Smile Like you Mean it (Wrenmae)

by **Rayage** on April 27th, 2013, 6:40 am

”You are not mad, Wrenmae.” Rayage spoke simply, turning back to the window, he stepped towards it and looked up at the moon which beamed bright light down in the shadows of the night, ”You say that the world resists change now. On a fundamental level that is untrue. Change is not something one can simply resist, and it happens every single day of our lives. Even the moon and the tides change with time, the moon waxes and wanes, and for but a moment its full glory is shown atop the heavens.” The nuit said, reaching up as if to touch the moon itself before turning and letting his arm fall to his side once more, ”With time everything changes. Time and change go hand in hand. You should have more faith, change is even occurring within you this very moment. Your thoughts are churning; your body is maturing, aging. Death and rot and life and the very presence of people are all a recipe for change. Change unrestricted is happening every moment, and with the help of time, change can plan its course and influence at just the right moment.”

”So, in the big picture it may look like those places are resisting change, but if you look around there is change happening within those cities, and with that change is possibility, hope for a brighter future. You know as much as I that it only takes one brave soul to excite the change needed for progress. That brave person just needs to show himself and follow his destiny. I do not think that Fate alone writes his book.”

”You are correct, that the concept of ‘choice’ just might be an illusion. One could argue that Fate knows every possibility and has taken into account every last detail of the world. If one is bound by that, such a Fate, is it all still predetermined? Yes. Though one has the power to choose the road on which he walks freely, as there is no escaping Fates grasp. Seemingly.” he ended, ”Nothing is impossible, Wrenmae, you should know that as you have preached that to me enough.”

”So, if you were an Alvina you would excite and force the world to move?” Rayage asked, smiling at that, ”Having once possessed such incredible power myself, it has left a sweet taste in my mouth, and a confidence that there is something beyond this nuit condition.” Ray told him, ”It is something which I shall pursue after I create my homunculus. Mark my words, Wrenmae, though alchemy I shall transcend, and wit that transcendence will come the power which I lost some two hundred years ago. I will once again possess the power of the pseudo-divine, and with that power I shall further this world into the future.” he did, after all, have his life on the line here.

”If you do happen to sire children, the ones you do not wish to have, would you give them to me?” Rayage asked him.

by **Wrenmae** on May 30th, 2013, 3:53 pm

The night passed around them. Outside, shapes moved in and out of focus in the Gated community. Mostly the Dragoons, shifting between the buildings on their ever moving patrol...sometimes richly dressed strangers moving towards some far off deal, or undetermined destination.

Wrenmae listened, but did not speak, flicking his finger against an errant imperfection in the table finish. The old man had tangled with the divine before...and although sometimes the hypnotist questioned both the motives and the mind of his companion, he had never seen fit to distrust him on a fact. Instead he nodded, curious, but offered no further question into Rayage's delve into the divine or pseudo divine.

It was only an option open to the nuit...the pursuit of the perfect body. His own hands were still his own, he still thrummed with the energy of life. But what of his morphing? There would come a day when even this would be taken from him by his own obsessive tampering.

Clenching his fist, he looked back up to the nuit.

"And what would a dead man want with a child?" Wrenmae asked dryly, raising an eyebrow, "I may be considered a monster by some standards, but I won't volunteer and infant for experiments...if that's what you're asking."

He crossed his arms and looked past Rayage, out the window again.

"And if you simply want to raise it? A corpse and a cursed child, what a poetic story."

by **Rayage** on June 1st, 2013, 7:46 pm

The nuit looked at Wrenmae in a bit of disbelief. Did he not understand Rays very reason for existing? Wasn’t it obvious what the nuit yearns for? Though in the end he laughed and waved a dismissing hand at the concerns of the mage, ”My, so direct.” he said as if this all was a game. ”Such accusation behind those words. It pierces my very heart. You should be careful what you say, nuit have very good memories.” he warned him, his voice falling back to a more serious tone.

A chime or two passed in silence and the nuit looked out the window once more, ”If it is your child, Wrenmae, then it will not be subject to my experimentation. It is just truth that a Nuit can give your child a better life than you can. As you said, that curse of yours is not good for anyone.” The nuit scuffed, ”Surely I am competent enough to raise a human child properly. I do not need sleep, require rest, or food. I can assure that the child will have a great and blessed life, the best money can buy. Surely you cannot promise that. Though, such words are empty until it is proven, correct?”

The nuit paced from the window to the nearby table, ”Just take a look at this shop.” Rayage said, ”This home. It is very fine, is it not?” he asked, ”And soon I will have the power of not only miza, but respect and fear. The power of magic is just one facet to exploit. Though one should not underestimate the pull of a highly persuasive person such as I. Your child will be protected, and have the finer things that not just anyone can give. He will have an understanding of the world that no teacher but I can teach.”

