Solo Outlines

[Konrad Venger]

14th Bell - 79th Day of Winter, 516AV - Rainshard Pavilion

It looked more like an abandoned pyre than the remains of a pavilion. He couldn't see any trace of anything inside it; just a blackened, blasted space that stank of ash and destruction amid the colorful liveliness of the Sapphire Clan's homes. If he paused and squinted, he could see the suggestion of debris among the dark, dead smear.

A flash of color, fragment of some cloth or blanket, miraculously untouched. A pool of melted metal, once weirdly white, now dirtied by mud and rain and ash. Gnarled cinders that could have been wooden sticks, bows, the remains of tent poles.

But he didn't pause. He didn't squint. Konrad spared the pavilion a look and then tramped onward deeper into the clan's quarter. He hardly needed to examine it closer. It was his work, after all.

Work. Heh. Like you got petching paid...

His jaw torqued and the voice was banished. No, he wasn't bloody well paid, but it was still work. His mind had been as cold and methodical as any other time a purse had been pressed to his hand, and a name had been muttered into his ear. Not just the deed itself, but who, and where, and how bst to escape that he may enjoy his-

But there was no reward. Konrad scowled for a moment as he allowed the sheer injustice of that to gnaw at him for a hot, blissful moment. Keeping his outrage suppressed was full-time work, after all. No, that bastard Pridesun had given him no pay; not even an opal, not a single coin. Just that he would keep his secret, and continue to protect him.

For how long?

The Sunberth man growled lowly, making a Drykas passing him shudder quickly and look around, trying to pin down the sound. But Konrad was stalking onward, eyes focused on pavilions, turns, banners, until he found what he sought and could forget for a while the secret business he'd been blackmailed into.

He set aside the flap to the pavilion, greeted by the same muggy, close gloom as he had seen last time. Only in the center was there the usual, brilliant beam of Syna cutting through the miasma, and there a coldly beautiful woman looked up from her sketching board. She sniffed at him and rolled her eyes. Further in the gloom, there was the shuffling of a tall, well-built shadow... and her brother didn't even bother to make a sound before going back to his doodling.

"Ah. You again, eh?"

Not from sister or brother, that voice. From the shadow, but coming out to join him. No bundle of rags, but a clean and simple one-piece shawl of... naturally... purest blue. Smooth and unwrinkled, unlike the craggy face above it that smiled thinly at the scarred man.

Who bowed, of course. A walahk, greeting a Drykas Elder? Oh, yes. 'Twas very much the done thing.

"Aye. Me."

"Come t'learn s'more, I'd wager?"

"Aye," Konrad said, and his slow smile told Ed'yta his visit was about something more than Reimancy. "Come t'learn somethin' new."

[Konrad Venger]

The old woman knew that what sat across from her was not a nice man, nor a good one. She was also old enough to know there was an important difference. But in her last dealing with "Hansel", she'd not detected any true malevolence from him. Ambition, certainly. Curiosity, gods, plenty of that. Even a tremor of inherited, hard-learned discomfort around all the trappings of djed, but malice... no... he'd not given her that kind of pause.

His scars and his steel meant little to Ed'yta. That Stormblood, Azmere, had even worse scars, and she'd only ever heard him spoken of as a fine Drykas, if a haughty one. She knew a man's nature lay deeper, and from where she knew of Hansel...

"Morphing." He nodded, eyes wide and eager, sitting across from her after she'd wiggled herself into a comfortable groove on her cushions. "You wish to learn that djed, do you?"

"Aye."

"I'm no teacher. I know of it, I have heard how it works, but-"

"Does it need'n inish-ee-ay-shun?" Ed'yta blinked in surprise and the walahk held up his hands, scars in the palms red and lurid in the candlelight. "Like wi' this?"

He knew more than she'd thought. It was one thing to have djed, to use it, to know it... and another to know the terms that mages would use. That almost implied an education in magic, and she doubted Hansel had ever had that.

"Fancy word for a Sunberth lad to know?" She said, smiling easily, disarmingly, wondering if the man would be fooled. "Thought you people hated magic?"

"Mages. We hate mages," Konrad said back, voice as heavy as stone until he'd spat them, and then realized how hollow they really were. From him, at least. "But... yeah... I know the word. Man who gave me these-" he flashed his palms again "-tol' me what it was. Used that word, ken?"

