[Flashback] Finding the Void (Wrenmae)

[Seidaku]

"So the void is the empty bag we all fell out of," Wrenmae speculated with a rueful smile, "And you're interested in getting back in?"

Seidaku blinked at the boy in surprise, obviously shocked at the immediate connection he had drawn. As quickly as the surprise had flickered across his face, it was gone, chased away by a laugh of genuine pleasure and a wide grin, "That is exactly it!"

"Well, half of it, maybe," he trailed off, "But certainly the most important half. You've got the idea of it, certainly. The Void is the, umm, bag we all fell out of. However, it's not where I am trying to get back into. It is where we are all inevitably headed. Certainly not today, and probably not in any of our lifetimes... but someday, the Nothingness will reclaim its own."

He had drifted off into thought as he spoke, considering the far off future when all things returned to Nothing. As a result, he only barely heard the boy's next question, and had not seen him reach out to the book on the mantle. He gave a startled jerk and reached out with one hand as if to stop the boy, "Please, don't..."

He trailed off when he saw that the boy... No, that Wrenmae was holding the book with almost the same sense of reverence that he himself would have clutched it. Indeed, the same reverence that he had clutched it, years ago, before he had ever found a mentor of his own.

"To learn Voiding?," Seidaku asked, more to himself than to Wrenmae. He could still remember his first lesson with Vauthor. A deceptively simple seeming task that he carried with him to this day.

"What is nothing? Describe it to me."

[Wrenmae]

The question was a good one, or at least challenging. Often times the most difficult questions were those also the easiest to conceive. In Alvadas, all answers and questions were just grounds for another, and another, and another. If there was one thing Wrenmae had learned while he stayed within the city of Illusion it was that nothing was certain, and everything had a second answer...a more truthful answer beside the point.

Grabbing a seat, Wrenmae stared at Seidaku, evaluating the teacher with his eyes. Nothing, nothing...it was a concept that held no weight, no substance. Simplicity was not in his strong point. Wrenmae dealt with unwieldy concepts, never this sort of word play.

Of course he could not simply be expected to answer correctly. Nothingness was s subjective definition...or perhaps it was a distinct answer like none other.

Either way, he had to answer.

"Nothingness," Wrenmae said, struggling with the concept, "Is the absence of somethingness, I think. More like what happens when you look at the night sky, most of us see stars, but it's the space between them. Nothingness, is what they are suspended in."

[Seidaku]

The fact that the boy paused to consider his answer instead of blurting out the first thing to come to mind was a positive sign. With his elbows on his knees, he leaned forward slightly and watched the boy think.

Seidaku gave a pleased laugh at Wrenmae's answer, "The absense of somethingness. That is actually a very apt description."

"It's incomplete, though," he said, once his chuckles had died down, "And this is the first big hurdle of learning to reach the Void. The answer seems easier than it really is..."

"Nothingness isn't."

[Wrenmae]

"Nothingness...isn't..." Repeating it, Wrenmae looked down at his hands, puzzling. It was a simple concept but bleak in its application. Of course it didn't tell him much, not the way to summon the portal nor control it. There were shapes, designs, and intricate details to calling forth this matter of magic on the material plane.

Frowning, the storyteller opened the book and leafed through the pages, more glancing then anything else.

"Knowing the essence of nothingness, does that mean we can move to actually calling it forth?" He itched to stretch his Djed in ways not used before, to explore the magical horizon of possibility.

His body exuded disease.

Could his mind exude something else?

And maybe in the study of Void...would he find a way to shelter his essence from others?

[Seidaku]

"But knowing is not the same as understanding," Seidaku said, then paused, shaking his head to himself with a small frown, "I am not explaining this very well, I'm afraid," he took a deep breath and tried again, "Creating a portal to the Void is, at its base, about creating similarities..."

He trailed off into silence, his eyes losing focus and flickering slightly as he made connections that would need to be explored later. Scrambling to his feet, he rushed to his desk and snatched up a wrinkled piece of paper and his jar of ink. Wetting a quill that was beginning to fray and would need to be trimmed when he got around to it, he scrawled himself a quick reminder message.

