Completed Visionary Tribute

[Kuvarakh]

60th day of Winter, 512

He was eager, almost giddy. It had been pestering him for weeks now. Truly, ever since these Ionu's Stars first appeared. When he had amassed a number of them together, they had reminded him of something, but the subject had eluded him until a few days ago. Now that he had finally grasped the nature of the inspiration, he was glad that he had resolved to gather the little glowing beads, in the quantities he had, in anticipation of figuring it out.

It had been his good fortune that he did not need particularly bright ones for what he had in mind. He had been using his billowing sailcloth "kite" to gather them up for a number of projects in the shop, job contracts, for the most part. He had spent a good portion of his work bells every day collecting them. He and Wanda had come to an agreement as far as the shop getting the brighter ones and himself taking the milder ones. This extended to the stars gathered after the workday as well. It was only fair.

At first he was going to make one large tribute as a goodbye gesture before relocating, with The Order, to the town of Riverfall. Then he had his mind changed about moving by the memory of past hostility there, combined with his genuine reluctance to abandon Wanda at Alchemmia Alchae. But he was not sure it was the best thing to stay, either. So he decided to make TWO tributes, one for each location. One in honor of the birth of The Order, here in Alvadas; and one in honor of its growth, to go with them to Riverfall. Then, whether he left with them, or stayed as their agent here, it would not dilute the gesture. And it would give him time to decide whether he wanted to stay or go.

At least this effort did not really require any elaborate 'purposing' of the beads, he envisioned them as marble for sculpting. The actual sculpted subjects had already been finished. The only reason he had 'purposed' the beads into marble as well was to have less transmutational variety to deal with. The fewer aspects you needed to alter, the quicker and 'purer' the results would be. It was really only the colors he was trying to manipulate.

He had already spent a number of activations combining colors to obtain his blocks of black marble. Now it was time for phase two.

[Kuvarakh]

His walk to the Acumen Asylum the next morning was interrupted a number of times by colorful orbs of light floating or whipping brightly by. He chased down a few of them, letting them go if they required a drastic departure from his path through town. But managing to ensnare another three of medium luminescence and one bright one. There was still plenty of call for them back at the shop.

By the time he arrived it was mid-day, and many of the students were breaking for lunch, a break scheduled more by the faculty than the students. He received a number of stares as he crossed the campus, a strangely empty affair of jumbled rooms, seemingly tossed around at random, some stacked atop each other in disregard of the fact that there was more than enough open space to accommodate them all. Stairways led to dead ends and some rooms were half sunk into the ground, accessible only through the windows, which was no more odd than the fact that they had no doorways anyway.

There were areas entirely roped off, yet the "ropes" were often just crawling vines. The areas were treated as if the ropes were truly intended to designate the places "off-limits", however. The ropes extending out into the grounds beyond what was necessary and student and faculty alike took pains to walk around rather than cut the vines back.

Kuvarakh shrugged, it was not as though space was at a premium here anyway. His shrug also served to set some of the more uncomfortable students a little more at ease. There was a spooky aura here and his undead appearance did not take away from it. But his casual disregard for it touched a nerve of relief to some. It was as though they had expected him to begin "haunting" the grounds and were eager to connect to the ease with which he dismissed it as so much foolishness.

Not dismissing it this way, however, was the person he had come to see. Miss Rihea taught carving, among other things. She seemed drawn to the bizarre and macabre side of things and always expounded on the mysterious and unexplained elements of life and death. She was drawn to Kuvarakh like an embalmer, rarely looking him in the eyes, but never taking them off him. Running her fingertips on any exposed skin and muttering about the "cold touch of immortal death" as though she longed to be witness, victim and perpetrator of her own death over and over again. Kuvarakh had no doubt she would take the Daek-nuit ritual in a heartbeat, but she had never asked.

