[Flashback] A Taste of that Scholar's Ink

[Hadrian]

25th Summer, 508 A.V. Hadrian's cottage was a modest affair, really too small for two grown men to cohabit for long, but it was close to the Old Quarter and one could see beauty through the windows, which were open to the sea breezes. But though the sea was beautiful, especially this far from the stench of the docks, and the pre-Valterrian buildings that made up the bulk of the University were too, but his only concession to the heat that was nearing that brink where it went from luxurious to overpowering was to unlace his shirt and let the air in as he conjugated verbs and declined nouns and adjectives in the ancient tongue. "Hea," he said, meaning to reach, to look for, and to touch depending on the context. He drew out the glyph for that word, and then conjugated it, vocally and with ink and parchment. Next was "yaq", or circle, sphere, bend, and curve. This, a noun, was spoken and declined, each variant of the glyph carefully written out with careful, delicate scratches of his stylus. He was focused, so he didn't daydream, but his mind was agile and could jump down a divergent tangent if he wasn't careful. Now he was drawing a series of yaq in a circle, wondering if that would be the base for a summoning circle, but not having the proper books or professors at hand to find out at the moment. He began to weave other glyphs he knew into his little bit of art: canoch, daeq, isikai, korad, pechi, randjaq, roza. Each word was spoken, and each word became a part of a sigil. When he stopped and looked at it, he wondered if that was the sort of sigil from which one might write a Grand Oath, but he knew he was getting far ahead of himself. Only the very brilliant wizards could manage such contracts. Someday. With a sigh, he glanced out the window. Faraluun had said something about a workout, and Hadrian wrinkled his nose. One of his neighbors, a woman he had seen but never spoken to, had come by earlier asking about his new roommate. Apparently he had been working out without a shirt on. Hadrian didn't know a thing. He went back to his grammar and penmanship.

[Faraluun]

The breeze felt cool as it glided against him, raising bumps across his bare flesh. He wasn't far from the cottage, a place he had been staying in recently due to the graces of Hadrian. Ever since he had run into the young master ten days ago his day had been tightly scheduled, practically every bell in the day filled with him busied with something.

He usually reserved a brief reverie for the mornings but this one was different. The night had left him feeling particularly invigorated, and so he chose to spend it working on his technique with the blade, honing his skills to better be able to defend himself should the need arise.

Lifting the blade before him, he stepped forward slicing the elegant sword through the air swiftly before twisting his wrist and slicing it through the same path in the opposite direction. It was a flawed stroke, he leaned to far with the strike and exposed numerous holes in his defense. With his next slash he tried not putting so much weight into the stroke, and struck with the thin flat of the blade so he could better manage his defense against his hypothetical opponent. Before it was even halfway through its pass, he whipped it backwards and in low, the steel gliding only through air as he intuited a dodge.

Even as the point arrived were he'd expect an opponent to have caught back his balance from the dodge, Faraluun was already bringing his sword back to a readying position, and a moment later, he swiped it through another pass horizontally, and again diagonally continuing through with the strokes till he could hardly manage control of the sword.

By the time he was finished with his maneuvers, his bare chest gleamed with sweat, and his chest heaved with effort as he struggled to bring much needed air into his lungs. His sword felt heavy in his callused hand, and sheathing it he started back for the cottage, his teal eyes studying the modest affair. It was simple but it suited his purposes for the time being, a thing valuable that couldn't be denied.

Fingers curling around the handle of the door, he slipped through the door, offering a curt nod to the young master as he walked over to a water basin. "And what occupies your thoughts today, Master Hadrian" Faraluun asked idly as he soaked a cloth in the water before running it over his flesh, washing free the dirt and filth that had gathered there during his training exercise.

