On monsters II – Excerpts from Art of Atonoth Likes shaping
...as all mages learn, uncontrolled wild magic twists the body and mind in an uncontrollable manner...
...the following techniques aim to guide a proficient carnomancer in the ways shaping collapsible fleshbeasts in the shapes of existing creatures using the properties of controlled mana, the Art of Likes...
Early spring / Mercy 782 ADM – Eternal Empire – Modona’s upper district – Merentah mansion
Ulysse was a bit sore after losing once again to his sister.
Three to five wasn’t all that bad honestly, he had been one good hit away from actually winning. It happened sometimes when he surprised her, he thought he had a free win with his new opening counter but his sister too had pockets full of surprises.
It was the first time she’d pulled of a smooth enough transition to feint him.
“Since when are you able to switch so fast?”
“I managed it earlier this week, but I can only do it between Gods of the same season.”
“And to think I almost had you… I'll need to learn how to see faith passively if you get any faster at switching.”
Alice was now glowing of pure white, channeling Life or Mercy to recuperate, such injustice he thought that she would never have to suffer from sores or light wounds.
But maybe he would soon get to do the same.
“Sooo, about that thing I wanted to try out.”
“Yeah what was it?”
“Channeling.”
She looked at him like he was stupid, stubbornly stupid.
“But you can’t.”
“Maybe I can now! I've been healed by a miracle of Mercy, it felt just like what you described to me when channeling spring Gods.”
“Are you sure you want to try that here though, because if you go down I'm not hauling you up the ladder.”
“I am pretty confident it will work this time.”
“More confident than you were last time? Just don’t force it ok?”
He was slightly vexed that she didn’t believe in him, after all he had proven his inability to channel too many times. But she was right, if it still didn’t work he shouldn't try to force the issue like last time.
“Any new tips?”
“Same as always, pick whichever one you can and let it course through your body.”
He went from sitting to laying in the grass, feeling the fresh night breeze rustling it’s blades. Eyes closed he focused his mind on his chosen deity, priesthood often urged to clear the mind of thoughts and focus on prayers to call on the Eternals power. But he found simply thinking about the concepts, or elements, they represented to work much better. In fact his sister and most of the Merentahs did it this way, they weren’t very pious.
Behind the cover of his eyelids Ulysse was starting to see the flashes of a few pictures as his imagination ran wild. Mercy mending a broken arm, knights sparing the weak, mother cradling a child. He repeated to himself his chosen definition, a compassionate force of forgiveness shown towards those it could as easily crush.
Slowly, but surely, over the course of a few minutes the young boy started to feel the everpresent, yet hidden mist of power. They were made of light yet tangible, white, airy and when touched smelt of compassion.
Some peoples could supposedly keep on using the confusing senses all day long, with their eyes open.
He couldn't, but still, it was a feeling he knew all to well, having reached this state many times now. Some called it communion, meditation or faith sight, he rather favored the latter.
Somewhere to his right he could feel the mists flowing through something as though it was being channeled, his sister he realized, still channeling Mercy, likely as an example to him.
An example he had no need of, having heard the priest drone about it dozens of time.
Channeling, at it’s root was insultingly simple, the hardest part was supposed to be faith sight, then you only had to fill your body with the mist.
He spent some time staring at the endless stretches of mist, twisting around all opaque obstacles, leaving all trees devoid of divine power.
His hands were trembling in fear.
He was stalling.
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It would fell wrong.
He really didn’t want to do it.
Ulysse shook his head, getting a grip on his thoughts, he had to do it if there was even the slightest chance to succeed.
His right hand extended, gripping at the mist. The gesture wasn’t strictly necessary but made it much easier to visualize the next step. He then brought said hand to his chest and pressed his palm flat against it, permeating the mist through clothes and skin.
Once inside the mist fell trough his empty body as if pulled by gravity, ending up resting in his feet, it started to seep back out but with an effort of will he thought of himself tangible, and to the mist he became as such.
To channel it he would have to fill his body to the brim, gaining control over it once his whole body had filled.
He started to process, not grasping and pulling but thinking, at once the mist would come to him, and it did.
It was ridiculous to think he could gather the mist by thought, yet not be a channeler.
As the mist began to fill his head he thought it might just work this time. Then the dreaded feeling came abruptly, the gathered force of Mercy had passed an arbitrary threshold, UNHOLY, the thought slammed his mind as his body started convulsing.
He could feel the mists inside him wage a war against an unseen enemy, searing pain followed bursts of color as the mist blew itself into nothingness, a primal part of himself shuddered at the shear wrongness, that a foreign presence could be within him. The acrid taste of vomit came next and soon he couldn’t breath, chocking, he couldn’t yell, his head spun as he saw black spots darkening his vision.
