Hearing The Void Sigh [Antar]

[Bedlam]

Season of Winter, Day 34, 511 AV Two guards stood outside the door to Ada Beatrice’s home. They looked up, shared a quiet glance with their partner. “Beatrice said that you’d be coming,” one said, relieved. "Thank Kelwyn, she hates it when she's wrong." “Be careful,” the other whispered, so low Antar could barely hear him. “Half the time, the men who go to see her? Don’t come back.” They turned and removed the bolt from the door—on the outside. “She’s waiting for you.” The door slammed shut behind Antar, the door trembled as the bar fell back into place, locking him inside. On the way in he had seen the laboratories of the Department of Illusion—empty, all stone and glass vials and experimental notes that twined into illegible nonsense when he wandered close enough to see—and clean. Sanitary. Barren of all life but the researchers, wandering from experiment to experiment like automatons; the room of Ada Beatrice was none of this. It was heavy with shadows and incense and candlelight; velvet rugs and patchwork curtains sewn together from half a hundred different fabrics, filled with little trinkets. Paintings of yellow flowers and sprawling landscapes decorated the walls, made Ada’s little home in the midst of cold experiments. “Is that you, deary?” Her voice was soft and warm, and came from elsewhere. “Stay where you are, let your grandmother welcome you. I have tea!” Ada Beatrice strode into the room, teacup in hand, but only one. “You are right on time deary,” she smiled, and wrinkles covered her face. Age had made the delusional old woman small, near diminutive. “It warms my old bones to think you would come to visit me, oh dearest grandson.” The corners of her eyes turned up. “It has been so long.” Beatrice smiled, too wide, with too many teeth. She drank her tea. “But you have not come to share words with an old woman,” she smiled, almost sadly. “You come for business. Sit.” “You,” Ada speared Antar with a finger. “With your aid, the world was made once more right!” She bared her teeth in a rectus that no fool would ever mistake for a smile. “I am Ada Beatrice, seer, greatest among my people!” She spread her hands. “And I have seen your face in the stars.” Her eyes were empty and cold. “I have seen your path clear in the omens, young Antar! Heed well. My prophecy is truth!” “Antar, you come to learn, and you will learn. Glorious Antar, you will learn in a day what others seek for a dozen!” Thank Kelwyn, she hates it when she's wrong. Half the time, the men who go to see her? Don’t come back. “Rejoice young Antar,” Beatrice sang. “For by midnight this night, I will teach you the truth of the Void!”

[Antar]

"Indeed honored grandmother it has been far too long," Antar said as he smiled towards the old woman. Beatrice was an odd sort, but one he was sort of feeling a genuine affection for, even if he knew she was as batty as batty could get. Taking out his waterskin, filled with warm tea to ward off the cold chill in the wintry air, the rogue simply smiled as he recalled the warnings of the guards at the front of her rather humble abode.'Of course, half the people who came to see her went missing, they would merely be voided for the slightest of transgression which piqued her ire.' But hopefully Antar would not be one of them.

The woman had started to call him 'grandson' almost as soon as he arrived in her presence and he had let Beatrice continue the practice, even if she had made it known she thought herself a member of the konti race. Such things didn't matter to Antar, if the old woman could be given a brief moment of happiness by thinking he was her grandson, even for a fleeting illusionary moment, then he did not see the harm.

Setting down his rucksack he pulled another cup from the bag. This one made of tin. He had come prepared today, "I brought that raspberry tea you wished to try grandmother. Brought fresh from the brewer's shops. I can't promise you'll like it but you're welcome to have a taste. Be warned though its a little cool. Please don't be startled in the slightest, I'd like to warm it up for you with a little reimancy, and you told me how wonderful things exist in the void , grandmother. Could you be more specific? You told me how it could help someone counter anything horrible which some foolish brats summoned... are those summoners still troubling you grandmother? I could scold them for you later if you wish. "

He was making light conversation, some of it was true, and some of it was not. It was not for him to say. It was only his fervent, heartfelt desire to see the old woman in front of him to be happy this day, while struggling to comprehend a new art that hopefully wouldn't swallow him whole.

