Completed The Strong and Shallow Type

[Kuvarakh]

Fall 20th, 512

The routine was well established in his mind. The chargers set, fount and filter, the receiver awaiting the blended djed, accelerated for the smoothest mix of qualities. His finger pricked, the ichor connecting his will to the awaiting conduit. It no longer took the mental recall of the sensation of metal sliding beneath his fingertip to begin the acceleration.

The movement began, the founts becoming solvent in their ability to surrender their djed natures into the circle, The filters becoming barricades, collecting the unwanted natures, barring them from the moving circle of djed. His focus to control and accelerate became, as always, empowered by the image of a whirlpool.

He closed his eyes and felt the movement in the ring. His hand on a ledge or piece of driftwood, inexplicably secure in his mind as the spinning djed became water in his mind, revolving in a massive funnel before him. The surface rough and full of visualized flotsam and foam. As the funnel spun, the speed forced the impurities to the edge and smoothed the surface. The filters rose from the water like jetties, the flotsam catching, shattering and flying off beyond his focus.

Soon the funnel was so fast and smooth, its movement could almost not be detected, the color a perfect constant, no foam, no breaks in the surface. He backed away mentally from the water and opened his eyes to see the towering ring of accelerated djed spinning before his eyes. He looked over at Wanda, who pointed up with a combined grin and scowl.

He saw the ring brushing the underside of the chain assembly, there to move heavy items easily. He had forgotten to move it...again. he released the activation to allow the djed to sink, spinning into the target item, the receiver. In this case it was wood. Another filling of the standing account. Made with properties of hawk feathers and eyes, to hit with deeper tear and to be more true flying and accurate.

"Now it's going to be harder than it should, probably heavier than it should and it may even rust when it gets wet. The first two effects might not be so bad, but I think the local hunters are not going to care for arrows made from wood they have to keep oiled in the rain." Wanda chided him.

He was about to ask why they didn't take down that chain assembly altogether, since it was so rarely used, when he remembered that HE had been the one that had argued against it. He muttered an apology. Wanda strolled up and punched his shoulder playfully, telling him not to worry.

"Is there some way you can learn to squash that djed stream, so we don't have to worry about it? You're fast, and you're strong, but you only have one size. That's part of the 'versatility' quality you are always flattering me with."

"If you'd like me to flatter you with some of your other fine qualities...Looks, fashion awareness, poise, your lovely voice, generosity, forgiveness of your inept employees...just let me know."

[Kuvarakh]

A few days later, Kuvarakh came into the shop to find Wanda performing a very low level transmutation. Judging by the items she had stacked up against the walls, it was only the first of several such activations. He waited until she was done and stepped up behind her. "uhhh...I'm not late, am I?" he asked hesitantly, concerned that he had done something else wrong.

"Hmmm? No, not at all, Why?" she sounded genuinely surprised.

"Well, you're doing the boring stuff, the everyday stuff. That was sort of what you hired me to do, so you could do other things more creative." he winced with the realization that he sounded whiny.

"Well there really isn't anything more creative to do right now. Mizas don't always hinge on novelty, Kuvarakh. Sometimes it's the basics that pay the bills." She saw that he was getting defensive and decided to tease him. "I mean, the most novelty we've had around here lately is when your towering acceleration ring sucks the rust off the chains into some cloth you're treating."

"Hey, I said you could take that out of my pay." he protested, "And I'm sorry about that last time with the wood. If you want me to-..."

She cut him off, stifling a grin. "No, it's ok. The prop people at the Playhouse decided it would be useful to put in their backdrops as the sides of old dilapidated wooden barns and such things." she managed to keep a straight face.

Kuvarakh looked horror-stricken, "Barns? Old rundown Buildings? It didn't look THAT bad. It was still lovely cloth, just...rust...colored..." he started to protest further, but was cut off by laughter coming from the other room. It triggered Wanda's release and she joined in, doubling over at Kuvarakh's wounded look.

She reached up and laid a hand on his shoulder, "Oh come on, Ku, we're just teasing you."

Mollified, but now curious, he looked at the doorway, where the other laughter was coming from. "WE?" he asked.

A man stepped through the doorway, wearing the robes of one of the confirmed of Ionu. Still laughing, he held out a hand. "You must be Kuvarakh. I am Jendras, an acolyte at the Temple. I am here to help you gain control of your acceleration shaping."

