[Environs of Avanthal] Guises of the Mind [Stas]

[Tabarnac]

guises of the mind 67th Summer, 511 A.V. East of the Port of Avanthal Even in the dog days of summer, the city of Winter erred below freezing temperatures, and now as evening gathered the temperature plummeted. The flora and fauna of Taldera were well suited for such weather: trees whose xylem and phloem flowed even when water hardened into ice, animals whose thick fur and layers of fat protected their innards from Morwen's kiss. But the trees were dreaming in the gloaming, the animals curled up in dens and burrows with their families. Only the insane or the desperate were out and about when night came, Leth being more tolerant of cold than Syna. One man walked the snowy tracks taken by hunters and animals, trailing breezes of his own creation, muttering to himself, to the growing darkness, to the cold, to anything and anyone who would listen. Why he was out in the first place? Only he could answer that. Why he hadn't gone back to the everwinter city when the light began to fail? Well, he was following another light. It hadn't been quite lightning, nor a flare or recognizable beacon. Perhaps it was magical, but whatever it was, it called to him, to his bones and his blood more than to the mind that failed him from time to time. This was not the realm of the trickster god, but the ice queen was divine and the lands hereabout were used to bearing up the weight of gods and demons, direwolves and the aurora borealis. But whether a bolt of balefire or a will o' the wisp, he trudged on toward the end of the proverbial rainbow. He found a creek, its water still running thanks to the summer, and followed it toward the sea, toward a cleft in the high, rocky hills. It was only then he recognized that not all of the winds were his.

[Stas Grigori]

Hours before Stas found himself walking into the deepening clouds of chill, he was at his home. Circling and muttering and snapping at himself while he chased around the room he had known for more than a decade for training and study. Within were leftover notes, scrolls, stains and memories of his tutelage. Stas was snatching and tearing through anything he could get his hands on. “I have been a pupil, disciple, student, and apprentice, all of that buffoonery since I was in the early teens and what do I have as a result? Some magic tricks, fancy letters and just enough clothes to keep my bollocks in place during winter. Did he do anything for my maddening hallucinations? Not a chance there! I had to spend a year of travel, lose my horse, and live in that entirely loony city for months! Even now, they aren’t removed from sight and I have yet to go two weeks without having a, hah, flare up.” He certainly looked the part of the deranged wizard pacing about his ivory tower. Missing the ivory tower, cloak and everything besides his great stomping boots was beside the point. Anyone who spent half a moment looking in the room would notice that there was no reason why the loose papers should be flittering and flapping around a closed space. He was surrounding himself with air currents, just for something to drain mental focus. Anything to distract him, to find an escape. “There will never be any peace for me until I can sort myself out. I am so entirely filled with sickness and disgust and bile at feeling so lost and confused and directionless... Why did he leave me with so much and so little? What the petch am I actually supposed to do? What do I want? What am I good for? Why am I always torn between wanting someone around, and feeling a complete lack of interest in most people? Does any of this rubbish even matter?” The long and short of it was, Stas was having his teenaged developmental and personal identity crisis, a little bit late in life. No amount of reading about how one could improve their inner peace through meditation, worship, physical exercise, artistry, what have you, was going to make any difference at all to his life until he started acting. His endless pacing and literally wind swept seeking came to an end when he sat down in the centre of a great pile of parchment and dust and a ruined book cover, and gave the most petulant and childish sigh you could imagine coming from a grown man. “The only thing right now I know I am strong and good and have any aim at, is the power my will controls. The air and the land bend upon my focus, but how much? For all my work and discipline, do I know what I cannot do? My teacher had always said beware the whispers, the pain and the agony of using too much. That in such a way lay more madness than I could understand. It cannot be worse than now, and blast it all I will have at least ONE firm, reliable answer about myself. How strong am I, in wielding the sky?” The only way to find that out, at least that he could think of was to go seek out the sky. He was barely cognizant enough to grab his heavy coat before sliding out into the encroaching night. The often brutal cold that came with the sinking of Syna would not discourage him tonight and he met the rush of icy breeze with a puff of his own will directed gusts. He had only been following the idea of going out of the city to look for luck and the forms of likely clouds and wind and snow and frost, but for reasons beyond his thinking he made his way to the port. “Nothing to be found. Just more cold and somewhat lovely reflections of the tips of Syna on the water. What am I even doing here?” With a shake of his head he was gone and moving east. It was then that oddness he felt took some kind of form in this world. A flash or trick of dying day light or some strange mental trick showed up just beyond him, and he found a grin to light up his gaunt cheeks. His steps got faster and he was out of the safety of the city of ice faster than he could have imagined normally. But whatever mystical speed, whether helped by his fending off the air around him, or by the desire that was no longer gnawing quietly at his consciousness but raging and thrashing for answers for something new and filling and satisfying, he was into the wilds. There, alone amongst the winds and shadows and lurking blackness that loomed before Leth’s full rising, he found out what seemed like yet another new mischief of his mind. Stopping in the midst of a divot between the hills, he looked around even while he knew Leth would not give enough light to see fully just yet. He drew his will back and waited to feel the wind. “I haven’t even done anything that feels like effort; does planning to exert myself bring on tendrils of madness? Blasted wind is moving with a mind that isn’t mine and certainly isn’t this normal wind. OI! Is there someone trying to screw with me out there!?”

