Solo Vigilance, Always

[Caesarion]

18th of Summer, 515 AV

Dear Priskil,

Somehow I have always found - since coming here - that I speak better when it is through letters over words. My pen is certainly sharper than my tongue, because somehow the sound of my own voice loses gravity the longer I remain in chains. I apologize if the words I write cannot be heard so loudly as my tongue, but fear not my friend, I will repeat all of these words with my voice. It is just that the writing is much easier. If I am only repeating something, I can detach myself from the sadness associated with it - almost pretend it's about a different man, not me, not the sad louse known as Vox.

I want you to know that my acts of devotion to you will always be done by Caesarion, not his alter ego, the slave of Telemaran. Caesarion is the man I love and aspire to be - the me that is filled with hope, the me that found you, that has shown his desire to bring hope to the miserable and force calloused hands to soften and show mercy. Caesarion is the man who will serve you to the best of his ability once he is able. Vox . . . he doesn't yet know where he falls in the world, or who will help him, or who he knows - who loves him. He doesn't have the courage right now to fight for hope, vigilance, or radiance.

I write to you today to tell you that I am, for once in my life, filled with hope. That I have improved faster in the past month than I'd improved in my entire life. That I know what I want now, and how to get it, and this thought bathes me in a sort of warmth that I know it's from you. You may not whisper the words to me, or ever come forth and admit it, but I know that just recently you waved your hands over me and brought me this happiness that I had never known. I know that since I came to know you, I had gone from being sad and weak to committed: my hatred for my family became love, my guilt over the slaver I used to be, became an unbreakable will to right my wrongs. Free the slaves. Even though I have become a slave myself, I do not look at this as the end, only a place where I too can feel what it's like to be owned. To better guide my hand to my goal.

All of the joy in my life, I owe to you, my Goddess and friend. I thank you for everything you've done for me. Today, I will try to use the hope you've given me to give hope to men alike; of likewise suffering, and likewise need for your radiance.

Thank you,
Caesarion Panthos

As he finished his letter, he clasped his hands to pray: he repeated the same words as on the sheet, with his eyes staring deeply into the candlelight before him. Once he was done repeating his written words, he readied himself for the day ahead - where he would begin a personal project of his that he had contemplated all morning. A sort of ideological desire that was inspired by Priskil. It would be called Illumination - finding the poorest, most damaged, most unfortunate souls in a society and fighting hard to put their lives back together. Former slaves, text experiments, drug addicts, orphans and thieves - Priskil's light of hope extended to all of them, they just needed to know that. They needed to learn like Caesarion did, once, alone and lost in a foreign and hostile place.

[Caesarion]

The person with the closest proximity to Caesarion, who deserved to be given the Illumination he sought to give others, was the young slave from Ravok known as Ameer Milab. He was a slave of Emarus Telemaran's, just like Vox, and he had lived a life of suffering for its entirety. If anyone's suffering was greater than Vox's, it was his. His father died when he was nine, he recalled. His mother had gone away. He had no one to protect him. He was taken as a slave and treated like a pet for eleven years, then to be shipped off to Sahova once his master's children had grown. He lived on the Way of the Voice, where all the evils had taken place. He was . . . The man sighed. Treated as livestock. Now, he has been bought by my master as a sort of servant and even a sex slave. For me. What did Priskil ask that he do in a situation like this? He supposed the answer was that he brought light and hope to his life. But how could he do that? No matter what Vox did, he could not free Ameer right now. All he could do was try and make the young man happier.

Happiness was something that Caesarion was not too capable of handing out freely. It was a commodity. He could try, though. Make him smile. Lighten up his life. If he succeeded, then maybe this was a positive thing for him too. Making someone else happy could often make the self happy. Boost the confidence. He needed all the confidence he could get, considering his plans for the next weeks to come: attending his own judgement to become an apprentice, murdering Emarus Telemaran in cold blood, and worst of all beginning his schemes to punish and kill all of the evils of this city. To lead Sahova to a better direction, and let kindness win over depravity.