If she consented to the raspberry tea he'd warm a cup up for her in the tin using his fire reimancy, and pour it gently into the old woman's tea cup. He even had a bit of honey and mint julep for spice that he'd bought at the market today to help the old woman's taste so it the raspberry flavor wasn't so tart.

When such things were over and they were both sipping away at tea, the white haired rogue would smile kindly, "Where should we start grandmother?"

oocTake whatever the 'tea' would cost freely from antar's ledger at the end of the thread. ^-^

[Bedlam]

Beatrice stared at Antar's tea, her eyes narrowed, studied it. The tension leaked from her expression. "Oh, thank you deary. You are too kind, too kind." She raised the cup to her lips and smiled to herself. "It warms my old bones to think you would come to visit me," she said again, unaware of her redundancy. "Oh! Forgive an old woman. We so like to go on." She sat across from Antar, placed the tea on a table between them. She put both her hands on the table and leaned forward, smile gone. "To open the Void you must understand nothing!" She made an a sudden wide gesture and the china fell to the floor with a crash. Beatrice did not seem to notice, or if she did then she certainly did not care. "We hold our hands like so," Beatrice showed Antar her open palms, "we close our eyes and we understand the absence of all things, and we make that understanding true." A pinprick of darkness appeared between her fingers, and as she spread her hands it became as big as her head, as big as a table. It was the color of a night without stars. Pressure whispered at his clothes, and the broken bits of china on the floor trembled. Then it was gone, and Antar could see Beatrice's face again. "Fools, they think they understand nothing, but they do not. They do not know the absence of all things; they cannot know. It takes weeks of study and meditation, Antar. Except," her voice was ecstatic. "For you." "Close your eyes," she said. "Do nothing! Think of nothing. Meditate on nothing. Understand nothing. Then! Then you will know the Void." The old woman put her hands in her lap and stared at Antar expectantly.

[Antar]

"Very well honored grandmother." Noth said as he smiled paying the shattered china no heed, he had drawn his scabbarded blade and used it as a piton, shoving it between his belt and the sofa back to hold him upright. The sofa was of an old make, but good quality in its fashioning, which he oddly had noted from its immobility that it had been bolted to the floor. A carpenter's eye just had a knack for such things, but why the bolts? He soon found out the reasons why it was bolted to the floor with heavy bits of steel... much like some of the other random bits of furniture in Beatrice's house.

He supposed it was a preventative measure taken by the one of the shadowy departments which made up Alvadas' governmental structure. So it would be wise to anchor himself in as best as possible, even if he had only been able to do so while the wise old woman wasn't looking. If she had however noticed, he would make up a trifling excuse that his 'grandmother's' exploits of the Art were always so breathtaking to him that he felt he needed a bit of extra suport to make him sit up and be as attentive as possible.

When asked to meditate, he began to do so, whispering his thoughts aloud as his mind began to picture many a things. Things like grass, and trees, and one by one , he would repeat a word . The word 'removed'. In each repetition in his minds eye he cut off the item for his focus.

This was repeated until he came to the monikers' "House, table, kitchen... and then 'self', thought and consciousness."Nothingness... an eternal spiral winding downwards, never ending, never existing. A place that is simply apart from space and time, within and without, fluid , yet concrete, separate yet unnaturally apart. No air, no wind, no dust... Removed."

This attempt was both at once, the dutiful attempt by a 'doting grandson' and of a former assassin, carpenter, slash -bounty hunter- slash mage trying to better himself in order to prepare for the rough roads ahead.

But such thoughts were far from his mind, there was only the present, his meditative focus of the frozen waterfalls of avanthal set as a backdrop as his ruminations cycled through different aspects of the world and discarded them. Eventually, the focus itself faded into nothingness, torn there by the mused suction of the dangerous craft he had seen the old woman perform.


