014 - Canyon River Step
[sunny_side_up]: okay so what's actually the bar for getting into [kava]. like what are you actually testing for[Hadrian’s_Fyre]: whether u can believe something u don't believe[sunny_side_up]: ...elaborate please.[Hadrian’s_Fyre]: anyone can join a guild and learn a hermetic tradition. but u gotta be a bit coocoo loco weewoo in the brain to run multiple trads hard enough the game belives ur bs, be a “big brain wizard” like [Stormold] says[Hadrian’s_Fyre]: for example u gotta be able to be a blood mage even if ur not a blood mage, look at the trad from the inside and mean it, even if u think blood magic is a stupid deadend tradition for vampire RPers, because it absolutely is[Hadrian’s_Fyre]: …sunny? u there?[sunny_side_up]: i vant to suck your blood![sunny_side_up]: ㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ[Hadrian’s_Fyre]: NO.
—Private chat between Players [Hadrian’s_Fyre] and [sunny_side_up], April 6, 2120
From her vantage point atop the heaving back of Balala the Orgawyr, Sari watched the Gihn revolutionaries flow over the battlefield like water. The blood and noise of the battlefield seemed to melt away, if only for a split second.
What a beautiful spell.
She watched a Gihn karra slide down a sheer rock face, his feet finding purchase on sandstone that should have offered none. He didn’t push off of the rocky surface but rather glided over it, as if he really did embody the [River] as it flowed through the [Canyon].
That was the [Canyon River Step]. It was, in a word, poetry.
Magic was taught in Varran Academies as a series of rigid axioms, deriving from the in-born Varran right to preside over all that fell under the Sun. Natural forces, living things, and even matters of society, law, and faith. All were subject to the same universal precept of Varran supremacy.
The Varran mind, cultured in the high halls of the Republic, demanded order in all things, even magic. It demanded that the universe submit to a hierarchy where the caster stood at the top, dictating terms to reality, and allowing them to come to pass under the weight of their Semblance.
This spell had none of that.
Sari’s mind, trained to dissect the base concepts and symbols that underpinned all magic, began to unspool the ideas woven into the Gihn man’s movement. [Canyon River Step] was an entire tapestry of the cultural heritage of the Gihn people, elegantly pressed into a single, fluid action.
[Gihn-River]-[Canyon-Stone]-[Walk-Step].
The spell began with a declaration of identity as its first tenet. To cast the spell, one had to believe, truly believe, that they were inseparable from the land of Gihn. They had to have internalized the memory of a people who had lived in these winding cracks in the earth for centuries, possibly even millennia.
[I-Gihn] am/are the [River] of the [Canyon].
This was a narrative of persistence and of belonging, of life within the canyons that made up the region of Avna—no, of Gihn. Generations of the Gihn people had traversed these lands, walking through the canyons, observing, worshiping, becoming the rivers that carved paths through red stone.
The [Stone] yields to the [River]. Therefore, the [Stone] yields to the [Walking-Stepping] of [I-Gihn].
To be Gihn is to be the water that remembers the stone, Sari thought, a strange sense of vertigo washing over her. For an instant, she thought of home. Of Beyal, deep in the Northern Acquisition.
A low, vibrating rumble beneath her thighs snapped Sari back to the present.
Balala let out an impatient rumble. The massive Orgawyr shifted her weight, her taloned feet gouging deep furrows into the hard-packed earth of the fortress courtyard. Smoke curled from the corners of Balala's mouth, smelling of sulfur, burning flesh, and the coppery tang of impending violence. Her blood was up. The target-rich environment in front of them threatened to drive the predator into a frenzy.
“Easy, girl,” Sari whispered, leaning forward to stroke the pebbled scales of the Orgawyr’s neck. “Hold. Not yet.”
Balala snapped her jaws angrily, her eyes fixed on a group of Gihn fighters attempting to flank the main melee. She wanted to charge. She wanted to bite, to tear, to bathe the world in the liquid fire churning in her gullet.
It took every spare ounce of Sari’s focus to keep the Orgawyr in check. Her legs squeezed against the theropod’s flanks, maintaining maximum physical contact to allow Balala's control jewel to function at its best, while Sari tried her hardest to project [Calmness] and [Patience] to her.
Sari looked out over the courtyard.