"Your carvings are ready, sir. My academic interest bids me ask what they are to represent. Feathers? Carved of wood? To stand for the long rest of the body as it is reclaimed by the soil? The feathers, the earthen mattress of the grave, as it gives the soul into the ground? Do the trees give our souls an avenue to the chambers of Lhex? The souls reborn on the winds which shake the leaves from the trees in Winter? It is Winter now, Mr. Kuvarakh. Do the feathers represent these floating leaves? Do you believe that souls are released in Winter to be reborn in Spring and throughout the coming year? Do you think then, that harvested wood, holds trapped souls? Is this why so many houses are haunted?"

Kuvarakh smiled patiently, "There are haunted houses made from stone as well, Miss Rihea. I lived in one not long ago." He held up his hand to forestall her eager request, "I'm sorry to tell you, the unhappy soul found her answer and has now moved on. There is nothing to see now."

Miss Rihea's face fell, "Aaah, the pity. Still, a stone house may only hold a more recently deceased inhabitant that had not yet even found the trees." her voice grew hopeful as she spoke.

"We can only hope." he humored her. "However, in this case, it represents a sign given my group as a sigil of our organization by Ionu himself"

"HERself." she countered.

"You may be right, Miss Rihea. If I ever meet her, I'll ask him." he winked. She chuckled and called to one of her associates, who led Kuvarakh to the cart where his two wooden carvings of a single large feather mounted on a base were lashed down. The students in her carving class had spent several weeks completing them. They were of a semi-exotic wood, that was especially suited for carving. The initial, specially cut samples had been six feet high by four feet wide by two feet thick and were a good three hundred pounds apiece.

Though they were probably less than half that now, the original cost had been 50gm per hundred pounds. Added to that was the cost of a woodcarver's wages to have Miss Rihea turn her regular curriculum to this project at 5gm a day for three weeks. All told, 300gm for the material, 100gm for the work by her students and another 50gm for the delivery made 450gm for the two subjects. It was worth it.

[Kuvarakh]

He gathered dark-colored stones as the cart moved slowly back to Alcemmia Alchae and set them on the bed with the giant wood-carved feathers. 'May as well let you get acquainted now.' he mused to himself, knowing they would be united in alchemical bond soon enough.

He got back to the shop and Wanda looked up, a touch of sadness showing in her eyes despite her efforts to repress it. "So...you're going through with it, then?" She had left the ring available for him. The current job contracts had been filled for now. She set to separating the Ionu's Stars into two groups, 'bright' and 'dazzling'.

The cart driver helped him carry the first "feather" into the shop, all the way to the back room. "I haven't decided yet." Kuvarakh answered her. "I've been remembering some difficulties I had there a while ago. The Akalak are a long-lived race and the mistakes I made there are not likely to have been forgotten by a couple of them."

By this time, the cart driver was calling to Kuvarakh to take his end of the second one. Wanda brightened noticeably at the sight of it. Kuvarakh smiled at her, his voice straining somewhat with the effort. "Now don't get all teary-eyed on me. I said I haven't decided. I simply decided to make one for here as well. In either event, there will be a remembrance of The Order's beginnings and it's reach to new horizons. One here, one there. I may still very well go."

"Oh..." Wanda muttered. She took a deep breath, a slight shudder betraying her emotions. "I hope you decide to stay. You've been an inspiration to me. I can probably find a replacement for your skill, but not your enthusiasm, or your innovative creativity." There was an awkward moment of silence. Wanda was clearly yearning to say more, and Kuvarakh waited a moment to allow her.

When the moment dragged, he turned to go back and bring in the stones, sparing her the embarrassment of further strained silence. She loitered awkwardly as he carried an armload in. "Anything you'd...like me to do?"

"You can do the corresponding activation on the other one with the other bunch of stones, when I finish this one, if you like. I want to get a combination of the stone's cool smoothness and dark color and the wood's resistance to crumbling." he explained.

Calculation and result projections swept aside her emotions for a moment as the gears turned in her head. "You're going to need more stones then, don't you think? You'll still get slivers from it with just this little bunch of rocks."

"That's what the little black marble blocks are for. I've got two follow-up activations for each feather. One for the nice black color and extra stone quality. Then the one to add the rainbow glow effect. I don't want to risk the black marble blocks until I know this is going to work right." He went to his private closet and took out a decorative, silk-lined box. Opening it, he lifted out the unique black feather that shone a rainbow of colors when stroked.