"Oh, yes. I 'ken'. And where is this man now?"

"Dead."

"And how-"

"I killed 'im."

Charcoal scratched across parchment. Kindling crackled and smoked. Outside beasts and beings brayed and chattered and called and stank and inside the pavilion, man and crone eyed each other evenly. He'd figured that would have came up at some point, with someone. He didn't know enough of this woman to lie, at least not all the way, so some semblance of honesty seemed the smarter play.

Some. Not all.

"Why?"

Evade the question and she'll know it was on you.

"He crossed me. In Kenash. Lucky f'me, he was drunk when he made his move. I wasn't." He snorted, looking away for a moment, into the nearest candle, as if in fond remembrance. "Good wiv' his wyrd. I was better wiv' me blades. Close thing, though."

The crone was silent. Watchful, pondering, and damn her, not easily convinced. That last part? Too far, damn him. Too much of an embellishment. But he had no choice but to wait for her, sit there in silence until she found some other angle of attack-

"If he initiated you, he must have trusted you-"

"I paid him." Konrad shot back, doing his best to keep a victorious tone out of his voice. "He was a sellsword, jus' like me. Paid t'protect the livestock... the slaves, from the Berth to Kenash. Gave the cunny half me wages, an' he gave me these. Wunt about trust, love. Never is wiv' blokes like him an' me."

The old woman sat back and pondered, perused, studied, leaving Konrad to stew silently. He stared back in equal silence, with equal calm. It was't just skill with steel and bare knuckles that had saved him throughout his life; knowing when to watch and wait, and turn the right phrase... those could carry a man far, too.

"An' yeh didn't answer my question," he said, cracking a wry smile. "Morphin'. Does it need anythin' like that?"

"Not to my knowledge, no. Once one learns of it, one can practice it. But the gap between one and t'other takes... much time. And training."

Konrad's hand closed into a fist and squeezed and... and... did nothing more, save for loosen. She was holding back. Not toying with him, just being wary. Knowledge was what would take him from knowing to doing, and she knew what. Just as she knew that he wouldn't have come back unless there was no-one else he could bribe or cajole into helping him.

Or mayhap he just preferred her company. Mayhap, but not in that moment.

"What d'ya want in return?" He shrugged, as if the cost was insignificant next to the reward. "I have coin, now. Huntin' pays well in this city."

"Don't need your coin, lad," the crone said, a little testily. "Don't need you offering it, neither."

"Then what do y'want? How about yeh answer a question fer a change?"

Idiot!

Gods, he almost winced as the words rattled from his malformed lips and slapped Ed'yta across the face. She paled for a moment, wrinkles twitched across her face, ending in a single, sardonic raise of an eyebrow. Konrad licked his lips and-

Don't back down. She likes you feisty, you know that. Play to it. Don't show your damn belly.

"All yeh've told me is shyke I already know. Aye, m'from a place that hates mages and magic, a'right? Yet here I am. Man who cut me hands an' gave me my magic? I caved his head in after he tried t'do the same t'me. Now I'm lookin' to learn something new, an' youse can help me. So why don'tcha?"

It was the most he'd spoken to one person, save for Sloane, in quite a while. Konrad wasn't one for speeches. Concise and laconic was more his way, conservative and always avoiding waste. A life of speaking through violence, or keeping a close eye on other men's property, and recently stalking prey through the grass, had robbed him of the need to natter that others had. He was almost tired by the end of it, and yet before she could reply-

"Y'think I'll turn on yeh, don'tcha?" He nodded slowly, as if he understood, even as Ed'yta's eyes widened. "Aye. That's it. Yeh think if yeh tell the ugly walahk how t'Morph, he'll jus' turn 'round an' kill yeh wiv' it-"

"Tell me you won't."

"I-"

"On anyone."

Silence again. Simmering and sizzling in the air between them. Konrad had no problem with lying. It came to him easily enough. He preferred it when his lies were close to the truth, because that made them easier to believe, but a barefaced, outright untruth... he had no issue there. But this wasn't just a matter of deception. For that moment, at least, the old woman had pinned him, and men like him, and he would not for a moment pretend to be something he was so patently not.

"In this world?" He spoke, and his words were low. Angry. Almost disbelieving. "Don't be so bloody silly, woman. I'll do whatever I have t'do to survive, an' if the world'll come at me with more'n swords and arrows, I'll damn well use me wyrd, too."

