[Flashback, solo] Continuing education

[Leo Varniak]

Summer of 503 AV "The young Varniak, hmm? Why, I thought you'd died in the fire with the rest of your family." "Yes, I get that a lot." Finn DeRober puffed on his beloved pipe Marguerita. He claimed it was a pre-Valterrian heirloom, but even sixteen-year old Leo Varniak found it very unlikely. It was probably the replica of a replica of some cheap design that vaguely resembled something from before the cataclysm. Finn was a large man, strong and big-boned. His neck almost burst out of the collar of his shirt. Middle-aged, meaning that he looked pretty old by Syliran standards, but in all likelyhood he would already be dead anywhere else. "Ahh, they made some damn fine wares if I say so myself. My toughest competitors in the city. Been doing a lot more business since they died." He said that in a cheerful tone, not really giving any thought that their kid was standing in front of him with his black eyes staring right through him. Finn DeRober was as amoral as they came, talking to the boy as if he hadn't been there, and still he could not help but feel slightly disturbed by the young Varniak and his attitude. "I can imagine." "So, how did it happen anyways? You'd think people used to firing a kiln would know better than to start a fire in their own home, no?" "Someone got careless." Sworn to never lie to another, Leo had to find an acceptable response that did not involve his spouting a cloud of fire in Allistir's face. But truly, this kid was creepy, Finn thought with a frown of his barely-there brow, thinned out by years of working the furnace. He was just standing there, arms parallel to the body, waiting and watching and giving him one-liners. "So, you looking for a job now? I'm not hiring at the moment. The market swings a lot these days, I'm not investing time and money on training someone I might have to sack after a season or two." "No. I am not looking to work here. Frankly, Mr. DeRober, your craftsmanship is too shoddy for my standards. You underpay and overwork your staff, and you settle for second-rate materials." An angry spiral of smoke rose from Marguerita. "If so, you impertinent little orphan, what the petch are you doing here? I'm a busy man and have no time for morons." "You will find time for me. You have been conducting immoral activities in this district. You sabotaged two competitors over the past six months. As well, the Syliran Knights may want to have a talk with you regarding your taxes." "You little...!" Finn DeRober shot up from his seat, nostrils flaring. "Those are dangerous things to say in MY house and MY turf!" Leo did not seem impressed with the outburst. "Yes. Especially for you." Finn had gone red in the face. Leo could see the resemblance to Allistir Varniak. They were probably alike, except Finn had never crossed paths with an extraordinary woman like Lina. "You have guts to come here and threaten me like that, but no-one would believe a snotty kid like you. Besides, you've got no proof, and you know why? Cause I'm extra careful. I only leave tracks that a little money can dry up. Go home if you even have one, Varniak. Go while you can still walk." The potter grinned broadly with his pipe between the teeth, and cracked his knuckles. The grin died on his lips when Marguerita erupted with a vertical stream of fire that almost singed the ceiling, as well as some of his greying hair. "Dira will believe me," Leo replied calmly. "I know you are a Glypher. I need to learn. Now you teach me."

[Leo Varniak]