The battle had devolved into a brawl. The initial shock of the Avnans’ [United-Charge] had broken the Gihn’s formation, but the defenders were tenacious fighters defending their home.
Lieutenant Baior, at least, was in his element. The burly Avnan officer had dismounted his Domga and was fighting on foot, his curved sword a blur of motion as he rallied his soldiers against the mundane Gihn fighters.
“Push them back!” Baior roared, his voice cracking with exertion. “For the Republic! For Captain Iorec!”
But near the center of the courtyard, the tide was turning.
Master Benessel was alone. He had been forced to drop the [United-Charge] to engage a cell of six Gihn mages who had leapt from the ramparts in a coordinated strike. Now, he was surrounded.
Sari watched, her heart hammering against her ribs, as her master engaged in battle.
He was magnificent, of course. Even exhausted, Karravar Benessel was a force of nature. He deflected a swinging blade with a wave of his hand, turned a kinetic strike into a glancing blow with a shift of his shoulder, and retaliated with a whip-crack of [Force] that sent one attacker sprawling.
But he was slow.
Sari knew his rhythm better than anyone. She knew the precise cadence of his breathing, the incredible speeds at which he could normally weave spell after spell.
Right now, he was lagging.
A Gihn mage, wielding a scimitar wreathed in [Cutting-Vibration], slashed at Benessel’s flank. Benessel parried with a barrier of [Force-Barrier], but the impact staggered him. He stumbled, his face gray and sheened with sweat.
He shouldn’t have stumbled. A strike like that, from a mage of that caliber, shouldn’t have even moved him.
The Ve’un, Sari realized, a sinking feeling in her stomach. Beseeching Nor every night was killing him.
For the last week, Master Benessel had cast a fresh Ve’un every single evening to protect the caravan from Veh. A spell that normally required at least two mages and a prepared wardstone, he had done alone, fueling it with his own stamina and will rather than the material components and ritualistic worship that were considered necessary to cast the wards.
He was running on fumes—a shell of himself, held together by duty and pride.
Another Gihn mage lunged, his blade seeking the opening in Benessel’s guard. Benessel parried successfully, but his counter-strike was weak, easily dodged.
Her master was going to die.
Sari looked at the gate behind her. Her orders were clear. Hold the rear. Let none pass. She and Balala were the anvil to Benessel’s hammer. But Master Benessel needed her help. What use was an anvil without its hammer?
Sari made her choice in the space of a heartbeat.
“Balala,” she hissed, releasing her mental restraints from the wyrm. “Kill.”
The Orgawyr didn’t need to be told twice. With a roar that shook the very earth beneath them, Balala erupted forward in a whirlwind of absolute violence. The massive wyrm covered the distance to Benessel in ten thunderous steps, a blur of orange and black scales and terrifying display feathers.
“Master! Down!” Sari screamed.
Benessel threw himself to the ground just as Balala arrived.
She slammed into the Gihn mages about to set themselves upon Benessel like a living wrecking ball of muscle, fangs, and bloodlust.
Her tail, thick as a tree trunk, swept out in a vicious arc, catching two mages mid-cast and sending them flying into the stone walls with a sickening crunch. Her jaws snapped shut around the torso of a third, lifting him into the air and shaking him like a ragdoll before tossing him aside.
His scimitar went flying, but Sari managed to catch it as it whizzed by her head.
The remaining three scrambled back, terrified beyond their wits.
Balala stood over Benessel, her massive head swiveling, her throat aglow with fire. She hissed menacingly, a rumbling sound that struck all who heard it with a sense of primal fear.
Sari didn’t waste the opening.
She slid from the saddle to stand atop Balala’s back, balancing on the beast’s shoulders.
“Get up, Master!” she shouted, raising her new scimitar.
She didn’t have the finesse or breadth of experience to match Master Benessel, nor the rule-breaking flexibility and seemingly astronomical Semblance of Miss Ayle. But she had been watching them both like a hunter, diligently noting everything, anything that could help her own growth as an aspiring Karravar.
The unnamed spell Miss Ayle had improvised to subdue Balala back during the bandit attack. [Force]-[Repetition]-[Trinity]. A story told in three beats.
Magic is a story, she had said. Tell the right story for the situation.
Sari looked at the three remaining mages. They were regrouping far outside her reach, preparing to cast. But she couldn't move from her position. She swung her scimitar through empty air.
[Force]-[Extension]-[Blade-Reach].
