Revenia was a place. Of course that sounds stupid to start with but the people made it what it was, even though the place and land was serene and its constructions magnificent, the Revenian people were each like one more reflection of what I felt inside. Unlike Akyria, there was no ether spell involvement, or ether wardings.

Just a people who would constantly flip their whole religion upside down, on a whim, though centuries stable. When we first saw their laws I was certain this empire would be a hellish and lawless place, sundered by crime that I had thought more likely of medieval civilizations. I was thankful to be born in Akyria, and certain we were going to have the worst jobs. 'This one has to be the problem empire.'

Getting there had cost five other squires injury enough to be sent back, but the one struck with venom returned days before arrival, we'd been passing through fair sized towns by then. Robes. The land was comfortable, and all wore some kind. They wore their native robes in native styles, and mixes of those with foreign types.

It's always silly to try and label any people solely as hunting and gathering nomads, or farmers alone. Too much supplements and secondary sources, conservation farming would teach you to quickly prefer to hunt meat other than your own stock, and who else would have been doing the work of domesticating animals? The first bonds and dominions were likely a bit unnatural, considering most would just see animals as food.

Trying to figure out which these people were would be simple, since they mostly ate plants they gathered, but between rotating fields, crops, and animals in adjunctive fields a clear pattern started to emerge. Revenians worked like a true functioning community, one with little individual identity outright, but it's people were far from being cookie cutouts. Their stores were no different.

Rather than waste time with a market, in towns a staff of townsfolk would work in a warehouse all goods being sold were housed in, where they'd get you all that you needed in a short amount of time for the price. The only 'discounting' would be from the owner, who recieved all but one tenth of the sum, the rest was imperial tax. The people guarding this group was even smaller, one for every ten workers, but they didn't offer much in the way of sold arts or fineries.

Food, basic supplies, small hand tools. Building materials, silverware, thick and fine leather sheets, suede, sheathes of plentiful textiles, dyes, glues, soaps, bleaches, and hundreds of similar type solutions and solvents besides. Carved wooden goods were a high volume commodity, but whilst small animal and plant figurines and walking staves sat unsold, arrow, spear and tool shafts, ornate wooden weapon shafts, and arrow shafts were constantly carted from larger towns.

The finest of goods were coming from other places, more obviously, but exquisite masterworks of every school were heading to other places in small volume. There, a barrel of fine maps, all types of them everyone functioning yet artistically attractive. One map, the stars and lands, with Revenia centralized. The next the same of Akyria. Then Phoruae, all as if the center with the surrounding empires drawn. Each was also culturally inspired, with symbols unknown to me.

Services were as plentiful with their chefs, musicians, and singers all as certainly around the inns at night. It would've been more creepy they seemed to have beneffited so much from their lifestyle, but then you had to notice the adults, those doing the bulk of travelling, trading, and engaging of foreigners. I like to tell myself it was more the elders among us they were wary of, but their elders weren't just keeping close eyes on them.

Revenians were, almost to a man, simple at a glance. They were all more at a distance, but you wanted to underestimate them on every account. Nothing about them was as it seemed. A few squires thought those our age were stupid all on the assertion they spoke little and seldom, but a single gesture towards or from them could elicit all manner of response, with no way for most of them to tell what was happening.

I thought they might all be seers, after it became apparent they had a heightened sense of unity, because the bulk of the younger of them always closed in towards the center when we came through as a large group. Not any of the other foreigner groups drew much attention from the young after that. Most adults kept doing what they were doing, so it felt like a little higher subconscious pressure on the adults that made them a little nervous.

All that changed when a boy had been scouting at night and protected a Revenian girl her brother, they'd come to sneak a look at us at night on a dare, and then I'd seen my first abomination. The orc was just a lone pig-man, sizable and strong, but had sword itself our enemy by even charging at kids who were a few years our junior and unarmed. A few had already grabbed each of its arms, and another had his back, but that stopped anyone from getting a clean enough strike to kill it.

It was all I could do to jump that high assisted by ki, wrap my legs around his head, and pull my torso back upwards to where I unsettled his weight enough for him to start falling towards me. The boy at his back started pushing him forward, in response to the orc leaning heavily backwards, and it only took a little pushing my way for it to start its fall. Pushing away from its shoulders with my knees, and rolling backwards across my back and arms allowed me to come upright quickly. I'd started for its knees, then.

Three of us had been on each arm, one at the back, and two had been striking it at the front with shallow slashes and attempts at stabbing that barely gouged the orc. When it went down, of those eight others, five were focused on arms still, two were laid across his back and one was trying to get at its throat. This had been the first cause of failure, the orc fought intensively when they'd tried spearing his throat already, and this time only his neck had apparent mobility.