Well. That buggered him. But there was still the future to aid him, and now he had a name to work with. Riverfall was a season away, and he was sure there was some tome or ideally a teacher he use. He knew what Morphing was, and now at least he knew it could be taught, so-

"Good enough, I reckon."

The sellsword blinked and refocused back on the present, and the woman smiling at him with a hefty dose of smirk in her wide, wrinkled lips.

"I... D'you mean-"

"If you'd promised me you'd never use it to harm another soul, I'd have known you were so full of shyke it was flowin' out your mouth. I don't know all, Hansel. But I know a man who lives by violence. And I know one that's smart enough not to cause trouble where it won't profit him."

Konrad's lips quirked, and he caught the vague hint of a threat in her words, but that was all it was. Threats weren't Ed'yta's style, he could tell. An old woman she was, dependent on her shyke-arsed grandchildren for all save speaking. But she didn't need to be a tower of physical strength to ward off predators. She was old and knew many ankals, most of the Clan Heads; had known them when they were but boys. Making trouble there, for her, would soon bring it down on his head tenfold.

"So... is that a 'yes'?"

She made him wait, of course. While she rummaged around for a rude clay jar packed with herbs, and motioned impatiently at his pocket. Konrad frowned, wondering how she knew he carried a pipe even as he handed it over to her, and as he wondered that-

He looked up. She was smiling. The question was answered.

She knows more than you think. Remember that.

"I think so," she said around the stem of the pipe, tapping the tobacco-loaded bowl. "But for the Now, if you wouldn't mind?"

Konrad made a noise like a laugh being strangled, but a laugh nonetheless. Then he leaned closer, harnessing a thread of his djed into res as he made the motion, ready to light the damn lady's smoker.

Don't Make Me Repeat Myself.

[Konrad Venger]

"I'm no teacher, lad. Not in this affair."

"Don't need ya t'be. Not directly, anyway."

The old Drykas cocked her head, looking like Konrad so much like a wizened, curious owl. One that was admittedly smoking his pipe and gently spewing grey trails up into the hole in the center of the pavilion.

"What do yeh mean?"

Konrad leaned forward, getting his body comfortable and hoping his words would follow suit. He'd been giving it some thought, thinking on the words she'd told him last time. Not what Morphing was, which was easy enough to understand, but how it worked. More importantly, what it took to wield it.

No initiation, just practice. Fine. But how do you practice?

"Man who taught me Reimancy? He got me started wiv' dat medit-ay-shun malarkey, back when I wuz jus' startin' out. Had me clear me mind, empty me head. Focus on what I had in me... an' nuffin' else..."

He knew he needed to demonstrate, simple as his words were. With Ed'yta watching, Konrad spread one hand, palm up, and closed his eyes. Ah, it was an old dance, now. Almost routine. He breathed in, and in doing so he felt the breath go deeper, push his mind deeper, beyond his flesh and into the pool he knew was within him. Trevin's words came back to him, his sage advice.

See beyond your skin. Under it. Between your muscles. Feel it flowing. Pulsing. And once you see it, will it.

Come.

He did just that, and when he opened his eyes, green-black res was rising from his palm just like smoke rose from his pipe. Another mental command mashed it into a ball, a spinning globe that he lit with-

Now.

-the merest thought. Syna burst into life with a muted "whoosh!" and one of the siblings across the tent looked over sharply. Konrad couldn't tell which, and didn't care. He focused instead on what he'd made, and then with that same effort, a new breath-

Out.

-snuffed out the fire and the res feeding it, closing his hand on... nothing but warm smoke. The Drykas nodded slowly, eyebrows high as if somewhere between amused and impressed.

"Nice little firestarter."

"Aye, I can do bigger, but this ain't the place. Jus' wanted t'show yeh what I meant."

"Hmm... had to use yer imagination, then, I'd wager."

"Eh?"

Again, that cocky smile. As if she were the guardian of all knowledge and she dispensed it only after due scorn. She took another hefty slug on Konrad's pipe (gods, I need to sterilize that when I get it back), and exhaled slowly, relishing the baccy as she relished the imparting.

"Can't imagine using yer imagination has much use where your from. Oh, being creative, sure, but imagining magic in your blood, your skin shifting, all that kind of mage nonsense? You had to work on that, eh?"

