[Library] Mutual Benefit (Dieter Heydrich/Asheny/Vallux)

[Vallux]

Summer 67, 510 In one solitary corner of the largest library in Syiras sat a lone figure, reading. He had sat there day and night, without pause, for more than five years, his head never moving from the books laid before him by the librarian each morning. Once every other day he would step into a small side room and do something that involved many liquids, from the sound of it, and now and then he would perform some minor alchemical function with the materials available in the library, or else Animate some minor object, but otherwise he would read. Every day, all day. All that was known was that the being was a Nuit and that he never spoke. His belongings were in a pack next to him, with a small box strapped to the pack, and a waterproof cloak next to it. In matter of fact, people had come looking for him several times, wanting to know details of what the world was like immediately after the Valterrian. He ignored them without exception.

[Ash'eny]

If the rumors were true, which stood on a fair balance between being myths and truth throughout his life, there was, as was described to him, a man that had been in the library for days, never moving, speaking, eating, sleeping, or giving into any 'other' biological necessities. Ash'eny typically had no interest in books, he could read, not that he was a professional at doing so or that he knew every word in existence, but he could read, chose not to though. However, today he was here to check out this myth, the man-statue, the one that didn't eat or sleep. If the rumors were true, he sounded like a dead man, and so many people claimed to have seen him, Ash'eny had to know. Sifting slowly through the library, Ash'eny scanned through the spines of the books, he of course was not really looking at them, but was trying to find his target, the man that doesn't move for days and days straight. After his scanning of the library, he decided there was a single person that seemed to fit that role, Vallux. He was in the corner, there was a mound of books on either side of the man, his face was hidden by one that looked fairly thick and made Ash'eny shudder lightly. Ash'eny reached up with his left hand and slowly ran his four fingers through his brown, short, curly hair, the he moved towards the Nuit (though he was doubting that this man was anything but human and believed the rumors to be false). "Hello, my name's Ash'eny. I heard you haven't moved in days, is that true?" Ash'eny grinned as he stared at Vallux from across the desk. The Beggar and Thief felt an odd presence, perhaps an imaginary chill, but he could have sworn there was something strange about this man.

[Vallux]

Vallux turned a page and kept reading, the presence of a human next to him registering but not particularly caring. It was only when the human started talking that he paused for a moment. "No, years. I am Nuit. Leave." With that, he got back to his studies, reading through the scroll in front of him - an extensive list of alchemical formulae - in the manner of someone who knows quite well that he has the rest of eternity to get it right. Interestingly enough, as he took notes on a scroll with him it was obvious that the handwriting between the two was the same, despite the first scroll being old enough to be crumbling around the edges. On further thought, this wasn't so strange, since Vallux was by his own admission a Nuit and probably very, very old.

[Ash'eny]

"Years, I see. I guess the rumors are true then. You are one of those dead people. I've never met one myself, or at least I don't think I am. You haven't read everything here yet? The petch you lookin' for anyway?" Ash'eny, curiosity getting the better of him, as if he was no more than a child in grammar school, slowly cocked his head to read the title of one book resting on Vallux's makeshift work desk. "Alchemy? What's that?" As Ash'eny spoke, obviously not paying attention to Vallux's cold command to depart from him. He lightly tapped the book that was once red, but had began to fade and wear an interesting brown color, perhaps residue from 'alchemical' experiments. "You know, I don't think I've ever even seen magic. Being dead and all, I bet you have some kind of magic keeping you... well, alive and dead at the same time. What did you call yourself? A newt?" It was fairly difficult to ignore the obvious differences in these two people. Ash'eny was a young man, curious, yet almost childlike, and Vallux was cold, serious, and only the Gods know how old. Ash'eny just didn't quite comprehend the situation he was in, or how serious it was to the Nuit.

[Vallux]

Vallux sighed. The human really would not go away... That was strange, or merely indicative or mortals' general predisposition to impatience. "If it will quiet you and make you leave, I will show you Alchemy. And I am a Nuit. Look it up." Taking out a scroll, Vallux opened it to a sectionwith two circles on it, one inside the other, with runes throughout. Two small triangular pieces of wood were attached to the circle directly opposite each other. There were, strangely, three spaces devoid of runes, two on the side where there was a small 'I' outside of the circle and one on the side where there was a small 'O' outside the circle. On one side he placed a dead black widow spider and a small piece of leather, on the other he placed a small sliver of half-rotted wood. A single gold Miza went into the middle. "Watch closely, I do not have the materials to repeat this." Pricking his little finger, Vallux let a single drop of his ichor collect on the tip, then pressed it to one of the triangles. He concentrated on increasing the Djed flow throughout the reaction, the flow going through this particular circle in such a way that the spider and leather were founts. Though Vallux was a competent Alchemist he was by no means an expert, and it took him several minutes to get the flow up, not as fast as he could, but to a very specific speed. At the end of the time he drew his hand swiftly away from the circle and directed the flow of Djed inwards towards the gold Miza. There was a small flash of light and the spider and leather crumbled, while the Miza seemed to gain a greasy sheen and became slightly flexible, which Vallux demonstrated when he picked it up and bent it into a 'V' and back again. "The spider and leather are fonts. The spider has given its poisonous properties to this Miza, the eather its flexibility. The wood absorbs the qualities I do not wish to go into the Miza, such as the organic component of both and the coloration of the spider. I have deliberately weakened this reaction so it will have a half-life of five minutes, since carrying around a poison coin doesn't appeal to me all that much. Now you understand the basics and now kindly shut up and leave me alone."