Mustering his djed, he simply let it hum along the course of his body, tightened to sing like a subtle string of an instrument as it began to undulate with the waves of his thoughts... or would it be unthoughts? For the first few minutes he would continue, tuning out everything under his 'grandmother's watchful Eye' as the djed within him began twisting in a whole new way as it tried to create a place of nothingness in the world between his fingertips.

This did not mean to say he would get it on his first try, no... far from that. It might take several, but there was one thing that seemed to echo in this space between the wizened crone, and her newest 'apprentice.' The palpable accord of the man's razor edged focus to strive and succeed even in the most dire of odds. What would come next would be bourne of the fruit of his 'grandmother's' teachings and observations... and that was enough for this smallest of steps. But even steps were inconsequential in a place of thought where only nothingness could exist...

[Bedlam]

"Oh dear," Beatrice raised both her hands in front of her mouth and stared down at the broken teapots. "And after you struggled so to bring it to me! I am so sorry deary. Let me make it up to you. Keep it up." She stood, hobbled back into the kitchen and started warming up more tea; a noisy, distracting process. "I know you can do it." Time passed. The teapot whistled. "It's done, dearly. My special tea!" Beatrice poured into the cup, took it in her hand . . . and stopped. The old woman set it down again, opened a cabinet, filled to the rim with vials and bits of glass, well stoppered, labeled in the flowing text of a language she had invented for herself. "I'll be right there," she said, pulled a liquid that shone in many colors and let one drop fall into the cup, two drops, three drops, four. Only then was she satisfied. She stoppered the top and put it in its proper place. She came into the room, the cup steaming and full. Her smile was as warm then as it had ever been. "It is only right I return your kindness." She placed the pot on the table, and the cup on Antar's side. "You'll get it in time. I know it." Her voice trembled. "The Void is a terribly hard thing to understand. Take a breather, you will know faster if your mind is clear, and nothing clears the mind like good tea."

[Antar]

"Thank you honored grandmother, I'm sure it will be plenty. Please don't feel the need to go to so much trouble."Taking the tea, Antar nodded once to the old woman, he still had a bit left of the raspberry tea in his waterskin, but to play the dutiful grandson was a part he had to succeed in. For a moment, he held the choice beverage under his nostrils, letting himself savor the warm aroma as his normal paranoid nature checked his mind for anything off in the smell which might denote a poison or two. Old assassin instincts died hard.

He imagined since she was part of the ministry, and one of their few extremely talented individuals, her fellows wouldn't allow her to have anything which was truly life threatening around herself to imbibe. But that did not discount the possibility of a medication, or some other calming substance, though its effects would be stimied. For all he knew the crazed woman had a bit of konti vision water stored somewhere abouts. Shipped in from Mura.

God that would be awful.

He'd hate to see visions or become induced into a drug crazed rendition of several childhood songs, in fact he could probably pass the day singing to the old woman to fill her heart with joy if it came to that. All while psychotically practicing voiding. But there was one thing anyone who knew anything about him knew he hated: He hated losing control of his mind. In any way shape or form, even if his auritics went out of sorts or not... an assassin with a mind lost in the past, or not attached to the present , sans when trying to learn voiding, was dangerous.

After the first sip of tea filled his mouth the rogue sloshed it around his toungue, waiting to detect any tingling chemical sense on his pallet or sharp aftertaste before taking a single shallow swallow to set the cup down and smile at the old woman, "Thank you grandmother, the old family recipe tastes quite well, please share it with me before the day's end? I'm sure it would prove a boon to keep our secrets in the family. You know I'd never tell anyone anything to the contrary."

