| Present day Location: Ortal's home, The Spires The writer's hands unscrew the cork from the ink vial. It takes time and its difficult for them. The worn skin, cracked and wrinkled, barely cover bones that have seen too much use and even more abuse. They don't work as well anymore. The cork is removed from the vial and the right hand dips a quill into the substance, tipping it off on the edge of the vial before placing it onto the piece of parchment on the desk. The writer's left hand holds the parchment in place as he begins to write, the scraping noise of the quill's writing end moving over the rough texture of the parchment. |
| Summer, 2nd, Year 464 A new chapter in life. A new start, a new beginning. A chance to do things differently. For some people it was exciting to start over, to do something different. For the Undrykas, it was a means to an end. He had wanted something but it was impossible to get it where he had been so he had moved on. Focused and with a goal, a reason. He had gone through the entire process of entry into Sahova and it hadn't been easy. The people here hated him with a passion. What had looked to be a new beginning was in reality just more of the same. The first fifteen years of his life had been roughly the same. Everyone around him hated him, dispised him and never let an ooportunity to hassle or yell at him or reprimand him slip by. But he was here for a reason and he was going to see it though. And that reason, that goal he had in sight, had a path to it. A path that went through wizard Taren Alter, an examplary nuit when it came to nuit thoughts and actions towards living people, or pulsers as they were called here. It had all been explained to him, how he would stay with this person for almost half a season, 40 days and nights in his service. For a short moment, the Undrykas had thought he would learn a lot from this man and was more than willing to learn. The master had been assigned to him to teach him, or so the Undrykas thought. His connection to the nuit through his study lasted only a few minutes. "A pulser? What am I going to do with you, pulser? I don't need pulsers like you in my lab. You better go home before you even start, pulser." It seemed like the man was very fond of the word pulser. Due to his time spent in Zeltiva, the Undrykas felt like he was allowed a little more than just being called pulser. He spoke up, a mistake on his part. "My name is Ortal Drykas, not Pulser." The master seemed to explode. His eyes spewed fire at the Undrykas before his cold fist hit him right on the nose. The punch threw him to the ground and the master stood over him. The kicks rained down on the Undrykas, his face, shoulders and chest got hit over and over again until the master stopped, bored. It was the first and last time the Undrykas spoke up. His first few days were spent getting used to the immediate area he would be spending his time in. The laboratory, the sleeping area and the common areas. He memorized the routes from and to all places and made sure to keep a mental list of places he was not allowed to go. It had only lasted for a few days, but the Undrykas had already returned back to his younger self. The quiet lump of meat sitting in the corner, shunned and taunted by everyone around him. He threw himself on his teachings, on the research of his master, absorbing every little detail he could while working. Of course, his time was spent as nothing more than a slave. Every time something went wrong in the lab, the master lined the apprentices up and had the living ones, the pulsers step forward. A good beating later, he would ask who had made the mistake. As often as the pulsers made mistakes, the nuit apprentices were to blame as well, but every time, the pulsers got a good beating first. The Undrykas spent his time sweeping, cleaning the laboratory and simply surviving. It became obvious rather quickly that he was not here to be taught anything. Whatever he wanted to learn, he would have to observe from and steal from the others. He watched the master and the higher apprentices as they worked. He observed them through the day. From the outside, the Undrykas looked like nothing more than one of the golems here. Silent, just doing its job, lifeless eyes and with shoulders hanging, defeated. But inside, he was watching, learning, surpassing. He observed two apprentices working with a bone, it was bent in a strange way so it wasn't human, that was for sure. With a sharp carving knife, one apprentice was making incisions into the bone, cutting out a round like shape. With precision and skill, the man... or unman? The nuit carved symbols in the circle. The time to make the item took a few days, at least. The Undrykas observed through it all. For the first dozen days or so, the new apprentice to master Taren Alter did not learn anything at all from the master. But he learned on his own. With a knife he started carving out circles from his wooden bed, practicing on his own. He cut out a general circle first and then started to shave off small