[Ash'eny]

Ash'eny wasn't quite understanding what the man... uh... Newt was saying, or doing for that matter. Ash'eny, instead of speaking or or doing anything, stood there silent, watching as a child may watch something as simple as a wheel of color spinning rapidly. Each motion by Vallux was being absorbed by Ash'eny's eyes as he watched, his mouth felt almost like it was drooling inside as his lips tightened up, sealing his mouth to keep any said saliva from spilling out. As the scrolled was pulled out from somewhere, Ash'eny took a step back, watching the parchment unroll and be lain across the table. The various symbols, shapes, all meant nothing to Ash'eny, much like some sort of puzzle that had no indicators of how, where, or why it matched together. It was probably as obvious as the sun in the sky that Ash'eny was missing one main thing, knowledge. Ash'eny would have been just as lost if he had tried to watch a mechanical engineer point out a blueprint of some small gadget, or a doctor revealing the in depth points of human anatomy. A prick of the finger revealed his blood. Ash'eny watched, it wasn't red. Ash'eny was amazed just by that as well, the blood in the Newts weren't red! This was crazy! Who would have thought that some rumor about a man that doesn't sleep could turn out to be a Magical Newt! Ash'eny smiled now, realizing just the possibilities, the situation, and just how is was him that was here, watching! He couldn't believe it, and became so attentive to the coin, which was now altered already, that he hardly heard Vallux speak. "Why did you make a miza poisonous? I don't think many people would eat a miza anyway." Ash'eny gave a small, soft clap, so as not to disturb anybody in the library, which probably were already disturbed by his voice if they were here. "I'll shut up now." Ash'eny nodded, but he wouldn't leave, he couldn't, not now, not yet. Perhaps he would sit quietly for a while, but the Newt had to take a break at some point right? Anyway, Ash'eny could take this moment to find a book on Newts, like he was suggested. The beggar/thief stood up and walked away, bound to return soon with a book that had absolutely nothing to do with Nuits.

[Vallux]

Vallux smiled grimly to himself as the human walked away. Hopefully it would be occupied long enough for him to re-center himself on his studies. The recent loss of his metallic Alchemy Circle collection was unfortunate, but the fact that they had been the only thing of value he had with him when he was a crucial point in his research and the librarian had demanded the monthly payment for renting the desk - one silver Miza, cheap because of the long periods he stayed in the library and the low amount of disturbance he generated as compared to other notorious inhabitants. He had needed to offer up his Circles - all of them custom-made by his own hands, labeled so he always knew where the founts and filters went, and all of them extremely inexpensive - as a compensation for the lack of rent. He could get them back when he got a silver Miza, but he hadn't had the time to get away from his work until just now. Now, of course, would be a perfect opportunity. Taking the gold Miza he had modified, its half-life spent and the poisonous quality vanished, he gave it to the librarian and held out his hand. The man looked at him for several moments, then nodded, reaching underneath the desk he sat behind and handing Vallux a set of six alchemical rings, most of them constructed haphazardly out of wire and rubbish metal that the blacksmith had thrown out. All of them were labeled in the same manner as the ink-circle he had used, an 'I' on one side and an 'O' on the other, and all of them wrapped in D-wire. Smiling thinly, Vallux walked back to his seat and began to root through his pockets for some rubbish, the sort of thing he found in garbage cans and, because of its uselessness, exactly the sort of items that would never be missed. However, because he conserved his funds carefully the bulk of his experiments had only served to enlighten him as to the combinations of characteristics possible with the contents of the average rubbish bin, and his knowledge of the applications of half-rotten apple cores in small-time alchemy was probably greater than anyone in a hundred miles of Syliras.

