Completed Hesitations vs. Resolutions: Part II

A conversation must be had in order to move on from the past.

(This is a thread from Mizahar's fantasy role playing forums. Why don't you register today? This message is not shown when you are logged in. Come roleplay with us, it's fun!)

A city floating in the center of a lake, Ravok is a place of dark beauty, romance and culture. Behind it all though is the presence of Rhysol, God of Evil and Betrayal. The city is controlled by The Black Sun, a religious organization devoted to Rhysol. [Lore]

Hesitations vs. Resolutions: Part II

Postby Rohka on December 1st, 2019, 12:12 am

Image
Continued from here...

The Divinist looked back down to the book, satisfied with the glimpse of understanding she’d caught in the eyes of her apprentice before seeing the words her grandmother had written on her own existence. It was more of a journal than anything else, but the Konti knew that it contained reflections on the arcane and the reality of the times. On the next page, she began to read a sentence written in a floral script, the handwriting different from the rest on the page, and she felt the urge to read it aloud.

You live in times much different than our ancestors. Take care of this land, for it is all you have until you can find another.

Rohka scooted forward in her chair. She’d begun to feel restless and a question formed at the edges of her thoughts. “Lia, who wrote that?”

“My grandmother, I called her W’inia. She was part of the Grandmother’s circle, and then I left Mura soon after she passed on.” Rohka sympathized with this. She left the Lakeshore soon after her great grandmother died as well. “W’inia taught me most of what I know now. My mother was more of a seamstress and a painter, a bit of a healer too. She never quite grasped what it meant to need to know how to fight. Mother was a natural in her ways of getting along with friends and family, I don’t think she ever saw herself as someone who had to push to get her way. W’inia, though, she understood. She’d travelled, too. This was her journal, where she recorded her thoughts and the things she learned on her journey. Look,” she pointed to a drawing and flipped the book around so the sybil could take a peek.

It was an elaborate drawing of a stiletto blade, with an ornate hilt, covered in symbols and swirls. Beside it were notes that seemed to be scribbled quickly. It was almost illegible. Rohka squinted trying to read it and then gulped when she understood a bit.

“She was detailed,” whispered Roh, fascinated. “Muscles pull on tendons to move bones. Sever the muscles and tendons on the inside of the forearm, destroying their grip. Severing above the knee destroys mobility. This is useful when you intend to maim instead of kill.” Rohka continued to read the rest internally, seeing names and other little notes surrounding the drawing. She found another scribble that caught her eye. “To my daughters: defend your dignity, protect your hearts. The Gods know who you are, but not all of them know who you can become. You decide.

Rohka looked back up, her face in a bit of a grimace. She stood up, taking another deep breath in and stretching her arms out, suddenly tired from the mere act of reading someone else’s words. Lelia gently closed the book and set it down on the low table between them. She too stood up.

A scaled hand reached to her side, pulling out a dagger that looked identical to the one in the drawing.

WC = 510
Most active on weekends.
User avatar
Rohka
So?
 
Posts: 426
Words: 428949
Joined roleplay: May 24th, 2013, 5:28 pm
Location: Zeltiva
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Plotnotes

Hesitations vs. Resolutions: Part II

Postby Rohka on December 1st, 2019, 12:13 am

Image
The Konti slowly walked away from Rohka, contemplating the fact that they had only a few more bells together before they parted ways. Long, thin fingers played with the weapon, passing it between both hands as she took her steps across the floor. Lelia then chose to speak, her gaze turning back to the silent, stormy stare of her apprentice.

“See if you can go to Mura while you’re on your journey,” said Lelia, using the point of the dagger to gesture outwards.

“Why? I don’t think my father said—“

“Leave him, when you can. If you can.”

This stunned her. Rohka crossed her arms, her chest heaving after hearing the words she thought Lelia would never say. Countless times she’d complained about her family, and countless times the Divinist merely listened, offering cryptic words of sympathy, and nothing more. For the first time, Rohka felt a relief at hearing someone else voice the thought in her mind. Leaving her family had been a battle for longer than she could remember. It was as much internal as it was external, voiced in words as much as it was imagined in mind.

Dark eyes began to well with tears. Rohka looked away, feeling like she was burning inside, wanting to suppress the fumes.

“I don’t think I can leave,” she said. She was beginning to hyperventilate.

Lelia glided across the room, closing the gap between them, and handed her the dagger.

“Roh,” she said, her voice as soothing as she could make it. The Divinist rarely spoke to her so affectionately. It caught the Calico off guard as she took the ornate hilt of the dagger in her hand. Lelia came closer, sweeping a lock of the sybil’s hair behind her ear. “I love you too.”

The tears fell. Hiccups caught in Rohka’s chest as she gripped the hilt and focused her gaze purely on the sharp edge of the weapon. “I can’t, Lia. I love him. My family, I—“. She started to sob. Her knees got weak as she dropped to the floor, her tail feeling the roughness of the wooden floor and driving the tears to run faster, flow smoother, down her reddened cheeks.