"Aye... aye, I guess so."

"Then yer halfway there." She leaned back as if she'd just answered the deepest of questions, even if Konrad's brow was still thoroughly furrowed. "What works for one will work for another. Just have to go at it in a different way."

"Which way?"

"Whatever works for yeh, I'd say. Told ya before, lad: I'm not a teacher, not a mage, and not an instructor. I know of Morphing like I know of most magics men can wield, but I don't hold their power in my hands." Another smile, flitting across her lips like a tiger in tall grass. "Not all of 'em, anyway."

Konrad would have dearly loved to spit back some bile about her being oh so sodding helpful, then he brain yanked back his balls and went to work. He had used his imagination, now she put it that way. He'd looked inward and pictured his djed like a pool of water, flowing and shimmering and filling him. Difference was, he'd felt it, too. But it had taken plenty of practice and experience, and that other thing.

Meditation. Which means time and patience. Wonderful.

He frowned harder and studied the burning baccy in the bowl, the smoke rising from it and the crone's lips. The way her beady eyes rested on him, surrounded by folds and wrinkles like a land map of a mountain range. No malice there, just a wry amusement and curiosity. Konrad looked down at his hands. Scarred and not just by his initiation. A lifetime's worth of abuse, near-Dira moments and, occasionally, hard labor. A hard life in general, he guessed.

He turned them over in the light. Looked at them with fresh eyes, or an original intent. How to change them? How to see them and know them in his own mind, that he could twist them? Like a man would with-

"Ah." Ed'yta said as she saw that look cross over his face. "I think the man has something..."

Don't Make Me Repeat Myself.

[Konrad Venger]

"Huh. Never would have pegged you fer the artistic type, lad."

"I ain't," Konrad said after he'd explained his idea. "But if it works, y'know?"

Ed'yta shrugged and bobbed her head a few times, unable toa rgue with that logic. For a brutal bastard that clanked when he walked and stank of death even after a long bath, this Hansel bloke had a fairly keen mind. Took him a few chimes to get his idea out, though. All the details and the like. But he'd got it, and that's what mattered, so now she gestured with his own pipe.

"Well, on you go, then."

"I will, m'just... thinkin' what I can start with."

"Hmm. Well. I'd not do too much."

"Aye, figured that much," Konrad said, tones dripping with an unspoken yeah, thanks for that searing bloody insight. "Dunt wanna start wiv' puttin' on wings or shyke like that."

Ed'yta waited for the lad to get an idea, eyes roving around idly until they landed on her grandson. Black-skinned and narrow-eyed, working as usual on the latest in a series of doodles. Glyphs, she was sure. Every more complex and layered, linking djed and ink together, overlapping orders and wishes and enhancing them all. She cocked her head to one side and Konrad heard-

"Try that."

He looked up, then followed her pointing finger... and blinked.

"... y'mean... like... his face?"

"Nah, too much. Just his skin, I'd say." She looked at the back of her hand as if just noticing it, then waggled it under Konrad's nose. "Just a patch of it, eh? Back of yer hand, maybe?"

Konrad studied the wizened old claw for a moment, as if it was some priceless treasure, and then turned his gaze to the real subject: the grandson. He didn't know the name and didn't need to; all he needed was his eyes, and his memory. Lit by the candles flanking him, he observed the shade of the man's ebony skin. The way it was dark and yet glowed in the light, shining like something hard and carved. Even when the man felt prickles on his neck and looked up, Konrad didn't look away. Not until he was ready.

"A'right," he said, in that slightly breathless way of a man about to try something arduous. "Gonna get started, I think."

"Aye, well... take yer time."

Konrad didn't even try to keep the scowl off his face as the old bitch tapped out the debris from his pipe, then refilled it for herself. She lit it off a candle that time, puffing contentedly until Konrad closed his eyes... and then she spoke.

"Remember, lad, you can't rush this. You had a good idea. A smart idea. Something you can get yer mind around and use. But you wouldn't sell a painting without finishing it, and you would put a dagger in a man without getting close to him. So take your time. No-one will bother you."

He was annoyed for just a tick, that she would keep prattling on mere moments after he'd begun, and then he stopped to think. He realized that she, an elder of repute and standing, was telling him, a mere clan-less walahk, that she would keep him safe and undisturbed, in her own home. That he could sit there, cross-legged, and take all the time he wanted for his idea to work.