pieces to detail the circle more as a circle and not a group of different lines together. The first circle took him a few days to carve, the next one took him a day less. With practice, his circles were carved quicker and quicker. But carving wood was easier than bone and carving wood was not malediction. So the Undrykas used the time his master was not around, which was not often. Sometimes he was called away for something called the reacquaintance or something. That was the time when he practiced real malediction. He looked at the half finished projects on the tables, observed their circles carved into them. At first he only saw carvings, different forms and shapes but nothing interesting. As he looked at more projects, however, he saw that these carvings were actually pictures, images. They depicted things, some good, some bad and were all limited to the circle on the bone. The Undrykas had little to no time off in a day and most of his time off was used to catch up on sleep, which he seemed to miss a lot of under Master Taren Alter's guidance. Days passed, came and went, without leaving a marking of time. There were no windows in the lab and the Undrykas had no idea how much time passed. The candles and torches provided light in the lab and they helped him with some semblence of passage but nothing helpful. And then he had his breakthrough, his first assignment. All the nuit apprentices were working or out and about, doing chores for the master. Only the Undrykas was not doing anything important at the time. "Pulser. Come here." The venom seeped down from the words. He quickly followed the order and walked over to the work table. There were no instructions as he watched how Master Taren Alter carved a circle out of the skull on the table. A single one, no markings, no images, nothing. He prefered to not waste words on living apprentices. He handed the knife over, together with a stack of skulls that the Undrykas did not recognize. "Carve them." With the master gone, the Undrykas was trying to get over his initial surprise. What was he supposed to do? Carve them did not really tell him much? Confused, he set to work. With the knife in hand, the Undrykas started carving. The bone was of a different texture than the wood he had been practicing on and his first attempt caused the skull to crack over his circle. Afraid of the consequences and afraid of hiding the consequences, he put it aside. In his eagerness, the second skull cracked as well as his carving tool went right through the bone. Breathing and relaxing himself, just like with projection, he slowed his mind and focused. It was just another carving. With the carving tool in hand, he set to work and started removing chips of bone, slowly, making sure he didn't carve through the skull or damage it otherwise. The little pieces of bone started to move from the rest of the skull, shaved off by the hands of the Undrykas. Slowly but surely, a quarter circle was visible. It was easier than expected. And from the quarter circle, he made a half circle. And the half circle turned into a full circle. The bone was easy to work with, little resistance but also prone to cracking if too much power was applied. The finished skull went to one side, away from the failed pile. The next skull went through the same process. Bone shavings and chips came off the skull as the Undrykas worked on it, carving out the circle, slowly. He got a feel for the amount of pressure and power he could apply safely and started to get into the carving. The circles were finished faster and he attempted to detailed them off, making them slightly rounder by shaving off the corners and edges of the circle. His skill was far from what he had seen from the other apprentices, let alone the master, but he managed to make circles on the bones, albeit with a slight blocky feel to them. The pile of completed skulls grew and grew every time he finished another skull. The pile of failed bones managed to stay at three, one more accident added to the pile. He already knew how this was going to end. The last skull was added to the pile of finished ones. With a three to one ratio of succesfully carved circles, the Undrykas was proud of himself, considering it was the first time he ever done it. But his pride lasted only for a short while. The master returned later on. The Undrykas had spent the rest of his time cleaning up the carving bench and the ground underneath it, getting rid of the bone chips and shavings. "Pulser!" The dead voice of his master called for him. He knew it was addressed to him. "What's this?!" Always yelling and always angry. "You good for nothing bag of meat!" The Undrykas didn't even have time to answer the question as the punch hit the side of his face and nose. Blood splattered over the fist and onto the ground as the Unrykas hit it with force. Another round of kicks that he tried his best to avoid without looking like he was avoiding it. After a while, the master got bored again and turned to his bench. He tossed the failed skulls into a bin and