Void portal = summoning portal? Similarities between worlds like between emptiness? Like calls like may be key.

Staring his note and drumming his fingers idly, Seidaku slowly returned to the world around him and remembered that he had just abandoned a prospective student to go wool gathering.

Clearing his throat, he gave a nervous chuckle and said, "Sorry about that... If I don't write it down, I will never remember it. Now, umm, as I was saying. Without similarity, there would be no portal. That is why an understanding of what exactly the Void is is so important."

"In order to create a portal, you have to envision a point of perfect, absolute emptiness in your mind. Then, you use Djed to impose that image in your mind on reality. Once there is a point of true emptiness in the world, the Void rushes reaches out to link with itself."

[Wrenmae]

Wrenmae was skeptical.

How could he not be? Envision emptiness? Would not envisioning, alone, make it impossible? One could not SEE emptiness, just as one could not make nothingness. There was an unlike amount of comprehension between the concepts. Sighing, Wrenmae threw up his hands and paced. It felt good to pace, his footsteps set a beat he could jaunt to, and at the least he could hope to gain some semblance of calming balance to his normally scattered thoughts.

"Alright, alright, alright," he said, repeating the words like a mantra, "Void is nothing and that nothing needs a place to go, nothingness fills nothingness or 'somethingness' with the use of Djed. Djed, then, is a conduit of nothingness, a somethingness the nothingness ghosts along till it reaches the somethingness that is nothingness and thus nothingness is born...ok, easy right?"

He sat, suddenly, dust motes hurling themselves suicidally at the walls.

Screwing his eyes shut he stared into the black behind his eyelids, willing that to be nothing. If he could envision it, he could create it.

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing

But there were shadows beneath his eyes, motes of electrical interference running along his brain. He had to push deeper.

Quieting himself, that errant beating heart in his chest and the desire to just succeed, Wrenmae forced himself to abandon his ambitions.

To think, to sit, and to quietly envision what every fiber in his being was a direct testament against.

This would take time.

[Seidaku]

Seidaku watched as his new student absorbed the first lesson. He remembered those first emotions with perfect clarify. Frustration at Vauthor's seeming ramblings, skepticism at how easy his own teacher made it seem, frustration at how difficult it had actually proved to be and finally, days later, the euphoric pride when his first, small portal had swirled into existence.

When Wrenmae threw himself to the ground and closed his eyes, Seidaku nodded to himself and, content that the boy would be at it for a while, returned to his work. With Wrenmae working to open a portal of his own, he was reluctant to allow a portal of his own to interfere with the boy's efforts.

And so, he returned to his jar of ink and his fine brush. Kneeling on the floor, he applied gentle strokes of inky blackness onto the floor. With an almost agonizing slowness, he extended one of the angular lines spreading across the floor with a line that was alternatingly jagged and smoothly flowing. As he worked, he thought he could almost feel the flow of Djed through the room as it was slowed and warped around the Glyph.

Maybe smooth out the flow in the southern quadrant, he thought to himself, setting his brush to the floor once again.

[Wrenmae]

He let his mind wander...down avenues of intangible nothings and the half formed thoughts of his own subconscious. Perilously close to sleep, hanging by a finger from the abyss of unconsciousness, he gazed into that void and looked for what he could not conceive of...

Nothing

Empty

Void

These principles were in existence, or rather somehow maintained their inexistance as existence. Thought-wise, the lesson was madness. Who could conceive of what they had never experienced? It was impossible, an illogic Wrenmae could not push himself past.

So he tried another route.

Perhaps that nothingness was not really nothingess. It was a hole, a giant hole with no bottom, and the distance TO that endless bottom was the nothingness he was drawing from. He formed the hole in his mind, some unimaginable spiral into the very fibers of his being, reached out to pluck that nothingness and immediately flinched away.

He could not touch nothingness.

Keeping the void in mind, the storyteller tried to block out all unnecessary thought.

The cloying scent of Vayt's cigar followed him regardless, pushing at the edges of his mind.

