14 - 3

[Magus]

Demonstratum And The Eye That Was Not, Opened

The Lone Sparrow - 1st of Evening Star, Year 1125 A.E.

Throughout the wise woman’s lectures, Barry had needed to pinch his rump once for each of the Heavens. And when that was not enough to stave-off the thawing of his focus, the sellsword had bit his inner mouth for each of the Seven Sins that would brand a man for the corresponding Damnation of the Nine.

He had restlessly rearranged his bones atop the chair so much as to slight the Gods Above. Enough so, perhaps to go further afield than the Seven Damnations and unto the Eternal Perditions Themselves; the Infernal Rungs of Ikisat and Dudael, from which no soul would ever ascend no matter the repentance.

The Two Final Hells, they were called.

Why’s it that the gods’re more on my mind these days? Barry thought, an askance whisper into the black as he dozed-off in midst of another repition of the twenty-seven ‘holy’ letters of the Kedweni alphabet.

It had been difficult, what with his lack of education, to pay the tithe of attention; the common and fundamental teachings given to townsfolk was not his ken, having been reared in a faraway hamlet and then grown in a roving band of bandit’s bane.

So, when the Priestess had begun to speak of magicking proper, he perked up nice and rightly.

Only for her to douse his spirits in cold brook-water.

Or so, she thought; Barry, careful to keep up his cultivated (but mostly natural inclination) of a country bumpkin, had not shown the breadth of his understanding and curiosity during the magick talk.

The words, no matter that they should have never rung a bell in a man possessing the ken of a particularly dull rock, resonated with the sellsword.

He knew, somehow and probably due to sorcerous shenanigans once again, that reality was partitioned in discrete layers. He knew, down to the marrow of his bones, that the mind—unto itself and even devoid of the flesh—possessed its own particular place with which one could seclude themselves to and even walk upon.

Barry had been stuck there a few times, afterall. The endless black nigh suffocating and the placid greyen stillwater up to ten paces away from himself; a child between far-off horizon and close-met fog where both met.

Void was an apt lumen for the place in between his brows, in more ways than one, he thought with a chuff easily disguised as a cough to loosen up the throat.

The only part of the lecture that had no sat right with him was the talk of ‘cognition’ and ‘sieve of perception’ and whatever else the Priestess lectured on about.

The truth was the truth. If another believed false things, then it was not truth; simple as that. Barry couldn’t see himself wrapping his thoughts around it much more than so.

Seemed like the Crone’s Khristi was just overcomplicating things.

That was until she spoke of the shadowstuff that made up Barry’s arms. That was until she told tale of things that did not exist but were still so. Had presence in spite of their absence.

Some things were best left unspoken, the bandless sellsword learned that day; he almost ate a poor old lady because of some pretty little, flowery haggle.