[Flashback:Coren] Library Daze

[Coren]

Coren was about to say something positive about the man's reasoning and turn his attention back to the book when he suddenly felt his skin crawl, the telltale sign somebody in the vicinity was using personal magic and his gaze almost instinctively fell on the man sitting right in front of him, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. His suspicions where confirmed not that long after, Noth's palm's released a very small amount of some strange eery kind of fluid that crawled towards one of his fingers, before it suddenly burst into flames that quickly puffed out. Coren instantly recognized the widely practiced, well for a magic discipline, reimancy. And a bit of curiosity slowly made itself known but it was immediately followed by suspicion and wariness towards the man, mages didn't get the reputation, overblown or not, for being insane and dangerous to people around them for no reason. “Yes,” Coren replied, a bit of caution in his voice. “It usually is, though I don't think causing a spark inside a library just to show you are able to do it is a necessary use of magic.” he pointed out to the man, hoping that he wasn't the type of mage that would fly into a rage and started lighting things on fire just because he could. He would cause a huge amount of damage to the books that for the most part where almost impossible to replace. When the man suddenly grasped on to the little thing he said about morwen and began digging for any information about her and how her mark worked did throw him a bit off. “Well, morwens mark is just her gnosis, the bearers of it being blessed with a small part of her power.” Coren answered. “It protects us against the cold for the most part, and while I know something went on between morwen and ivak during the valterrian I'm not a snowsong so I don't really know the stories. You should talk to a snowsong if you really wanted to know more about them.” He paused for a few moments before giving Noth in front of him another weary glance. “Why would you want to know that though? As a matter of fact, why would a birdwatcher of all things learn magic?” Coren said feeling his distrust growing.

[Antar]

Noth smiled at the man, and shrugged casually."Birdwatching's a hobby. It doesn't net you any mizas. But catching criminals as a bounty hunter and sending them to Hai is a much more profitable trade even if I'm taking a break from it all for a season or two to study up on things. Morwen is one of them. I respect necessity and tough choices that others make. I've had to make a few myself, so perhaps I shall seek out a snowsong or two for the information. Morwen is just fascinating to me. A goddess who actually loves her people, and Avanthal so far is pretty peaceful. I respect that, I respect that greatly. It is a far different place then the normal chaos in other cities."

This was almost the truth of course, but hidden within the facts he said there was a slight lie about taking a season off or two. Were Coren astute enought to see through the slight pause as he explained taking time off , then perhaps the suspicion that he was in Avanthal after such a criminal might begin to take hold. But whether or not that would be ventured as a topic of conversation would be best for another time. " As for the light," He made a mistake in his vani here, saying the word light for candle. But he switched over to common to phrase his words."I did it because it was necessary to see not because I wanted to show off. Were I to have had a striker on me , I would have preferred to use it. But there is one thing I did note in your reaction, you are not that unfamiliar with the arcane yourself, are you?"

For a moment, it was almost as if "Anthony's" demeanor had changed to a simply polite man who was a bit more then the airhead that Coren had seemed to have been presented with before. His words and portrayal of himself was spoken with clarity, even at the mention of his 'job' came out a little colder then his normal carefree tones the vantha had heard before. His eyes stared straight into Coren's own as if measuring him, not being belligerent, or intimidating, but definitely inquisitive as he considered to broach the next subject to. "Of course you seem to be an alright fellow for a vantha, hardly the dangerous sort, unlike Cara who definitely had a brush with the whispers when we met. You at least and seem quite competent enough in the general studies of the arcane. I'm sure if anyone were to help lead me in a right direction towards this Auristics as well as help you out; then the pair of us would be able to find something of ... benefit to us both. So how about I offer you a chance to get to know who you're dealing with a little more? Question for question answer for answer."

He took a short breath and sighed before switching back to his pidgin speak of vani.That sound alright, Coren?"

Cocking his head slightly to one side, Noth let out a smile. " What hold are you from anyways? If the Snowsong know lore, the frostfawn deal with animals, what does your family do? What ideals does your hold cling too?"

