Lore of Leyuna RPG (FRPG)

[Hopeflower]

A man with less patience might have snapped at the third interruption to his lesson. Another man might also have tried to be overly polite - lie and say nothing had been interrupted. Viho closed his eyes and allowed himself all of a second's irritation before he turned to face the newcomers. There was no need to be dishonest, but there was no need to be rude, either.

He was proud of the fact that his voice came out low and even when he said, "Welcome. How can I help you?"

[C S]

"We received word in our travels that there would be psychomancy lessons here," the dwarven lady replied to the elf. "We would like to enroll, but my little Friend does not share our tongue. All the more reason for us to learn how to speak with the mind, but a hurdle I would understand you turning down, if you would be so inclined."

Gwenviere met the curious gaze of the half-elf from the jungle. The vaun could tell there was something more to her than what appearances would share, and it was for that she felt somewhat uneasy. As if she were staring at a predator.

[The Kingpin]

"She did not tell them, I don't think. But there was an unintended result. Once Desrium realised through her absence that something was wrong, he went to the Tower, following her aura all the way to the room she was being tortured in. But by the time they were out of the tower, she was already too far gone. His first friend was also his first loss. He buried her on a cliff overlooking Aster, where she'd always wanted to visit. She had asked him not to bring harm to others, not even those that hunted them both. She told him that they had ways to 'crush one's life and spirit, but never one's soul.' It is something he carries with him to this day. In a sense, she was telling him never to give up. It was, aside from seeing Aster, the last thing she asked him to do," concluded Septimus morosely.

Another wrap. It was a difficult story to tell, much less to envision. But if nothing else, Syria's company, and the steadily waning void he felt in his stomach as he fed his hunger, helped him through it. More than once on that night two weeks ago he had wanted to bend time itself to change what had happened to his friend. But that was a foolish wish. And one that would affect all else.

[Hopeflower]

Viho cocked his head and clasped his hands behind his back. For just a few moments, he projected his mental voice as Arsenic did, so that dwarf and the rest of the class could hear. 'Not much of a hurdle at all.' He nodded to the several empty desks. "Please, have a seat. My name is Viho Deimos. I'm the psychomancy instructor."

[C S]

"Solaurn," said the dwarf with a curtsy. "Solaurn Bvadrisl." Her friend made a chirruping noise and held her tiny paws to her snout. Viho heard the thought as any other, however. "I am Gwenviere Frittlestul." The two new students walked across the floor to their desks, sitting next to each other. Dahnae cut across to her seat, which she had strategically taken next to Firel's desk. Not that she had much reason to set elsewhere back when they were the only ones in the class.


Syria wiped the dampening around her eyes away. "You know Desrium; he'll do whatever it takes to keep his word," she commented. "They say it always starts early... well... he's no different, I guess."

[The Kingpin]

"Indeed," said the Scholar, pausing his recital of the tale for a moment, giving Syria some time.

Eventually, he continued. "After that, word spread that he was a product of the Order. They themselves became highly secretive. The Order abandoned their original goal and instead dedicated their existence to weaponising their abilities, to find a way to destroy Desrium, and began hunting him across the island. And he ran. He ran when they found him, sometimes in broad daylight, doing whatever he could to escape without hurting them. It went on for centuries. Hunting teams cooperating to try and best him. One of them, Morrelie, was especially overzealous, even among the other members of that fanatical group. She's still out there somewhere, hunting him," he explained, pausing to reign in the rush of anger he felt at that knowledge. Eight hundred years...Eight centuries and she still had not relented. It had taken all the restraint he had not to decide to initiate a hunt of his own when Desrium told him of her existence, and her cause.

"She was the one who oversaw the torture that cost Ithra her life."

[Hopeflower]

Viho offered the smallest of smiles to his new students and promised, "I'll get you started in just a moment." He turned to the rest of the class and said, "As you were. Relax, clear your minds as best as you can, and I'll come and see how you're doing." The redhead waited to make sure nobody was fooling around when they should have been concentrating, stretched as best as he could, and took a seat facing Solaurn and Gwenviere.

Once he was settled comfortably, Viho asked, "So, do either of you have previous experience with magic? Anything at all is worth mentioning." While he spoke, he reached out to link minds with both of them, so that Solaurn didn't miss out on her friend's responses.