focused on the other nine. The Undrykas coughed and tried to get up, hurting everywhere. The blood from his nose and lips ran freely down his chin and dripped onto the floor and his clothes. Pushing himself off the ground, he wiped away the blood, licking over his lips to see how badly they were damaged. If he didn't hurry and got back to work he would get another beating for being lazy. Or for being a pulser. At the end of the day, or around the time when Master Taren Alter decided it was time for a break, the Undrykas finished his duties. Gathering all the bins and cleaning them out. He emptied the bins one by one in one of the general waste dumping areas. The cracked skulls were lying in the next bin he picked up, staring at him with hollow eyes, taunting him. Taking a quick look around, the Undrykas reached in and pulled them out, pocketing them for his own practices. If he wasn't going to be taught anything useful here, he was going to claim it. Constantly looking around, he walked to his room. The bed was completely carved out on one side, circle next to circle over other circles. He looked at the failed skulls, the cracked surface and the unfinished circles. With the knife, a crude tool that was not made for carving, he practiced. He finished the circles, applying pressure from the inside of the skull to prevent it from cracking further or breaking. The circles were quickly made. From there, he didn't really know what to do. He remembered seeing the images but he had no idea what they meant or what they did. Without knowing their purpose and without knowing the origin of the skull, the Undrykas didn't know what to do or how to continue. With no other practice to benefit from, he continued carving out circles from the skulls, one next to the other. It seemed like the circle was the beginning of everything. The skulls turned into cracked, circle riddled surfaces. The knife cut and chipped at the bone, taking off small pieces with each motion. He left the circles crude and semi round, as they were not perfect. By the time he had finished the last circle on the last skull, the Undrykas had already gotten used to the motions and almost made the circles without thinking. Over the course of the next few days, he attempted to learn more about the images. He watched, from the side, how the apprentices carved out images of creatures, of things and shapes he didn't recognize. He got a smack on the head every time the master caught him doing it but he didn't stop. Sweeping through the lab, he had good reason to be everywhere, cleaning up after other apprentices, cleaning the floor and emptying bins. It gave him good reasons to be close to other apprentices and observe their works. On the far side of the room, away from the master, he approached one of the other apprentices, also a nuit. "What are those for?" The nuit looked at him, curious and worried. With a glance past the Undrykas and towards the master he whispered back. "Later." That was all he got for now. With nothing else for it, he waited, cleaned and took care of the lab. Almost as soon as the master announced that he would be away for a few bells, the Undrykas reapproached the other apprentice, almost like a puppy. "Fine, pulser. But if you ever tell the master I will kill you." It didn't sound like an idle threat. The Undrykas nodded, attempting to hide his eagerness. "Through malediction we try to bring out aspects of the previous owner of the body parts and out onto the wearer of the object. This is done through these images." he tapped on piece of bone with a circle filled halfway with images, still in the making. "For example, this one. I'm trying to draw out the strength of the creature, so the images I make are about that strength and how good it was. Positive images draw out positive effects... usually." And that was the end of his lesson. It was more than he had received before, though and he happily accepted it. "Thanks." The Undrykas moved away, leaving the apprentice to his work. With one of the... borrowed skulls in hand, the Undrykas looked at it, observing the circles. So the images are about the creature and the effect that the maledictor wanted to get out of it. As he had no idea what or who the skull belonged to or what effect he wanted from it, he simply started imagining images in the circles. A creature with strength, something with large arms, lifting a boulder. It was crude, to say the least, as the image was formed with what limited skill he had in the trade. There was no detail and the creature looked blocky. But it was just practice, not a real malediction. He was taking mental bits and pieces from inside of the circle, slowly forming the image he wanted. He looked at the image in his head, the idea of a malediction attempt. And he hadn't learned a single thing from his master to create it. It became more and more obvious to the Undrykas that his apprenticeship here wouldn't do him much good if he didn't act towards it. His master was already useless. Time passed as the Undrykas worked under Master