[Coren]

Coren couldn't help but feel a chill run over his spine as the man in front of him confessed what his job was, catching criminals and handing them over for money in some place called Hai. He wasn't sure if he should have been glad he didn't know about it, but he really did feel like that way. What did rub him a bit the wrong way was the fact he was able to take a few day's off and travel from whatever region Hai was located in, no matter how far or close it was, that endeavor would cost quite a bit of money just for the supplies and travel costs alone and unless that guy was filthy rich, which he highly doubted to be honest, he couldn't just take two seasons off just to study on something he was interested in. He just wouldn't be able to survive without mony. So coren didn't buy the study idea for a second. He kept his mouth shut though, if the bounty hunter found out about it the man might just see him as collateral to whatever he was doing here. “Well if you say so,” coren said halfheartedly in response to Noth's question. “Though to be honest, it sounds like an interesting life you lead.” He added as an offhand comment. When Noth brought up that he wasn't unfamiliar with the arcane coren subconsciously stiffenend for a few moments before relaxing again. “Well, yes I know some things few things about magic, can't do any parlor tricks though.” Coren tried to clear up the things. Technically not lying since he used magic in serious situations, not as some kind of parlor tricks. “But I know for a fact that the people behind the counter have things to light the candles. Which you would have known if you asked around though.” He paused for a second looking down, seemingly thinking. “But I guess it isn't as bad as I thought it first seemed, it was just a small spark after all.” Coren said in a reassuring voice, more to convince himself that the man in front of him wasn't insane then anything else. When he looked back into the man he was a bit taken aback when the man stared straight into his eyes with a cold inquisitive gaze, almost seeming as if he was trying to measure what he was made off. When Noth mentioned Cara he shivered a bit, his parents and the rest of his anti-magic family sometimes mentioned her when talking and they talked as if she was only chimes away from snapping and killing everybody around her. Granted they said that about every mage, but usually they didn't bother connecting a name to it. “Yes I have to agree with that point.” Coren said, really hoping he never ended up like that poor woman. “But how exactly do you think I can help you? I never heard of auristics before I read that book just now and no matter what little scraps of knowledge I got about other disciplines, it wouldn't be of use, since most disciples are as varied in dangers as they are in what they do.” Coren warned the man sitting right in front of him. But even though as he tried to keep out of the man's business he couldn't help but be curious about him, so when the offer of getting more information about him he couldn't help but to try and take it. “Fine, sounds good for me.” Coren gave in, before giving Noth a glare. “But even morwen can't help you if you only give me some useless crap in return for whatever favor's your asking for.” Coren muttered the last sentence under his breath. Not really intending for the man to hear it. As the question about the holds came up coren just shrugged. “The snowsongs aren't really the keepers of lore, they are the storytellers and since most of our history is usually handed over to the next generation as a told story they just happen to have hold on the history.” He scoffed. “Doesn't stop them from exaggerating a story beyond recognition if it would make a better tale” Coren paused a bit as if thinking about what his hold did before resuming, obvious bitterness in his tone. “As for the skyglow, they are the artists and carvers. You know, the ones who doll everything in this city up.”

[Antar]

"Hmmm... so the Skyglow are the artisans of the city? The carpenter's and the makers and the shakers. I guess that was why this book was probably written by one. At least it's on architectural principles and using auristics in the detection of weaknesses with morwen's gift. Ice reaving you called it?" Noth shrugged, ""No matter. It's pretty good then I have a skyglow here who knows vani and this nader-canoch well, yes?"

Sitting back to inspect the book from afar he muttered, just loudly enough for Coren to overhear him and with a slightly pleasant tone to ensure the other man that he had heard him."Of course I'd be careful of what to do in exchange for this information. I'm not too shabby with a bow, and I'm sure you might need a bit of ... help increasing your ability to defend yourself. Even if it's not you're forte, if you travel later in life it is wise to learn how to use a bow to hunt while you're on the road. In fact it's almost a necessity unless you can fish, though rivers lakes and streams are sometimes far apart. Then again, the experience of hunting in the wilds could be good enough for a man to get their feet under themselves. There's a few caribou near the tundra, or some wild game about three days out near the canyons which dip below the frost layer, though most of the thrushes are still iced over. "Would such things interest you?"

