Inscribing Destiny Date: 37th of Fall, 505 AV Location: Spelltower Timandre Control. It always boiled down to control. Ever since that fateful day when she had somehow managed to open a portal to the Void large enough to swallow her and a horse, Arianni had received lesson after lesson from her mother about control. How was she to know how to handle such a large rip to the vast nothingness, when she expected her first successful attempt would open nothing bigger than a golden miza, instead of some yawning maw that looked like the dark eye of some gigantic god? It had blinked into existence an arm's length away from her, with a pull strong enough to drag the poor girl from where she stood. Desperately, she had tried to collapse it with her fledgling skill as it did not seem as if it would have collapsed in on itself any time soon. Needless to say, she got sucked in, and would have died had it not been for her mother. And that's how it had all started. The magic dead girl everyone thought would not be able to cast a single spell managed to open a black hole in the middle of her mother's living room, overgave from the strain which resulted to her almost venting her right eye out of her skull, and ended up with a demon-red shade on said eye which everyone now thought was a mark from some dark, malicious god. So now here she was, walking through empty streets and unused alleyways leading to Spelltower Timandre, on her way to learn “control”, as her mother had insisted. Avalone had been adamant about it. If she could not deny her daughter's interest in the arcane arts, she was determined for the girl to receive the best instruction for practicing it, and nobody was the equal of the Timandres when it came to magic. The woman should know, she was one of them, though Avalis knew she had done her best before to shield her daughter from her family. But ever since Arianni displayed a propensity in the art of Voiding (just like her mother!), it was inevitable. Arianni had received very specific directions from her mother, from the location of the nautilus shaped structure that was Spelltower Timandre to the exact location of the room she had to go to inside, described down to the number of steps she had to take to arrive to the place. Thus the girl did not even need to ask anyone for directions to get to where she was headed; her mother's intimate knowledge of the place served better than any map. She found the place easy enough, a veritable palace to her simple tastes, all extravagant and exquisite with its carpeted floors and chandeliered ceilings. Her destination was a side room on one of the bookcase-lined hallways, and she encountered no one else in the tower save for a doddering elder Konti who was looking through the endless shelves of books and mumbling something about a missing cat. Hearing voices within, Arianni paused just outside the threshold of the room, out of sight, composing herself. Meeting new people had never been easy for her. At least there only seemed to be a couple of people in the room, judging from the sound. Taking a deep breath, Arianni turned the corner and entered. The room was small and there were only two people in it. One was a girl about the same age as Arianni sitting in one of the few chairs in the room, listening attentively to a tall and wispy woman enumerating the properties of glyphs. Occasionally, she would dip her swan feather quill in an inkwell to scribble notes on her leather-bound book. She paused in her writing to stare when Arianni entered the room, prompting the shy girl to instinctively lower her gaze to the floor. The lecturer, noticing the girl's arrival as well, cleared her throat. “Arianni, I presume. You realize you are late.” It wasn't a question. The woman sounded strict, though there was no trace of anger or annoyance in her voice. Arianni could only nod meekly at her in response. “Very well. You know why you are here. As such, you will not be late in my class again. "I am Amaris, and if your mother has not told you yet, I will be the one instructing you to better channel the energies you draw upon to fuel your...gift.” Arianni heard the slight pause in the Amaris' introduction. She imagined the woman staring at her red eye, though she really couldn't tell with her gaze still on the floor. “Such things could be achieved through a number of other ways, meditation foremost among them. But since I do not have the patience to train your mind to achieve the discipline required for such a state, you will instead learn glyphing from me. At any rate, sit down. This is Kamalia, by the way.” Amaris said the last part as if it should be of some significance to Arianni. The girl did not understand however, so she merely offered the other girl a faint smile and a soft, “Hello” before taking her seat. Gingerly, she took out her own notebook, quill and inkwell – much simpler items compared to the expensive-looking possessions of her co-student. They would still serve their purpose nonetheless. Time to study control, then. |