The potter scowled at the young Leo Varniak. Somehow the kid had gotten himself some magic. It didn't give him the right to walk in and make demands. The Knights would not spare him just because he was a teenager; but naturally there was no point if Finn died before the Knights arrived. Being avenged in death was little consolation to the man. "Golyffer? Dunno what you're talking about, Varniak," he probed, but Leo shook his head. "Do not play dumb with me, Finn DeRober. My sources have told me about the way you… upgrade your most expensive wares." Finn clenched his teeth. Someone had ratted out on him, but he still had to make sure the kid wasn't bluffing. "What do you mean, brat? "Simple," Leo explained, "you hide certain magical symbols on your best porcelain, disguising them as painted decorations: geometric patterns, to be precise. You charge them with a tiny amount of power, so that they will cause the item to 'accidentally' slip off someone's hands at a set time. A broken dish is one more dish you get to sell. A very unethical way of doing business." Finn hissed through his parted teeth, almost crushing Marguerita's briar wood stem. "I spent my childhood painting teacups and saucers. I am familiar with the patterning. I examined five different patterns from your workshop - 202, 277, 287, 399, 415, as per the numbers on the underside - and I noticed certain recurring elements. A trisected square in all of them, even though it made little sense to have one in the middle of a curved pattern. That was when I got curious and decided to probe further. Three steps down the road I knew you were a Glypher. Everything else I found out about you was just a bonus. Apparently the amount of magic in each piece is so small that you think it can't be used as proof against you. We would need a formal trial to ascertain that." There was a moment of very awkward silence as Finn resisted the urge to physically assault the kid. He was feeling far too disturbed for that. Being exposed by the Syliran Knights was one thing - a boy with some kind of obsessive disorder was another thing entirely. "Let's make a deal, Varniak," he said at last, puffing on his smoking pipe, "I teach you some Glyphing and you just forget about this whole story. It's not like I killed anyone, right? No need to get violent, eh?" "Your offenses are not yet what I would consider 'lethal'," Leo admitted, "though only by a slight margin." Only by a slight margin? This young man was crazy! "You have an outstanding debt to society as a whole, Mr. DeRober. You also have one chance to redeem yourself by aiding me in the pursuit of justice. I will not tell the Knights, provided you put an end to your questionable practices." "Er… sure?" "I will take that as your word then," Leo nodded. "The drop in your profits will be smaller than the money you would have to spend on bodyguards if you chose to lie to me." Finn swallowed a hard one, but merely stood and motioned for Leo to follow. "Come with me. Let's pull the tooth before I change my mind, kind."

[Leo Varniak]

The potter led the way and Leo merely followed him to the workshop. It was pretty late and the workers had already called it a day about an hour earlier. The boy hadn't been in a place like this since the day his house burned down and his family with it. Rows of unfinished earthenware goods were lined up on wooden shelves, with boxes of complete sets nearly stored in boxes to be put on sale. The kiln looked much like the one Leo had manned throughout his childhood. He pushed back the ghosts of his loss and kept his eyes trained on the man. Chances were he had a dagger or something hidden around the place and was simply waiting for a chance to drive it into Leo's heart. "This is how I do it. I'm no master, mind you, but it works well enough for me." Finn produced a notebook from a drawer and tossed it Leo's way. The boy caught it in his right hand and flipped through the pages with his thumb. There were figures, diagrams, annotations. "How did you learn magic?" Leo asked coolly. "You're one to ask," was the grunted reply, "barely old enough to wipe your own ass and you're already casting stuff around. They taught me in Zeltiva. Didn't learn enough to make a living, though, so I'm just using it for a little bonus on the side." Leo's thumb flipped the very first page of the sketchbook where the word 'Djed' appeared in big bold letters in the middle of some messy script. "What's this Djed thing? It looks important." The potter blinked. "Huh?" He sounded incredulous. "You cast magic and don't even know what Djed is?" "So it seems, but you will rectify that. My casting works on an intuitive level. I need to catch up on the theory." Which was an abridged version of 'Ivak imparted Reimancy on me through tons of dreams over my younger years'. Fenn squinted at the boy and replied in a slower tone of voice. "Djed is the essence of all things. Everything is made of it." "That is to say, lead and gold are basically the same thing?" "No, not the same thing. But they both lie on the same foundation, so to speak. It's like enamel colors in ceramic painting, you make them from different stuff but in the end they all cover the same terracotta. And you can mix and match them. Djed is the earthenware you paint, the paper to the drawing. The colors are the different forms Djed can take once it's painted. There's a color of me, a color of you, a color for every little thing." Leo looked pensive for a while, slowly walking around the workshop as he pondered. "Go on." Finn shrugged. "Djed is what makes us what we are. Normal folks can only tamper with the colors, but mages can go straight to the canvas and play with it at their leisure." He was getting the kid to think, good. A little more and maybe he'd let his guard down for a moment. A moment was all Finn needed, anyways. "Different magic gets to the canvas in different ways, of course. With personal magic, you mess with your own little piece of canvas to change the colors around you. World magic, you use tools to bend the canvas of the universe. Gnosis is yet different, you get the gods to repaint the canvas for you." The grim student stroked his chin, but still kept an eye on Finn at all times. "Naturally, those bound to the world of colors won't understand a change in the canvas," he pondered, "so it looks wondrous to them. Magical. But at the same time, messing up the canvas can ruin the whole painting." The potter nodded. "Yeah. That's pretty common, too. Hardcore magic users rarely die of old age." "So, how does this apply to Glyphing?" Leo asked next. "Hmm, Glyphing is a way to pack some Djed inside a series of magical symbols." Leo looked at him quizzically. "If everything is Djed, then does that mean I can put anything inside a doodle and it just disappears and stays there?" Finn DeRober laughed at the notion. "Kid, there is a saying in magic. 'Nothing is impossible until you try'. Sure, things are possible in theory but doing them in practice is the stuff of legends. Glyphs are like the alphabet of the universe - the things we see around us are words spoken, and glyphs can turn them into words written. The catch here is that the spoken language of the world is much more powerful than the writing system. Even a legendary Glypher would be hard-pressed to describe a person in such perfect detail as to store them in a Glyph… even though it's not impossible. So, what we store inside Glyphs is magic. Magic is far easier because it's closer to the canvas. To the root. It doesn't need as complex an alphabet. You get that?"

