a brief history of glyphing and the fact that every wizard worth their salt used to be and should be familiar with it. His thoughts mockingly wandered to the shyke-spawner apprentice he had to save from their own monster. Equivalent of reading and writing for warlocks, eh? Suppose that makes good Feto one illiterate simple fuck. With the most inappropriate of chuckles stealing itself away, he strode his way back to the reading niche, taking a seat across the way from the sleeping girl, proceeding to pay her the most brazenly lacking amount of attention. He saw a couple awful failures from apprentices he met on his occasional assignments, so learning a thing or two about how bad their failures actually were might provide for an amusing thought or two. He hazarded that time better spent than counting the cracks in his room’s bleedin’ walls.

After about a whole slightly stressful bell, he made it through the second chapter of the introduction. This one briefly listed the basic uses for runes, and spoke of sigils, groups of runes. Apparently individual symbols had piss-poor and narrow uses, and were almost always used in groups with many other symbols to provide for complex and versatile pay-offs. Makes sense. That’s why we simply go and write ‘One ugly motherpetcher.’ Instead of tryina scribble up the image of some gods-awful-looking bugger tryina bugger your old hag. Ein choked back a burst of laughter at his own thoughts. Aye, becoming a ploughin’ scholar, I am. Though he soon found himself tiring of the book. He skimmed through a couple more chapters. Each described a specific type of rune (or group of runes), and their specific uses. Things Einar would remember as:

Focus – Big-arse rune, stores and then releases magic. Doesn’t really have much of a point being drawn on its own as I suppose whatever buggery you store in it will be released the moment you store it unless you make restrictions.

Barrier - Scribble some restricting phrases ‘round the Focus. Shyke’s supposed to keep magic from leaking out.

Trigger - So if I specifically write that the barrier is to pop when I tell a whoreson to ‘go bugger himself with a spiked rod’… that’ll pop the barrier, which’ll pop the focus, which’ll let whatever whoremnongery I stuffed into it out at mentioned whoreson. Lovely.

Path - Something about connecting multiple sigils?

Switch - Really can’t bother with this lot of nonsense.

He did, however, catch that one bit that pointed out that most sigils won’t need all five of those. That, and a couple advices and examples for freshly baked glyphers. For example, that single runes could be used to ease the manipulation and directing of Djed if one were a Reimancer, or, more notably for him, a Flux user. Or that most glyphs and symbols used could vary from writer to writer, though, as he understood it, they were all supposed to be based on the ancient tongue. Man wasn’t a daft brute, but he didn’t quite tend to ponder on things such as the full potential of something he had just dug out of a heap of trash either. Same could be said for this lot of nonsense with glyphs... runes, whatever the buggering wizards like to call them better.

[Belugnir]

With those most brazenly lazily acquired bits of knowledge, Ein felt as if he could do twice as good a job at writing those glyphs of theirs than half the sodding apprentices on the island. In fact, he had already clapped the manual closed, left it on the desk, snatched a chunk of charcoal from the table beside the sleeping apprentice, and started a struggle of scribbling a roughly remembered Nader-Canoch symbol for ‘Flow’ on the inner side of his left forearm, right beside a word that he was positive stood for ‘Djed’. One’d be surprised with how quickly all thoughts of superstitious Sunberthian drunkards and their discrimination were pushed aside in favor of discovering and trying out something new and unfamiliar, even if it was the business of bloody mages. There was a fine line between dully reading about something and actually experiencing it.

After writing down the words as best as he could, which was poorly done to say the least, he decided to entwine them with a wavy arrow-like symbol, pointing toward his hand. The whole thing took up about a square inch of space across his skin… and about ten chimes to scribble up.

Then he decided to test his handiwork, and turned mind to meditation. Another ten chimes later, he broke a sweat, trying to direct the most modest amount of Djed into his left forearm and hand. While he had practiced his Flux usage on occasion since coming to the island, he never quite managed to press his energy into a part of his body as specific as a single forearm would be, and while his first, piss-poor rune seemed to just barely ease the job, seeing as he was able to focus on it, rather than literally every existing component of his arm, he found the endeavor to be as draining as trying to plough and satisfy two hoarding wenches at once. Eventually, however, an aching heaviness did come to rest below his elbow, yet it wasn’t numbness… just the crude, cramped, confident feeling that he could easily tear the jaw off a bugger if they but gave him cause to slap them… and then the feeling faded, along with his concentration. Piss-poor rune to help him or not, he had, for the first time, forgotten himself when using Flux, and made a single nod towards overgiving. It wasn’t anything severe, but it drove him into a faint drowse. One that brought with it a sour dream.