Taren Alter. The 40 days he had to spend as an apprentice were already passed but neither him nor the master had decided to set him free, to let him become someone elses apprentice or to try out for the next rank. Master Taren Alter would never let him go, not alive at least. But why would someone stay with a man who had no value to them and who did nothing but belittle and torture them? To the Undrykas it was simply the way things worked. He was, after all, the exception, the one person everyone could hate and dispise without any problem. It was how he had spent the first fifteen years of his life and it was how he saw the world. Other people were simply more fortunate than him, where more priviliged than him. People often put others into boxes, labeling them with names to signify their importance. The Undrykas' box had always been all the way at the end, after the dogs and the cats, after the pigs and the chickens, that's where his box had been all his, short, life. For the Undrykas, the time he spent in the lab was starting to shift more and more into a self service learning experience. Having realized that he wasn't going to learn anything from his master, he simply started teaching himself. He peeked and copied motions from other apprentices as they worked, he observed them for days on end, noting their steps and tasks in his head, writing them down whenever he had some time for himself. To keep himself busy with things besides sweeping, the Undrykas took it upon himself to organize the whole lab whenever he wasn't actively cleaning. It allowed him to stay closer to the work benches while he was 'working'. The labs were a complete mess. Nobody cared what was where as long as they could find it on their own. Whenever there was a free working table, the Undrykas sat himself to it, first putting all the tools aside and clearing off all the bits and pieces of skull and bone, dusting off the shavings from the table and into the bin. With the table cleaned from the little bits and pieces, the Undrykas started on the tools, cleaning them and organizing them, the carving knives first, in order of thickness of the blade, then the other tools. Some tables had more tools than others, some tables only had a set of carving knives. At first, the nuit apprentices were confused as their work benches changed over the period of time that they weren't working. But they soon got used to it and seemed to appreciate the Undrykas a tad bit more. The only one who wasn't happy with his meddling was the master, of course. The situation had been strange. All the tables and desk were organized regularly except for the master's. The Undrykas did not want to get beat up for trying to help the nuit. Instead, he got beat up for -not- helping the nuit master. The beating he received was so bad that he couldn't move the day after and continued to hurt for the rest of the week. The Undrykas quickly decided to organize the master's workspace as well. During that time, the Undrykas spent every waking moment he wasn't working on practicing his craft. He came here for a reason. He had been a little misguided and naive when he first had arrived but not anymore. The skulls he had borrowed from the bin were covered with circles and shapes had been carved in most of them. The progress that had been made in the craft was easily visibly in the images. The first one was more blocks fit together, very square shapes with no detail at all. The latest one was recognizable as a humanoid creature with big arms, lifting a boulder like object. Practice was important to the Undrykas, as he had never been taught how to learn something. He never had to until he had come to Zeltiva first and Sahova afterwards. He pulled the carving knife out of its hiding spot behind his bed and put the skull on his lap. There were no carving benches for him, his master would never allow him to use any of them for some reason or other. Usually out of spite. He set himself on his bed and held the skull with one hand, the knife touching the inside of the circle. Carefully, the tip of his tongue sticking out between his lips, he started cutting into the bone. It was a feeling he enjoyed, it was different from carving wood. The bone was not as hard as one would think and the knife cut it with relative ease. He sharp edge of the knife scraped away at the bone, taking off small pieces at a time. He never could spend one slot of time on it, always little bits and pieces. Never a chance to truly focus on his work. With the knife he carved a small half square half round shape to start from, the boulder. From there, two long lines moved down, the arms, connecting it to another shape, the chest, almost the same as the first one. Between the two, a round shape was carved, the head, connected to the lower one of the two large ones, the chest. The design was as simple as a child could think off. There was no need for details or intricacies. Just practice. From the lower shape, two more long and slightly thiner lines were carved, the legs, very small. The