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[Magus]

Demonstratum And The Eye That Was Not, Opened

For Elaria Rel—She of Desire, the Lady of Three Colors, and Wife of War—maketh offerings of the wizenedwort known as porphyria sage; burnt and made into incense, heavenly visions shall spirit thee away in mind while in place body stays.

With beads wrought of the woden wood, sealed in the lakh kermes that thine lowborn call the vermillion, wring a bond across the hollow of thine neck and give unto the Divine Madness of the Danse Sphenic.

The clack of blessed rosarie is the omen of good tidings, a talisman to the wayward eye and the coming storm and the Corvan’s death-knell. Heed not a single inhibition when women make tremble their legs in midst of smoke and sage.

With sight beneath the waters of What Is and What Could Be, lie with thine man as the Lust-God lieth with Her Heavenly Husband the Seventh Seed of Arkomahkia.

It is in dream and fever that the Divine graces upon the undivine, flesh upon flesh. Matters naught that it be the body of lovers between one another or the carnality of battle and strife, Lust is found theretwain all the same.

In the pulling back of that which hides the skin.

-The Mandatos Luxuria, Holy Scripture of the Cult of the Heavenly Bride.

The Blue Priestess of Berrowden - 1st of Evening Star, Year 1125 A.E.

Emilia and Barry sat in one of the many lecture rooms, private dwellings small in stature when compared to the larger and more public halls of learning.

The Priestess had started the lad on memorization of the Kedweni alphabet, the names of each of the Twenty-Seven Holy Letters and their sounds.

It had only been three glasses—or hours as said by the higher nobles with coffers big enough to empty on such frivolous artifices known as timewatchers—since they had started their lessons, Sola’s Vigil burnin’ orange through the glazed-glassen window of the room.

Emilia had not needed to open the letter-book proper that lay on the wooden table between mentor and apprentice, instead reciting and drawing the various little glyphs by memory atop a tablet black; a plane of smoothened wood with no grain left behind and lacquered by layers of tar. Chalk was dragged atop it, white streaking against the dark to form shape against negative space.

By the fourth glass—the time when the first of the wise women should return—Emilia had seen that Barry had wrung himself dry in his attempts to learn letters. The lad’s face was scrunched up as he held the tablet black, chalk staining the sleeves of his tunic. The dust that fell from the limestone stick did not leave its mark on his hands wrought of blackness boiling.

No white would find purchase there, she felt.

“Alrighty,” said Emilia, voice hoarse with the weight of age, “that’s enough of that. Let’s move on from mundane letters and into more… magickal pursuits.”

Her words seemed to light the lad from above and below: his face lit in expectation and a fire lit under his arse as he squirmed in his seat, trying in vain to ease his excitement at learning more about the magicking arts.

“I have already explained to you some basics—what mana is, some spiritual anatomy, dual-planar-theory, and all that.

“Now, I will explain to you tripartite planar theory.”

Emilia held up a star-spangled claw, warding off the sellswords coming mumbles.

“I will not teach ye practical magicking technicae just yet. You need a proper foundation for this stuff, Bare. Magick is dangerous if not well grasped; it is chaos incarnate.

“Like a horse unbroken for the saddle, to try and ride the wild mare that is magick without preparation is to risk fates that are—at best—a broken neck and caved-in chest.”

Her eyes sharpened low in acerbic reprimand, their perch o’ crows as piercing as the talons of said carrion-fowls.

“You could end up ripping apart your own spirit if you're not prepared rightly and have caution. Seven forfend, you might rip apart mine.

“But even worse than spiritual injuries is injury to the soul eternal. Or, more accurately, blemish black upon it: sin and warlockery.

“You might damn yerself to the Nine, should you walk blind in the dark paths of magick arkana.”

By the look on the once-sellsword’s wincing face, she could tell her preaching had bitten into his chest like a well-placed thrust to the heart.

Yet such was not enough.

Emilia Forentes knew so from skimming the scum of his mind. Her working—Reading Drops of Dew—painted two pictures wrought from the messy hue of qualia and pathos.

One was superficial, a veneer atop a scandalous piece of obsession and wrath: eager inquistiveness that would trump prudence given enough time.

The other, deeper picture, lay beneath the insatiably-inquiring mind: a man unrelenting in his willingness to do anything to himself, mortal body and eternal soul be damned, to wreak wrack and ruin upon the target of his vengeance.

It was only in brief moments that the smoldering rot of rage came to, but fleeting shadows in the night but still present nonetheless; a subtle thing like the waft of ripe fester on the edges of one’s nose.

A tainted spring, Emilia thought with a grimace as her spirit’s tongue tasted fully of the qualic dew of a grief-stricken man hankerin’ for a balancing’ o’ the scales.

Justice and vengeance are one and the same for the wrath-addled man.

The lad would take some of the warning to heart, but would otherwise make his own way, unheading to any would-be tumbles.

Barry held not caution nor reck as his compliment of courage, but instead the boldness of a fool. Of a man having nothing else to lose.