Ein saw before him the image of a memory. A man, one of the two who raised him, dragged out of his home, chained to a wooden post, beaten, bloodied, and showered with stones by an angry mob, his body twisting in ways it was not supposed to whenever a bone would break. The crowd shouting as his marred face was finally bashed into a pulp: ‘’Death to the warlock!”

[Belugnir]

He nearly fell off his seat in waking shock, taking a good while to realize where he was, and to remember what he was doing. A moment after he fully came to, Ein almost panicked in an effort to wipe his forearm clean of the charcoal symbol on it, paying quite frankly no mind to the woman who was now awake as well, and stared daftly at him, much less could he hear the question ‘’Ahem… you alright there, sir?’’

He turned three shades paler than usual while the words echoed in his head as if the most self-important prick kept spitefully hammering a church bell. ‘’Warlock! Kill the Warlock!’’. Leaving the manual behind, he stormed out of the Library, startled like a chicken, too much so to even curse under his breath as he normally would.

Only later, in the relative safety of his room, would Einar have calmed down, and at that point prideful anger with himself would swoop him. He couldn’t believe he let himself be scared out of his skin by a fuckin’ daydream of something that happened nearly ten years ago. Sunberth was a month of perilous sail away, and it wasn’t as if he’d allow himself to end up like that old fart who got stoned to death over getting drunk as an arse and openly preaching about his prowess with magic in the middle of the most narrow-minded scum infested city on the continent. I’m over you two old shits. No. I’m over the lot of all you useless, arrogant, greedy pricks.

It wasn’t a moment before he was off on a determined walk to the Market, to fetch himself charcoal of his own and several dozen sheets of the cheapest paper he could find. On his way down from the Citadel, Ein realized it was already late afternoon. Was I really at the library for so long? Matters not. The young man greeted evening in spite-driven efforts of slowly drawing some half a dozen improvised glyph sketches over a single sheet of paper. A shoddy symbol for ‘Strengthen’, ‘Restrain’, ‘Empower’, ‘Release’, half taken from what he could recall of the written forms of Nader-Canoch, half drawn out of his own, albeit rather poor artistic creativity, yet none with any particular usage in mind, all he cared for is the fact that they could, in some way, be related to raw power. He was merely learning how to walk with a new pair of feet, how to handle a brand new, completely clumsy weapon, making a proper sigil was still a good way's off. Just you wait, you whoresons. I’ll show you a fuckin’ warlock yet. It will not be long before he comes to visit the Library once again.

[Sayana]

Don't forget to edit/delete your grade request. If there's anything I may have missed, please PM me and I'll be happy to look into it.

 

Belugnir

Skills

• Endurance: 1
• Reading: 2
• Research: 1
• Glyphing: 3
• Writing: 2
• Flux: 1
• Meditation: 1
• Observation: 1

Lores

• Location: The Quarters
• Location: The Great Library
• Glyphing book: The Runed Lexicon
• Glyphing: Sigils verus groups of runes
• Glyphing: Glyphs and symbols vary between writers
• Glyphing - Focus: Big arse rune to store and release magic
• Glyphing - Barrier: Scribble restricting phrases around focus
• Glyphing - Trigger: Phrase to pop the barrier and focus when I tell a whoreson to bugger himself
• Glyphing - Path: Something about connecting multiple sigils
• Glyphing - Switch: Couldn't be bothered with this skyke
• "Warlock! Kill the Warlock!"
• Glyphing: Basic words in Nader Canoch to represent glyphs

Miscellaneous

• Charcoal (10 sticks) (-5cm)
• A dozen sheets of paper (-48 sm)

Comments: He's got such a dismissive attitude towards the wizards of Sahova, yet still decided to learn a thing or two from their books.
I also liked the little 'flashback' you added in the form of overgiving. Don't forget to be descriptive in your use of magic. Some of the glyphing felt a little hollow and not fleshed out.

Your Grader,

Sayana

Boxcode design: Firenze