[C S]

Syria put a hand on Septimus' chest in a calming gesture, sensing his anger. At the same time, she looked up at him with disbelief. "She's still alive?" the mage asked. She was no stranger to humans outlasting generations through their use of magic. Her father and Gregori were prime examples. But this Morrelie... if she understood things correctly, that would put this mage in the range of a millennium old. A human with the lifetime of a dragon.

"Dearie."




"I have this," Solaurn replied, and reached over her shoulders to bring forth her pale slab. Bearing the sharp, angular script of dwarves and their earth-crafting runemarks, it was a rare and potent magical artifact. "I made it myself, to store mana that I otherwise couldn't hold myself. I can't do much with it yet, but I'm getting better each day. I hope so... at least."

Gwenviere shifted about in her seat, which wasn't exactly made for her kind, and pulled her feather from her shirt. She buzzed and squeaked as she spoke, but her mind, which took Solaurn by surprise, was an active and vivid thing. "I have a friend who is a Chiurem," she told the two, "This is his feather. It makes the air blow hard, and makes me run fast if I need to."

"Friend!?" Solaurn exclaimed.

[Hopeflower]

"Fascinating," Viho murmured, regarding the feather with interest. He would need to do some studying to figure out how that worked. For now, he gave the shock a few heartbeats to settle while he turned his attention to the carved stone slab and the energy it contained. "That will be useful if you find psychomancy drains you, I think. If you have no objections, I can also teach you both to draw mana from it safely."

[C S]

"B-but of course," Solaurn stammered, feeling self-conscious when she saw the others looking at her. Her start broke their concentration, but it did not take much to have attention lingering on her. She was, after all, a dwarf. If only she knew about the oddity that was Dahnae. Maybe she would be less inclined to be so critical of herself.

"I am a vaun," Gwenviere continued, grateful for the relief of being able to communicate freely. She kept on verbalizing in her inhuman way by instinct, but her mental voice communicated in a language that the psychomancer was doing well to decipher by the grace of magic. "My people live out in the woods surrounded by mountains. Our homes are in the trees, but some of us live underground. We have dedicated fighters who take up the earth as metal, in both armors and weaponry. We have scholars and artists. What else..."

She tapped her paw against the end of her snout, a gesture not unlike holding one's chin.

[The Kingpin]

"Yes. And powerful. More so than Desrium, if his last encounter with her is telling of anything," responded the Scholar, that uncomfortable lump forming in his throat at the thought. It was anger. It was sadness. It was many things, but above all, it was the thought that, if this woman were to find Desrium, he may not survive the encounter. And even the Scholar's aid may not be enough to save him.

"Eventually...he started to think that...that perhaps they were right. That perhaps he was a monster that needed to be locked away from the world," he continued, with difficulty. It was in the past, and the Desrium of then was not the Desrium of now, prone to such beliefs. There was nothing the Scholar could have said now to reassure Desrium's past self, so nothing was said. But it was the futility of what had already been that burned the Hueilin from the inside out.

downing the last of the...seventh plate of food --How had he gone through so much, so fast?--, he again resumed his tale. "It was around that time that he met a boy, who felt the same. They got to know eachother, and perhaps, even briefly, were making something together that could have been called friendship. He was found again, and the boy was used against him. He fought to protect himself and keep their wanton aggression from reaching the boy, but, in doing so, ended up striking the blow that killed him. And after that, he himself sought to lock himself away. Somewhere he wouldn't harm anyone, and where he would not lose his mind to hunger."


"The Mana Well."

[C S]

Syria was silent, putting the pieces together as best she could. When she spoke again a few moments later, she said flatly, "So the Order's mages... this Morrelie... they all drove him down this horrid path, yeah?"

[The Kingpin]

"Yes," was the Scholar's almost unusually brief response. "Get told you're an abomination enough times and you start to believe it. That much, I at least can say I share with his past. If only his tale was as...easy to live through as mine," he mused. It was an unpleasant childhood he had, that much was not in question. But in comparison to Desrium's living hell, the Scholar's early life was a blessing.

[C S]

Syria swallowed hard. "Does that mean, at the mana well... was he acting in self-defense? Did he... destroy Zuppoland deliberately, then?"