That much was true at least, the rogue would never tell anyone about the strange odd woman in Alvadas who thought she was a konti, and his 'grandmother.' It would put her in too much danger if enemies came hunting for anyone connected to him. No matter how well protected she was... and if she had seen his past run red with blood she'd know that too."But the real thing which always cleared my mind was a hug from you grandmother as we shared our tea. "

Rising to his feet he gave her a hug and took back his tin cup from where it lay on the with a small bit of his own raspberry tea in it. A small deft movement on the tabletop, to let the china cup old had taken a small sip out of rest towards Beatrice, and his tin cup of raspberry tea would be enough to get them both drinking and talking. If she wasn't overly flustered from the hug that was...

Reaching over the table where the old woman had spilled a bit, the rogue conscienciously used his own kerchief to mop up the remains of the china from the floor, keeping it in a pile on one of the end tables moored heavily into the floor by large bolts. If he did succeed today he wondered if he could make them vanish as an exercise. Only time, and control of this new endeavor he set upon would tell.

[Bedlam]

The old woman shook her head almost sadly. "Oh deary," she said, in a voice near a whisper. "You are too kind to me. Too kind." The kerchief fell from Antar's hands, limp, the feeling draining away. "I dare say, it is a recipe that my dear friends in the Department invented; it is not mine to share. I could never imitate it in my life." She smiled. "The best tea is sometimes bitter, remember that." His extremities tingled, and then Antar felt numbness. She pushed herself to her feet, her smile spread wide, barred her teeth. "The void is more than nothing, Antar. It is understanding is not enough." She clenched a hand into a fist. "You must know it. There is no time. You must experience it. Mediation?" She spat. "Learning? I have seen your future! You do not have time! You never did!" The Beatrice shrieked. "You must experience it!" She laughed, and its sound was sharp and sudden. The numbness spread further in, up his arms and legs. If he tried to stand, he would not make it to his feet. Darkness clouded over his eyes, left only her voice. "Touch, first," she hissed. Fingers? Gone, feet? Gone. Direction? Gone. Then?" Numbness swallowed Antar. The taste of his raspberry tea faded to nothing in his mouth, the smell of incense and old woman died away. "Then?! She screamed, but her voice seemed a whisper, and though there was noise, Antar did could not understand it. Antar could not feel his body. Could not hear her words. Could not see or taste or smell. He was left alone in his mind with nothing.

[Antar]

If he could have spoken, he would have comitted verbal murder in the third degree at the moment he felt himself go numb.

'Note to self , Antar.' He thought, 'Never trust your ability to interact with an insane woman again. Sure she's a lovely duddy old bat when she's not seeing things, but boy does she have a vicious streak.' the rogue thought to himself with a smile. Sometimes, it seemed the old woman really could have been his real grandmother or something.

She was insane and cruel enough at least.

He never had known his real father, nor any other relatives on his mother's side. No questions to his mother or stepfather had ever given him answers... Only pain.

Pain so intense, with whippings and beating that he felt numb like he did now. Numb before he slipped deep into the darkness of unconsciousness. Only now... now he was awake. Trapped in his own body, unable to move. Unable to act... helpless. Trapped in the darkness inside him.

Without understanding what she was doing, Beatrice had entrapped him in one of his worst fears... no- more of a nightmare. Only his hearing of her words assured him he wasn't going to be ended by a blade, so he thought it was only lucky he had taken a small gulp of the tea. Finishing the damn full cup off would most likely have killed him. At least, he could hope his lungs wouldn't stop... though with a drug created by the ministry of illusions he surmised it would be a means of helping to break a prisoner. As he fell to the floor he vaguely noted righting himself so his back would hit the ground, and turning his head slightly to the side. Keeping himself upwards facing would at least allow him to breathe, if the concocted poison, or anasthetic, or whatever it was didn't stop his lungs.

And god forbid if he vomited it would not clog his throat tilted to the side... it was the only precaution he could take as he slipped into Darkness.

Darkness...

Numbing darkness.

That was what he found now within him and without.