Wanda came up beside him and marveled at the Stygian black feather, at her touch, a swirl of colors gleamed as though just beneath the downy surface. "Remarkable." she sighed, "A gift from Ionu himself, you say. Every one of the original founders of your Order received one from out of thin air?"

"HERself" Kuvarakh corrected, with a wink.

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh brought the two carvings into the shop, with the help of the cart driver. Wanda helped with the stones and brought up two blocks of glass from the storage room below. They placed the glass and some of the stones in founts with one of the carvings in the center.

He began, as usual, by pricking his finger and sliding it slowly along the ring, starting near one of the founts and stopping at the keystone, letting the sensation of friction on his fingertip trigger the inertia of movement within the ring itself. It always began as a very slight tickle of movement, but that was always enough now.

As the djed gained acceleration, Kuvarakh's perception of it focused within his subconscious as a whirlpool. When there were properties to be filtered, the funnel of water would have protrusions, usually boulders, jutting up through the surface. With Kuvarakh's mental focus as guide, these would catch the undesired properties and cause them to flip free of the vision. They always had the appearance of shipwreck flotsam, but Kuvarakh's certainty that they represented unwanted qualities in the accelerated djed ring had not let him down yet.

This time, though, there was no filter, so there were no protrusions. But he perceived that there must be some property that needed to be removed. Usually it was easy to see it, but this time the unwanted quality was more subtle. The water had a strange look to it, a broken look. There were ice patches separated by gaps. In a back compartment of his mind, he puzzled over this. There were no frozen aspects to this activation. there was nothing thermal related at all, so what could it mean?

As the ring spun, there were times the ice patches submerged just enough to cause the gaps to fill with displaced water. They bobbed randomly for several cycles, but there was something important about it. One time around, all the ice patches submerged at once and the displaced water filled the gaps perfectly.

He understood suddenly what it was about. The stones were several pieces in one fount. Was it possible that the quality of being in several pieces had been manifested as a djed quality in this activation? You didn't always know how and when djed was going to surprise you. He was starting to feel tired. He realized he'd normally be about done by now.

If only they had thought to put something in the filter, something broken into pieces. It would need to be made of a different material altogether than any of the items in the founts, so that the property of being in pieces would be the only "related" quality it could filter out. But for now he would have to improvise.

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh pulled his perspective of his vision back, away from the swirling water. It became a part of a larger body of water, an ocean it seemed. He let it shift off center. More and more off, until an island appeared, a volcanic island. A volcanic island with a flow of lava just reaching the water in a roaring, bubbling geyser of reaction to the heat.

Fatigue began to pick at his concentration. He spent more effort than he could afford ingraining the image of the hot, bubbling, steaming water in his mind. Slowly he started bringing the original projection of the image back into position. He had to stop every few seconds to reconfirm the mental image of the heated water. Eventually, he brought the image of the ice patches together with the hot water and focused on the certainty that the ice would melt.

The sounds began to stutter and wane and he could feel his knees wobbling and buckling. He could no longer be sure of the image as it spun with his equilibrium. It was not just the whirlpool anymore. The whole image spun in a kaleidoscope of blues and grays, sky and water, deep and shallow, light and shadow, clouds and foam. The roaring of the water was embellished by the hum of an impending blackout. He heard something like his name echoing as blackness began to border the vortex of his djed perception. A last desperate surge of effort gained him no surety of success as blackness swirled in and overtook his consciousness.

Some sliver of awareness confirmed what he was expecting. The sound of Wanda's voice, strained with worry, but emboldened with a veil of bravado, "You idiot. What do you think you're doing? If it's not going to work, you can always try again later. You don't need to push yourself into a damn coma! One of these days you're going to soil your pants while you're laying there and I'm NOT going to go to the trouble of slipping a mat under you then."

Kuvarakh waved a hand deliriously to acknowledge her comment. "I...wouldn't...expect you to." he gasped, spots beginning to clear away from before his eyes. "Only...two of the...carvings. Couldn't afford to...let one...get...ruined." He started to roll over in preparation for getting to his feet.