[Leo Varniak]

"Yes, I think I get that," young Leo mumbled in response. His eyes dropped to Finn's notebook and began to devour the intricate shapes of the glyphs. Apparently the discipline was relatively easy to use, but very difficult to master. Any dabbler could get the glyph to trigger a simple reaction, but once you wanted something more then it got hard, fast. You had to think of corners, lines, power distribution, and other strange terminology like "symmetry artifacts", "meaning overload", and "reality-shape interpolation". It really looked like there was more to the potter than met the eye. These notes did not seem like they came from some book; they lacked the typical organization into chapters and paragraphs. More likely, he'd been taking notes while an expert on the topic held a lesson or something. Interesting. "A student at the University of Zeltiva, I assume?" Finn gave a sarcastic laugh. "That's scary, kid. How did you know?" Leo shrugged, still immersed in the book. "Just the most likely way you'd have learned this." Finn took three careful steps, positioning exactly the way he wanted to. "Yeah, I once studied there, Varniak. I wasn't bad, I wasn't good, just decent. That crappy level where you can't earn a living without taking a lot of risks, so I quit and got into pottery. Exciting, eh?" Leo turned a page and gave him a stern look. "The world does not begin and end with money. Magic may well be the only force that can save us. It should be used to fix all the wrong things, not for profit." This was the longest the kid had talked since stepping into Finn's house. The potter used the time to make sure everything was ready. The brat had no idea what awaited him. Finn always lived by this one rule - Finn comes first, and second, third, and every other position that matters. "There is one thing I am not getting, though," Leo closed the notebook, "it says here that glyphing has no power of its own. So you must know some other form of magic, yes?" "Die, Varniak," the potter smiled with benevolence, and something hissed from behind Leo's back. Perhaps it was the kid's paranoia, but his body turned to face the noise. The knife flew, driven by an invisible force, and cut a long gash through Leo's upper arm. The blood-stained blade gleamed in the candlelight as the boy rolled on the floor in pain to avoid more of the slashes. "I didn't want to kill a damn kid," Finn growled as he led the Projected hand to point in Leo's direction, "but you just had to barge in here and act all high and mighty about it, didn't you? Who are you to do that, you little shyke?" The knife drew an arc to stab Leo from an angle, but his reflexes made him jump back just in time, the point only scratching his chest. His back slammed into the wall, sending sharp lances of pain through his spine. "No-one even knows you're alive! No family, no friends, no nothing! You should have died back then! I'm not really killing you if it's like you're already dead, right?" Finn was foaming at the mouth. He hadn't used Projection in years; he had gotten a bit rusty at it and the feeling of how draining it was only just started to resurface. But it would be enough to erase Leo Varniak from the realm of the living, right?

