Solo A Void in my Heart

[Clyde Sullins]

10 Spring 513 OOC: Learned of how to initiate here IC: It had not been that long since Clyde had left Mura, and made it to shore. He had been lucky to hook up with a caravan heading to Ravok. Once he had shown them his apprentice badge to the Stryfe, they had gladly brought him along. After all, having the extra protection of a Ebonstryfe apprentice, did not hurt... Of course, he left out what had happened to the last caravan he had hooked up with, on his way back to Ravok... So now all that was left was the long monotonous walk back to Ravok... Occasionally taking watch. Eating the meager food they had to share... Doing the same thing day after day, until it all blurred into an endless meaningless haze of memory... That was what he had to look forward to. But Clyde was not one to waste time. If he had this long expanse of time open, he would work on his skills. What better way to spend this time, than working on a new magic skill. He had heard a good bit about voiding back in Ravok, from a girl at the Silver Silver. Terms, themese, bits to what voiding was. So he had a general understanding of how it worked, from back then. However, he had yet to actually make a portal to the void, and done his first bit of voiding. That is what he would work on. He tried to recall back to that time... What had she said... She had said you needed to be isolated... Well you did not get much more alone than this. And though he was with the rest of the caravan, he was just as alone as if he had not been. No one but Rye to watch his back... So that was a check. He needed to learn to understand the concept of empty, of the void... His mind flickered back to when she had opened a portal, to the black emptiness... She had said voiding worked by... Using djed, to empty a point of everything... To drain it of anything at all, even energy... And in so doing, a portal to the void was created, a hole through which things could cross into the void.

[Clyde Sullins]

Clyde thought on this for a bit, as he walked... What he wondered, would be the best way to go about this... Clyde took out some ink and a quill, and silently prepared to write on the palm of his hand. Setting the ink bottle on a passing cart for a moment, once he had loaded the quill. Then he made a rather simple but effective focus glyph. He drew a circular glyph on the palm of his hand, and circled it with a wavy line. Generally this was to represent an eclipse, the black sun, so commonly used in Ravok. Here though, he thought of it a bit differently, like the void and emptiness was eating away at the core of the sun, and only the outer edges were escaping... It seemed fitting. His simple focus done, Clyde carefully put away his ink and quill, for later usage. He would likely need to reapply the focus every so often, though it should last at least for a day or so. Now it was on to the important bit... Creating the portal... The pathway to the void... He did his best to picture emptiness in his mind, but it was hard... he was not the best at meditation, so things kept on creeping into his mind... Bird sounds. The smell of grass and trees. Idle chatter from the other people. All so pointless and empty of meaning... He tried instead repeating word in his head, kind of like a mantra, perhaps that would work better for meditation? "Empty... Absent... Alone... Devoid... Dead... Silent...Roza..." The last one being a word in the ancient tongue, with various meanings, but seemed to capture the meaning of the void pretty well... Clyde sighed... he wondered how long this would take.

[Clyde Sullins]

17 Spring 513 How long had Clyde been at this? He had lost all track of time, so concentrated on learning voiding was he... He knew he had slept since then... he had ate... Though he had not eaten much... The last few days seemed to just drag on... He woke up, ate, walked... Walked... Walked... Meditated... Walked... All while focusing and meditating and trying to clear his mind and understand the concept of nothing. Then he ate, was back to bed, and rose again the next day to do it all over... Rye by his side... Never speaking so much as a word to anyone since he had begun this... They all avoided him... Perhaps it was because he was of the Stryfe, or a mage... Or perhaps it was how he was acting, that was pushing people away... It was hard to tell... He did not care... He just wanted to figure this magic out... To get it to work... He had redrew his focus glyph on his hand today... It was much less stylized than the last one he had done. It just seemed pointless, to spend much time on it. All that this one consisted of was a single circular glyph on his palm... "Empty... Absent... Alone... Devoid... Dead... Silent...Roza..." He repeated this over in his head, As he tried to understand nothing... The words were ingrained in his mind. Lately, when he tried to sleep, he could still hear the words echoing in his mind, without him calling upon them... Surely this was not a good way to go about things... But he knew no other... And he was determined to learn this new magic. "Empty... Absent... Alone... Devoid... Dead... Silent...Roza..." He repeated it over and over, trying to understand this concept, which by its own being made no sense. He could understand so much... But to understand nothing? It was counterproductive! "Empty... Absent... Alone... Devoid... Dead... Silent...Roza..."

[Clyde Sullins]

24 Spring 513 Clyde had figured it out... It was fake! That was it. The magic was made up, there was no way to learn it, this was all just him pointlessly spinning his wheels in the air... Like a wagon turned on its side, going no where... This thought seemed to be going through his mind a lot lately... But no, he knew it worked... he had seen it be done... That MacBeth girl had done it... He had seen Hadrian do it long ago... It was real... Perhaps it was supposed to take this long? And were was Ravok? Surely they had been traveling for ages, seasons even. They should have reached it long ago... But no, when he had asked this morning, he had learned they had only been traveling for 15 days or so... It felt like so much longer... It had felt like forever... But hindsight, he supposed nothing was forever, even when it appeared so. "Empty... Absent... Alone... Devoid... Dead... Silent...Roza..." The words... He went back to them... Surely, they were how he would find the way to nothing... They were how he would find the void... Surely... Surely... "Empty... Absent... Alone... Devoid... Dead... Silent...Roza..." It was just a matter of time... Enough hard work... Enough time spent... Enough dedication, and he would do it. Just like the other magics he had learned... He would learn this one also... Perhaps even one day master it. He focused on the sigil on his hand, the simple glyph... Today it was just an X on his palm... He tried to hard though to understand nothing... But what was he missing? Or was he doing it right and was on track, and this was how it was supposed to go? He focused on his palm, as he repeated the words, that he could not get out of his head. "Empty... Absent... Alone... Devoid... Dead... Silent...Roza..."