"Oh, I see. Better to ruin your SELF then. How silly of me not to have seen the reasoning." Wanda said as she pulled one of his arms over her shoulders and helped him up and over to a chair. Her sarcasm was not as heavy as usual though, and it was only a moment before Kuvarakh realized the chair had been strategically positioned.

Before him was the result of his effort. The dizziness was replaced by pride and wonder as he gazed at his feather carving, now strikingly deep and dark, the surface polished and translucent, a sturdy, blended look of dark wood and onyx, equal parts grace and stablilty. The feather based inversely, the weight on the convex curl of its vanes, the tip curling up at the base like a cupped hand, the back extending five feet up behind it, ending with the down and quill at chest level.

Wanda's sarcastic smirk became a genuine smile of appreciation."I've gotta admit, it's gorgeous. Maybe worth knocking yourself out. I'm sorry, Ku, I thought you had two made so you'd still have one after you screwed one up." she winked.

Kuvarakh chuckled, "Thanks for the vote of confidence. But no, I'm going to make a second one, but I need a small piece of leather or cloth for the filter."

"What? Why? There's no leather or cloth involved." She said, knowing it was obvious, but guessing it still needed to be pointed out. Kuvarakh took a moment to explain that the trouble he had encountered was due to the fact that the quality of being in several pieces had needed to be worked out of the djed alignment. So he wanted to take a small sample of something, cut it into several pieces and place them in the filter fount.

Wanda returned from the storeroom a few moments later with a small square of silk. Static electricity caused it to stick briefly to her hand as she handed it to him. He started at it in shock for a second, then broke into a wide grin.

"What?" she asked hesitantly, but with a hint of eagerness. She could always tell when her assistant was having brainstorm moment.

"Well, I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to get the reactive rainbow effect into the feather. I mean, it's no problem simply getting a rainbow color pattern permanently. But I want it to be unseen until you touch it, like the actual feather itself, and now I know how I'm going to do it!"

[Kuvarakh]

He brought up two of the round-bottomed ceramic pots Wanda had had specially made. They were not expensive and they were always used in pairs. Wanda had a couple dozen of them. He also brought up a wooden pole about eight feet long with a hook attached to the end, and another one only a few inches long. Wanda also had a number of sets of these.

Their purpose was to allow something to be put in the pot and shaken or swirled by someone holding the other end of the long pole. The hook was what was attached to the top rim of the pot so it could be twirled or shaken without the person being dangerously close to the accelerated djed stream. The matching pot, pole and hook were in the filter slots to counteract the presence of these items in the founts. All this was to make it so the items IN the pot and the movement they were subjected to were the only qualities imbued into the receiver at activation.

In this case, it was a couple dozen of the mysterious "Ionu's Stars" beads that had been circulating around Alvadas during this Winter. They were floating in water, which was being swirled by Wanda during the activation. The water in the filtered set was not intended to be swirled. Again, this was to filter out the presence of water, but to allow the movement itself to be retained.

As Kuvarakh began the deep meditative phase of the activation he saw, as usual, a wide whirlpool. A portion of his subconscious was gratified to see what appeared as brightly colored fish darting in and out of the water, moving independently of the inertia of the whirlpool itself. He put his focus into the acceleration now. As the water whirled faster and faster, the bright dots within did not seem affected by it.

As fatigue began to tug at his concentration, Kuvarakh released the ring and the djed snapped into the center, into a large sheet of silk. It showed small orbs of color dancing and spinning along its surface. Kuvarakh smiled weakly as he rested to regain his breath. Time for the last phase.

[Kuvarakh]

He waited until the next day for Wanda to get some rest. The two of them rolled the dark, semi-translucent stone-like feather carving into the ring and let it down gently. Now that both stone and glass qualities were imbued into the original wood carving, it was considerably heavier.