He moved, or maybe something had moved him. He spilled the remains of tonight's dinner, coughing hard, then took laborious, short, panicked breaths.
The black spots kept growing lost all feelings.
But not consciousness.
He reached that same horrible state of nothingness he always did.
Thoughts were muted here, they were not his to think, they felt alien, they were the same he felt earlier, only this time there was no pain nor shock to hide them behind. He had to think them for time uncountable.
His very own mental torture.
UNHOLY
Wrongness
It had gotten longer each and every time he reached the state.
Still, as it always did, the unholy thought died of bit by bit while the feeling of wrongness quieted along the same pace.
***
Some time later – At the clearing
Ulysse woke up to a sudden splash of water to the face.
He straightened in panic, head-butting his sister who had crouched over, the pain barely registered to him while she was sent careening back.
He sent a paranoid gaze around as if the thoughts were hidden behind trees, waiting to pounce on him.
Then Alice got back on her feet, hands on his shoulder and started shaking.
“Come. Back. Here. Ul'.”
The scream pulled his mind back to reality.
“I'm there. Sorry.” He said, still a bit shaken.
“Holy shit, I am sorry, it’s my fault I shouldn’t have let you channel, I’m never letting you do that ever again…”
Her voice cracked a little.
“…I was so scared, you, you weren’t getting back up.”
Ulysse looked down at his feet, defeat and hopelessness clear on his face, he was quickly calming down, ignoring the recent state of his thoughts as well as he could.
“I wont do it again. Well – I thought that too last time, but it was months ago. Its… I just thought it would be different this time.”
“Yeah…”
“I just hate the gods, why don’t they let me channel. Their Remnants can die all over again for all I care, Mercy first for fooling me. I don’t want to be the only one who can’t do it.”
There was a long silence, neither had anything more to say, it wasn’t the first time they had this discussion after all.
Eventually Ulysse stood back up, on legs not quite solid, but not quite shacking either, he felt a little weak from the sudden movement and took some time to steady himself.
“Let’s go back to sleep.”
***
The next day, late afternoon – Merentah's library private study
After his latest catastrophic failure at channeling, Ulysse had woken up late and gone to the library. The Librarian’s parting gift in hand.
It was that very book he then spent his afternoon reading. And this time he actually took the time to take notes and transcribe the more complex symbols based on their components.
It lead to some very interesting discoveries at first.
Like he had noticed with priest Xavier the other day, the first syllable of their name could mean something in this unnamed tongue, for example
Curious he had searched the corresponding symbol for
That was a pretty lame surname in his opinion, why wasn’t he surnamed Genius or Bestest.
Then looked for
He found out it meant Same.
That was a funny coincidence, that the twin’s first syllable transcribed to essentially the same thing.
It felt more like a pattern to him.
And if he remembered correctly it was tradition in their family for the patriarch, so grandpa, to name to name the newborns.
At first it felt good to know he was linked to his sister even in name, then he thought about it some more, priest Xavier had been named after the god Fire, and became a priest, did their names dictate what they would become?
He made a mental note to seek the meaning of all of his relative's names. Then another note about talking to grandpa about it, he might even be able to help him learn this mysterious tongue.
Then he kept working on the book, copying and translating the pairs, though he would forget most of them, writing helped him memorize things.
Eventually he got to page 8.
Eight was an auspicious number, the number of the Eternals, and as luck would have it, it was the very topic of this page.
This page's title was pronounced
The language felt like it wasn’t as subtle as his mother tongue, lacking distinction, or maybe it was just his limited vocabulary.
He wrote of the name of gods, represented as four pair of symbols, the second one the inverse of the first; Fire
Then he got started on more complex religious vocabulary, he’d just written down the symbols for Channeling
Below them was
Ulysse started trembling, this was certainly no coincidence, nothing was in this book. In what other context could you use these three words than to describe the very thing that happened to him every time he channeled.
The Librarian must have known all along, so did grandpa, likely grandma too, this whole year he had suffered dozens of torturous attempts while his grandparents had acted like they didn’t know why it happened, but they did…
He closed the book fuming, furious at the betrayal he was about to throw all of it in the bin when he barely held himself back.
What if it was his only chance to achieve something. The Librarian had told him he would teach him much more if he could learn the tongue.
But right now, he hated them all so much, his grandparents, the Librarian and that book.
He made a compromise, packing both book and notes, yet not intending to open them for a long while.