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh stared, confused. "My...acceleration 'shaping'? My what?"

The man swung his robe back on his left side to place his hand on his hip as he made vague gestures with his right. "Your 'acceleration shaping'. Wanda has been good enough to explain the difficulty you are having with the height of the djed stream as you accelerate it. She said you mentioned some sort of vision you associate with your efforts at the ring that help you generate power for faster activations. is this correct?"

Kuvarakh looked at the man directly, his expression somber. "Yes, I see a whirlpool. A full maelstrom. The mid-sea type, not just some eddy swirling in a harbor." There was a history of grief behind his eyes as he spoke. His eyes focused on some past tragedy. Wanda felt a stab of regret to have forced this issue into the open. "It's been...with me ever since...my...ever since I...I've had nothing else to lose. Sometimes I...see her in it. She helps keep me focused on keeping the water calm. So nothing...happens to her."

He started to look over at Wanda, but saw with peripheral vision that she had one hand to her mouth. He decided not to make eye contact with her just then. Jendras did not look away. "Are you from Zeltiva, sir?" The tone of his voice brought Kuvarakh's gaze back to him with the sense of a kindred loss. "I lost my sister there...lost at sea." he looked at Kuvarakh expectantly.

"My daughter...My wife died in childbirth." Kuvarakh's eyes became dull. His spirit desensitizing his soul to the old pain. Wanda choked back a sniffle and turned towards the door. "You two work it out however you need to. I need to go...back to work." She looked back with a smile. "Don't worry, Ku, I'll still...You'll...still have a job here."

He looked towards Wanda as she stepped from the room, a strange comfort in her presence. He liked it when she called him "Ku". He looked back to Jendras to find him smiling.

"You will not need to lose your 'focus'. We will just alter it. She will still be there if you need her." He patted Kuvarakh on the back and gestured for him to follow him outside. "We need lots of open space."

Kuvarakh followed, curious. He had no idea how an illusionist would help him with alchemical acceleration control. "What did you have in mind?"

Jendras did not look back, "Whirlpools" was all he said.

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh stared after the man. 'Whirlpools? What is this guy talking about?' He followed him down the flagstones to a clearing. There was only grass and dirt, no water.

Kuvarakh looked around, "Umm...Don't you need water?" he said, a bit of mockery coloring his voice. His cavalier expression turning puzzled as the smell of the ocean drifted up to his nostrils. A breeze whipped up, with a mist of salt spray to it.

His jaw dropped slightly as the ground became fluid and began to churn in a choppy rotation. The features of the clearing, grass, rocks, dirt, roots and leaves melded into a watery uniformity as the texture became pure liquid.

Jendras turned and grinned at him. "Actually, no, I don't. I'm an Illusionist, not a reimancer." The Illusion continued to develop as Jendras pressed Kuvarakh for details of the vision he used to empower his alchemy. Ocean in all directions, stormy weather, high winds, dark clouds, centering around a massive whirlpool funneling out of sight into the depths.

"As I conduct my acceleration I apply my will to smooth the water, to eliminate the roughness, any floating objects, the foam and work it until it looks like glass. The weather goes hand in hand with it. By the time I'm done the sky is clear, the wind has died to a gentle breeze and the sun is shining. But the whole process has an urgency to it that drives my skill to its peak."

"Your daughter's presence? Is she in the water?" Jendras guessed.

"Exactly, I am compelled to make the water smooth and clean to save her. I know in my rational mind that she's dead, but when I'm in my meditative acceleration trance, I feel her presence in the water, battered and desperate. And I am driven to perform."

"I see. That makes sense. And so the massive maelstrom makes you feel that she is threatened, and as her father, you will do anything to save her." He pondered the problem as Kuvarakh awaited his advice.

"Well, the problem is that you create an accelerated djed ring that follows suit with your concept of the whirlpool, very, very deep. As a result your djed stream is also growing very, very deep. But the nature of the ring prevents it from passing below it, so it climbs instead. Your boss, Wanda, has stated that your gaze climbs as you progress your acceleration. You are envisioning the surface of the water. As the ring climbs you subconsciously follow its rise, thereby lifting the top of the stream to problematic heights."

