NationStates Jolt Archive


A Mage's Fall

29-10-2003, 11:52
Note: This thread is closed to outside posting at this point in time, although I may open it later.
Important Note: This contains some scenes which some people may consider gruesome. It's not some torture thread, though.
Note: You may find it helpful to go here (http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1921738), as this topic provides an introduction to the Phae.
Note: Throughout this post I refer to "vanes". These are long, thin crystals used by the Aethrakai (mage) Caste to channel magical power from it's source, the rionkhal, into whatever spell is required.

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"Excuse me, you're Vaiphaen Caste, are you not?"

The young elf turned to regard Moraeth. "Yes, I'm Maintenance," she confirmed, absentmindedly tugging at the green-and-grey jacket that identified the Vaiphaen Caste. "Can I help you?"

Moraeth smiled embarrasedly. "Yes. One of the doors in my apartment has come off it's hinges, and I need someone to fix it. Could you oblige?"

Her eyes narrowed briefly, considering whether this was some sort of pick-up line, but the Vaiphaen Caste did fix such things, and although most people could certainly have done it themselves, Aethrakai Caste members were notoriously otherworldly.

"Certainly," she said finally. "I've got a window to repair up on the Top Levels, but I can help you after that. Where do you live?"

"Level twenty-nine," Moraeth told her, "Insula fourteen, apartment eight."

"Thanks." the woman jotted it down in her notebook. "I can be there in two hours - is that fine?"

"That's fine," Moraeth confirmed, and bowed. She bowed back, and trotted off down the corridor.

Back in his apartment, Moraeth slid the bolt across firmly in his front door, looking around the front room. Plain, even for an Aethrakai's dwelling; most of his colleagues would have had bookshelves, at least. Moraeth had memorised the knowledge he needed centuries ago, and refused to write down his secret research lest someone else find it; with the things he dabbled in, it was better that way.

He walked across the bare room, and up the flight of steps beyond it. The staircase had once been narrow, but Moraeth had had it widened to accomodate his aethric crystal vanes about seven hundred years ago.

Leaving the aethric lighting off - the soft blue glow from his vanes provided all the light he needed - Moraeth came to the door at the landing, and unlocked that.

There was no broken door, of course, in his apartment; that was the lure, to get the Vaiphaen Caste woman here. Two hundred years ago, he'd lured the last woman here with the same tale; Vaiphaen Caste members were easy to fool.

In the light of his vanes, Moraeth inventoried the room he hadn't opened for two hundred years. Everything was where he'd left it, and Moraeth busied himself with cleaning off the thick dust, until his tools gleamed in the blue light.

After his last failure, Moraeth had spent the years studying what he'd done, figuring out where he'd gone wrong. This time, he thought he knew what to do (although admittedly, he'd thought that every time). To alleviate the sudden nervous tension gripping him, he went through the steps again in his head, laying everything out neatly in his mind.

Finally, after what seemed much longer than two hours, there was a knock at the door. He slid the bolt back across and opened the door, ushering the Vaiphaen woman into his apartment.

"It's through here," he told her, leading the way up the stairs and into the dusty, silent room off the landing.

She frowned, turning to Moraeth in puzzlement. "There's no door in here-"

"You're right," Moraeth told her brightly, as he moved between her and the door, "I lied."

Shock, then horror blossomed on her face as Moraeth opened his mind to the aethric winds, drawing power from the rionkhal at the center of Phaerion through his vanes and wrapping it around her mind.

"I'm sorry," he said as he picked up his tools, "But this is necessary, you see. The Senates won't support my work, you see, so I have to work in secret. But I'll succeed, eventually, despite them all."

Delicately, he peeled back the eyelid over her right eye, and carefully loosened the eye from it's socket with another of his tools. A slight application of power served to stem the bleeding.

Letting the eyelid fall back into place over the empty socket, Moraeth repeated the procedure on the left eye. The eyeballs went on a tray, staring blindly up at him.

The next step was the replacement of the removed eyes with the aethric crystals he'd procured for this purpose, twin spheres of gently glowing cool blue stone.

Moraeth touched his fingers to their glassy surfaces, and sent a jolt of power into them.

"Eyes open that the spirit might see," he whispered, "See into the realm of shades for he who has the eyes of the body. See loyally, and true. See!"

Had the Vaiphaen Caste woman been able to move, Moraeth hoped that her eyes would have opened, seeing not the physical world but the realm of shades. That, after all, was the focus and aim of his research; a tool to see clearly the aethric winds of the realm of shades, to better divine the nature of the rionkhal, the source of all Phaerion's power. To take that power for his own.

Moraeth had decided long ago that scrying tools of steel and crystal could never compete with tools of flesh and bone, and the long centuries of work were, hopefully, about to be justified.

Grimacing at the slimy texure - although he'd done this a dozen times over the centuries, it never got any easier - Moraeth put the eyeballs into his mouth, and swallowed.

Bright blue light blossomed in his mind, twisting coils and lines of light radiating out from a point he could see clearly, even through the kilometers of rock; the rionkhal. In an instant he could see it's workings, the secrets that had eluded even Enthrial the Founder laid bare to him.

Moraeth laughed alound in his success, a grin cracking his normally solemn face. He felt young again, as young as he'd been when he'd began this project, as young as the tool which stood statuelike before him.

There was only one more thing to do, to ensure that the tool remained his. Moraeth called power into his vanes until they glowed more white than blue, and sent it flooding out into the mind of the Vaiphaen woman.

"Power bind mind to mind, will to will, heart to heart," Moraeth whispered, a perversion of the marriage rites of the Phae. "What my mind thinks let that mind feel; what my will orders let that will obey; when my heart stops, let that heart fail."

It was done. Carefully, Moraeth released the binding-spell, and caught the woman as she crumpled to the floor.

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OOC: This is not yet concluded, of course. Stay tuned.