Konrad nodded instead of cursing, and he began. He breathed, and that was the foundation of it. Focusing only on the sound and feel of his breath, the way it sucked and hissed, how it filled his chest and expanded it. Focused and focused so hard that all else fell away from him. Until it was no longer him breathing, but instead a beat, like footsteps, carrying him away from his body and into his mind.

Which was where he found his idea, after all.

[Konrad Venger]

They came out on the warm days, when rain was a possibility, not a certainty. Started early so by the time the streets were thronged, their wares were ready for display. The boy watched them from the shadows, where it was safe. He knew how he looked, and how people looked at him. Were he to get too close, they would shout at him, hurl stones or cow pies. From there, he could watch them.

With their charcoal sticks and dye powders. Making stories on the brick and stone.

Konrad remembered every detail of them. Giants and winged wyrms, knights and godlings, beasts made of stars and molten earth, all fighting and warring and carousing across the buildings. Sunberth artists, and oh yes, even that wretched place had them. Crafting their wares for the coins of passerbys, though Konrad always suspected that such fine work was not merely for money. One time, he actually remembered-

No. Not too close. That's the past. Focus on the now. Whats happening. What you want to happen.

They thought of things, and captured them with their little black sticks. Took the raw, bare clay of the walls and alleys and sliced it up into scenes of daring and horror and glory. Konrad turned that image onto himself now. The more he breathed, the less he was, until the outlines of his body were smudged away, like those artists he'd seen who groused over their work and rubbed the charcoal borders away until they were gone, and they could start again.

Soon even his breathing was forgotten. His body was there, he knew it, but his mind was what filled his being. His body was just the clay, and the outlines of it... he could see them now. Smudge them away. Remake it, or at least one part.

Imagine your hand. No. A hand. Like yours but darker. Skin like midnight, deep and dark but lit by stars.

His mind brushed and scratched with charcoal across the darkness behind his eyelids. Fingers and palm, and coloring in between these fresh outlines. Black like the distant folk he'd seen in Sunberth as a boy, jabbering in foreign tongues. Like the two Drykas in the pavilion he sat in.

Something was tingling. Sizzling, almost, only without the heat or pain. It was his-

"Your hand, lad." The voice came from so far away. Like he was at the bottom of a well and he actually looked up, with his closed eyes. "Your hand."

It was such effort to open his eyes. The meditation... well, he was hardly an expert, but Konrad knew how enthralling it could be. To vanish within yourself was quite a heady thing, leaving your body behind as best you could. But open they did, and the first thing he saw was Ed'yta, still holding his damn pipe-

But no longer smoking. Just letting it smoke. Staring down... and he followed her gaze...

To see his hand blackened as if burned, but when he blinked and focused... it was not burned. It was simply darker, like the Drykas scribbling in the corner. He held it up to the light and turned it over. The sides were still the pale, bleached color of his own body, but the back... ebony and deep...

"Bring it back now, lad. Don't want to-"

"Aye."

Always easier to destroy than create. Konrad hardly thought in such philosophical terms, but it was a truth he knew as well as any other. He'd been sitting there for almost a bell, he would find out, breathing and thinking and summoning the focus and djed to change just a small part of himself. Now it was but the work of a moment to knit his brow and shake his hand, feeling the tingling sizzle grow sharper, growl angrily at his skin until-

The djed dissipated and his hand was his own again. White and pale and scarred. The Drykas crone across from him sucked again at his pipe. Baccy hissed and popped and she nodded her approval.

"Satisfied?"

Konrad smiled crookedly and held out his hand. Now he felt like a smoke.

"S'a start."

Don't Make Me Repeat Myself.

[Jasmine Stormblood]

Very nicely done. Let me know if I missed anything you were looking for dear

 

Konrad Venger

XP

• Socialization: 5 XP
• Meditation: 2 XP
• Morphing: 2 XP
• Negotiation: 1 XP
• Persuasion: 1 XP
• Reimancy(fire): 1 XP

Lores

• Meditation: do not try and force the concentration
• Meditation: hard to come out
• Morphing: start out small first
• Morphing: changing skin color for a short time
• Don't make promises that can't be fulfilled
• Konrad: hates not being paid for a job
• Sunberthian hate mages but not magic
• Ed'yta: knows more than she lets on
• Ed'yta: old but not weak