His legs were the threat, he was widening his elbows out under him, and his hips and shoulders were allowing him the movement potential to wiggle and generate more space every throe. It was simple for me, as with them and the orc in this position, I needed only force the orcs knees away from each other with my elbows and his ankles outstretched with my feet. About that time things changed, again.

It had screamed and throwed itself forward, then I had done the exact same, as those knees had come close together and luckily rolled over my arms and slowed down as they had come snapping towards my head. The weight of them flinging off of me, and of my head being squeezed, it was instantly the champion of all of the headaches I'd had in at least two worlds. I'd had plentiful recent experience, but not without ki.

Thinking about ki may have saved us all, as I'd hobbled its ankles with it after a moment, and it had already gotten up and started turning to bolt. If I wasn't sure before, I knew the orc was using ki when my nose tickled but didn't bleed, and the recent practice had paid for itself. Moments later the orc was dead, a couple spears taking it where they could at the throat, others having started at its sides first. It had fought hard to put keep its belly and neck to the ground.

I'd been gone to get my head in cool water, and missed the boy whose spear ended its life get rewarded. That medal pin made us friends to Revenian of all ages after, and as if it wasn't clear enough right after the distance we were treated with was mostly staged, I wouldn't have thought these people were crazy since their kids pulled such stunts and risked their lives. Their mother had come and cooked for us, and tended to our wounds and clothes both.

Their father had taken the orc to a field where buried things ended up fertilizer, the sorts of things nobody would eat or feed even anything. He'd brought back fruits from that field that were sour and sweet at once to perfection, something I wished to find and try a cobbler or pastries made with, that would put any lemon based desert to shame. It was a pale citrus fruit, spherical and steely grey, with a light electric blue citrus flesh inside, but a small core in each tasted of custard.

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I'd had to make all of that I could with mana right away, and stashed it, as it was too delectable to let mana energy waste not being used to produce it. By the time we did make it through the next town, it was the last, and then we found ourselves in the edge of their imperial city. That last town was smaller, quiet, and what little of the buildings were there were all well spread out and their properties built up. They were older by far, and larger.

Estates, there were only short fencings around each, mostly wood and some stone but a few were woven together from vines, thin limbs, and stalks from crops. Small poultries and fowls of all types, rabbits, goats, and sheep were populating the grounds of these, and in each there was located a low corner where a young pig rooted in a shaded pen. Only a few younger and older Revenians could be seen outside them, working in modest clothes and paying you no mind until they noticed you, only to give a casual greeting and smile then keep about their work.

Nobles. Revenian nobles were more independent, and nobody could say they suffered for it, though they were still dependent at large. Their fields were smaller, but now fewer, and they wouldn't starve if trade here collapsed. Instead of a backyard, they had fields and pens with a little distance between house and those. The fields had a bit more room from them and the trees, you could see that keeping a forrests shade off your fields was smart and hard work, but a simple once a year attrition on it would make it harder.

I watched them pulling young parasitic vines off those same trees, pulling up some plants roots and all to dump in a sack altogether for composting, and watched them taking care to point out certain places to each other. Some on the ground where a young plant might be, others on trees where either damage or growth too fine to currently remove might be, I could only guess what they might be gesturing at in the trees until I noticed the dead limbs by their actions. Up a cord went, thrown over with a rock as weight, to pull one down. It took a few to pull this one.

The second attempted it and the group of four had laughed a bit, when the adult had added just a little extra pull it had fallen, and their group had scattered whooping as it started to fall. If the common person here learned to be industrial for theirself, it was the noble who was more versatile. Each taught their kids to be like them, but if common folk learned to make and provide for a community, noble folk learned to provide for individual needs.

That town had a forge, but it was not lit or being used, though plenty enough work was being done inside. Grinding wheels turned and scraped, a bellows unused but able to be powered by the same river sat along the same far wall as the furnace, both too large to be missed yet the grinding wheel was only being used lightly to touch up an axe head by chance. Most of the workers inside were finishing, repairing, or were servicing something else entirely.

Plows, carts, carriages, but other things mostly made of wood like small bird or animal cages, chests, and other furniture pieces. Of course, all of them and plenty else had metal parts, so to only expect metal goods made of only metal from a smithy had been a failure of my own conditioning. How many would buy heavy pieces of plate and heavy weapons? Few, even of them who could afford it, bought such and it wasn't often. There were few pieces one would call junk, or novice.

Most of what tools and weapons were visibly proffered in sight for trading were fine quality, if not the shape was barely worn, and the bulk were moderate size and weight meant for the average person. How much more would smiths earn, taking the same amount of metal as made an axe head, and stretching it out to make a chest instead? Not every family would need more than one axe, yet a family would use more than one chest.

