Chapter Three: Roslin Von Paraval nee Yogdal
Cedric woke up to the cooing of birds and the harsh light of the noon sun. He yawned deeply, reaching around to feel around in his lab; looking for a strong bottle of a foul-smelling potion to help wake him up. Instead, he felt something hard and warm.
He shook himself awake and blinked hard to clear his eyes out, the grogginess fading as he found himself waking to an empty pool; he was sitting and laying back against a softly rocking swing. He heard a rumble and glanced over to find a huge well-muscled man lying next to him, rumbling away as he snored softly.
Memories of last night came flooding back, and Cedric found a smile come to his face unwillingly.
Family.
The smile turned bitter; how enviable he was of his mother to have a father like this. He shook that jealous thought away and softly stepped out from the swinging seat, glancing over to his grandfather and wondering if he should wake the man. He rubbed his head, stomach rumbling just as well.
He didn’t know his way around the mansion, and his guide was slumbering. Troublesome.
Steps drew his attention away from his brewing thoughts, and a solution appeared.
Balduran smiled and waved as he rounded the corner, in his hands a steaming cup of tea that he softly brought to his lips to enjoy. Cedric wasn’t much of a tea or coffee person, which he found ironic considering his profession; although in his past life he crushed a ton of Energy Drinks, which kept its trend in this world just the same. Although, he was sure to claim that at least the potions and elixirs he produced were significantly healthier than the sugar and caffeine filled garbage called Energy Drinks.
He still missed the taste of Monster though. Something to think about for later.
Balduran gestured for Cedric to follow him, and to keep quiet. Cedric nodded and followed the butler, soon being led to the changing rooms.
“Lunch is soon, young master. Lady Roslin was rather cross with her husband for missing out on breakfast, although she was quite surprised and overjoyed to hear the reason for such absence.” Balduran stated with a soft smile as he enjoyed his tea.
Cedric raised an eyebrow, “My coming wasn’t mentioned to Lady Roslin?” He questioned, recognizing the name of his grandmother. Not from any real mention, but general osmosis, and being required to study the names and heraldry of all the important nobility within the Empire.
Baldur shook his head, “No, sadly not. Lord Paraval obtained a letter from Lord Alkahest, and the contents were for his eyes only. He neglected to mention the details to Lady Roslin, although that could be because she was out-and-about in the wilderness for the past few weeks; on and off, at least.”
Cedric raised an eyebrow, his unasked question going answered promptly by Baldur. “Lady Roslin is a Shaman, as we understand it. Her bloodline has fae ancestry, and she has undergone rituals and mystic practices to bring out that ancestry to a more prominent degree than many find acceptable within the Empire. I do caution you to be tolerant of your grandmother’s linage. Lady Roslin is only a decade younger than the Lord himself, predating the Empire and its culture of human supremacy; many Empires in the past were built on the back of hybrid races. Even full-blooded elves.”
Cedric nodded, not needing the commentary as he’d studied history himself, but he understood it needed to be said by Baldur as to protect himself from his grandmother’s wrath if he acted unwisely regarding her heritage.
“A Shaman?” Cedric murmured to himself as found himself focusing on that aspect, utterly ignoring his grandmother’s ancestry save for the fact that it was magically enhanced in potency via rituals and ‘mystic practices’.
Shamans were, as most traditional Mages understood them, primitive magic casters.
There was some truth in that, but how that truth was interpreted differed from person to person, shaman to shaman. Some shamans were limited in manipulating very ‘basic’ aspects of magic, like the ‘traditional elements’ of nature, Fire, Lighting, Earth, Light, Dark. General elemental aspected abilities and connections towards those aspects and natures.
Shamans were also lumped in with what Cedric would call ‘Druids’; however, a word that could conjure the concept of a ‘Druid’ didn’t exist within common. Words that did usually had strong Fae roots, with ties towards elvish communities that understood such magical practices far better than any human faction that he knew of, at least from his scant research into the topic. He couldn’t exactly go out and hunt for human enclaves or hedge witches that could provide primary source information on the topic and relationship of Shamans and Druids within human cultures, separate from the more predominant representation within Elven and Fae cultures.