Before embarking on this program, Kuvarakh had run a similar activation on a smaller piece of wood, with smaller pieces of glass and stone, and found that the remaining wooden property still kept the end result from being too easily cracked or chipped. This was important to him due to the fact that he was going to repeat this entire process on the second wood carving to send with the guild members when they moved The Order's base of operations out of Alvadas. It would be a bumpy ride in all likelihood, and he didn't want it to break.

He took a fair-sized square of silk and placed it in the filter fount. This piece did not possess the swirling rainbow effect that the second, larger square possessed. This second square needed one last bit of treatment.

He had spent some time while Wanda rested experimenting with building up a good charge of static electricity in the silk. He found it quite easy to do by rubbing it against a variety of things. One particular piece of modified fabric seemed to really serve well. The silk actually clung to it when he lifted it away. This was exactly what he was hoping for and he simply carried it over to the fount.

Some of the charge arced when he pulled the other fabric away, so he tucked a corner of the silk under the acceleration ring and rubbed the other fabric on it vigorously again. This time, the weight of the ring held the silk down as he lifted the other fabric. There was a fair amount of popping and crackling as he pulled the fabric away, but there was clearly a great deal of charge left in the silk. It was time to begin.

He initiated the spinning flow of djed in the ring as usual and allowed himself to slip into his semi-meditative state as he oriented himself to the motion of the acceleration process. The sound of wind and water became the backdrop of his thoughts as he let the ring take on the whirlpool effect that he had come to instinctively associate with the process of alchemical djed acceleration.

The water took its usual course of growing smoother and clearer as the blending of djed became more and more complete. This time however, there were subtle streams of spray the seemed to reach across the gap to tug on the far side. Occasional sparks shot across the maelstrom. Fortunately this didn't happen too often, as Kuvarakh subconsciously tried to force a visualization of this NOT occurring with any frequency, as he feared it symbolized small releases of the charge.

He didn't go to his usual brink of exhaustion for this same reason. He felt sure that the static attraction property had been successfully imbued into the carving now, and didn't want to chance any more sparks and arcing. He released the activation and fell back to let the djed snap into the ring's center, where the carving was. If it worked as planned, the attraction of the static charged silk would be present to raise the colors to the surface upon touch, the way the silk would rise with static charge as you touched it. But the actual textile property would be filtered out.

He took a moment to catch his breath. Wanda's voice alerted him as she gasped. At first he was alarmed that something had gone wrong. But when he popped up to see what she had gasped about, she was standing in the ring, running her hands along the edges of the giant feather figure, eyes wide and mouth open slightly in a delighted smile.

"My gods, Ku, it's beautiful!" her voice was intense as she brought swirling patterns of color racing along the edges with her touch. "Not just prime colors, but you've got blends and pastels, they change as you watch them, even as they reach your hand, each orb will shift colors or blend with others, and it shifts back to being that deep, glassy darkness when you lift your hand away."

Kuvarakh stared in satisfaction. It was nothing more than decoration truly, serving no practical purpose. Yet it served the most important purpose of all, and the one most in line with the guild's designs. The demonstration of magic as a means to create beauty alone, with no agenda of manipulation or ambition. Something to bring even a skeptic closer to lowering their prejudices against users of magic.

He took out the original feather and ran it with his finger along the edge. The two vessels mirroring each other in mystery and splendor. He felt a spiritual warmth fill him for a moment, and thought that perhaps Ionu was smiling at him. Perhaps he would make a gift of it to the temple.

But for now, he thought, setting aside his satisfaction, it was time to repeat the whole process and make the second one.

[Whimsy]

Kuvarakh

Experience	Lore
+5 Alchemy	Ionu's Stars
+1 Philosophy	The Acumen Asylum
+2 Meditation	Planning Alchemic Endeavours
	The Quality of Djed in an Alchemy Experiment
	Exhaustion from Creation
	The Power of Mental Imagery
	Magic to Create Beauty; not to Gain Power

Comments
Extremely detailed without sacrificing poetry and grace. I love your style of writing. I gave you the philosophy because of your brief conversation with Miss Rihea - it was very well written. Please subtract 450gm from your ledger for the carvings. PM me if you have any questions or concerns.

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