It was not the first time he had been in such a place, not the first time he had been a prisoner. He remembered the pain of failing his mission, the assassins of his former master of the trade locking him deep within one of the vaulted rooms. There had been no light, the air had been kept stuffy and his gaolers had kept him chained to the cold floor. Those jobs had forced his mind to keep itself sane by displacing his personality and forging a new one for the mission.It had become a way of survival back then... only "Antar" was the real one.

Antar... after weeks of infiltrating the house as a 'pleasure slave' and enduring many horrors forced upon his body by the guards, both male and female. Back then he had been , "Jamie" as a persona. Forced to work his way through being the nighttime companion of both the men and women of the household. Eventually he'd get his chance. He hadn't actually failed to kill the mark, but the client had requested the old man who loved boys be sodomized and abused as he had been. But Antar hadn't gone through with it, instead he had just played the part of the meek ewe until the target had been close enough to kill. He had not snapped the man's neck in the midst of passion, as the contract required, rather had ended it simply. Tired and refusing to play any more games, Antar had simply waited as the paid off guard kept the rest of the servants away. Then after a suitable time had passed, he had escaped as per the plan while hoping his digression would not be noticed.

Unfortunately for him, it had been and he had been struck down from behind and taken away. He didn't know how long he had been locked up. At times, they'd come to whip him for what seemed like forever, scarring his back worse then a slave's... though he supposed anyone being trained as assassin in that Enclave of had been considered a slave.

Darkness...

His world had been consumed then in darkness, right up until the moment they had dragged him out to be 'initiated' in reimancy and warned to never disregard a contract's particulars again. Now, with the help of some damn tea, that was all brought back to his consciousness.

The weight of the cell, the feel of feeling nothing at all.

All of it.

For a moment, his mind revolved in madness as he remembered every tribulation and punishment in that cell. The way it blended together till even time could not be told. That was what he felt the Void was like... or what was trying to be shown him. The errant thought stopped his ruminations cold, as he pondered that question... and realized that the void was the absence of everything. Not order, or chaos, but a plane of nonexistant entropy.

Entropy, the Inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society.

That was the Void.

Entropy, A measure of the disorder or randomness. Entropy... not chaos, but of the degrading quality to break down and consume anything and everything it came in touch with. He knew this for when the agent had told him he'd void the wagon for him, there might be a risk of the wagon getting lost, or broken.

That was the void.

The despair of dwelling in darkness... the emptiness felt within.

That was the void.

The all consuming hunger to return everything to nothingness.

That was the-

The emptiness of feeling the almost ritual infliction of pain from his stepfather, and to some extent his mother slapping, though she usually cut his stepfather at times.

That was... him... The Emptiness he felt inside was loneliness, and loneliness was cleanliness.

The void, devoid of anything real, was clean.

Perhaps cleanliness was godliness, and the gods were empty just like him, paltry puppets of their own making, yet still greater then the ants crawling below them.

But where was the void in that?

It was the consuming hunger... the darkness... the lonely emptiness... the disorienting loss of time, and space. It was like him and to some extent he was like the void.

What was the Void? Beautifully ugly, vulgar, and beyond comparison. Old Beatrice had been right, one had to experience something like the events in that cell so long ago in order to try and find their way to the Art of Voiding.

How did one open a gateway to the Void?

By djed... like all personal magic. That was the theory anyways...

Personal magic... the thought resonated in his head, and for a moment he would try to see if the djed would respond to the emptiness inside him after trying to find out if he could activate his ability for auristics to begin its weaving. If he could move his jaw, the old woman would hear the words , "I think..." , only just before he let the djed react to the remembered darkness inside of him, letting his thoughts guide his abilities instead of long hours of contemplation, to "See" and rationalize how he might use that inner memory to darkness to form a bridge. By letting the hazily remembered understanding of that time, the time where complete emptiness might now show him the way.