Most of Cedric’s knowledge of Shamans came from text investigating the foundational roots of their magics; often called the most basic and reduced form of magic known to common thought; er, well, common thought at least among mages. Wild Magic, instinctual and often emotionally charged, such magic was the basis of most magics that Shamans used, that all magic was built off the foundation off, save for more magics that Cedric would call ‘external magic’, like ritualism, spiritualism, and alchemy. Cedric himself was somewhat of a proficient user of Wild Magic, and yesterday was one of his most powerful non-intentional expressions of that magic.
In his practice, he purposefully used illusion magic to coax his emotional state into near apocalyptic levels of wrath, rage, and hatred; just to experience and understand more about Wild Magic. These experiments helped him develop his subconscious mind to become familiar with Wild Magic, and to use it in instances where he needed magic to happen. While it was theoretically dangerous to others around him if he were to become volatile emotionally -something that he only now recognized to happen to his Grandfather- in a scenario where his life was threatened and he didn’t have the time to structure a powerful enough spell, or he just needed something to happen and couldn’t spare the focus towards casting the correct spell; then Wild Magic would step in.
Cedric had honed this magic to a great degree, thinking it as the foundation of effectively all forms of magical practices; not just Shamanism. If he were to compare Wild Magic to something more physical and understandable, then it would be Cedric teaching his body muscle memory, training his eye-hand coordination, and being able to just instinctively do something if he wanted it enough.
Like catching something thrown suddenly, in which the body moves before thought can catch up; because the body and subconscious mind is reacting before it can process and control that movement.
Cedric’s Wild Magic was unique in his findings, not conforming to elemental expressions of magic. Instead, it took after his proficiency and familiarity with a more subtle form of magic, Enchantment and the Illusionary arts. Extreme bouts of emotion that Cedric experienced, artificial or otherwise, had him retreat into his own mind to confront the emotion; to try and control it.
He often failed, as Cedric had rules; boundaries that he kept to while working within his mind. Flagrantly violating these boundaries would mean potentially altering himself to a degree that he found…untenable. A little death of the identity, as it was. He was familiar with how they felt, to kill someone, yet not of the soul or body, but of the mind. He’d killed himself plenty of times, shaping his mind away from what he once was; into something that he found…agreeable.
Away with the negative, accentuating the positive as it were. Although now that he was wiser and more knowledgeable of the magic he’d used flippantly in the past, Cedric could recognize that he went too far in his ‘journey of self-improvement’. Gone was the man from Earth, and anything that could even be recognized as him. Gone was Cedric Ala-Khan Alkahest, Scion of the Great Ducal House of The Alkahest. Gone even was the strange reincarnation of both, and instead the meandering studies and reckless practices of the illusionary arts had shaped both into something…different.
He’d long since experienced identity death, and now knew how to recognize what identity death was, and as the current identity that functioned within his body’s mind and soul; he didn’t exactly want to die like his older selves did. Wild Magic was thus left to be wild, as doing otherwise would mean relinquishing ownership of the emotions that inspired it. If one feels rage, yet holds the tools to not just temper it, to control it; but to redefine, reshape, direct, quench, alter, amplify, and so much more…
Then at what point does Cedric stop being a man, and instead becomes a human computer; able to be programmed and puppeteered by the logical higher intelligence of his mind? Cedric found this fate to be untenable, and while he allowed certain freedoms in his alteration of the mind to stay as they were -for they were ultimately him-, creating further alterations would change him irrevocably.
Cedric’s Wild Magic, while still wild in nature, enslaved to his emotions, was well trained. Real emotional outbursts such as the one he’d had yesterday, well, they weren’t even a rarity as they were outright anomalies. It was his subconscious that had been trained to recognize this level of emotion as something that needed to be defended against, injecting his mana into the natural currents of the air, infusing itself into the surroundings with utmost subtly, altering the perceptions, senses, and very perception of reality. Cedric had no real name for this ‘technique’, for it truly wasn’t a technique; just an expression of his magic, trained and conditioned as it was, leaking itself into reality and acting as it was programmed to.