[Tabarnac]

His trek had not succeeded in keeping him warm. The numbness grew from his fingers and toes, and any rational person would seek shelter with the signs of a cold snap and the oncoming night. But a rational person would not imagine the sudden sense of being watched, a hot gust of desert wind that smelled of burnt sand, the salty bonesnapper, the humid, turbid jungle breeze, or the one that smelled of grass and horse shit. Voices whispered in each wind gently buffeting him from all directions, dancing with him for a brief turn and then fleeing to talk about him behind his back. Invisible people were tell-tale signs of paranoia. But there had been that light, hadn't there? Or was he only a sad idiot, a husk of a man burned out by magic he didn't understand, couldn't hold? Lights, invisible people, olfactory hallucinations. Perhaps he had never left Alvadas after all, but had sailed home in his bathtub, forgetting to breathe as he submerged himself. It was so easy to second- and third-guess himself, a thousand times, a million times. He had lived among Ionu's tribe. He had experience on his side. A stinging gust of wind slapped him out of his reverie, some temperamental wind wanting attention or some such. Perhaps that gust about his house had heard him boasting of his ability to control the sky, was daring him to prove it. Was the wind laughing at him...? Silly, ineffectual Stas, who could not hold it together. The invisible eyes multiplied, countless tiny judgments laid at his feet before moving on, replaced by others. The weight of their presence grew, threatening to blot out breath and thought. And wouldn't that be blissful? Were these his thoughts or was something intruding on the dubious sovereignty of his mind?

[Stas Grigori]

Most of the time, Stas could call himself reliable, sensible and perhaps even a keenly aware sort of person. This night was not such a time for him. He strode on through the cold while the night broke around him and cared not for his stiffening digits, or for the continually lessening chance that he would find a safe path home and warm. Compulsion became consummation for what he could only possibly imagine were the Whispers came around him from every possibly way. Words that made no sense to Stas, teasing, insults, what sounded to be a screech at one point without any echo. “I am getting sick of this now! I can deal with the flickers and tendrils of fire tormenting my vision, but you creepy wind voices need to –“ he stopped flat out as a sharp snap of the breeze came and he felt that he was just been lashed across his cheek. It set him off. The voices did not quiet in the least; they grew less and less intelligible, and started to feel more akin to invisible faces and heads floating and swirling around him. He kept walking, trying just a little more to push them out and away. ‘Wait. What did I come out here for if not this? If I can shove these wicked whispers of the wind away, why even bother with storm clouds?’ Stopping as suddenly as he had started, he looked around. Pitch dark would have been overstating how little he could see, but darkness did not frighten him. At least not when he was so consumed like this. Sluggish fingers and tightening wrists were lifted up and a steady cadence of breath rose and fell from his nose now. His will was pressed out amongst the whistling, teasing air, and he struck back causing the sky around him for several yards to screech as if a great gust had to force itself through the opening of a small bottle. The shrill, penetrating whistle of air did echo around the hills, and for a moment he felt the peace of the air around him, the silence following a great noise and rush of power. A smile of hope started tweaking his lips as he looked about again, as he brought some of the wind beneath his will closer to his body, simply wanting to feel more of something he knew he controlled. He even slowly rotated his hands back and forth, as if caressing small orbs against his palms. A small trick he tried to use less and less, but right now he used it like a stumbling man reached for a crutch. He had not yet used his reserved, not yet sunk into the agony that would come with the fringes of his skill with the magic, but he was not together tonight, and he felt the urge more than ever for something to feel sound and strong about. "I may just be shouting to myself, but I'm not yet mad enough to think that alone would shut you up!" Though why Stas felt that shouting at the top of his lungs into the pitch dark at non-existent people taunting him would give him such security...Well he was felling quite mad after all.