Thwack.
Ten meters away, a Gihn mage’s head snapped forward as if he’d been struck. He crumpled, a bloody gash on the back of his head.
Sari swung the scimitar again, this time on her backswing.
Thwack.
Another mage spun out, clutching his shoulder.
It wasn’t elegant. It lacked the efficient, economic beauty of Miss Ayle’s magic. In the absence of the symbolic payment that a formal spell would have demanded of her, Sari instead felt the magic drain her stamina. Her breath hitched sharply.
But it worked.
“Sarila!” Benessel shouted, scrambling to his feet, his left arm hanging limp at his side. “On me!”
“Yes, Master,” Sari yelled back, swinging her sword again to keep the last mage at bay. She projected a mental image of a clutch of eggs that were to be defended at all costs through Balala's control jewel. “Balala, guard!”
The Orgawyr rumbled, stepping sideways to interpose her bulk between Benessel and a fresh wave of mundane fighters charging from the barracks.
For a moment, they held. Then, Sari saw him.
A single Gihn revolutionary, small and wiry, broke from the pack. He dropped into a slide, passing under the chaos of the melee, moving like some sort of insect skimming the water’s surface. He was aiming for the gap between Balala’s tail and the canyon wall—a direct line to Benessel’s exposed back.
Benessel was busy weaving a barrier to deflect a volley of crossbow bolts. He didn’t see the assassin.
Balala was consumed by the thrill of battle and an overwhelming instinct to protect. She didn’t see him either.
Only Sari saw the threat.
He was fast. Too fast to reliably hit with her [Force] strikes. By the time she swung, he would be past her arc and his blade would be in her Master’s kidneys.
She needed to be there. Now. Twenty meters. Too far to jump. Too far to run.
The [Stone] yields to the [River].
The thought entered her mind, unbidden and unexpected. In that moment, Sari forgot about the Academy. She forgot about the Republic and her duty as an Aspirant, of the expectations thrust upon her for being the first Beyari to enter the service of the hallowed halls of the Karravar.
She thought of [Water].
She closed her eyes for a fraction of a second, and the noise of the battle fell away. She felt the texture of the canyon floor, the ancient, water-worn memory of the stone. She felt the ebb and flow of the battle as it rushed through her and over her.
[I] am the [River].
Sari flowed off of Balala’s back.
She poured herself down the side of the Orgawyr’s scales. Gravity ceased to be a law and became mere suggestion, a gentle current guiding her downward. She hit the ground running, but her feet made no sound. She didn’t push against the earth with pounding footsteps, but flowed against the terrain, fluid and inevitable.
[Canyon River Step].
The world blurred. The red stone of the fortress walls stretched into streaks of rust. The shouting of men slowed to a low drone. She understood, in that singular moment, why the Gihn fought so hard. Why they bled for this land.
To move like this was to be embraced by a mother who had held you since birth. It was a sense of belonging so profound it made her heart ache. Sari thought of home again.
The next moment, she intercepted the Gihn karra.
He looked up, his eyes widening in shock as a Varran mage appeared in front of him, moving with the fluid grace of his own people.
“What—?”
Sari didn’t stop. There was a wet thud as she flowed past the assassin with her scimitar extended. The man collapsed, clutching his bleeding chest, his momentum turned against him.
Sari skidded to a halt, the spell dissipating as her focus shattered. She gasped, her lungs burning, her legs trembling violently. The sensation of the [River] vanished, leaving her feeling heavy, clumsy, and distinctly solid.
She stared at her hands.
Is this what it’s like for her? Sari wondered, her mind flashing to Ayle.
But before Sari could collect her wits, a sudden, deafening rumbling echoed from the depths of the earth.
The cliff face—the towering wall of sandstone that formed the back of the fortress of New Gihn—shuddered and fractured, splitting at the seams. Jagged cracks spiderwebbed across the red stone.
“Inneol,” Benessel breathed, looking up.
With a roar that drowned out the battle, the cave system and the entire section of canyon that housed it collapsed. Millions of tons of rock, destabilized by wildly cascading magic, fell into the ground.
A plume of red dust and debris shot into the sky, mushrooming outward and blotting out the sun. A shockwave of air blasted through the fortress gate, knocking soldiers and rebels alike to their knees.
Sari threw her arms up to shield her face as grit and sand blasted her skin.