Cedric frowned as he worried about his grandfather’s mental state.
To gain control of his mental state, Cedric used many different methods of meditation; uniquely created to manage his magic, mind, mental state, and emotions. A sort of ‘Operating System Reset’ that his rational sense of mind found necessary to implement, using the ambient Wild Magic to do so.
His alchemical efforts had him in contact with a plethora of often…Psychoactive ingredients and products. He sold as such on the market, but Cedric had grown to become something of a fiend for the products that he produced as shameful as that was to admit. ‘The Cook doesn’t use their own supply’, as the saying goes, or at least, that’s what he roughly remembered it to be. Breaking Good was a good television show and was a large inspiration for him to start working with Alchemy; that and Skyrime.
Cedric used psychedelic potions and products to get high, and those ‘trips’ were what he used to train his subconscious mind.
Which, of course, was inspired directly by HP. Lovecraft.
His munchkin-ass also got into the mindset of ‘training his body to be resistant to poisons’, and so he started researching methods of increasing poison resistance; hoping to replicate tolerance training that assassins in fiction often did.
He, of course, didn’t jump right into poisoning himself; but instead started to research magical means of healing, with potions being the most potent outside of high-level Divine magics. Then came the anatomical research, involving the purchase of several dozen slaves: criminals, all of them. The morality of such an action caused internal friction among his mind at the time, however, a minor removal of squeamishness towards the vivisections -painless through painkillers- started a collapsing downfall of his morality towards such topics; and even got him interested in necromancy, before his logical mind started barking the real risks towards practicing that forgotten and forbidden art.
Cedric could already hear the dozen voices in his head whispering the ‘morality’ of necromancy, and how it could be used as a force of ‘good’.
No. Just…no.
That shit was a Dark Art, stained black and red; outlawed by divine forces all over the world, and not just because of casual ‘ew gross’ and ‘obviously evil magic’ sentiments. There likely were such things spread over certain cultures within the Empire, but anyone who spent an ounce of effort investigating the magic immediately realized that stuff was Evil.
Disregarding such notions, Cedric doubled down on his anatomical and medicine learning sessions, using similar enchantments to his mind to gain the motivation and commitment to achieve what was effectively ‘hack doctor’ level medical skill.
Cedric would never claim himself a proficient doctor, he was only nineteen and his time practicing medicine was amoral and the utter antithesis towards what actual healers and doctors performed; but what he learned from memorized books reminiscent of a more advanced and accurate medieval medicinal journal, and his vivisections and experiments, it all had him experienced in a form of medicinal practice.
It wasn’t the only time he’d used this method of learning, as once he started, he didn’t stop. Convicts and criminals who sold themselves into slavery found themselves smuggled into his laboratories through proxy dealers, stuffed into shipments of alchemical supplies inside cramped boxes.
Once they arrived, they never left.
Mind magic, investigations into the soul, the functions of Aura and Magic on the body; so many things to test and learn, yet never enough time.
He used the information obtained from his vivisections and experiments on several dozen slave groups, eventually gaining enough confidence to subscribe to a dosage plan; and it all started to spiral out of control from there.
His poisons, once he’d achieved a desired level of resistance, were replaced with intense psychoactive psychedelics and delusive potions or ingredients. His mastery of his mind left him able to easily recover from any permanent damage or change done by the potions, but the memories; they weren’t forgotten. He didn’t want to forget them, because he found the lingering traumas from these literally magical psychoactive products to be utterly enthralling.
If ‘magic mushrooms’ were something that existed within the mundane world of Earth, then what would a trip look like with actually magical mushrooms? Put simply, it was out of this world.
Considering that his Wild Magic took great president after his Subconscious Mind and that he used magical psychedelic effects to train and refine his subconscious to be ever more aware of its surroundings; then considering how Cedric’s Wild Magic was directly ‘controlled’ by his subconscious mind, and one could see the obvious loop of where this was going.