It was hard to quantify people anyway, but here even harder, especially with a criminal looking law system. I'd sent a petition for changing it when we made our way the six months journey through to the imperial heartland, as I'd seen nothing but how it didn't fit them, and the last weeks of passing through their country had inspired me. We were only going to be getting familiarized to the place better there and then, when we could become immersed in their culture, instead of our own Akyrian.

A year, we were to have spent familiarizing, but the morning after the third full day changed that for me. We'd made it very late at night, first, so only the early morning put us over that time. My petition had one of the knights white faced, as he saw the topic it concerned over my shoulder, I had to notice because he pulled the letter from my hand almost as soon as he had read the first sentences. "We are about to lose student two."

That noon I'd had to debate my petition for their laws to be changed to those I'd written. Their laws were meant to be simple, short, and sweeping across all subjects broadly. Mine wasn't really suitable as a comparison, as it didn't define human nature as appropriately, really it was quite antagonistic towards human instincts. I couldn't argue any of those points. But I wasn't wrong either.

"Both are right, but the only time it would seem proper to try and separate from emotion according to your laws are at all the wrong times. If everyone always acted on the wrong impulse at every wrong time, then we would never have survived so long. And if they had to be emotionless to prevent crime around others, why would emotion also be what prevents most crime?

"Detatchment from material is one thing, but all you do if you detatch from a part of yourself is let that part rule over you, because you'll be lost to it and you'll only get that part from others after. It will get weak, but only in yourself, and it's a terrible awakening to have to look outside yourself for clues as to what is really happening inside.

"Why else would the holy seek to make sure earthly and heavenly desires are cared for? Holy people do works to make sure vessel and soul are provided for, because most have too often felt hunger from long hours spent working, praying, fasting and caring for others. Filling others bellies first becomes their nature. It sounds good, but they get so caught up in that, they give their life to that only.

"Priests live by the detatchment, and die by it. Warriors live by the sword, and die by it. Priests give us peace, and plenty, which we take from them. Warriors give us peace and protection, which we take from them. Both lose the thing for themselves that they give us, which is the thing they are taught to without in order for the rest to have them."

This debate and every similar and different one occurred. Revenians might have ugly laws, but they weren't there to reinforce or cause the 'Precepts of Power' to be things people focused on doing. They were focused on them because they were trying to help other in overcoming them, these were the dark and material challenges one could face, those which would not simply poison the individual alone. Sin would have died long ago, if they only affected the individual, but they didn't.

Often as not, sins were acted out by an individual, but they were caused by the types of things existing before and above an individual, like laws, and like those trying to act directly and physically to stop things that would only perpetuate something else. One might kill a thieving parent, only to wind up dead to a murdering descendant of them, whom that parent had been caring for. They might punish the person who cheated with a spouse, only to find their spouse was the instigator.

Trying to mechanically stop sin with sin, one could find powerlessness deeper than the original lack of control, and grow lost beyond finding themself again. Months of debates went by, and each day for me, there would be a new debate when the predecessor would stop bringing up the points of their arguements they held closest. Most had the one, 'How do people know when they have erred in their ways?', and I had the same counter for it.

"How do they know at all anyway? All know when they have done wrong, but many will try to use laws to argue that they've done no wrong according to a technicality of logic, yet our empathic natures have no such technicalities. We know we wouldn't want someone to treat us certain ways, so when a person does know and commits the crime anyway, they are willingly criminals. Others don't know, they are too young, or they have no perspective. Those will seldom commit the worst crimes.

"Only those who knew in their heart what they were doing was wrong before they turned away from it, those who chose dying over living, are the ones fit to be killed. If they would kill themselves willingly, by dying and trying to live out of harmony with their heart and head, then there is just no reason not to kill people like that. Not unless they were a whole race who had let themselves be robbed of mind, for if they had none to say better or show them, they would be unfit for the same judgement."

I never expected to have my own revison of their laws, turned from dark to light, become as the tenets and mantras of a peoples religion. But when it was done, I was sure I had done something great, without any idea of the consequences. It had all happened too fast, without me ever realizing the scope or even the point of offering a better alternative, and not even knowing if I had failed to have suggested something that suited them they found better I would've been executed for sacrilege.

The 'Writ of Weakness' had true power, however, in comparison to reflecting on our primal nature and its motives, it was something I was unfit to judge because I created it. My own examination of anything I made, it would only be biased for me to try and quantify or compare it but to their prior precepts, so I had to see how others took to it before I could even try to get an honest evaluation. That wouldn't take very long, for the good, and the bad.