Lelia came to sit beside her and rubbed her back as she cried. Rohka didn’t let go, her knuckles turning white while she held the dagger close to her chest. “He,” she hiccupped, needing to explain. “He doesn’t,” she hiccupped again, leaning into Lelia’s shoulder. Lelia reached around the sybil as she sobbed, gently taking the stiletto out of her hands and showing her a different way of holding it. She made Rohka reverse her grip, positioning the blade to point downwards in a locked fist. with her thumb on the button of the pommel.

“It’s ok,” whispered Lelia. “Your father will understand. There’s power in this. Defence, too.”

Rohka nodded while she weeped, holding the potential of the weapon in her hand. In her mind’s eye she saw her father’s sleeping face and she couldn’t bear it anymore.

WC = 504
Most active on weekends.
User avatar
Rohka
So?
 
Posts: 426
Words: 428949
Joined roleplay: May 24th, 2013, 5:28 pm
Location: Zeltiva
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Plotnotes

Hesitations vs. Resolutions: Part II

Postby Rohka on December 1st, 2019, 12:15 am

Image
She gently released her grip and laid the blade on the floor.

“I can’t do it,” said the sybil, breathing in, leaning harder onto Lelia, practically letting her weight fall on the Konti. She brought her arms around her and felt Lelia return the instinctual hug. “He’s just,” she struggled to find the words. She found herself trying to reassure her inner self. My father is a good man. There’s no need to cause him any harm. He will understand. He’s been protective, naturally, and I’m grateful for that. I’m being dramatic, I should choose to find the positives in my circumstances. I will help him only if it will help me too.

It wasn’t hard for Lelia to read the aura of the young woman wrapped in her arms. The amount of denial was as strong as it had been all along. What was hard was having to watch Rohka go through these cycles of psychic grief, repeatedly. Lelia held the dishevelled human close, feeling her begin to calm. “I will miss you, Roh,” she said, finally. “You brought a lot of life back into this place. It filled my days being able to pass on what I’ve learned. You’re special to me, I want you to know that. I know how strong your bond is to your family, but I wish you were more careful with that. They take from you, child. They take as much as they can get because they can. Can’t you see how much you’ve stopped giving them since you’ve been here?” Rohka groaned and coughed, distraught over the words she was hearing. She slid down and placed her head in the Konti’s lap, stretching her legs out on the floor. She felt a hand stroking her hair while Lelia spoke to her gently. “Use your auristics to sense their worries, their expectations. See through them.”

Rohka pulled at the djed threads around her to try and sense the aura of the soul that was holding her closer than they’d really ever been before. It was comforting and intimate in a way that she’d never felt with anyone other than family. But even with her focus, even with her continued reaching within her external bubble of sensory perception… she could sense nothing. In fact, the only thing she felt was a warmth. And even that warmth felt odd, as if it was meant to be loving… but artificial.

Lelia shifted herself a bit, sensing the sybil’s aura as well. It was easy to hide her true self from her apprentice. She’d mastered the magic long ago, and could suppress her intents enough to mask it from prying fields of djed. Slowly, she released a bit of anxiety into the caring infusion she’d mixed around her emanating form. Rohka sensed this immediately as a cold breeze, prickling against her skin.

She slowly rose from the Divinist’s lap and looked across the floor at the bade she’d dropped. Hand over hand, she crawled across on her knees and picked up the hilt once more before coming to face Lelia, seated on the ground in front of her, gripping the stiletto blade in the way she’d been taught, reversed.

WC = 532
Most active on weekends.
User avatar
Rohka
So?
 
Posts: 426
Words: 428949
Joined roleplay: May 24th, 2013, 5:28 pm
Location: Zeltiva
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Plotnotes

Hesitations vs. Resolutions: Part II

Postby Rohka on December 1st, 2019, 12:16 am

Image
Rohka felt the urge to separate herself from the Konti. The anxiety she’d felt in Lelia’s aura had sent chills down her entire body, and the earlier, artificial love frightened her…

But she was grateful for it.

“You love me, but you hide from me,” she said, her voice shaking. “You hide from everyone you touch. You never stick through the effects of the changes you makes, unless you’re paid. That’s smart of you, you protect yourself in that way, and I’ve learned that now. But you’ve taught me even more. I can see the world through a form of perception that helps me find the truth, even when its hidden. I needed that. I really do love you, Lia,” she paused to stand, still holding the Konti’s dagger. Lelia stayed sitting, watching her apprentice speak with a renewed inner strength. “I want the best for you. I accepted the burden you gave me because I respect and honour what you’ve given me. Not only did you give me the chance to build a true profession out of my joy for this craft, but you even let me in on this arcane plane of living. But I can’t just blindly follow your advice, Lia. I can’t make the same mistakes you did, and I won’t shirk the responsibility to protect life through this power you gave me. A power that now lives in me,” she said, speaking of the ring that had melded with her body many days ago. “I won’t leave the only dependable source of love I’d grown up with until I know that it is time. I can’t abandon the ones that stuck by me, despite our combined weaknesses.”