In a roundabout manner, there was truth to that. He had lost most all that he could’ve, being bereft of one’s home does so to a person. Yet there lay the operative word, that which Barry did not—could not—contemplate:

Most.

He had lost most all, not all in its entirety. He still drew breath. He still lived.

O’ sweet, plagueless child, Emilia thought, chiding the lad in her mind but not spilling it into the Physical for she knew better. Some chides needed dilution lest they poison one against the other.

There is always something more to lose and grief; it’s part and parcel of being this side of the Pale River.

To have is to be able to lose.

That Barry could end up as a soul-devouring alder-thing, was left unsaid. But still, Emilia took that particular worry of hers to heart. Anger was the great bridge between Man and base beast, the opening of the door that was atavism requiring but a single giving in to the rage within. Should he ever fully acquiesce to his worse instincts, the sorcerer would be rendered unto the monstrosity at the core of his being

No fate worse than the bereftment of a good man’s principles.

Temptation lurks in knowledge without restraint, another Mahneanic proverb came unbidden to the mouth of her mind as breath did from her lungs.

The Priestess would need to give Barry a lesson—one that stuck, preferably—lest he lose his humanity along the Path Sorcerous because of either simple, wayward curiosity or ferverous chase of price paid in full.

What better teacher than the Kennen Goddess Herself?

And so, the Priestess drew on her Patron’s Ethos for enlightenment.

Like a flex of a muscle long-lost and long since atrophied—faint, and almost invisible to the waking mind—her soul constricted in its arkane ways upon prayer to the Third Sister.

The Ethos dormant in the mantle of herself blazed upon being fed by the vital breath that was her faith; an ember-turned-fire stoked by unwavering belief, by Bheidh.

Such was a beacon in the black, that which would call upon—conjure—the other recipient at the end of her binding soul-pledge.

Resonance befell the dark in between her brows and ears, ringing out with a call to the Heavens Themselves.

A sending to On High that rang with whisper-quiet hymns along the threads that bind All Things. In the edges of her awareness, in the darkness visible, unseen heavenly messengers chanted, soundless yet heard.

An eternity passed in less than a breath and faster than a blink, the wait bated and breathless.

Her God answered.

In her Mind’s Eye appeared the Fleeting Star of Mercury, arising from the realm of endless black like a whale breaching the surface of the Dark Ocean’s waters.

A presence of unbearable weight came upon Emilia Forentes and she knew that were it any greater than askance attention from the Blue Crone, she would die.

Spirit snuffed no different than a candle flame bare to the elements without.

An insect that dared accidentally make itch the skin of a god and was promptly erased.

Though the baser parts of herself conjured worse fates still, Emilia forged ahead in her holy magicking. Her focus, the honed spear-tip of her wits, lay bound to the Fleeting Star that stole through the black of the mind.

The hazy film of heat-mirage made of the planet’s already heavily metallic surface a boiling ocean of argent; all caustic and biting, even to the sight.

For divinity was corrosive to the mortal form; purity that broke down that which was not perfect, not like itself. An extremely basic, alkaline solution thrown against the skin, stripping the flesh to the bone and further still.

Unto soap.

The sleeping body of Mahna was awesome and awful both.

Glorious and monstrous twain.

Its forever-flowing form of quickensilver shone an illustrious, nigh-blinding light, that which brought knowing to Man by its mere sighting.

One could not be ignorant after having witnessed the Light.

Yet to stare too long was to risk the wayward eye of fire; a man’s eyes burnt to blindness black and ash left in the sockets of the skull for the transgression of not looking away from the Light.

The Heavenly Sphere of Mercury was, afterall, oh so very close to that of Sola Divinat, the Sun-Mother and First Sister.

Mercury’s other epithets of the Mirror Sphere or Celestial Prism were apt. For, in the divine dance of god-spheres, Mercury guided the rays of the Sun unto the Earth in a gentle manner so that Terra Mundus would not be scorched to but ash and greyen rock. World-ending solar winds and epoch-sundering heavenly plasma diverted through the Sphere’s influence and mere presence, its gravitas.

The weight of Ethos made manifest upon the skein of existence.

And from this reality-bending entity—this divinity—the Priestess would draw to influence the waking world.

The eyes of Emilia’s soul looked askance, sideways bound to get glances and hints of the Light filtered through the planet mercurial.

Gossamer threads, stronger than the adamant veins formed in the black bosom of the earth below, spread from the Fleeting Star of Mercury in lines of cutting, sharp steel. The holy silk was a subtle thing, its visibility dependent on the angle of the sighting and how the Light Divine caressed its transparent hide.

These perfectly straight threads bound All Things under Heaven and Earth, and from them, Emilia tugged.

From the teat of divinity, she nibbled.

From On High, came a single, tiny drop of mana-most-holy. A miniscule lump of divine clay to be molded by her mortal will.

An allowance of a granule of a grain from the unending crop of the Heavenly Sphere of the Crone Herself.