”The child will be well cared for, I assure you. Its been my dream for over seven hundred years to have a child to call my own. You must take the ability to procreate as a given, while someone who could never sire children would watch as the child was taken for granted. No. It will not happen here. Family, after all, is most important. A blessing that no service to a petching god can ever recreate…”

”There is nothing stopping you from just abandoning the child because of your feelings of unworthiness. Though don’t let your feelings ruin a life that you did not even want. That is one of the greatest injustices in this world. However, you might as well abandon the thing to a person who you can trust with the most precious life.” the nuit grinned, planting the idea of trust in Wrenmaes head with just his words. Ray needed the man to hear that.

"You can joke all you want about an ironic story. A truly sad story is that of a child, unwanted and unloved, brought into this world by a father who cannot bring himself to raise a child because of his 'condition'. So the child is abandoned.And the child dies. Or the child dies from your curse. A life cut short by irresponsibility."

by **Wrenmae** on July 17th, 2013, 9:48 pm

"You have a way with grim words," Wrenmae answered, scowling, "To my knowledge, I've never brought a child into this world, nor would I seek to." There was a pause, he looked past Rayage at nothing and shuddered. He remembered himself, young, weak, alone in the Unforgiving.

"You do not sleep, you do not eat...but you change faces. Your own body rots away while that child will need to see every face of their father falling apart only to be replaced by a stranger. A father who is so dissatisfied with the way things are that he creates new things, warps familiar creatures, creates wonders...but still..." He threw up his hands, "A nuit...by magic, of magic, and for magic. No." He shook his head sharply. "My child will not be a mage. No one is supposed to be a mage." Crossing his arms, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"It destroys, it warps, it perverts...say what you want about me being a practicing hypocrite, but I think power is that most addictive spirit that one should never taste." Putting both hands down on the table, he called a small trickle of res from his fingers to the air around him, pulling the lantern light out and the fire dancing through the air to balance neatly above his hand.

"My child will never be a mage. If you can swear that, Rayage, that you will never teach it magic...that you will not expose it to that kind of trauma, I'll swear any misbegotten child of mine to your care." Wren's eyes were cold and hard-set, unforgiving and scathing.

"You can take less than a century off your work...and focus only on raising a good man or woman. I'll be long dead by then, but if you can swear to me that you will protect my child from magic...from those that abuse it...I will, right here, in the sight of all the gods, swear a child to your care."

He held out a hand to the mage, "Do we have a deal?"

by **Rayage** on August 7th, 2013, 7:49 pm

”You are forgetting why I became a wizard in the first place,” he told him, ”Some people may use magic to destroy, but my magic is that of creation and infinite possibility. I create, just like you said, wonders which cannot be replaced so easily.” However after that there was silence. The nuit seemed to think over the conditions that Wrenmane had set for him. The child must never be a magician, must not know about magic… Wrenmane surely wanted the world to remain in the dark age that has descended upon it. Magic is more than a destructive force, it is a creative one! It is through magic that his dream will come true.

”You child will be blissfully ignorant of magic in all its forms.” Rayage told him meeting the wizards gaze, ”Ill get it a teacher of lesser things to distract it. The child will learn the importance of the mundane, such as how to plow a field and grow food, how to hunt, cook, clean, many other important everyday things. I can plan out a life,” the nuit said.

”And you can hold me to my word. For we undead, what else do we have to lose? What else can we bargain away? However if it is not good enough for you, then I know of hardly anything we could do to fix this trust issue.”

The nuit shifted as if restless and began pacing around the room, ”There is much philosophically I think one could say that we disagree about. More so, about magic than anything else…” Stopping mid-step the nuit turned back to Wrenmae, ”You have a deal, Mr.Sek.” The undead extended his hand towards the human in an offer to seal any sort of deal, the ritualistic handshake.

If the shake was accepted or not the wizard would continue after a minute, ”I have much to think about now.” he sounded less bored than he usually would, ”And the night is growing late, and you have had such a traumatic experience,” there was a hint of sarcasm in his voice, a slight personality, ”you should get some rest. I’ll be here in the morning.”

OOCSorry for the shorter post. If you want to end it here that’d be fine. However, if you’d like to continue around Sunberth we can keep going

by **Wrenmae** on August 8th, 2013, 9:49 pm

Wrenmae accepted the hand offered to him, feeling the rigid texture of the dead skin against his own. The words of the nuit stuck with him, at least enough that mid-shake he paused.

"World magic would be appropriate," He said at last, "But I would not have my child gambling in the risks of personal magic...it is an easy practice to abuse and its drawbacks sometimes outweigh its benefits."

Both men squeezed, sealing the deal between them before Wren withdrew his hand.

The night seemed, at that time, somehow quieter. The violence of earlier had left the mage and in its place there was an oddly comforting serenity. While he did not plan to have progeny, the ideas that there was someone willing to take that misfortune child and teach it in the ways of logic, science, and control...that was all he wanted.

His own cursed legacy would not be a continuous one. He wished no fate like his own on anyone else. It was a heavy burden to bare, and if someone had to...it might as well be him.

Turning from Rayage, he stumbled back to his bed and collapsed.

He did not say another word.

ooc :

by **Twister** on December 17th, 2013, 1:18 pm

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Experience Award

Rayage

Grade :

Wrenmae

Grade :

If you've any questions or concerns about your grade, drop me a PM!
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Closed Smile Like you Mean it (Wrenmae)