Undrykas held the skull as he worked. His palm was firmly on top of the skull as he pressed it down into his leg, making sure it couldn't move at all. His fingers were spread out over the sides of the skull. His thumb was dangerously close to the carving knife but he didn't pay attention to it, which was his own mistake. Pain flared up through his thumb and hand up to his brain. The knife had slipped out and cut through the thumb, leaving it bleeding from the wound. The blood trickled out of the wound, on the skull, slowly moving down over the circle he had been carving in. Grumbling at himself for not paying attention, the Undrykas sucked on his thumb, tasting the blood in his mouth. The pain was annoying, not painful enough to really hurt but with enough presence to be distracting to the young man. And without his left hand to hold the skull, he couldn't complete his work. Mentally cursing at his stupidity, the Undrykas wrapped a quick bandage around his thumb and went to try and get some sleep for the few chimes that were left of his break. The Undrykas' first real touch of malediction came from his own experiment. To him, it was just a bone canvas, a place for him to work on and mess around on, to practice. He never expected it to turn into an actual maledicion item. The creation of the item had been an accident, literally, and the discovery of the item had been by accident as well. Pure luck. The skull had been lying on his bed, the circles carved all over it visible from a distance. One of the circles was slightly darker, where his blood had trickled over it from his wound, which was still throbbing on his thumb. As the skull was completely covered in circles and carvings, there was no more use for it to him and he was planning on throwing it away while doing his duties. In order to do so, he grabbed onto the skull, his fingers in the empty eye sockets for easy transportation. Falling often hurts and it was not something the Undrykas was immune to. Unlike most things in life, the Undrykas was not the exception to this rule. But things were somehow different this time. As he picked up the skull, he suddenly found himself on the floor. Blinking in surprise, he tried to get up again, tried to move but his entire body felt like it was stuck to the ground. He had trouble simply moving his arms. It felt like something was pushing him down and tried to flatten him. An invisible weight pushed down on him as it trapped his arms and legs and made it incredibly difficult for him to breathe. Panic took hold of his heart and he tried to shout for help but no sound was made. He only chocked more. In his panic he tried to move, tried to squirm, tried to do anything. His fingers slipped from the skull as he squirmed and suddenly the entire weight was gone, his body free to move as he wanted. He crawled up, grasping for the bed and breathing heavily, coughing as he tried to calm himself. It took him a while to get himself to calm down. Whatever had happened had been strange and the Undrykas was still half in panic. He couldn't explain it and therefor he was scared, scared of whatever it had been. His mind went out and imagined invisible man eating creatures trying to get him. With wings. And fiery eyes. And claws like knives. He managed to get his mind back where it was supposed to be and got up. Still shaken, he focused on his task ahead, trying to get his mind of the panic and fear. He grabbed the skull once more to clean it up, his fingers slipping into the eye sockets. The next moment he smacked onto the ground again, his body squashed down by an invisible weight. His mind quickly returned to fear once more. He squirmed and wriggled on the ground, tried to get out but nothing worked. He let go of the skull as he tried to push himself up with both hands and found no resistance as he rose again, pushing up from the floor and scrambling away. His eyes darted across the room, like a trapped animal looking for the way out. On the floor in the middle of the room, the skull looked at him, the empty eye sockets taunting him. In a fit of childish rage, completely unjustified, he got up and ran over to the skull, planting his foot firmly on top of it. There was a loud breaking noise and the skull shattered into pieces under the impact of his foot. |
| Present day Location: Ortal's home, The Spires The quill is put down, resting on the writer's block near the top of the desk. The hands of the writer rest next to the parchment for a moment, tired. The left hand reaches for the little pouch and takes out some of the contents, sprinkling it over the parchment. The mixture of sand and wood shavings suck up the excess ink and drying the words into the parchment with a slight brownish tint to them. Both hands works to close the ink vial again, leaving it there for now. The scroll is picked up by the writer's left hand before he moves to the side of the room, where he places it with the other scrolls resting on one of the many book shelves in the room. |
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