“Miss Ayle!” she screamed, the sound torn from her throat. She had gone into the caves to find Inneol. She could be right in the heart of that collapse.
The rumbling continued for an eternity, a grinding, crushing sound. No one could survive that. Not unless they managed to escape.
All they could do was hope.
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the coughing of men and the clinking of chains.
The battle for New Gihn was over. The collapse of the caves—their sanctuary, their holy place—had broken the rebels’ spirit more thoroughly than any battle could have. They had surrendered, dropping their weapons as they stared at the ruins.
Sari worked mechanically, her hands moving on autopilot.
She tightened the binding on a young Gihn mage’s wrists, weaving a simple [Knot-Lock] weave as she tied off a length of rope, until they could secure proper manacles. He didn’t resist. He just stared at the wall of rubble that blocked the cave entrance, tears tracking clean lines through the dust on his face.
“Secure him with the others,” Sari directed an Avnan soldier, her voice sounding hollow to her own ears.
She walked over to where Master Benessel sat on an overturned crate.
He was being tended to by one of Baior’s men, his left arm bound tightly in a sling. His face was pale, lined with a fatigue that went bone deep. He looked old. Older than she had ever seen him.
“Master,” Sari said softly. “The prisoners are secured.”
Benessel looked up, offering her a weak smile. “Good work, Sarila. You disobeyed my orders, but your actions saved my life. I couldn’t ask for a better Aspirant.”
Sari nodded gratefully, but she couldn’t return the smile. Her gaze drifted past him, to the sky, to the rubble, searching.
Lieutenant Baior was nearby, barking orders at his men as they corralled the civilians who had emerged from the fortress’s outbuildings. He was blustering, loud, trying to project authority, but his eyes too kept darting toward the collapsed mountain.
They were all waiting.
Hoping.
She knows so much that not even Master Benessel does, Sari told herself. But was she strong enough to hold up a mountain?
Sari thought of the way Ayle had looked at the Gihn spellwork, analytical and with buring curiosity in her eyes. The way she had smiled forlornly, a sadness in her eyes when she ate Beaky’s stew with Laric and the other soldiers. The way she had saved Sari's life and upended her reality.
If she’s gone…
Dark thoughts began to spiral in Sari’s mind.
It had barely been a week since they had met, but Sari felt a pang of loss for the woman. Ayle was strange, with an aloofness that bordered on arrogance. But she was also larger than life and made the world seem that much more vivid.
Benessel winced as the medic tightened another bandage. Sari stepped closer, her worries returning to her mentor.
“Master, I've never seen you push yourself this much, this quickly,” she whispered, keeping her voice low so the soldiers wouldn’t hear, “I know you've been keeping secrets from me, but are they really worth your life?”
Benessel’s eyes hardened. For a moment, his exhaustion vanished, replaced by a steely resolve that filled Sari with worry.
“There are things, Sarila, that are worth any price. The Republic—”
He cut himself off, his gaze snapping to the sky.
Sari followed his look.
High above, emerging from the settling dust cloud was a speck of white and gold. It grew larger, descending with a controlled, graceful velocity.
Sari’s heart leaped into her throat.
It was Miss Ayle.
Her robes snapped in the wind, her golden braid trailing behind her like a banner. Her lizard-dog’s face poke out from over her shoulder.
And they weren’t alone.
Tucked under Ayle’s left arm was a ragged man in a tattered Varran uniform. Captain Iorec.
Dangling from her right hand, held by the scruff of his neck, was a gaunt figure who was more robe than man. The rogue mage Inneol.
Ayle flared her cloak, killing her momentum inches from the ground. She landed in the center of the courtyard with a soft thump.
She dropped Iorec gently to the ground, where he immediately began to retch, clutching the earth as if afraid he might fall off it.
Then she tossed Inneol down beside him. The rebel leader groaned, curling into a ball, utterly broken.
Ayle straightened up, brushing a speck of dust from her shoulder. Aru the lizard-dog popped his head out of her hood, giving a sharp, happy bark that echoed in the silent courtyard.
She coughed, seemingly inhaling the dust that surrounded her. She looked at Benessel, then at Baior, and finally, her golden eyes landed on Sari.
She grinned.
“Well, at least nothing's on fire,” Ayle deadpanned.
Sari felt laughter bubble up in her chest.
“Welcome back, Miss Ayle.”