[Hadrian]

When the door opened, Faraluun came in, and when he shut the door, titters from neighbor girls were silenced. The ethaefal had fans, it would seem. Hadrian looked up again, a splotch of ink smeared up from his brow to his forehead where he had accidentally touched his face. Those blue eyes took a moment to focus, but when they did, they had a razor sharp intensity. He was clearly someone who wanted to know everything, else why the scary curiosity? He attempted a smile. "The Ukalas," he said, but, realizing that might upset an ethaefal, he added, "specifically making accords within the Ukalas to be witnessed by the gods. Grand Oaths. I'm really just practicing Nader-canoch, but that leads to forming an alphabet that works for glyphing, which led me to wonder exactly how those glyphs might be worked by a master into a Grand Oath. My mind... it likes to turn strange corners if I am not careful to rein it in." His discipline was usually intact, but today there were the breezes from the window and it seemed to distract him. "I know an ethaefal," he continued, following another tangent, "who's interested in the Celestial Language, which is, I suppose, the summit of glyphing and linguistics. The language of the gods. I had a lesson from the graphomancer, Alaihi," another tangent, "last Winter. I enjoyed the rigor, but what he was after was me learning the true glyph for my name, whatever that means. I mean, it means the symbolic essence of who I am in written form, but I have no idea how to even get there... "Ah, how was your practice?" he asked politely.

[Faraluun]

His eyebrow raised at Hadrian's seemingly incoherent speech, though he stayed quiet for a moment, washing himself as he digested the human's words. The boy was courteous and highly intelligent, but his manner of speaking sometimes left ethaefal feeling off balance, a thing not well favored by him. There was only so much he could adjust to the young master's strange behavior, though he was no stranger to circumstance. Hadrian had done nothing but good by him.

"It was only as well as it could. With no live steel to meet my blade, I fear it's an exercise in futility" He spoke mirthfully, casually walking over to stand beside Hadrian. While it was true he lacked sparring partners in a city full of strangers, he wasn't bothered by it. Simply working through the motions had suited him in the past, and with most of his time taken to his studies, he considered his return to it a necessary sacrifice. It wasn't a permanent sacrifice in any case for as soon as the call came, his time in the city would be at an end wether he desire it or not.

The papers on the table awaited his eye, his own blank journal sitting open and abandon atop a pile of scrawling that had been his first tries at drawing. It was a sore sight for the ethaefal to behold, but in a way it bolstered his resolve, his need to improve swelling. "We spoke at length the other day on exploring the uses of glyphing on summoning. I would like do that now if I might pull you from your studies, for equal exchange of course for perhaps a study later to night on what mysteries this ethaefal my enlighten you with" Faraluun spoke cooly, his teal eyes studying the master.

[Hadrian]

It was fortunate that Faraluun did not call him master in his hearing. Hadrian would not have known how to deal with that. While he would have been flattered by the recognition of all his hours of study, the more he learned, the more he realized he knew nothing at all. Nothing ever seemed to be a pure emotion for him, everything bleeding into everything else, tangents and free associations. "I can't speak to the swordplay," he said. "My little brother is the squire." Verus was in the service of Ser Evander Marster back in Syliras, but it would be some time before he became a knight himself. Sometimes he imagined magecrafting perfect arms and armor for the scrawny little Aelius boy who would protect the realm. He was not close to his family -- he didn't know how to be -- but he did care for them in his way. He began to tidy up his notes, seeking fresh, clean parchment. "Oh, of course, of course." There was only the one table, one chair, and one bed, so teaching would be strange. "Er, make yourself comfortable, I guess. Tell me what you know about glyphs and I'll tell you what I know. I don't really know much firsthand about Summoning, just the theory, but I imagine knowing about glyphs could only help."

[Faraluun]

"Perhaps you would do well to learn, we live in dangerous times" Faraluun remarked offhandedly at his comment, burdened with care for the young scholar's well being. His time of travel had seen injury to his person, and much death. The wilds where harsh, and in some cases the cities that offered refuge where hardly better. It had yet to be seen if such was the case for Zeltiva.

In any case he let the matter drop, for though he might have fleetingly wanted to shield the young man from harm, he was not prepared to argue the matter simply because he didn't think it worth the effort. He claimed no closeness with the scholar, despite the fact they happened to be residing together for the present, and if Hadrian decided not to heed his wisdom then whatever happened was not to stain his hands, however terrible it might be.