He didn't say another word in regards to other things as he returned to the subject at hand, mainly pulling the glove back on to thumb another page in the book that spoke about several different subjects, even if it was upside down he could see the strange triad of languages was apparent to the eye. Common, Vani, and that nader canoch. In common, he could see a small introduction to the art of Auristics, but he covered up the common portion and the vani portion with a small scrap of paper to leave the nader canoch terms visible. "So, can you read that aloud for me so we might translate it together? At least maybe before you attempt to sneak out like you did from that shop in the markets?"

[Coren]

Coren shook his head at nod's misinterpretation. “No I said they where the artisans of the city, the ones who are the carpenters and in charge of the cities buildings are the iceglazes.” He corrected Noth. “So I doubt any skyglow would have written this book, unless he or she married into the hold of course.” He let a small prideful smile come on his face at the man's compliment in vani. “Well I'll do the best I can, but don't expect wonders from me, I only got a basic grasp on nader-canoch.” He pushed the book a bit back towards the man in front of him and twisted it once again on its side so that antar could read it a little bit easier, though when he heard the mutter from antar coren had the sense to scratch the back of his head in an embarrassed way, he hadn't meant for the man to hear his doubts. But still, the idea of being able to get out and stay in the woods close to avanthal not only for short wiles to get away from his parents or find a quiet place to practice his magic without any risk of getting discovered but actually for long stretches of time since he could keep himself alive out there without having to sneak a lot of stuff with him. “I wouldn't mind you teaching me that stuff.” Coren slowly replied, not bothering to muffling his voice like Noth did, since he probably just did that to let him know he found out about his little comment. “Knowing how to hunt never hurted somebody and you never know when you get stranded in some kind of icy wasteland with only the clothes on your back some basic supplies and a weapon, knowing how to use those things to get to the nearest place resembling civilization would save your life then.” Coren anwsered in a positive way, smiling a bit at the idea of him being able to go and stand wherever he wanted. He might even be able to travel to other cities and learn more, where was that city that had quite a lot of projectors just like him, somewhere to the south? He didn't really know, he did know it was called lhavit though. He just dropped plans of travel for later as the man covered a part of the book laying in front of him telling him to help him translate the words he just nodded. “Sure it wouldn't be a proble...” coren paused when antar mentioned the sneaking away from a shop, his mind needing only a few short moments to get what he was talking about. “You saw that!” Coren said in a sharp surprised tone as his eyes widened in shock. “How in the name of morwen did you find out about that!”

[Antar]

Noth let out a bark of laughter, and he tried to phrase his words in vani. It took a few minutes thought but eventually after checking the dictionary for a few words he managed to stutter out."Easy. You were seen by half the market! Anyone walking by at the right angle would have noticed you. But don't worry, after hunting trips , that will get much much best-er."

'Wait, did he make a mistake there? He pondered a little at the normative subject and the corresponding adverbs for the correct wording of descriptions. Good better, best in vani were a spectrum of six different adverbs and he... he chose the wrong one! 'Damnit.'

Antar's mind was a sharp one to be sure, but that didn't mean he wouldn't make mistakes. His primary mode of operating in any town or city he came to would be to study the languages, and the local customs and practice until he was good if not fluent in their methods of communication. This allowed one to blend in more, and blending in allowed one to accomplish their goals all the faster. However, he supposed there were some cities that still wouldn't ring true... he had heard a rumor of a city of blue skinned giants, Riverfall, where Akajia, the mother of the night was in her repose.

He couldn't just grow into a blue skinned giant now could he? But then again... there was probably very few things you couldn't do with magic, but the problem was with the cost of one's sanity or soul. The rogue supposed it was a very thin line one had to dance upon, a literal razor's edge as it were. Anyways, it was intriguing.

"Ah, I'm sorry, better, Better yes? But Iceglaze, yes Iceglaze different from Skyglow, Skyglow different from Frostfawn. Snowsong's the story tellers. All good to know. Good. Thank you, Cor-wren."