This was the first step towards kindness in this Alahean stronghold. It began with a single glimmer of light for a lost and forlorn soul. It began with - simply this, Vox stepping out of his tiny little area of Telemaran's laboratory, into the test subject pens and opening Ameer's cage for the morning. "Hello, Ameer," he said. The young slave opened his eyes, rubbed them over, and smiled faintly as he stared at the mage. "Good morning, Vox."

Letting him out for the day, the mage told him to be still as he went towards Telemaran's bleak little area of tomes and scrolls. "Master, I would like to ask permission to bring Ameer to the Prairie outside of the citadel. The intention of this is that I might have a target to practice hypnosis on while I go further into my Air reimancy training. Not only that, but he can hold my water jug and hand me meat. It's simply more efficient." He was plain and straightforward, like he had been lately. The more he learned and the more he fought, the less his words were laced with the sort of ridiculous glamor he had when he got here. He'd gone from being Telemaran's minx to being Telemaran's monster in the six months since he arrived on Sahova.

"You have a devious aura about you, Vox," the master said. "Are you sure you don't just have some kinky outdoors fetish? You can tell me if that's the case. I'll be sure to have Mayana ship over some cotton beds to the forest of thorns." The man grinned, teasing Vox as he often did. Hell, as he always did was more accurate. "That wasn't my thought, but now that you mention it, I have always wished to do a bit of buggery at a park. Do you know of any recreational parks in Sahova?" He smiled. The two of them would've gotten along so well if they weren't on the opposite side of the most imperative coin: good and evil. "No, sadly I don't. You'll have to master gardening and fix up the Heartlands for us more artsy mages." The old Nuit smiled, then waved Vox away - that was his way of giving permission.

So he went back to the pens, concentrating for a moment so that he may focus his Res. He created a thin movement of gas that ignited into flame, moving and igniting more and more, lighting the candles assembled in the room. That was Telemaran's fancy way of telling the slaves that they had some form of break. These candles hadn't been lit in a very long time. "I got you a day in the outdoors. With me. It's a dangerous area but I'm quite skilled enough to handle it. Will you come along, Ameer?" The man held his hand out to the slave, and although it was somewhat fearfully, the young man accepted the offer and followed Caesarion through the laboratories, into the courtyard, then out to the Prairie.

[Caesarion]

The two men had entered the large and barren land, where you couldn't see much of anything all around you. Ameer's immediate look was distaste, but Vox breathed in the air - however putrid it was - and sighed relief. "Don't you love the outdoors, Ameer? Even though the Sahovan ones are muggy and feel deathly, it's still a great bit better than being cooped up in that awful citadel. Ever since I realized I could go here, I've been visiting the Prairie and the Forest of Thorns nearly every day." He began to go forward, because that was the way to the Forest where he would hunt Gibbats for food. He would get Ameer some too, today, if the young man wanted such a thing. Vox imagined that he would. "I didn't take you as the outdoors type, really, Vox." He didn't look at the other man, as the slave was too busy staring at every nook and cranny in order to confirm that this place really was as awful as his initial impression recognized. He didn't understand the mage's infatuation with it.

After his words, the older man looked back at him and flashed a smirk. "Well, of course I'm an outdoors person. Why else do you think I chose such a tropical place to be enslaved?" Sarcasm was perhaps his greatest talent, and it was always being demonstrated. "But really, I was a hunter back in Syliras. Did I tell you that? That I was a hunter? And that I lived in Syliras before I got taken here? I was actually hunting right before the slavers found me. I was walking back home." His expression dropped. The subject was still pretty unfortunate for him. But, he was here to be a metaphorical shining beacon of hope, so his face only dropped for a moment. Until Ameer decided to pose a question. "What was your goal, back in Syliras? What did you want?" Such questions from him seemed strange, but then again, Vox had already realized that an interest of sorts had been growing in Ameer's heart.