"But if you remove the sense of danger, I lose much my activation power." Kuvarakh protested. He paced a moment and turned back to the acolyte, his face lowered slightly. "Of course, if that's what it takes to stop messing up and start being useful to Wanda again, then I'll gladly give up the extra power."

Jendras' smile took on a calculating look. "Tell me, Kuvarakh, how deep do you think water has to be to drown in it?"

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh leaned back, his posture suggesting annoyance, "Ok, yes, I know. A person can drown in an inch of water, if they're face-down and unconscious. But seriously, I can't make myself feel that my daughter is threatened by an inch of water. In my vision, she is not unconscious. She need only stand up."

Jendras' expression hinted at tolerance of the uninformed. "And what if she is unable to stand up? No offense intended, sir, but you display the classic assumption that depth is the only hazard present in water." He held up his hand to forestall Kuvarakh's response. "Depth is not a hazard to a swimmer." he added hastily, "assuming he is not fatigued. But current is. And that is the greatest peril of a maelstrom. A man does not drown in one because of the depth. It is the force of the spin. It drives him back into the wall of the funnel. A floating object rests easily on the surface while it circles the funnel, but once it enters, it vanishes into the wall. Observe."

He turned back towards the existing illusory whirlpool. "Wanda chose to render aid in creating the required sense of urgency." His smile turned suddenly cruel. Two men became suddenly noticeable on the perimeter of the whirlpool. They had a bound body held between them. A struggling, bound body. A woman of early middle age, faded auburn hair, sparsely streaked with gray. It was Wanda.

She looked up, panic written on her face. "Jendras, please! I didn't mean to hurt you! I only wanted to become an alchemist. Please let me go. I'll marry you, I swear! Kuvarakh, Help Me! Tell him what I told you. It wasn't you that talked me out of it. I didn't even know you then! TELL HIM!"

Kuvarakh froze in shock. He turned to Jendras, who now appeared to be of an age with Wanda. All that she had told him of her one romance came back to him. Her rejection of her lover at the University in favor of a career in alchemy. Her loneliness and regrets at having grown "old" alone. She had never mentioned who the man was, or what his reaction had been. Now he knew.

The two assistants threw her into the swirling water funnel. Her scream gurgled into silence as she was sucked back into the wall of the whirlpool. Kuvarakh turned in fury and panic at the acolyte, who had stepped away, beyond his hypnotic range. He grinned sadistically, producing the ring from Wanda's unfulfilled engagement. "Here, lover. Keep this as a token of my love." His voice was ice as he tossed it casually in.

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh roared, "NO!" and made to charge the robed man. He fell to his face, his feet suddenly stuck in mud, grown dry and hard around them. The illusion manifested into reality. He turned his gaze back to the water as the man called in derision.

"Save her like you save your daughter." he laughed with hateful satisfaction.

Kuvarakh begged Wanda to find the surface again. Even as he did, her head broke the surface and she gasped a breath before she plunged under again.

"What? How did you do that?" Jendras croaked. "You can't save her, you fool. You have no control. You haven't learned to counter-believe." he sneered.

Wanda's head appeared again and she cried out, "Disbelieve! Over Power!" Her head pulled back under as the water whirled, unstoppable.

He had no knowledge of any Illusionist terminology, but the idea of 'disbelief' and 'counter-belief' was easy enough to grasp. The acolyte kept making references to his daughter and Kuvarakh took it to heart. He began envisioning the surface the same way he did in his usual image. It was already very similar, though not as deep. The same roughness. Foam and spray bursting off and around floating objects. The same stormy conditions in the background.

Occasionally, Wanda would break the surface, urging him on, pleading, encouraging. Slowly, amid fevered protests from the acolyte, which only fueled Kuvarakh's resolve, the image began to change. The water smoothed, as it always did. The weather calmed, as it always did. The objects in the water, which always represented the impurities to be filtered out, were cast out by the force of the spin, or sucked into the vortex and dispersed.

But there was a difference, The water grew shallower, until it was barely two feet deep. The sky was sunny and bright as well, the brightness in direct proportion to the shallowness of the water. Wanda was nowhere to be seen as the water simply faded back into the clearing. The illusion gone.

Kuvarakh looked around desperately, "Where IS she?" he cried.

The acolyte approached cautiously, his appearance young again. "Be at ease, Kuvarakh, and accept my sincere apologies. She was never there. You needed to believe, for this to work. If I had simply created an image of your daughter, you would have known it was not real. But I needed to make you connect the urgency with that you feel for your daughter, for you to envision the necessary change, and to remember them with the required intensity."