[Bedlam]

The body remains aware of time at all times. Its heartbeat? Steady. Its breathing? Regular, ticking as clockwork ticks. Blood pumps, hair grows, hunger comes, reminds the body of passing time, awake or sleep—but these things were hidden from Antar’s eyes, if they were even there at all. There was no difference between seconds, minutes and hours. Time was a thing that happened to other people. He had known blood, and pain, and torment, but this was none of those things. This was absence. This was apathy. This was perfect, uninterrupted silence, darkness like a sky without stars. It was the whole of Antar’s world. The absence, the emptiness, the quiet—it did not care if he was angry, if he was sad. It was not hungry, it was not jealous. It did not care for his understanding. It was the hollow place in the broken heart; it was the rhythm of the song without melody. It was oblivion, it was the void. An eternity of nothingness passed. And Antar felt his face against the carpet, felt pain where the fallen bits of china had dug into his cheek. Felt aches in his body, protesting their awkward places. Saw the shadow of Ada Beatrice loom over him, her smile wide and broken. “It is nearly midnight,” she whispered. “Do you understand?” She held out her hands in fists, side by side, ready. “Show me.”

[Antar]

Grimacing as he forced himself up the floor, he tenderly removed the pieces of china from the side of his face. The long hours of sense deprivation had grown cold, filled with nothingness that made his mind ache. He wanted to lash out somehow, but forgot about it as soon as he saw the old woman's face. She couldn't help her actions; she was 'possessed' at times, her faculties obviously damaged by years of practice. If one of her visions told her a great bird would come to mizahar's western world, shyking out a cadre of syliran knights in full battle raiment ready for the slaughter of Alvadas' people.

She would have likely believed it.

Who knew, maybe she'd foretell the second coming of Sylir tomorrow after tea and biscuits and go into a frenzied fit when it hadn't come true. He'd been warned she didn't like it when she was wrong.

Shame, he wasn't terribly scared of her, wary of course, and would be twice as paranoid in her presence next time they met, if they met another time. But such things were trivial to the fact that she was still an old woman, despite what proficiencies she had, and he was the one who had played along with the idea of being her 'grandson' to placate her rampant mania.

She wanted him to show her his understanding.

The real problem was that he Did understand, just putting it into practice with so little theory graced to him would be a problem. At least he thought he did, but the important thing was that he would eventually get this down pat. That much was clear; and in return he would simply nod, and smile brightly at the beleaguered woman. "Very well grandmother. You will be shown. But first, to ensure your safety I'll ask you to step back out of a grandson's concern."

If she opened her mouth to deny or equivocate his request, he'd hold up one hand to cease her protests, "No Grandmother, a grandson should not be denied his concerns for a relative's safety. Please step back!"

If she continued further, he would be adamant in that he could not safely show her until she was at least twenty feet from him: if he messed up , he did not want her to journey into the void with him. Things just needed a little preparation. Whenever , he was done dealing with her reaction he would resume his place, standing in the center of the room.
Taking a glance around, his eyes would note a vial of ink upon the workbench, and he quickly retrieved it before sitting about twenty feet from her speaking aloud all the while. "Though you've granted me a small understanding, out of caring in your own way Grandma Beatrice, I must use the other tenants of what I know to assist my ability for success. Please understand, simply that like all grandsons, I must learn in a different way. Your guidance is what I'm here for most! Been that way since the Isle, please just understand that.""

Without another word, with the ink and quill he began to draw the glyphs upon his palms, forging the circles of runes to encapsulate the creative elements of his mind, whilst cataloguing the outer glyphs with small circles and zeros to symbolize emptiness and nothingness. Zero was after all a powerful number, a mental focus which could explain to him the void. And coupled with his new understanding of the complete expanse of nothingness he wished to bridge into; for zero was infinity's twin, was not like other numbers. It was both nothing and everything. Without boundary or expanse, yet holding nothing that was tangibly 'real' of one's reality.


When the glyphing was done upon his hands, he focused the drawing of a circle around his eyes like he had drawn upon him when first learning auristics. A glyphed matrix designed to enhance the sight of his auristics. To keep his gaze steady and longer for the next step- constructing the field for the opening to the void.

But he would not stop there.