[Clyde Sullins]

31 Spring 513 "Empty... Absent... Alone... Devoid... Dead... Silent...Roza..." At this point there seemed to be little point to the words... He had almost forgotten why he was even saying them... Today he had newly glyphed the palm of his hand. As he had looked down at his palm, he had spent a full chime just staring at his hand... In the end, he had made a single dot... That had been his focus for today. The most simple of his focus to date, at least for this experiment... Perhaps even before that, he seemed to be having a bit of trouble recalling... "Empty... Absent... Alone... Devoid... Dead... Silent...Roza..." Today, as he walked along... He could not help but wonder what the point of it all was... Why was he doing this... Were was he going... Why did he feel he needed to learn this new magic... He could not answer that... In fact... Why did he need magic at all? It all seemed devoid of meaning, and pointless. "Empty... Absent... Alone... Devoid... Dead... Silent...Roza..." In fact, as he walked along, he was suddenly reminded of a ache in his chest... He had been so busy thinking on this, that he had forgotten about it... Perhaps that was why he had been so obsessed with this magic, that he had tried to distract himself by delving into it... It was a big hollow spot in his gut, or chest, or maybe right were his heart was... He did not know organs well enough to know which... He supposed the ache was were his heart was... It was an odd pang... What was that? "Empty... Absent... Alone... Devoid... Dead... Silent...Roza..." Kyra... For some reason her name came to mind... He had not thought of it for a long time... But he did so miss her... Were had she gone to? What was she doing? Was she alive? He missed her... He needed her... As he thought this, it felt like the hollow spot grew a bit... Was that what it was, his missing Kyra, that was the hollow spot? Surely this was emptiness... Surely this was being alone... Could he be any more alone, than when he was without her? He understood emptiness, it was the feeling he had in his chest right now, where Kyra was supposed to be... Clyde focused down on the tiny dot on his palm... Repeating the words once more in his head... The words droned onward, without meaning, he had heard them so many time. What were they? "Empty... Absent... Alone... Devoid... Dead... Silent...Roza..." As he hit the last word, there was a tiny bit of motion above his hand, above his palm, right above the tiny dot of a glyph... Above it, another dot was forming, a tiny black dot of nothing... Nothing... He had done it. With no enthusiasm, Clyde stared at the tiny dot, forgetting to even watch were he was going. He should be excited, he had been working on this for days and days and days. It had taken him over 20 days to do this! But he did not feel it... He just felt that odd empty pang in his chest... Clyde closed his eyes, and opened them, only to find the portal had vanished. His first portal, and it was gone... Well, I did it... Clyde thought this to himself... About 3 ticks before he walked face first into a tree. After all, one did not walk that long without watching were one was going, without crashing into stuff.

[Clyde Sullins]

32 Spring 513 Needless to say, it had been tough to explain the day before, the day on which he had opened his first portal to the void, and became a voider, why he had walked right into a tree. Clyde had passed some tale of deep mediation, and that he had become so delved into himself, that he had lost contact with the physical world. The only way to get back was to force sensation, and so he had walked on purpose into a tree... He had a feeling the others did not believe this explanation, but none of them pushed him further. They seemed more or less satisfied. It was only just now beginning to sink in, what he had done... That he was done with this work and focus, and could once more focus on things going on around him. It would be nice to eat a decent meal. He had not been eating much of late, for the duration, as if distracted him from his work. So it would be good to eat a bit more, even if the food was not the greatest. As night set in and they were stopping, Clyde set to work. He set up his tent, rolled out his bedroll, threw in his pack, and climbed in after it, being alone for a moment. Clyde still had the tiny dot glyph on his hand, and so focused on the spot directly above it... He focused on emptiness, a thing he had finally grasped, and cleared his mind... Picturing it full of utter blackness and nothingness, of the void, and isolation within. He focused on the point, and could feel his djed begin to work, and he said out loud quietly... "Roza"... It took some time, a full chime, but finally it worked... Then it appeared, a single dot of a portal, right in front of him. Right on his command, only delayed a chime of setup... He pushed a bit more djed into it, expanded it, to the size of a miza, feeling his djed flow outward to fuel the hole in space in front of him, leading right into the cold emptiness of the void... He sat there for a few more ticks, before he stopped fueling the action. After another chime, the portal dwindled and collapsed upon itself. He was a voider... Finally he was a voider... Not to skilled of one, but a voider all the same.

[Cloud]

XP Reward!

From the sky falls your reward!

PC Name: Clyde Sullins

Experience

Skill	XP Earned
Drawing	+2
Glyphing	+2
Meditation	+2
Voiding	+2

Lores

•	Lore Earned
•	Voiding: Initiation
•	Understanding Nothing
•	The Feeling Of Emptiness

A good thread. I enjoyed reading the process Clyde went through just to find that idea of absence, there were a few technical errors with words but nothing a review couldn't fix. Good work! Keep up the writing, and if you have any questions or concerns feel free to pm me.