[Leo Varniak]

Leo crawled under a table to narrowly avoid the flying knife, but quickly found that such a tactic only reduced his escape routes. The weapon had no impediments of any sort, and was highly maneuverable. Pain throbbed from his arm as the blood soaked his shirt. He wished for nothing more than to point his hand at the potter and release a firebolt, but he had to admit that no matter how quick he could make his casting, the knife would be quicker. He had to keep the knife in his field of view at all times, or he was a dead man. A dead teenager, anyways. He darted out from under the table and cast a quick glance at the air around him - the knife was there, immediately turning to point his way as he showed himself. "No time to play hide and seek, Varniak! Just petching die already!" It came flying towards him, and Leo used all of his strength to pull the table towards himself. The knife embedded itself in the wooden surface. Leo grasped it with both hands, and for a short moment the two of them struggled over the weapon. Then Leo was hit in the face by something resembling a fist, but totally invisible and intangible. He staggered back, bleeding from the nose, as Finn tried to dislodge the knife from the table with his Projected limb. He wasn't immediately successful, and Leo mustered his focus, a small ball of flames forming in the palm of his hand. Finn grunted, noticing the incoming threat, and redirected his effort to a pile of half-painted dishes lying on one of the shelves. Leo was targeted by a shower of earthenware crashing into him and dissolving into splinters on the floor. The cacophony of the battle filled the room as both combatants turned less than human in the struggle. Leo tried to launch the firebolt at the potter, but his aim was not true and the flames hit the stone walls of the room, disappearing in a shower of sparks. "That's why I never wanted a kid," Finn growled in disgust. Leo faintly realized, as he tried his best to survive the onslaught, that his opponent was raving from a case of overgiving. "They break shyke, they smell like dogs in heat, they won't eat their veggies until you smash their petching little heads into a wall." The potter gave a slasher grin and decided it was fine to use his left hand, too. Now Leo found himself bombarded by the dishes and the knife popped out of the table, all at the same time. Things were looking bad here, very bad. "Ohhhh, daddy, tell me a fairytale! A lullaby! Sure, junior, here's your story!" Stab, dodge, stab, dodge, crash. "Once upon a time there was a young prince. Then he was stabbed and he DIED! And stayed dead too!" Leo grabbed a flying dish before it could hit him and waved it frantically, parrying the knife as best he could before throwing it back at Finn, who wasn't expecting it - and worse yet, he couldn't use his arms to block it while he Projected. The dish hit Finn in the face, and the man recalled his Projected limbs back to him just as Leo picked up a second dish and launched it at him. This time, Finn grabbed it with both hands. "What do you think you're…" he laughed, then his eyes went wide and he let out a scream. The dish was burning hot, as if it had just gotten out of an oven. He dropped it automatically. Leo took it as his cue and bridged the gap that separated him from the door. "You're not getting out of here alive!" Finn screamed, gathering every ounce of his power and lifting an entire cupboard from the floor with an inhuman sound coming from his throat. He threw the piece of furniture at Leo's retreating figure, but the boy was quick to flee the scene. Exhausted, Finn collapsed amidst the wanton destruction he had unleashed and the smithereens of his own mediocre wares. He couldn't tell how long he slept, but he woke up in a sweat, and with the shadow of fear looming over him. Leo Varniak had escaped with his life. What if he had told the Knights? Finn spent the remainder of the day disposing of all evidence of both his practices and the magic fight that had taken place in his workshop. Then, he waited patiently for the Knights to pay him a visit, layers upon layers of excuses and alibis on his mind. One day passed, then another and another. After a season, it became clear that Leo Varniak hadn't told the Knights after all. The brat must have been afraid of the consequences. Finn was pleased. Sure, his right thumb wasn't moving quite like it used to, but he had taught the snotty kid a lesson he would never forget. How mistaken he was.

[Leo Varniak]