No, rather he knew if he was to force things through, he could not stop there. There were other elements he had to take into consideration.

He had to create something else, something to help him concentrate his djed, harnessing it to form the proper means to an end. An orrery, of sorts , formed of earth to his own needs. He remembered the sight of one of them in a shop, a mechanical device designed to illustrate the relative positions of mizahar, and syna’s and leth’s travels across the skies.

An orrery, which when fashioned to the present task, would be glyphed to assist and enclose a small pocket of air in the rampant expanse of the world's djed.

The idea in his mind was similar to to the snippets of knowledge used in summoning circles; though that would not be the task for it, there would be no coordinates or monsters wishing to be summoned. Instead, it would help channel his thoughts and control of his djed via an external guideline, channeling his efforts to open the bridgeway between reality and the void itself.

Minutes were superfluos to him, beyond his recognition as he worked, disregarding even the sense of time itself. He would not know how much time was past, or wasted in this endeavor, only that this endeavor was the whole of his focus to the exclusion of all us. He started, by placing his hands upon the ground, his djed reacting to his will as it boiled like liquid lightning in his stomach before transferring itself up his spine, to his shoulders, and down to his hands as the Res began to flow from his palms, Beading off of his skin like droplets of sweat before they began to gather in two spheres, each one compliant to his will and shaping. The first sphere was a precaution, reaching back and below him, driving transmuted stone spikes into the ground of the workshop before creating a handlebar of stone, cemented to the ground as it rose up between his legs... an anchor.

The second ball of res drifted forwards about five feet, stopping its progression to sink to the stone as the orrery's spine began to form of clear res, lifting itself up in a long stream to anchor the contraption in place. In his mind, the res thinned to the facade of a mirror, a mirror not unlike one he had briefly held before, before severing itself into separate, yet concentric rings.

Connected only at the junctures of where they would be formed. Activating his second sight to begin the process of enscrawling with the Res, he began the process of transcribing the outer ring, glyphing a focus circle as it stood upright from the floor. Manipulating the Res to form the squiggles and scrawls of the craft to shunt the energy flows as he prepared them too inward, collapsing upon the center, like a radial fan.

Once the glyphing was described the outer ring, and the podium it stood on were transmuted to solid stone, as the second concentric ring swiveled to lay horizontal to the floor as the process of glyphing again mimicked the patterns of the first.

Then it came the focus of the art.

A glyph formed of interconnecting patters of zeros traversing to a single point, yet not connecting as they would to store anything. He'd learned it was impossible to store a void, so this was an endeavor to task the energies of pure djed to bring his construction to fruition. He left the center plane blank, designating the internal legrange centerpoint as the field where he would attempt to call his first void.

With his auristics intact, he shut out the outside world, to let his hands hover to each side of the orrerry's levels. Strands of djed, wriggled like worms as they began to anchor themselves to the earthen contstruction, their purpose only to be tasked to block the flow of djed from the inside of the plane, towards the outside. Like corking a bottle, the djed would go in, and then not be released.

Such was a key facet to his idea here.

When the shield shimmered and faded from all but his auristics, Antar began to construction of djed he wished to use for opening the void within the sphere... once more, bluish filaments of power spread from his fingertips as they traced theie way to the center of the orrery, only to begin to take the facade of a gordian knot.

From there, he cut the connecting strands, one by one until the last was in his hand. Meditating, focusing upon the concept of nothingness, the emptiness, and uncaring feeling of the void, he would begin to concentrate only on calling a void within the center of that djed... Taking a moment to look towards the old woman, his thoughts attempting to bend a bridge to the gateway of the void, he stumbled in his containment of the raw djed, failing his attempt as the cacophony of forces sent the shield flickering until he gained a hold of it once more. Unknowing where the old woman was, he shivered as cold beads of sweat began to form on the back of his neck as the djed stream began to settle around the center of the orrerry. Once more coming into place. “What? He stammered out the question as he fought for control, ”What do I do now?”