[Ash'eny]

Ash'eny couldn't have even been gone a full five chimes, because by the time Vallux had returned to his table, Ash'eny was sitting on a small wooden stool only a few feet away, his eyes were pouring pure pain into the pages of the book in his hands, which was clearly titled Amphibians, Reptiles, and Fish, within he was searching for his answers about Vallux the Newt (no, Ash'eny didn't know his name yet, but mistook the pronunciation of Nuit as Newt). As Vallux returned, Ash'eny lifted his head, clearly glad to take a moment's rest, but spoke not, and within seconds was glaring back at the words on those many pages. Ash'eny was not a reader, he was not fond of it, and it was torturous on his mind, but he was going to work at it, or at least read until he learned what a Newt was. It may have been a solid four chimes later before Ash'eny gently closed the book and glared at Vallux. He was a bit skeptical at first, since Vallux did not appear a single thing like the picture-drawings in the book, not a single one. He even searched beyond the pages of the 'Newt' section, and still nothing that looked like Vallux, nor anything he saw mentioned the crazy colored blood. Ash'eny pondered as she stared at the Nuit, trying to figure out what he was missing. Then he got it. "I get it now! You're like those Kelvic people aren't you? You are a Newt, but can shift into a human!" Ash'eny chuckled as he opened the book again and showed Vallux the picture on the page, which he prodded repeatedly with his index finger. "That's sorta like you isn't it? This researching stuff is pretty cool."

[Vallux]

Vallux, who had finally been able to focus on his notes and had offered up a silent piece of praise to whatever god watched over obsessive undead bibliophiles that the human had finally shut its mouth and found something to read. What it was reading was of no concern to him, as long as it was quiet. Then, less than five minutes later - people called them 'Chimes' but Vallux persisted on the antiquiated 'minutes,' a word that had died out of use since the Valterrian but which he had been raised on - the infuriating being began to speak. Again. He turned to it and gave it a look that said, plainly, "Of all the sentient beings in all the possible worlds in every universe there ever has been, is now, and ever shall be, there are exactly zero that annoy me to the degree you currently do." He didn't say this out loud, because rudeness got you kicked out of the library for a week and his portable shelter was in the back room, but his gaze said it clearly enough. Sighing once more, he silently got up, walked to a nearby bookshelf, and pulled out a book titled A Collection of Observations on the Sentient Races of Post-Valterrian Mizahar, by Saruk. It was very thick. Still silently, he opened to a page roughly halfway through the book, thumbed back a few pages, and brought it over to the human, taking the useless animal dictionary out of its hands and dropping the very heavy Collection into its lap, the page it had been opened to displaying a picture of a Nuit, with the opposite page containing several long paragraphs on the species. Vallux had written the book himself roughly three hundred-fifty years ago, barely a century after becoming a Nuit, and had waited for a few decades before publishing it. He knew for a fact that there were thirty pages of information on the Nuit alone, and their section was the shortest of all, since they were the youngest race on Mizahar when he had published the book some years after writing it. "This you will read." Having thus given the most blatant hint possible to the human that he wanted it to shut up, he turned back to his alchemical formulae and kept reading, taking a note now and then.

[Ash'eny]

Ash'eny stared back at Vallux for several long moments, and the glares he was getting from the 'Newt' were moving right through the pupils, and sending chills straight down through his spine. Eerie business this guy was. Still, Ash'eny liked him, he seemed to have an interesting sense of humor (yes, Ash'eny thought Vallux actually had some minuscule amount of humor inside of him), and of course, he was so intriguing. Ash'eny couldn't deny that this knew insight to Alchemy was just so amazing that he simply couldn't leave, or at least not yet. Before long, certainly, he would feel the needs to eat and sleep, such is the curse of having a human body, and being fully human inside of it. For now though, Vallux had his full attention, even though he clearly didn't desire it. Well, clearly to most people anyway, Ash'eny was being strangely dull today, slow to understand. Anybody that knew Ash'eny knew that he was typically cooler, a bit smarter than this. Perhaps it was an act. Ash'eny watched as Vallux stood, traded books with Ash'eny, and returned to his seat. This time, Ash'eny found out was Vallux really was. "Nuit, I see now. I thought you said Newt. So, I guess you can't change forms like a Kelvic then?" Ash'eny, of course, could just read the pages to find out what a Nuit could and could not do, but why bother with something like that when he had a Nuit right here to ask questions? Ash'eny slowly peeked back onto the paper, searching, or more so skimming, for interesting information, anything that said something along the lines of 'Nuit are known for large-scale slaughter of humanoid races', but in his brief skimming, found no such thing. They didn't seem too particularly dangerous. He did pick up a few things though. "How old are you?" Ash'eny was looking directly into Vallux's eyes now, or at least he would be, assuming the Nuit bothered to glance up at him. He was more serious now, even the tone in his voice changed, and he wasn't smiling now. "If you've been in this library for years, then you must obviously be dedicated to something. It's not my place to ask or know, but I am interested. I may not understand alchemy, but I can understand that it holds tremendous power." Ash'eny allowed his lip to hang, leaving his mouth open slightly as he hesitated about speaking more, but instead he buried his head once more in the book, reading about Nuits, and he was actually reading now. His statement was not one that asked or even expected a response, but more of a statement that was meant for Vallux to know that Ash'eny was suspicious.