As for all Heavenly Spheres, so too was there a weaving of stars to bind it. Without a tool in the form of an arkane pattern, a spellform, Emilia could not do much to influence the mana endowed upon her.

Much the opposite, she would become the clay; molded by another’s influence.

To touch upon this ember of divinity with bare hands was for her spirit to be turned to soapstone and her body a pillar of salt; saponification of the very soul and fundamentation of the flesh by hubris of the unworthy.

One by one, superimposed upon the Sphere Mercurial, stars came into being. They were arranged with the very same thread fatal that bound All Things, using of the pre-existing channels carved into reality; archetypes and patterns found everyone one looked, forever repeating unto the very bottom of the Living Universe Itself.

Needle of Aracsna.

The Weaver’s Formation that steals through the skein of night in the seremonths. Prayed to by many a tailiator and tailiastere, the tip of the Aracsnaean shines greater than the rest of its chain, ready to bite into cloth no different than a spider alaying atop its prey upon the web.

The Priestly Constellation pieced together the holy silk, intertwining thread fatal and the Fleeting Star into the tapestry that was her spell in exchange for a portion of her Patron’s currency.

The allowance of a granule of a grain of mana-most-holy was whisked away, through the channels mahneanic of the world without; back from whence it came.

In the elden tongue of her faith, Emilia spoke a single word in the voice of her soul, a parting prayer:

‘Luxae.’

The spell unfurled from the bosom of her being, spreading through the etheric waters of the Spiritual unto the Priestess’ target.

The conduits for her holy magicks, her foci, were the Maiden’s hands and staff covered in Sevenfold artificery. Without either instrument, she would not be able to effectively propagate mana through the Physical. Thaumaturgy—miracle-work—of her kind required a breachhead or foothold through which spirit may enter the waking world.

As a soldier may need a medium such as a blade or spear to better leverage pressure unto a singular, cutting or piercing point, so too did the Priestess to perform her Art.

The light refracted through the gems embedded in her nails and stave began to blaze. No longer were they simple tricks of sight and glass but instead glowing embers of arkane power, blinding both her and the sellsword in the heaviness of divinity itself.

For a timeless, eternal moment, neither man nor woman saw a single thing but all-encompassing, neveian white.

A hint—an echo of a shadow—of the Ken of Good and Evil Itself borne unto the waking world.

It was the cutting of rays against the curtain of stormy veil, the providence of sight trumping over the natal blindness of the black. It was the beauty of dew upon morning leaves, the splendor in the simple. It was the flash of epiphany in the candle-light hour, the arkane unearthed in manner most sphenic and spontaneous.

It was Enlightenment; Da’ath fomented.

It burned the shadowstuff of the sellsword-sorcerer’s conjured limbs, unraveling them unto nothingness; Barry was left as he was without his magicks, a cripple bereft of both arms.

Ethos brought to bear against another was an effective thing.

According to the manifested virtue’s sphere of influence, it could make an angry man calm or a vicious one virtuous in turn.

The Sister-In-Mahna’s spell, though a primal sort of working, was made to make the minds of men malleable. It endowed upon any who were willing to hear, an increased ability to learn. Even elders, stuck in their ways like old and cracked plaster to wall, were once again able to assimilate ken just as well as younglings.

They became clay, plastique and ready for the molder’s touch.

As the light died down and sight tentatively came back, Emilia chided.

“You see, like a man coming out from the threshold of his home midday, you are blinded. I understand your curiosity; it is most certainly not a bad thing. I hear your aching need for justice; it is easily abused.

“You must temper both with caution and care, lest you go to quickly from the dark and into the light and be blinded just the same.

“It isn’t just the black that make men without sight.”

And it wasn’t only Barry that had learned with the lecture. Emilia herself had seen that hers was a heavy-handed sort of teaching.

Too much of forcing your own views on another was a dangerous thing.

No matter that Emilia saw her way of seeing the world as the true and proper way, she knew that such was folly.

Hubris.

The Light of Mahna shown upon all, even the conjurer that bringed It forth.

Forced to confront her own failings and deficiencies, she was—her spell not one that discerned caster from target.

Seedlings of the Seven Sins dwelled within her such as it did in All Things under Heaven and Earth.

Her ease to do bad things for the greater good.

Her untrusting nature that would not give an inch for fear of another taking a full span.

Her thick-horned stubbornness that she called ‘conviction.’

With a sigh from herself and an affirmative nod from the sellsword, the Priestess continued, lecturing though much less vicious than before.

At least, she hoped it was as such; Emilia could not tell how the speech was received other than by body language, unreliable as it were.

The feel of spirit and her technicae Reading Drops of Dew would be disabled for a half-glass given the nature of auric suppression; it made the magicks of the losing party weaker, dulling the skin of the spirit as it reeled back into the body proper in effort to minimize presence and contact area.

To receive the touch of a greater power left its marks.

Not that such was evident to the lad in front of her; his shadow limbs had already remanifested, bleeding from his stumps in what felt like glee.

Strange that.