The man shrugged. "The same goal as anyone, really. Life, love and liberty. L times three. I was actually planning on going to Zeltiva with a friend of mine. Well, uh... an acquaintance. A past relationship. It's quite complicated." He laughed. He was already making this pretty awkward. Despite his talents for ridiculously pompous speak and sarcasm, he always had a weakness for actual conversation, especially when he was asked about himself. He got shy, and flustered, and always embarrassed. "Past relationship? You will have to tell me about him later... or her... whatever." He shrugged. "It was a him. And sure, I'll tell you, though there's not much to say. Man wasn't a man for words." He laughed. That was certainly true at the time, though he might've grown to be a man for bickering and yelling after all the times he'd been petched over by people in his life, whether intentionally by them or unintentionally.

"I was trying to get some extra money before going off on the journey. So I didn't have to be such a burden. I did a lot of hunting, night and day. And I was trying to learn wilderness survival - camping, making fires, things he wanted me to know. I tried so hard, you know. Harder than I ever had. And then they found me." He exhaled. This was why he told himself to remain impersonal and keep the emotions to letters. He hadn't actually talked about all of the lost dreams of becoming a slave, not to anyone, because he didn't have anyone to speak to. He was entirely forlorn. But this wasn't supposed to be about him - he was supposed to be bringing hope to Ameer, not whining. He'd done enough of that in the past few years.

The other slave simply said nothing, looking into Vox's eyes and offering him an apologetic look. "I am sorry to hear of your loss. When you are new to chains, the recent past seems so beautiful and the current predicament so desolate. Eventually, though, you will grow out of it." He was matter-of-fact. It was as if he lost the curiosity that he had just moments ago, the desire to look into the lens of Caesarion and find out what sort of life he lived. He was perhaps weak around sorrow. Maybe for someone who tried to suppress emotional needs - a long-time slave - sorrow was the greatest enemy. The thing was, Caesarion wouldn't ever let himself slip into apathy for his surroundings. He wanted - always - to be strong, to be willed, to remember. If he accepted the way things were, then things would never change. And he would let Ameer know that, too, so that the man could eventually forge his own path and escape his shackles.

The man held his palm upwards, then released Res as a cloud into the air above him. The cloud was extremely small, and out of it came simply a focused and almost linear bolt of lightning, though it curved in trajectory as it went forward in order to strike a specific target. "What was the point of that?" Ameer asked, the lightning impacting and not a sound afterwards. "Sleeping Gibbat Dog. Spotted its fur through the branches. I've made a sport of killing them off, mostly because they're violent and pretty tasty. Plus, good target practice. Killing live entities is a lot more beneficial for a training mage than hunting . . . inanimates, such as target boards. You need actual awareness to succeed as a combatant." The man stepped forward, staring over the smoking corpse of the dog. "Don't know if we'll be able to eat this one. Give it a few minutes to dry off, and we'll see. But uh - you deserve some good food for once. So we'll have to kill at least a few before we leave today." The man was clearly serious about this. Ameer simply raised an eyebrow and asked... "Okay...?" As if he didn't understand the point. "I didn't realize I'd come so that I might watch you slaughter innocent animals." He said this, though whether or not he was being serious would remain something of a mystery. His tone was always the same regardless.

"There is no regard for innocence in the food chain. The weak are taken advantage of. You know this better than anyone, being taken as a slave while you were a defenseless child. The hope is to make the good strong, and the evil weak, so that there may no longer be injustice. That is what I want - and it starts with you." He looked at Ameer intently, and the other man stared back as if he understood - that . . . Caesarion, Vox, had brought him here so that he could learn how to survive on his own for when he stopped being provided for. Why? He had a theory . . . and it involved Vox killing the master. "Come on, you've gotta help me spot more dogs. We're going hunting for real, today."