He slurred a little of the pronunciation of the man's name, it came almost as a tongue twister at the end of such a lilting stream of sounds that made up a very poor conveyance of thoughts. He would have to try harder, and train himself to speak faster. The lightning fast speed of vani was different from the moderate pace of Common. And so far both were faster then this old language of nader canoch. Or perhaps that was simply because Coren had said he was only a novice of the language? Whatever the case, today was proving very fruitful. "Yes, we should go hunt one day soon. Very good , but first practice is good, yes? Good to get a bow from store to help you practice first. He slipped back into common as his words failed him and his constant thumbing through the dictionary wasn't fast enough to find the word for archery. "Is there a place to practice in Avanthal? One we could go to a few days from now after we work on this?"

[Coren]

Coren let out a disappointed groan at Noth's laughter and following comment in half-broken vani. “And I thought I did a pretty good job on getting away unnoticed too.” He halfheartedly muttered sulking a bit not really putting much attention to the man's mistake in his grammar and just let out a sigh. He guessed it had just been pure luck and maybe morwens watchful eye, though he really doubted that one, that he managed too sneak out from his fathers distracted eye. “Well, at least I'm lucky and nobody with even half a right mind spits on good luck.” Coren offhandly said as he looked closer at the book in front of him, trying to make sense of the sentences written down in the ancient language. “Yes, its better, not best-er. Also aside from those there are also is whitevine hold, those are the healers, the coolwater hold, who make boats and do the fishing and lastly we got the winterflames. They are the cooks and farmers for the city.” He said his mind only half with the conversation. “And its co-ren, there isn't any w sound in between.” He helpfully provided to the man. Nodding at his his suggestion of practicing first, though the idea of buying a bow did get him a grimace on his masked face. “Well, I do not have enough miza's to buy a bow for myself. They are quite expensive.” Coren said, tearing his gaze away from the book for a few moments to answer Noth's questions about where and how they could practice. “But I think I could loan a bow from one of my relatives, probably. As for where to practice, there is an archery range very close to the icewatch barracks, it isn't possible to train there if there is bad weather or if its late though. Just tell me when you want to give me that lesson.” Coren said excitement beginning to creep into his voice at the prospect of learning how to shoot a bow, sure he knew magic and he probably could do more damage to anything trying to kill him then he could ever do with a bow and arrow. But he would kill himself in a horrible way if he was to dependant on magic. “And yes, let us get back to the book.” Coren said as he refocused his attention back towards the book. And slowly read the text out loud, screwing up the pronunciation a few times and sometimes just plain not knowing what a few words meant but it wasn't that bad. “Well,” Coren slowly said after he had lead it out loud in nader canoch. “It roughly describes what auristics is and what it isn't. I'm not gonna try and translate it literally, since thats almost impossible with nader-canoch and just give you what I think it say's.” he clarified in advance before continuing. “Auristics is the art of reading auras that exists around everything that is in existence, though the complexity of an aura depends on the object it radiates from. This does not make them able to read the mind of a person, though emotions are..... then something I can't understand. But I'm guessing it means possible, since the rest of the sentence means to read.” He said in an unsure tone. “Well that was mostly what was said in the paragraph, though it was worded a lot more.. confusing and it also listed some more things what it could read from aura's like wounds and temperature for example.”

[Antar]

"Wounds and temperature?" Noth repeated and stored the information for later on down the line. That would be useful, extremely useful if he came across any number of situations down the line. He could begin to tell whether or not another person was having hypothermia, or even where they were injured if they were unconscious. Not that he'd really care about such sorts of things, it was a rough world out there, and few if ever were important enough to him to drag their sorry carcasses back to civilization.

But, perhaps, maybe he'd meet such a rare few people.

Pondering in silence he shuffled his chair over to where he might see the book a little better and took out a bit of paper and a charcoal pen. Copying the sigils of the strange language known as Nader-Canoch, he began to try and find any rhyme or reason to it with its grammatical forms. The 'ancient tongue was a dense language with a mixed subject -order-verb setup in its grammatical structure.

Even worse, in a side leaf he discovered a list of root words, that were so staggering in their number , uses, and meanings that any two pairings of two distinct root bases might net at least 1,190 possible combinations.