Four years later Pale hands carefully brushed the enclosing square in a relaxing deep blue color. An original dish had been bought for comparison, but the one being worked on right now was, as of yet, unmarked albeit identical in every other respect. A street urchin had bought them both from Finn DeRober's market stall, then handing them over to the strange young man who tipped him generously for the effort. It had taken Leo Varniak a long time to get the hang of Glyphing from just the potter's notebook, well-organized though it may be. Long days slipped him by as he tried to draw intricate shapes and fold magical fire into them only to set fire to the medium and be forced to start over. There were several components to each figure in a glyph - an attractive one that sucked the spell into the geometric structure of the shape, a retentive one that kept it in and a repulsive one that ejected it as soon as the retentive part phased out from a trigger. All of them were about 'meaning' - finding it, and describing it. The concept had escaped Leo for the longest time, but he'd finally started to get it right. Finn had stopped charging his wares with the infamous trisected square glyph following the incident, but Leo had never stopped watching him. Recently, he had felt confident enough to resume his practice, and the square had made an obvious comeback. The potter hadn't even tried to change the shape of the glyph to confuse him. It made Leo's task all the easier for it. He knew now that the square consisted of a Focus in the middle and two tiny Triggers by its sides, all surrounded by a Barrier. Glyphs needn't be too complicated for such a tiny amount of magic. It would serve Leo's purpose just fine. His hands looked like they were made for holding a brush rather than a sword or any other tool; had Leo not felt the constant, obsessive compulsion to rid the world of bad guys, he might have made a fine painter. He enjoyed it, too, even if this time it was just a matter of copying someone else's crude abstract patterns on a dish. Time lost meaning when he held a brush, and he was no longer reminded of the constant fever running in his body. He had the patterning done in no time - he had worked on far harder pieces as a child, painting entire tea sets with his mother. Dishes, with their flat surfaces, were quite easy in comparison. The forged piece completed and the paint dried up, he merely pressed his thumb against the square and released the fiery Res that built up inside him. The glyph absorbed the magic like a sponge, no visible result to his action. There, preparations were complete. * * * Finn DeRober sold his wares in person every now and then; this was one such day. Marguerita the pipe set firmly in his mouth yet still unlit, the potter sang great praises of his earthenware to any and all approaching market goers. Everyone always needed more pottery - the fact it always tended to slip off your hands probably had something to do with it. Business was always good this time of year for Finn. "Yes, milady, the enamels on this piece are quite remarkable, aren't they? Ohh, sir, you have a fine eye for pottery; that is my most exclusive model. Indeed, madame, there is a two-copper discount if you buy six of those plates. Thank you, and come again!" He was in his element, the silver-tongued scammer. A commoner woman picked up a dish from a pile and inspected it briefly. "Ah, what a talent for finding great bargains, my good lady. Buy four, get one free!" But the woman was frowning slightly, and the hearty grin died on Finn's lips as she put it back on the pile. "It's strange… the dish isn't supposed to be warm, right?" Warm? Was the woman raving? The dish hadn't been in the kiln for days now. Or was she trying to find an excuse to haggle on the price? "That's impossible," Finn objected firmly, and picked up the dish. Unbeknownst to him, he triggered something by his touch - something that his fingers and only them could awaken. The trigger had been very clear on who'd have to touch the item before it went on fire - which it did, suddenly and unexpectedly. Finn yelled, and the woman stepped back in shock. The dish broke as it landed, and the potter blew air on his burned fingers, cursing the gods for what had happened. Five seconds had scarcely passed, when the Syliran Knights surrounded Finn's stall, weapons at the ready. They started asking lots of questions, and they didn't seem pleased at all. "Can't you see I am a victim here?" the potter said, exasperated. The Knights asked more questions, then one of them inspected the other dishes on the pile. "They've got the same markings as the first one. We should get those checked by a wizard. Please follow us, citizen." "No!" Finn protested, and Marguerita fell from his lips. "It wasn't me! It wasn't me!" It was the Varniak kid! But of course, he couldn't mention the Varniak kid without telling them the circumstances of their meeting… and attempted murder was a more serious charge than fraud. Then, noticing how the Knights' hands slithered to the hilts of their weapons, he shut up and followed them, trembling in fear and anger while the bystanders discussed the accident, spreading the word faster than a plague. No matter what punishment the Knights inflicted on Finn DeRober, it was clear his business in Syliras had come to an end, his reputation utterly destroyed over a single instant. A young man left the scene and returned home. There, he crossed a name off a list and awarded himself a glass of water before focusing on the next item on the roster. F I N

[Ataraxia]

Leo Varniak XP Reimancy + 2, Rhetoric + 2, Observation + 3, Intimidation + 3, Acrobatics + 1, Glyphing + 4 Lore Sleuthing 101 | Handling verbal abuse with grace | Understanding the basics of Djed | Glyphing Theory | Surviving a Wizard's assault | Beating someone at their own game Comments I liked this thread quite a bit. I haven't explored too much into glyphing or read any threads that really utilized the skill, so it was interesting to see the strategic uses such a drab world magic can have. If you have any questions, you know the drill. Peace out!