[Caesarion]

They stood outside of the 'Bramble Gates', as Vox liked to call them, with the man offering Ameer a word of warning. "While we are in the forest, you cannot talk. The Gibbat Dogs have exceptional hearing, and can hear conversations from long distances. A regular sound like stepping on leaves or breathing, they might mistake for a different animal, or even just a solitary and thus weaker human. They're willing to risk confrontation with that. But, multiple people talking means extreme danger, and they'll remain at a far distance from us. I don't want to light the forest on fire, so I need them to be relatively close if I'm going to kill them." That was all he had to say, and with that, he escorted Ameer inwards past the thorns and the trees . . . and thorny trees. Entering into the Forest of Thorns, the young man paced himself slowly so that Ameer could keep up and wouldn't feel rushed out of his comfort zone. Additionally, silent and paced movements were much better for not warding off the dogs around here.

The man pulled out the longsword he owned from its scabbard for, well, in case a predator took them by surprise. He tried to imagine what sort of warning signs their current movements would be giving off. Breathing, and four feet stepping. There weren't any predators on Sahova that were much like that, except perhaps more Gibbats, but the steps were too heavy. There was always of course that terrifying aquatic dog thing, but he doubted that it would be around here, certainly. So - why would the Gibbats have any reason to come forward? They were less in number than before Vox had first come to the Forest of Thorns, and considering he hadn't killed many of those thorny rabbits, they were probably less hungry because of the distribution of food. They weren't desperate. They would be cautious.

And perhaps - he thought - that could work in his favor too. He decided he'd break his own rule, raising his voice to speak. "I don't think they'll come out and play right now. We'll have to hope we notice them. Or, I'll try and scorch one of the Thorn Hare. Either way. I think instead it would be better that we just spend the time we have out here to speak." He didn't have an air of restraint to him anymore - this forest wasn't gonna try and kill him, he could shape it as he pleased, killing the animals and slaughtering the trees. Perhaps Sahova's ruthlessness had made a ruthless man out of him as well. He came to a small clearing, but with a tree in the center with long and vicious thorns. The man relaxed himself, breathed in deeply, and emitted Res. From his palm, a large blast of wind would burst forward and fling the tree out of its position, tossing it back into some bushes. On the ground there were thorns that had fallen from the tree, and Vox stepped over them to pick them up and throw them aside. He wanted to have a moment of peace and of quiet with Ameer. Where they could fully involve themselves into one another and their thoughts.

Where Caesarion could tell the man the unfortunate truth of the future of their arrangements, if it came to that.

"Sit down and relax," the mage recommended. He knelt down on the floor, staring into the other slave's eyes. "Tell me, do you a dream, my friend?" He knew that Ameer had accepted slavery. In fact, he was sure that he'd asked him before whether or not he dreamed. But he wasn't content with acceptance and defeat. He wanted the man to know that no matter where he went, he should always feel like he had a choice. A chance. "I don't know," the young man said. "I feel such things have been stripped away." And perhaps he was true with his words. Caesarion didn't doubt the honesty or the gravity of anything Ameer said. It was impossible to expect someone owned for so long to simply adapt to a different ideal.

[Caesarion]

"Your dreams don't have to be dead," the man whispered, scooting forward. "You can become great. You can build a movement. You can do anything you want in this world. You just have to fight for it all, and bleed, and always be ready." He knew these words to be true. All the people near him who held success in his life had always been fighters. Survivors. They always found a reason to keep building, keep moving. "Can I?" He asked, monotone, like he usually was. The question was asked in such a desperate and hopeless manner that the mage couldn't help but feel a great deal of pity. "You can, Ameer. You have talents. I've seen them. I know you noticed that I was trying to hypnotize you, back on the first night we met. You turned the tables. You seduced me instead of the other way around - so skillfully that I'm sure Nikali batted an eye." He grinned, and almost laughed. It was ridiculous embellishment, but it was true. He knew that Ameer liked to pretend he was worse than what he was - that he liked to claim he was weak and useless, and not used for anything important.

Maybe that was what he liked to pretend. But no one would ever buy it if they knew anything about survivors - that was what Ameer was. "You've been listening, watching, observing. You know of what I'm doing all the time. I've noticed this, because I am much like you. I am always listening - to the master especially, and what he likes to do. What he wants, what he needs, what he feels we must provide. You are here to provide me with pleasure, but more. You are here to make sure the master doesn't die. Isn't that the case?" He was blunt. But calm. Peaceful. He didn't intend on scaring Ameer, or acting as if he was here to interrogate him or hurt him. He was here for the opposite.