More so when adding in the order tenses for past, present or now. Truly the language was a staggering display of confusing possibilities. Turning towards Coren, Antar suggested something, motioning to the next two paragraphs. "Why don't I translate the next one on my own, while you translate the third. By then we should hopefully have a better picture of what Auristics is."

With that thought in mind, Antar began to slowly copy the scrawling vani phonetics that began to spell out the next sentence of the upper paragraph, taking it one step at a time.

[Coren]

Coren nodded as antar repeated the tidbit of information he said. “Yes, you can find out almost everything about the condition of an object if you read its aura. You just need to be good enough at the discipline to see it and have enough time to find it all. Or at least it would work that way if the book is right about that.” Coren rattled of some more information he found in the book. Most of his attention completely absorbed into the new book, the prospect of fairly reliable knowledge about a magic discipline he didn't know anything about to good to pass up. There was a short period of silence as both noth and coren where concentrating on the book that was lying in between them, with only the periodic scratches of antar's charchoal pen on paper breaking the silence somewhat. Suddenly noth spoke up, asking that he would read the third paragraph while noth himself would do the second paragraph. “Already ahead of you on that part Noth.” Coren said absentmindedly as he kept focusing on the book. “The third pragraph mostly focuses on other things that can be sensed in the aura aside from the things we can see with our normal senses. Like the internal structure of an object, magical things and feelings.” Coren paused for a few moments. “looks like auristic's can sense things in the broad sense of the word. What did you find?”

[Antar]

Antar head ached with the transcribing and checking of word terms and meanings amongst three different languages. Common, Nader Canoch via the small paper he had found in the book(though there was no explanations of tenses he was beginning to string together word meanings, and how they were formed together. He assumed that the deviations of making a verb or subject was form by changes to the latter syllables of the words themselves, and his hunch was correlated by the word pairings noted in the vani and common as well.

But that task was difficult, long as well as though Coren had finished his translations in record time it seemed, Antar's were not done at such speeds. "Uhm... I don't think there's much." he said as by means of reply, as he continued to spend time sounding out words like 'Abase' and "Canoch"; dala and various combinations describing various uses. His hunch on the second paragraph turned out to be completely accurate as it did not say much more then the other pair of correlated paragraphs in vani and common.

So his efforts began to look elswhere beyond it in the same chapter, and soon his hands traced the words on the page that began to describe exercises to complete. But there was one tidbit of vital information, [color=orange]"It says here there is one thing to consider in nader-canoch: it has no written form, all types of written sigils, are normally spelled out in other languages by means of phonetics. So this man who wrote this book used vani phonetics and characters, mixed with common syllables to spell out each word of nader canoch. It says this is because the language was developed 'before the world was graced with wrting by the gods."

Sitting back in his chair, Antar puzzled a moment, "That means any book or pamphlet or written scratchings of nader canoch wouldn't be able to be understood, unless the individual reading them understood the phonetics of the base language they were written in, in this case, vani, and common. But if you find a book elsewhere it may just have equated glyphs or scratchings from that areas language. In short: you need to constantly improve your total amount of language understanding if you want to improve your comprehension of nader canoch as its in different sources. Unless you find someone who can simply speak it fluently or something to help you as it's only been imperfectly captured by any scholar. "

Turning over to the first page of the exercise it was labeled by a small title of syllables forming words of nader-canoch. "Yomi Korad-Korad" which he roughly translated to 'precious strings.'

In common and vani the following exercise was described as useful in determining the thickness of ice due to the fact that auristics could penetrate depths of layers between the viewer and the sight he was looking at. In some cases telling a worker working on the ice palace, or one of the holds just how dangerous the thickness of the object was. Of course, to begin to understand this one first had to open their mind with auristics.

On the following page there was a series of glyphs and sigils drawn in circular patterns saying that they could be used to help a person see with auristics if they were simply drawn over the eyes and the djed was used.

But it said nothing as to the how the person who had the scribbles over his eye was supposed to manipulate that djed. Pointing Coren's attention to it. Antar simply shrugged and laid back to rest a moment, closing his eyes to clear his thoughts as he massaged his temples.