[Tabarnac]

The air around him held, buzzing with energy as if it was fighting the influence of his res and, by extension, his mind. For a moment, the breezes ceased entirely, even beyond the bubble of his control. Then they returned with a concerted effort to rip him to shreds, pelting around him in a spherical whirlwind, bits of rock, wood, and snow swept up in the winds, hiding him from whatever ambient light might otherwise have found him from stars, the unrisen moon, and the nearby city. It might have been his imagination or the stress of his will and his circle of influence being slowly crushed closer and closer to an implosion, but he could have sworn the shriek of the wind was in the shape of his name. And that plangent voice, that razor chorus, seemed to be screaming for his blood, for his death, for restitution for his petty attempts to control the freest things in the world, the winds. When the end seemed truly fucking night, Stas managed to rally, calling on reserves from somewhere. The detritus flew apart, snow exploding around him to clear the ground on which he stood, but his victory was short lived. He didn't even have his breath back before invisible foes struck him thrice: one behind the knee to throw him off balance, one falling blow to the face that send him down to his knees, and then a blow to the ribs that left him wheezing, his face pressed into the freezing cold grit. Thunder boomed in the cloudless sky and the weight of Presence grew a thousandfold, threatening to crush the spark of his soul beneath it. "Stas," said a choral voice, rumbling like thunder, whistling like wind. "You wish to wrestle with the wind?"

[Stas Grigori]

“This…is…. new.” So he panted the words into the frigid earth that his nose was planted in. He laid there with his face is the freezing dirt just trying to get a hold on what had just happened. For half a moment, his will held, and the res he made had repulsed the angry winds and made a ring of peace. Then a force that felt alive came and struck him to the ground. And that voice…’What moves around Avanthal like this?’ Snorting he was brought to some sort of sense by the impacts but he was still furious about the skies attacking him in this way. Shoving up to his feet he let out this great sigh, and with it a great rush of res went out and swirled about before his chest. Staring out at nothing besides his own long hair whipping around his head, he found his voice against that feeling that was around him. The skies had screamed at him. Had attacked him, lashed him and even felt as though they hit him fists harder and colder than any man or Isur’s even. And now, it had spoken to him. ‘If this is a hallucination…It has to be doesn’t it? But it is unreal, more vivid and crazy than anything I’ve ever had. It has to be something to push through. Breathe, focus, and fight it off.’ Not knowing if something would come out again to strike him from his feet, he sent the res to swirl around his face, and to repulse whatever air it could. Stas knew better than to make it some bubble, but he could make it go fast enough to keep from being slapped again. So he hoped and intended. “Wrestle. Fight. Match. Whatever you want to call it I don’t care anymore blast it and you all! And whatever you may be, I will find out this petching night what I am worth, and if I have to blow half the snow in Avanthal into the sea I am going to find some way to live, some answer that I can live with. Curse you things. You mind twisting tendrils whether you are alive or be figments of my own self. I can learn all the same, just like in that shifting land of real madness.”

[Tabarnac]

The violence of the wind faded as quickly as it came, down to gentle breezes that caressed his barrier of res. But it could not be entirely impermeable else Stas would strangle himself, and so he couldn't help but smell the scents coming on the unseasonably warm gusts of air, things that reminded him of other places, other times: the hot, salty smell of the Suvan Sea, the tang of cold sweats after a nightmare, the unique scent of his mother. Brute force was not the wind's only weapon, it seemed, whether this was real or imagined. A breeze slithered through his dubious defenses, and through his hair like fingers. Then air seemed to push inward on his cloak of swirling res, and suddenly lightning struck around him: once, twice, thrice. Burning branches fell, surrounding him with barriers of torchwood. Sparks rose up like schools of fish to swim about him, but he was used to scenes of fire. "We know you," said the winds. "You will submit to us and to our Lord. Your hubrissss..." and the sibilant his of fire melting snow, of air moving through pine needles, was all he heard.