[Kuvarakh]

"So this was all a FAKE? It was just to make me PANIC, so I'd have the PROPER FRAME OF MIND to remember it?" Kuvarakh shouted in both relief and fury. "So I can USE it for alchemy?"

"There's nothing more I can give you than my apology. You have to face the facts, sir. You needed this development. You spoke of what you would be willing to give up to be helpful in the shop again. Helpful to Wanda. Doesn't that same conviction extend to what you would be willing to endure? without realistic emotional drive, the memory would not be sufficient to empower a shallower djed stream with the same strength you are capable of empowering a deep one."

Kuvarakh fumed in silence. He wanted to shout 'You could have warned me!', but he knew they couldn't have. He wanted to say he'd 'never have been willing to go through that ordeal' if he'd known, but he knew he would have. He wanted to shout that 'helping Wanda isn't THAT important to me', but it was. He knew it. He took a deep breath and blew it out. 'Funny how the gestures of the living still have a calming effect on the undead.'

"I'm very sorry, sir. Now, I'm going to release your feet. I hope that you understand why it had to be done this way." the young man said tentatively.

Kuvarakh looked at him directly, "Did Wanda know it was going to be done this way?" He wasn't so much angry with her as curious whether it had bothered her any to subject him to this just for better production.

The man eyed him cautiously and replied, "Yes she did. She didn't know exactly how I would work it. I didn't know myself at first, but she had a general idea. I hope you're not going to be angry with her. I would prefer you blame me if that's why you're asking."

"Frankly, I do." Kuvarakh said as he turned and took a hard swing at the empty air to his left. The image of the young man flickered slightly at the same time as a cloud of dirt rose along with a thud and an "OOF" just under where he swung.

The acolyte sat there in the dust, staring in amazement and apprehension. "How...how...did you...DO that? How did you know?" he bunched his legs, ready to scoot backwards if Kuvarakh took another step towards him.

Instead, Kuvarakh burst out laughing. "I think I'll just keep that little secret to myself and we'll call it even." He helped the hesitant young man to his feet. Eventually the young man came to accept that Kuvarakh was planning no further aggression and relaxed as they returned to the shop.

When they returned, Wanda was red-eyed and miserable. She jumped up and took a pair of hasty steps towards Kuvarakh, slowing suddenly as it occurred to her that he might be angry. Her hand went to her mouth, her eyes brimming anew. He strode without hesitation to her, as smiles grew on both their faces, and they indulged themselves in a long, cleansing hug.

After a long bout of explanations and apologies, Jendras took his leave. Kuvarakh shook his hand and assured him that there were truly no hard feelings, but told him to 'take a lesson. Nothing is foolproof.'

Wanda asked Kuvarakh later, "Just how DID you see through his illusion? How could you tell the fake image and see the invisible real one?"

Kuvarakh stood for a moment, a grin forming on his face. "I didn't. I was angry and was going to hypnotize him with something to scare him. His illusion was too good. Its djed was truly a reflection of his, and I perceived a basic impression of his view of our talk from the near left side of it. So instead of hypnotizing him, I just stepped into a nice right haymaker at him. I figured he'd probably duck it successfully, It was a long, cross-body swing. But I figured it would throw a bigger scare into him to have his illusion appear to fail him, than any thought I could implant in his head."

Wanda stared, agape, for a full three seconds before erupting in laughter. She shook her head after a bit. "Really, though, Jendras is a nice guy. He didn't charge me for his services, and he was willing to take the blame for it all."

"I know. And I really think I DID do him a favor. It is important to know that the skill you use has weaknesses, so you don't get overconfident." There was a long pause. Eventually he said, "You DID know what he was going to do, didn't you."

Wanda froze, saying nothing. He continued, his voice not angry, but oddly anxious. "How did you know I would react desperately enough? How did you know I would care?" There was another long pause. Finally she responded, her voice soft and hesitant.

"I...I hoped."

[Fallacy]

XP Award! Name:Kuvarakh XP Award: +2 Rhetoric +2 Interrogation +2 Socialization +2 Observation +1 Alchemy Lore: Learning from Illusion Notes: Any questions or concerns about the rewards gained please send a PM