"I am comfortable standing" Faraluun replied, opening up his own bag and removing from within a fresh sheet of parchment. Notes he knew could be more than helpful when the mind was less than reliable from wearisome travel. "I find myself knowing no more than that there seems to be a massive variety of the drawn symbols"

[Hadrian]

"You're probably right," he said, but left it at that. He hadn't the time to focus on swordplay when he was attempting to soak up as much arcane knowledge as possible while studying at the University. There was always the future, and he and Azilis had cracked the Flux together, and so he knew he could at the very least flee faster than the average scholar. "All right," he said, taking a deep breath to start at the very beginning. "Glyphing is not, in itself, a discipline of magic. Reimancy is a personal discipline." He held his hand up and concentrated until a mist of blue res coalesced within, limning his skin with its glow. With a smile, he transmuted it into vapor, which quickly disappeared into the air. "Glyphing is considered a world magic discipline, much like magecrafting and malediction, both of which can use glyphing... Indeed, malediction requires a sigil. Magecrafting often does, but not always. "Glyphing," he continued, "is the use of runes and symbols to create sigils that can affect other magics, storing, releasing, channeling, deflecting, augmenting... You might see a spell stored in a scroll to be released once, or a complex system of shields maintained by a series of glyphs to maintain them in the wizard's absence. "Are you following me so far?"

[Faraluun]

Faraluun tried hard not to look stunned by the display of magic but failed. Reimancy. It was the first act he'd seen of the art and his mind reeled at the thought of producing such a substance from his own flesh. He had met rare few talented in the magic arts in his time on the world, and as always he found himself awed by any display.

His hand hastened to keep up with Hadrian's tongue, and once he finished with his scrawling, he looked up at the young master once more. "It could be seen to that one could summon remotely then, without the caster being present with the use of such glyphs" Faraluun hypothesized, indirectly answering his question while managing at last with the gesture to wipe the surprise from his face, appearing calm and measured once more. Composure amongst others was all important he'd learned amongst the hired blades he worked with more than he would have preferred.

"That is just my take on it though, please continue"

[Hadrian]

"Certainly," he acknowledged. "Most world magics rely upon glyphing, or at least use some of the fundamental ideas of glyphing to shape the magic being cast. Summoners draw circles, as do Animators and Alchemists. Maledictors scrawl a sigil into bone or other dead material to pull out some of its essence. That is all, of course, more advanced or not germane to the fundamental understanding of glyphing." He smiled faintly, liking that Faraluun's mind was agile. "The easiest way to learn, I think, is to use the alphabet of Nader-canoch, but ultimately one can create their own system of runes, or glyphs. These mean what the magus thinks they mean, at least for his or her own work. The finished product of glyphs is the sigil. Its building blocks are the focus, which stores the magic and then releases it; the barrier, generally a circle of glyphs that block or restrict the flow of magic; the trigger, a glyph or set of glyphs that activates or deactivates some other part of the sigil. "More advanced building blocks are the path, which is basically just two barriers used to guide the magical energy's direction; the switch, which can split or merge various effects." He paused again, peering at Faraluun for reaction or questions.

[Faraluun]

"How is magic stored within the glyph? Is it simply drawn within the focus, or is something drawn additionally that allows for such an occurrence" Faraluun questioned, turning the man's words over in his head. From what Hadrian said, he intuited that combining lore of certain magic's with that of glyphing, certain desired effects could be achieved with experimentation, but only with the blending of both of the magical arts.

Personal magic had a variety of uses, and possibilities it seemed, something he would have to look into when he found the time.

"Further more advanced uses of glyhping seem predisposed to the personal magics, though could it not prove true that using such 'paths' in a summoning circle could increase its power without compromising it's potential, thus making it more attractive to the world's denizens that are the target of such a circle?" He added smoothly thinking aloud while scribbling his own ideas underneath Hadrian's words he had copied to paper only moments ago.