To even that, he sent to that hole, gone into a swirl of emptiness. There was peace in the action, a singular rejection of Vayt's doctrine, at least for a moment, to concentrate on the nothing that was greater than even he.

He poured the Void, simply directed the hole into the empty air in front of one outstretched hand.

Hours from when he sat, Wrenmae put a hand forward, as though pushing through some unseen plane.

A tiny point of nothingness, barely larger than the head of a pin, flickered into existence.

Wrenmae did not open his eyes, he could not. To see would be to banish the image in his mind.

"Seidaku," Wrenmae said quietly, his voice trembling, "What can you see?"

[Seidaku]

In the hours since the boy had drifted off into silence, Seidaku had added four long lines, alternatingly flowing and sharply angular, to the perimeter of his circle of Glyphs. Based upon his calculations, that should allow him to safely channel an additional five percent more Djed when opening a portal. Pleased with his progress, he sat back on his heels and took a deep breath.

Sitting back and stretching a cramp out of his neck, he could see the boy in his peripheral vision, face no longer screwed up in concentration, but relaxed to the point of slackness. In a moment of selfish nervousness, Seidaku moved over to where the boy sat and used his distraction as a chance to pick up his book, holding it gently to his chest as he stood and returned it to its place of honor atop his mantle.

He had just breathed a relieved sigh when his student spoke up, asking what he could see. Confused, he turned around, saying, "Don't worry, it takes-" he trailed off into silence, "...oh my."

As soon as he turned around, he had noticed the pin prick of blackness just beyond the boy's outstretched hand. Blinking in surprise, he said softly, "That was... fast."

[Wrenmae]

Despite himself, he opened his eyes. Immediately, the pinprick of nothingness was gone, but for a moment he had seen it.

Seidaku seemed surprised.

Perhaps this is owed an explanation.

Standing, Wrenmae shook exhaustion from his being and the stiffness of his long stillness from his arms. Voiding had been a difficult practice, most of it reliant upon picturing an instance of impossibility. Even then, Wrenmae doubted he had truly tapped into the Void's potential. There was just too much unlike theory in his mind to truly grasp the basics of expanding the portal. Still, even a little achievement deserved some lauding.

"This...isn't my first time channeling Djed," he admitted quietly, biting his lower lip nervously. Magic was looked upon as like a warrior looks upon a sentient sword. It was dangerous, unpredictable, and had incredible potential to harm, to destroy. Admitting he could perform other magic was similarly equivalent to admitting he had small trained vipers beneath his sleeves, instructed to bite any other hand within reach.

Taking a seat, Wrenmae held out his hands.

Before, watching alleycats had helped him grasp some of the basic points of morphing. While he was no expert and certainly struggled with the most basic of executions, mimicking their silky fur or piercing green eyes had proved an easy task with the right amount of practice.

The Djed flowing through his hands pushed at the backs of his arms, prickling the prexisting hair there. His hands warped slightly, skin twisting and turning in a slow almost chaotic intensity. Ginger fur pushed along the avenues that normal hair might flow, crowding his hands and arms. He focused on his eyes, feeling the pupil shifting, contracting, warping. He kept his eyes closed for this part, feeling his nails grow a little sharper at the ends of his fingers, rising to filed points by direction of Djed alone. The morphing was imperfect, only scant patches of the cat fur riding along his arms like wildfire and only a few of his nails pointed and sharp.

Opening his eyes, he looked at Seidaku with the piercing, eerie gaze of a cat, smiling almost helplessly before closing his eyes and reversing the change. His skin warped, telling it to dissolve the bonds of Djed to change, to return to what he was.

The process took several minutes, slow work that showed every moment of shifting skin and receding hair.

When the last of it had faded from his skin, Wrenmae opened his eyes and let out a long breath, his hands shaking. It was hard work, morphing, but hopefully he got his point across.

"I...can do other things to, but this is the most obvious form of magic I know...maybe I learned faster because I knew how to manipulate Djed already?"

It was an excuse, he had no idea why he grasped it so willingly.

He pointed out the glyphs now, eager to get off the topic itself. "What are those? Do they serve importance to Voiding?"