Rohka held the blade over the Konti’s head. Listening with her hands folded in her lap, Lelia waited, using her gnosis to be aware of the movements of the present.

“I know what’s been done to me. I may not know all of it, but I know enough now, thanks to you, Lelia. I know enough to continue onwards without the fear of losing myself, at least. I can make better choices now. I can’t erase the past, I can’t undo what I’ve suffered, nor what my family has suffered over the years.”

The blade glinted the light of a lit candle, its point grazing the pale hair atop the Divinist’s solemn face. In a few breaths, Lelia found what she’d been looking for. In the chavi she saw the life of Rohka’s past self, one that had been in this exact position before, holding a blade over the head of a soldier, determined to kill. The sybil, at the time, was full of numbed regret over the choices that brought her to that point. Suvan machines of war had driven her to kill on command, to hold power over the weak, to bring devastation to the families of her foes. The scene was hard to see because it was in twilight upon the beaches, waves crashing the shores with only the occasional strike of lightening filling the moment with flashes of clear vision. Lelia watched the scene of the past while feeling the rain pouring over them and the cold that Rohka felt at the time. The Divinist sensed that the execution wouldn’t be the last, and that there was a growing sense of self-destruction within this version of Rohka’s past self. In her drenched state within the chavi, Lelia heard a call to complete the deed.

WC = 580
Last edited by Rohka on December 13th, 2020, 3:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
Most active on weekends.
User avatar
Rohka
So?
 
Posts: 426
Words: 428949
Joined roleplay: May 24th, 2013, 5:28 pm
Location: Zeltiva
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Plotnotes

Hesitations vs. Resolutions: Part II

Postby Rohka on December 1st, 2019, 12:19 am

Image
The Konti looked up at her apprentice, boring through the windows of the past.

“You can choose differently now, Roh. You can change the course of your future.”

Rohka squeezed her eyes shut.

“How,” she whispered, the tears forming again. “How do I end this?” Rohka stepped backwards, still holding the blade.

“I can’t answer that. I tried,” said Lelia, whispering back.

The sybil loosed her grip and walked over to the table, setting the blade down. She stared at the weapon and sighed, a confused relief filling her as she stepped away from it and towards the door. Lelia stood, following her, and then laid a hand upon her shoulder. Rohka was as stuck as she was when she’d come in that evening. Probably even just as stuck as she’d been when she came into the Mystic Eye for the first time, years ago.

“Wait here,” the Konti asked, going over to pick up her grandmother’s book. “Take this with you. I know what it’s like to have family that want to protect their products of love.” She handed Rohka the old leather-bound journal. “May it bring you the strength you need to carry on farther than I did. You need it now more than I do.”

Lelia subdued the immense constriction that she felt in her chest as she gave the precious book of wisdom over to her apprentice and opened her arms, encircling the young Calico, knowing that this was their goodbye. Rohka hugged back. Her tail wrapped around the both of them and they stayed together, at the door, in acceptance of the present.

“Thank you,” said Roh. She focused on the Divinist’s aura once more, using her own djed to search around. “Because of you, I’ve grown into an identity that I hadn’t had before. Fortune telling became a passion that fuelled me forward and expanded my sense of self. I’ll never forget you. Nor this place. Your place, that is. The Mystic Eye will forever be another home for me.”

Rohka finally sensed the rays of golden light around Konti’s form. Its shine was purer and its snug depth was more akin to a true feeling of fondness. Lelia, in turn, stripped her aura of her own fears and worry over the sybil’s wellbeing before expressing her own truth. “You are welcome here, anytime.”

“I’ll miss you too, Lia,” said Rohka, admitting it finally, squeezing the Konti in her expression of gratitude for all that they’d been through, together and apart. “Goodbye.”

“Bye Rohka. Take care.”

WC = 422
Total WC = 2548
Most active on weekends.
User avatar
Rohka
So?
 
Posts: 426
Words: 428949
Joined roleplay: May 24th, 2013, 5:28 pm
Location: Zeltiva
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Plotnotes

Hesitations vs. Resolutions: Part II

Postby Rohka on December 13th, 2020, 4:30 am

GRADES
Rohka

Experience:
    Biology +1
    Weapon: Dagger +2
    Auristics +2
Lores:
    Lelia: Her grandmother’s name is W’inia, was part of the Grandmother’s circle in Mura
    Biology: Muscles pull on tendons to move bones
    Dagger: Reverse grip
Additional Notes:
+ W’inia’s Journal: The World Is Not As It Seems


If you have any concerns over this grade, don't hesitate to send me a message on either Discord or Miz. Also, please be sure to EDIT any posts in the grading queue to 'Graded'. Enjoy!
-Rohka ❤
Most active on weekends.
User avatar
Rohka
So?
 
Posts: 426
Words: 428949
Joined roleplay: May 24th, 2013, 5:28 pm
Location: Zeltiva
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Plotnotes


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests