Flashback [Ialari's Dominion] Taming the Untamed Part 1

[Ialari Pythone]

Spring 511 AV

Ialari sat in darkness within the confines of her Dominion. The random shifting of landscapes that had plagued her ever since her discovery of the Lost Discipline had slowed greatly over the past couple of seasons. The most common form that Dominion now took was that of a subterranean cave with small fissures in the ceiling. Light layers of lichen covered the stone walls of the cave while the slightest of streams trickling through it. The Tree of Death was visible just outside the confines of the Dominion. Unfortunately, Ialari was only able to access the smallest of spaces within the Dominion as the ever present unseen barrier prevented her from moving farther. The rest of the surroundings, were dark and that darkness extended far past what her nightvision allowed her to see.

In her Dominion she kept the majority of her possessions while many of her supplies were left outside at The Retreat. The Retreat was the small collection of ruins she discovered a few seasons ago along the coast of Sylira across the sea from Sahova. She had gone there to be alone and test herself. While there she learned much about herself and her world. When she discovered the ruins, she got to work preparing them for Dominion. Successful in her endeavor, she stepped into the Ukalas and claimed a small crumb of it for herself.

Since that time she had acquired a new companion, Va'al. Va'al was a zith who, along with two others of its kind, stalked, hunted and ultimately attacked her. After a hard fought battle, two of the zith were dead and Va'al was grievously wounded. In an odd moment of mercy, Ialari offered Va'al's life to the gods. If they chose to spare him, she asked for a sign. If there was no sign, she would kill him. Just as she thought no sign was going to come, she noticed a strange mark on the zith, the gnosis mark of Nikali, Goddess of Slaves. Taking this as the sign she was waiting for, Ialari spared Va'al and took him as her servant. She tended to his wounds and nursed him back to health. Their relationship following that had been shaky and unpredictable at best but did provide quite a bit of learning and growth for both of them. She hadn't revealed her Dominion to him though. Ialari felt that it may be quite a shock to him and wasn't sure how he would handle it. In the meantime she outward treated The Retreat as her own private space where Va'al was not allowed.

Sitting in the darkness, Ialari caught the briefest glimpse of light beginning to filter down through the fissures above. It was an odd occurrence that she was still trying to get used to. It was odd because, until recently, she hadn't really taken notice of the passage of time while in the Ukalas. It had always been either light or dark or somewhere in between. The nearest she could tell, her growing time spent in her Dominion was gradually having the effect of shaping it to fit her. At first, there was no control over anything. Eventually, the more she was in the Dominion, breathing the air, sharing her thoughts and feelings and just her very presence seemed to bring on subtle changes. First there was the shifting landscapes. While she had no control over the shifting itself, she began to notice that the settings, though still quite alien in their features, started to show some slight recognizable features. Mountain tops, grasslands, forests, caves, they all vaguely resembled highly stylized echoes of places she had been throughout her travels from Sultros to Sahova.

As her time in the Ukalas progressed, her Dominion slowed in its transformations. Certain landscapes would remain more stable for longer. Then came the noticeable change in temperature and a shift in the taste of the air. It was cooler and crisper, much like that of her home back in Sultros. The most recent change up to the present was the even more stable landscape of the great cave that she now sat in. Now with coming of the light Ialari realized that the progression of time was now developing.

The light grew brighter although it was still filtered from the journey it took from whatever environment existed above the cave down into the depths. The soft illumination did little to extend her field of vision but the fact that the light existed at all brought a smile to Ialari's face. It was then that she decided it was time to actually try and consciously shape her Dominion instead of just sort of going along for the ride.

[Ialari Pythone]

Standing up, Ialari stretched and flexed her muscles, rolled her head and shoulders around while shaking off the effects of prolonged rest. Sleep wasn't something she got much of; she never really did. There were always the nightmares, most of which she could not remember. The nature of those nightmares had changed throughout her life yet it was only in the past year or so that she realized the change. She knew it had everything to do with her fateful encounter with the ghosts of Amir Berliotz, Master Morpher, Domineer and former member of the Seven Robes. The reforging of Berliotz's soul using her own had damaged her; the extent of that damage was still not yet known. Sometimes, even while fully awake, Ialari felt as though she were looking on the world with two sets of eyes. Her voice was sometimes hers but not hers. It was as if the dead wizard had left a little of himself behind after his twisted rebirth.

She had found a bit of rest however as she had begun once more embracing old techniques of meditation that he had learned years ago during her time at the Silver Tower in Pitrius City back in Sultros. Now, standing in the center of her Dominion, pondered where to begin with her attempts to consciously get her tiny realm to respond to her wishes. After a few moments of thought, she decided the best way was probably to keep doing as she had but with a little more focus and force of will. She would commune with the Dominion, share her thoughts of home with it and try to will the land to respond.

As she had so many times before, Ialari began to pace around the available space of her Dominion. She moved all of her possessions to the center so that she had room to walk around the outside perimeter. She walked slowly while tracing the invisible barrier that surrounded her with her hand.

“Alright, so what shall we talk about today? How about my home in Sultros. We’ve talked about it before, mainly regarding experiences and thoughts but I don’t know if I’ve ever actually described my home. See, I was born in the mountains in a huge cavern below Pitrius Citadel.” As Ialari spoke, she tried to picture home in her mind. “It wasn’t a very large city. In fact it was probably the smallest of the five that made up the Kingdom. The cavern, though smaller than the others containing the cities of the isur, was still quite a marvel to behold. Luminescent moss covered the walls of the cavern and provided a dim, sometimes eerie but always beautiful, illumination. Unlike Sultros City, we didn’t have a lake nearby but there was a large number of subterranean streams that flowed through much of the city. The majority of the buildings of Pitrius City were arranged the cavern floor. There were a handful of structures built on some of the larger outcroppings of rock that overlooked the cavern floor. These were mainly the homes of the more powerful members of our clan.” Ialari paused from time to time in her pacing to kneel down and touch the stone ground beneath her. Letting her metallic fingers sink into the rock allowed her to feel even closer to her Dominion.

“One of the more memorable aspects of home was the air. It was cool yet a little moist. The moss that blanketed the cavern walls filled the air with a slight flowery scent that, as I think about it now, tasted a lot like some of the fields of flowers I passed through while traveling from Riverfall to Sahova.” Ialari pictured the look of the city from one of the bridges that connected the buildings above to the city below. All around her the walls glowed as if they were somehow enchanted.

Continuing her discussion with her Dominion, one-sided as it was, “You know, I think I’d like to taste that air again. What do you say?” She didn’t actually expect a vocal answer as it was more a rhetorical question. She closed her eyes and captured the image of standing on the bridge. She allowed her mind to wrap itself around that memory. She tried to remember every aspect of how the air smelled and tasted. She thought of how the flowery smell tickled the inside of her nose with each breath. She thought of how it tasted when she took a deep breath and let it out. She thought of the feelings she had as a child when she took time to admire her home.

No longer walking, she remained in place with her eyes closed as she focused on the thoughts and memories; of the feelings and emotions from that point in time. As she remembered and focused, it was as if she were back home again. She could smell the flowered scent of the moss. She could taste it in her mouth as her tongue and lips tingled. It was no longer just a memory though. A wave of soft trembling filled Ialari’s body and she knelt down on one knee. She took another deep breath and once more the pleasant smell of home licked its way into her nose. It was such a simple thing yet Ialari could not hold back the tears that spilled from her eyes. It was just a slight change to the smell of the air yet it symbolized a much greater thing for Ialari. She sat there in place for many moments, crying and taking countless deep breaths.

[Ialari Pythone]

It took a little time for Ialari to recover from her momentary breakdown of emotion. She stood up and cleared her throat while wiping the tears from her eyes. Changing the taste of the air was but a baby step in her journey toward reshaping her Dominion but it was a step in the right direction.

She began speaking once more aloud, "I...I have to say that I'm impressed. Let's see what else we can do. So, we have the taste of home as it were so how bout a little bit more of the feel. Maybe we'll stick with the air for now. So the air was scented which we have. It was also moist. While the air in much of the underground cities and tunnels was mostly cool and crisp, there were few places where there was noticeable moisture. Pitrius City was one of the places. With all the streams trickling through the city and the heavy plant-life of the moss, the air was not quite as cool as other parts of the Kingdom and it was a little thicker on the tongue."

Again Ialari tried to capture the experience in her mind. She remembered the day she first traveled from Pitrius City to Sultros City. She was going with her mother to Izurdin's Forge. When they entered the great tunnel that connected the two cities, she felt a shift in her surroundings. The glowing moss thinned the further down the tunnel they walked. The air began to cool down and got a little sharper. Ialari remembered asking her mother why it felt so different the further they got from home. She told Ialari that it was because Izurdin gifted the Pitrius clan with all the benefits of their cavern as a way of rewarding them for the patient pursuit of magical knowledge. That was one of the first connections Ialari made between the wonders of life and the grace of Izurdin.

"So it was that Izurdin blessed Pitrius City with the luminescent moss and trickling streams that filled the cavern with the slightly increased warmth and moisture of the air. Since we already have the taste perfected, maybe we could try mirroring the feel of home?" With the memory of how the air felt at home in her mind, Ialari tried to focus on that feeling and only that feeling. As she concentrated, she took deep breathes so as to allow the sweet smell of flowers to continue sending slight tremors of joy throughout her body. She kept her breathes measured and paced as she filled her mind only with the feeling she remembered of the air back home.

Then, just as with the scent, she began to feel the air temperature slowly rise. It was only the slightest of increases but when she felt the moisture in the air increase as well, the two came together to mirror the memory she held onto so tightly. The ever so small bit of warmth combined with the wetness mixed with the scent brought her back home again to the people and places she held so dear.

[Ialari Pythone]

Ialari spent a large amount of time just breathing the newly shaped air in the Dominion. She experimented with trying to raise and lower the temperature next. She found some difficult at first in doing so however. When she initially caused the temperature to raise a bit, she did so by focusing on memories and feelings from the past. Unfortunately, she didn't have any intimate memories of such a scale as she did with the experiences at home related to feeling of the air temperature.

Of course there was the journey through the lowlands of Kalea during the winter. The temperature was beyond cold and it was something she was likely never to forget. Even so, she wasn't sure she really wanted to try and make the air in her Dominion that cold. She wasn't even sure she could go to that extreme. The idea of lower the temperature however wouldn't go away.

"Ok, I'm going to try something here. Don't know if it will work but it's worth the effort." She said aloud as she tried to remember, not the events exactly, but the feeling of the extreme cold of Kalea during the winter. The details were quite as vivid yet the feeling of uncompromising cold was something one couldn't easily forget. Ialari remembered how, even beneath the furs and thick animal hides she wore, the cold seeped deeply into her body. Her fingers, wrapped in furred gloves, sent driving nails of pain through her hand and arm whenever she moved them. She could feel her lips and just inside her nose icing up while she couldn't feel her feet at all. The cold was so intense that there had been times she wasn't sure she would be able to continue on. There were times she simple wanted to sit down and sleep.

As she recalled the deadly cold, she slowly began to feel the air around her start to chill. It wasn't anything even close to the cold she remembered yet it was definitely noticeable. "I think I'm starting to see how this works. So all I need to do is concentrate on a feeling hard enough and you will react to that desire? Alright, let's see if we can warm this place back up now." Ialari thought again about the air back home. She focused on the increase in heat and moisture in the air and held onto the memory until, a few moments later, the air in her Dominion began to warm once more. She almost giggled like a little girl. She tried the same thing a few times more. With each attempt, the change in temperature came a little more quickly and with just a little less concentration each time.

When she felt she had a good grasp on the minor decrease in temperatures as well as the increase back to the way she liked it. She then attempt to increase the temperature even more. Instead of searching for some detailed memory or extreme feeling, she thought of the temperature around The Retreat during the first Summer she spent there. It was uncomfortably warm at that time. Though the heat wasn't overly memorable, she held on to the feeling of the increased heat. It took a few moments of concentration and for a few seconds, she wasn't sure it would work. Then, just as she was getting close to stopping to re-evaluate her efforts, she felt the area get a bit warmer. Adding that to the mix, she then practiced raising and lowering the temperature dozens of times. "You know, this kind of reminds me when I don't exercise or use certain muscles for extended periods of time. When I do finally get to those muscles and work them, tit's difficult at first. After a bit of stretching and repetitive focus though, the muscles loosen and using them gets easier."

[Ialari Pythone]

Having gotten a good feel for some degree of control over the temperature, Ialari decided to attempt something a little more difficult. Unlike with the seemingly infinite grasslands that the Ukalas greeted her with the first time she entered her Dominion, the cave she was now in had mostly stilled air. "If I can change the temperature simply by willing it to do so, I wonder if I can make the air itself move..."

Although she knew that she had experienced heavy blowing wind before, she couldn't really grasp any specific memory in any real detail. She remembered brief images of heavy winds blowing yet no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't form a specific memory of it. "Alright, so I can't rely on memory to get you to respond. Guess I'm going to have to play with this one a bit."

She thought back to the times she'd spent early on during meditation attempts trying to find a focus to concentrate on. She'd tried many different methods. She tried words and phrases repeated softly in an almost chant-like way. That wasn't something she thought would work with her present dilemma. Then there was concentrating on a single object like a candle or statue. While that worked to some extent in helping her find her preferred way to meditate, it didn't exactly apply to what she was trying to do with the wind. Sensations and feelings as a focus was something she had already tried yet was having difficulty finding the right one to concentrate on. Imagery however had some potential.

Ialari paced around the perimeter of her Dominion while she considered some type of imagery that may fit what she wished to attempt. She wanted to make the wind blow through the cave. Considering the relatively minor changes she managed with the temperature, she didn't think it was yet possible to create really strong wind nor was she certain as to how long she could make it blow. It was the oddest of pictures that came to mind finally that gave her an idea. She remembered something her mother had told her about some of the gods that shared the divine realm with Izurdin. She spoke of the God of Storms, Zulrav. Her mother told her how Zulrav was never known to take a mortal form to those he appeared to. Instead he sometimes appeared as a vaguely humanoid figure shaped from the clouds themselves. For some reason from that point on, Ialari always pictured the god as having a massive head that looked a little like an old man with a long beard. The face was formed of clouds and she pictured Zulrav's massive cloud face as puckering up and blowing wind across the land.

The image, as childish as it seemed to her in the present, strangely enough seemed to have some merit as far as her mind was concerned. It was a bit of imagery that she could wrap her mind around but also conveyed the general principle she was looking for. So, with the image of the giant, cloud-formed head of an old man in a beard in mind, she herself started to blow absently into the air. If any onlookers had been present, they would have saw quite a sight in Ialari pacing around in a circle, blowing into the air with her eyes closed.

She tried blowing softly as well as putting her all into it with deep inhales and heavy exhales. She did it so much that her mouth and throat were getting dry and she was starting to develop a headache. She stopped for a bit to rest and consider what she might be doing wrong. "I don't get it. I know what I want to happen and I've got an image in mind to help direct it all. Why won't... Then it hit her. "Ahh...I bet it's because I'm imagining not myself blowing but Zulrav doing it. I'm just mimicking what I am picturing him doing."

Righting herself, she tried again with the pacing and blowing. This time however she imagined herself doing as she did it. Sure enough, slowly but with certainty, she began to feel a soft breeze pick up inside the cave. It lasted the length of time it took for her to take a deep breath and fully yet slowly release it. When she had exhaled all the air out of her lungs, the breeze in the cave vanished. Ialari hopped up and down while clapping her hands and giggling. Indeed she was really feeling like a young girl again during the few times she was actually overcome with joy. It wasn't every day that one discovered that they could alter their surroundings, even if but slightly, through the force of their will alone.

[Ialari Pythone]

Ialari was finding quite a bit of enjoyment from what she was accomplishing yet there still seemed to be a little bit more that could do. Already she had changed the temperature of the Dominion, altered the smell and taste of the air and even discovered how to create a small breeze even if the latter only lasted a short amount of time. "There's still something missing. In a small way, it's all starting to feel a little more like home. The mood though, it's just quite right. What am I missing..?

Ialari thought about it for a bit. The things she remembered about how Pitrius City felt and smelled like were only the smallest of pieces to a much greater puzzle she hoped to complete one day. Though small in the greater whole of it all, the things she had done meant so much more to her. She still couldn't shake the feeling that she could do more to make it feel closer to home. Pitrius City had a unique mood to it that didn't have anything to do with the temperature or taste of the air. When one entered the city from the outside or even when one stepped into the city from inside one of its buildings, there was a general feeling to it all that said, This is the home of the Pitrius clan.

It didn't take too much longer for Ialari to realize what that missing element was. Centered at the Silver Tower and emanating outward through the rest of the city and even further to the walls of the great cavern; the feeling of mystery and magic permeated everything. While Ialari was obviously surrounded by the very essence of mystery and magic, it was not the same feeling that she got from her clan city. If she were to make this Dominion truly her own and make it her home, she needed it to feel like home. She wasn't sure she could achieve such a thing, at least not with the current strength of her connection with the immediate area but she was determined to try.

She sat down on the ground with the intent of doing a little deeper form of communion with the Dominion than she had in the past. She touched the ground next to her with her metallic hand followed by forming a fist and pushing it into the stone beneath her. She forced the stone to part past her wrist and half-way up her forearm. For Ialari it was a way to make more intimate contact with the Dominion physically. She then began to describe aloud what she perceived the mood of her home to be like.

"For me, home felt tangibly alive. I know it was just the way my young mind perceived what was around me yet as I looked around at the buildings, the people, the animals, tools, objects and everything else that made up the city, it felt as though they were all somehow interconnected. When I started studying at the Tower, I learned that this was one way those gifted with the talent for magic were able to sense djed to varying degrees in the world around them. When I would sit on a bench in one of the city parks, I would often think about how I fit into the complexity of djed and its relationship to all things. At the time it was just the imagination of a child yearning for something more out of life. Now however, I think back on my time there and of those childhood thoughts and feelings and wonder if what I felt around me was a direct result of how my djed interacted with djed of everything around me. Perhaps it was the tangible result of my very existence fitting in to the structures I saw around me. Ialari slowly started to drift off into a light meditative state as she pondered the deeper meaning of her own existence and its place in reality.

She slowly became oblivious to everything else around her even though her eyes were open. Her vision blurred and became unfocused though her mind remained committed to her verbalized internal discussion. "I don't know, maybe the general mood that I perceived as being somehow different wasn't different at all. Maybe it was me that was different. I mean, nothing really changed all that much in the city or the people but what if that wasn't the source of what I felt. Maybe what I was feeling in regards to mood and atmosphere was of my own creation. The problem with that though is that if it were indeed the result of my own perception, then why did I feel so much like an outcast? Wouldn't I have been able to change things? Or perhaps my own perception was only a small piece of it. Perhaps the connection between my djed and the djed of all that was around me affected each other to varying degrees which ultimately created the general mood and atmosphere around me. That would explain the sense of mystery and the tangible feeling of magic that flowed through the city. It is what people enjoyed, what they loved and cherished. It was what they struggled for in life and reaped the benefits of. Unwittingly, they created the mood simply by sharing of themselves and in turn receiving what was shared back to them."

While Ialari engaged with the philosophical conversation with herself, oblivious of her surroundings, the Dominion started to take notice. Ever so softly and even if Ialari had been more aware she likely would not have seen it, slight ripples formed in the invisible walls, floor and even the air itself around her. The Dominion was beginning to act just as Ialari had spoke of. It was reacting to her very presence, to her shared thoughts, feelings and ideas. It was taking what she gave to it and then started to give back. What it gave back to Ialari was that very mood she thought was missing. It was then that Ialari stopped her discussion and regained her focus on where she was. Through the contact made between her arm and the stone beneath her, Ialari began to feel something different than before. A small increase in her sense of awareness appeared. The sensation she felt from the ground reminded her of someone gently touching her shoulder. As she looked out into the cave past the confines of her Dominion, she could see herself sitting on the ground but from an angle otherwise impossible to view from. Just as a line from the Dominion Scrolls had mentioned:

Up and down are the same, space is the greatest lie.

While Ialari had thought she understood the nature of that statement in her early days of practicing Dominion, it now took on a much deeper meaning. The aspect of mood and atmosphere that she thought was missing from actually her own understanding of just how connected the Dominion was to the Domineer that she was missing. Indeed she and her surroundings shared a connection in the Ukalas that was more pronounced that she ever realized when comparing it to what she felt growing up back home.

[Ialari Pythone]

Ialari's realization and new understanding of just how physical space and interconnectedness in her Dominion were related, left her speechless and unable to move for many moments as she took in the new sensations. Looking to her left she saw herself looking to the right. Looking up she saw herself looking back down. She could feel, though only slightly, her own breath moving in the air and could feel her body exerting pressure as she sat on the ground as if she herself were pressing down on her own body. The feeling was slight enough that if she didn't concentrate on it, she would not feel it yet it was definitely there.

Finally finding words to speak again, she said quietly, "This must be how a Domineer knows how to shape their Dominion. This must be how the Dominion learns to respond in kind. Just as up and down are the same, so too the Domineer and the Dominion become one."

Baby steps led to just a little big larger baby steps but for Ialari, she now saw where those steps could lead. Now, just as with any muscle that has never been worked before, there would be difficulties and pains getting it to move. Once it did though,it was just a matter of stretching that muscle and gradually increasing the workload.

Ialari remained in her Dominion for quite some time longer before finally deciding it was time to tend to the necessities outside. She gathered a few things and with some remaining hesitancy, exited the Ukalas.

[Ialari Pythone]

Thread Grade

Arcanology 5
Dominion 5
Meditation 5

Lore: Influencing the temperature of a Dominion
Lore: Influencing the smell of the air in a Dominion
Lore: Altering one's perception to see in different dimensions within a Dominion
Lore: Sharing one's thoughts and feelings in a way that alters one's Dominion