"I am here to please you only . . . and by doing so, perhaps Telemaran hopes you will be satiated, calmed, and incapable of rebellion." Then that was it - confirmation of what he suspected, what Ameer had failed to hide because he didn't want to. Because he wanted to be free, and he looked at Vox as a kind man instead of an enemy that he needed to seduce and manipulate. "If anything you have further made me likely to rebel, because you have inflamed my passions and made me question my ability to pursue them. I will not be made sexual because it will pacify me to my master's will. I will do so because it is my choice alone." He lowered his head, staring into his palms - full of weeds, he'd picked them from the ground as he spoke of these dangerous and secretive things. Of his hatred for his master's schemes. By the end of it, he would whisper more to Ameer - the ultimate truth, although knowing it may be relayed, because he wanted to let the world know and make Telemaran fear.

"I will kill Emarus by the end of the first half of Summer. When that happens, I will set you free, and I will keep you from death until you can go out on your own. You can tell him of my plot, but by doing so you stunt your chances at ever becoming free. And remember, once I am gone, Emarus will have no use for you. You need to trust me. You need to help me kill the Master." He felt that his gaze had never been so magnified. He had never spoken of killing another man before, although it was not the first time he had committed such a sin. A part of him didn't really care though. Darkness festered in the souls of Nuit. They were not of this world, unnatural to the balance of things. And Emarus was a slaver. It wasn't the killing of him that was so imperative to Caesarion, but instead, the trusting Ameer. If this man broke his trust in such a way, then he did not know just how he could serve Priskil in putting his life back on track.

With his words, Ameer's eyes did not widen or soften - nor did his stare grow in intent or magnitude. He remained calm. "I have known of your intentions from the very first. Telemaran is arrogant and believes a slave could never kill a wizard. But you . . . are a superior mage to him, and a superior man. I believe that the council will not take it as a slight against them if you kill Telemaran. As long as you don't run away after the deed is done." He stared - as if to question if that was what he wanted.

"No," Vox replied. "I won't be leaving. I will stay in Sahova . . . and fix the blemishes I see from the citadel to the fields, then back again. I hate this place and its people. But magical power is liberation, and the knowledge of this land shouldn't be lost. I want to make this city better. Maybe I'll have what it takes." He smiled. If he didn't, then he would surely be killed by the legions of enemies he'd come across. There was more power in this city than most other cities he'd known, so many hundreds of talented mages all over. Still. It took a first light to ignite a brazier, and a bonfire, and surely the stars in the sky. He would be the light upon the darkness that seared evil.

[Keene Ward]

Grades

“For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”
-Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

Caesarion

Skills

Reimancy +1
Rhetoric +3
Socialization +4
Interrogation +1
Investigation +1
Negotiation +2
Persuasion +2
Teaching +1
Philosophy +2
Storytelling +1
Tactics +1
Writing +1
Planning +3
Leadership +1
Stealth +1

Lores

Gibbat Dogs Have Exceptional Hearing

Rewards/Consequences
-Overgiving: For the next seven days, Caesarion will find himself out of breath, similar to a panic attack
-Overgiving: For the next twelve days, Caesarion will find his body unnaturally charged with static electricity, shocking both himself and anything he touches at random


Notes
Okie dokie, a few things. First, please watch your skill level with reimancy. Concentrated, pin-point accuracy is difficult for a master, let alone a competent who does it off of whim. It should also be noted that it would take an incredibly powerful blast of air to uproot a tree, especially those within the forest of thorns. I did not award reimancy experience for either of these actions, as they were too far out of your skill level without any sort of consequence. Also, the Forest is close knit and there aren't clearings. It's one of the reasons there is a limited food supply for Pulsers, as the forest is incredibly difficult to traverse and to clear out. Please keep this in mind in the future.
If you have any questions or concerns, please send me a PM!