[The Kingpin]

"No, he didn't," answered Septimus as he resumed his eating. At this point, the food had lost its taste. He could no longer enjoy it.

"They chased after him with all they had. They hoped to destroy him. Instead the fools sent him hurtling into the Mana Well, and Desrium, a being that, by nature, absorbs mana, not knowing how to control his abilities, ended up absorbing a massive amount of it. The entire Well imploded when he emerged, and destroyed the island with it," he explained, sighing as he accepted the fact of the matter.

"To this day they blame him for it. They threw him into the Well in their ruthless lust for his destruction, obliterated their own island as a result, and then blamed him for it." It was clear that, despite the calm and collected tone he now bore, the Scholar was angry. Angry at the world. Angry at fate. Angry at himself for not having the power to go to Zuppoland and force them to live up to what they had done.

But he would. His quill, his inkwells, the thick, finely bound, empty book in his satchel, they all would see to it that the truth was heard. In every library and archive in Aster. Even Zuppoland's.

[C S]

As for the Daavenian, she was left feeling lukewarm about the whole affair. In one way, she felt vindicated at long last. She always thought the story that Septimus once told her was flawed, and now she had the knowledge to affirm that she had been correct in her suspicions. At the same time, knowing the truth did not bring her any comfort. Her metal friend, a hapless thing that wandered into her inn one night, had been through so many misfortunes and was steeped in lost lives, all of them tragic accidents. A victim of his circumstance, but circumstance that could not be contested.

So many people were dead. So much destruction had been wrought. And though she wished it were the case, as an objective eye, she could not say that Desrium was completely guiltless. She supposed these memories he had been keeping to himself ever since he regained them were his scars. The only possible things that could scar one whose body retained its form invariably were memories.

"Yes," Syria agreed after much thought. "Desrium's life is one of faults... flaws, if I am to use the certain words of a certain someone. But he would not be the Desrium we know without them all the same. He would not be stalwart, if I am to use more certain words from a certain someone."

She pulled herself closer to the Scholarly Elf, laying her head down on his chest.

"I'm... content, I think. I'm not happy to have learned all of this, but I don't regret asking."

[The Kingpin]

"Neither am I, nor do I. Even if you hadn't asked, I would have as soon as I was able to. In the past, he had lost the knowledge of these memories. He apparently only learned of them some time after becoming Moria's Champion, through the aid of Inarius. Between then and now...This is really the first time we've both been free to speak of such things," said the Hueilin Emissary, somewhat crestfallen. It was a sad thing, when one you considered your brother could not speak to you. More so when the reason was that others needed their attention more than themselves. Septimus realised, then, that he and Desrium had grown distant, not out of their loss of kinship, but of the sheer weight of the duties they bore. The Scholar had what amounted to a family to care for, and The Stalwart, a city, and each demanded that they set aside the pains and burdens they bore in favour of the pains and burdens of the many.

It was a sobering thought.

[C S]

"Mm," Syria hummed, "I can't imagine how my dinner-ravings of a plan could have gone now, you know? Having you be mister brittle-bones and then having to hear all of this from his mouth." It wasn't exactly a shudder, but a quiver went down her spine. After a little more time to recover from her revelations, she broached, "Do you think Desrium would fancy some honey some time soon?"

[The Kingpin]

"A barrel of it. No less," agreed the Scholar as he ate the last wrap off the...he'd lost track of how many plates he'd had, but a quick check revealed he'd indeed finished all nine. Story-telling had a knack for making one forget themselves, it seemed. But at least, he no longer felt the bite of hunger.

"You really couldn't think of someone more suitable to play the brittle-boned librarian?" he asked afterwards, a small, lopsided smirk tugging at his lips.

[C S]

"It was a dream, and you're the closest one to my heart. If I was going to go through with that nonsense, I'd have no one else with me," was Syria's answer to that inquiry. She planted a kiss on the elven-drake's cheek.

"We'll make it our mission today to find a place that can do away with a whole barrel of honey for Desrium," Syria decided without sparing a thought as to how bizarre that sentence was. "Depending on if we have time before meeting Ceridwen and picking up Beshayir, we may have a retreat to our room in store, hm? You bring your contemplative thoughts and I'll help myself to some Myrian's and we'll see what becomes of that."