[Stas Grigori]

The aromas were a surprise. He did not think he could imagine those up, but they were filling his nose anyhow. Sweet then hot then the tingling touch of salt up his nose, even the weird, sticky kind of stank that brought images of his bed in Alvadas to his mind. The wind that snuck in did not spook him right away. It was warm, especially during this cold night, and it felt as though the tendrils of the sky were gently fingering his hair. ‘Is it mad at me for not being cleverer with the wind? Oh, wondrous. The fire is back again, and there is of course, no hope that gentle peace could have lasted more than a chime is there?’ With a clearly irritated snort he shook the shock from his arms out. It had felt to him as though all the space around his form clenched in for a moment before the lightning struck. He winced at the sudden violence the bolts were, but there was a resigned familiarity to the way he strode over to the blazing wood lying around him. “Hubris? You mock me with this old trick, and accuse me of hubris?!” Standing before one of the flaming branches he paid no heed at all to the heat pulsing out from it. He reached down with utmost confidence and plunged his left hand straight for the burning end and into the fire. “WHAT THE PETCH!?” Stas flung himself back from the fire with a furious scream of pain and abject shock and sunk his left hand down into the snow as fast as he could. Looking rapidly from his stinging, aching hand to the fires around him he felt the new cold sensation of worry slide up his back and into the base of his skull. Without his proper focus, his swirling shield faded away, but the reintroduction of the full touch of the breeze was lost on him. “Alright then. Who is your lord?”His voice twitched when he spoke. Never before had there been a physical component to his hallucinations. Walking boldly into the flames was part of the way to combat them. His mind was flashing with the thought that it couldn’t be real, but he had never been burned by the flames before.

[Tabarnac]

"Stas," said a new voice, or it might have been the same. It was choral, yes, like a thousand winds howling at once, but hushed as a whisper at the same time. It was strong, but compassionate, like shards of ice tearing through his madness and numbing things as they went, calming him. The world seemed suddenly heavier, that feeling from before only more pronounced. A god stood here, ancient and powerful, not a man at all, though mannish in shape, made of rain and cloud, his veins lightning. "Your mind was not ready for Ionu's truth. You reached too far too fast and still you struggle with the least of My servants." He paused, observing the aeromancer in pain and struggle. "You are not broken beyond repair, though you cannot know what new shapes you might assume in the fixing. But struggle on. There is no life without struggle." Again He paused. "Do you still wish to master Me, or would you accept a lifeline in the sea?"

[Stas Grigori]

“There…is only one thing that you can be…But no.” Stas jerked in a sort of shocked relief as the figure came into existence. There were limbs of some form to be seen, lit by the power of living lightning that could only signify the presence of one god amongst the pantheon. The pain of his mistake with the fire was already forgotten, and his mind was focused in a snap on the great rumbles echoing into his ears. He could not accept what it was, what it meant, but he found that he was unable to push it down or away or fight off the impulse to listen as though the words crafted from the screaming winds. “Or rather the screaming whispers” His thought-word barrier was fading, though he felt less crazed as the words came from him, as he expressed and addressed towards the dark figure. He felt more collected, though the sensation of being entirely lost in a swirling mire of mind fog did not leave. “I am not afraid of the struggle. I don’t care one petching way or another if I’m broken, twisted or otherwise. But if you can give me something that helps me to know just one thing that is true and solid and worth knowing or doing…Then I want the line.” He was in that state of mind after a partial snap of the mind. Still lost, in his own thoughts so he felt, but overall he was clasping quite literally at the air for something solid to stand on. Focused on the words as he was there were small signs of his continuing strife popping up while he spoke. Particularly an oral tic where his tongue would stick out into the cold air and hang there, halfway past his lips before being drawn quick as a flash back into his mouth. Thoughts such as his asking for the help and therefore indebting himself to a god, that he may actually be considering begging for service and direction even if it was against his own deep desires. Such things were not found in his mind. Considering that he had no idea what he wanted other than to keep working with magic and to feel more at peace with himself and to have something he saw as worth doing to do, it was not surprising that his mind was fairly blank.