To be affected by his Wild Magic, one would be introduced to his subconscious thought-processes which functioned within the DMT realm of reality. If someone was exposed, Cedric would expect them to go bat-shit insane from the eldritch inspiration dabbed into his mind with the brain-rot of a twenty-first century individual stapling a rough structure into the ‘dream’ his Wild Magic represented.
Cedric was interested in how his grandfather would handle his Wild Magic, as he knew he was affected by it. Was he okay? Would he have lasting effects from the magic? What were the-
A snap brought Cedric out of his thoughts.
Balduran stood by his side with an amused expression, Cedric noticing that he was dressed and had been going through his morning routine while he’d thought in tangents. He gave an apologetic smile, “Apologies, Baldur. I was lost in thought.”
Baldur chortled, “No problem, Scion Cedric.” He pulled from out a pocket watch from his jacket pocket and smiled, “Would you happen to be hungry, Cedric? The madam should be eating first lunch right now.”
Not ever reacting to the notion of a ‘first’ lunch, Cedric raised his brow in consideration and gave the man a firm nod. “I’d love to meet my grandmother.” He decided. Lord Alkahest did not have his significant other any longer, murdered many years prior to his birth.
Balduran bowed and beckoned him to follow him. Dressed within his usual attire, Cedric followed through the halls of this old manner with an inspecting gaze. He paused in his stride a few times to gaze upon artworks and pieces of finery that caught his attention; from ancient pieces of pieced together pottery detailed with glazed artworks, to paintings of his Lord Nubinor Paraval and his many children.
He paused along one painting that held his grandmother within frame, the woman looked young; far younger than both of his lordly grandfathers. The painting held his grandfather within, looking perhaps a bit younger than he was today, and a subtle application of magic dated the painting being produced within the decade.
Inspecting his grandmother’s features, he noted the sylvan aspects of the fae and elven-kind. It depended on what ethnic group of elves that one sprang from, but some elves were truthfully little different than long-lived humans, while other elves held far more in common with the implacable and whimsical fae. Tensions between humanity and elven kind have been perpetuated by many factors, from human greed and lust to elvish whim and fae-magic might.
Cedric did not have the same features or bloodline of his grandmother, as Balduran had explained, the woman had gone through various rituals and magical rites to deepen her connection to her already thin bloodline. Perhaps a long-lost ancestor of his had lain with one such fae-blooded individual, but while Cedric could potentially experiment on his blood and revitalize the same effects that his grandmother did; there was little point in doing so.
He wasn’t vain enough man to go through such banal lengths of altering his bloodline for the ageless looks, nor did he want to exactly leave behind his humanity for something that wasn’t much better, and arguably worse in some ways. The reasons his grandmother might have for doing such procedures were her own, with Cedric not judging.
Too much.
If he was going to preform such a bloodline remedial procedure, he’d likely target creatures of a more esoteric nature. Aquatic creatures in line with the eldritch forces of the world, perhaps. The sea did ever-so call to him, and within the magical world did he wonder just how marvelous of a place that alien world was when it already was like another world back on mundane Earth.
He wasn’t advanced enough in his studies to try his hand at advanced-level flesh-shaping, nor was he prepared and experienced enough to develop a personalized bloodline for himself and his future children -if he ever had any- but he was merely nineteen and had a grounding idea of how to accomplish such things. When he was in his thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties, where would he be then? How advanced would he be in the realms of magic then? He’d studied magic since he was three, sixteen years he’d devoted towards his practice, and thus held the same capabilities as a stellar genius of magic twice his age.
His alterations to his mind meant he would not stop, could never stop.
‘Truly such an uninspired ritual.’ Cedric thought as he moved along, soon arriving through elegant halls to an outdoor garden.
Through detailed stonework paths he arrived at an outdoor awning, and seated there was the same woman that was pictured within the paintings.
Lady Roslin Paraval nee Yogdal.
The most immediate features one would notice would first be her piercing green eyes, the glowing -yes glowing and illuminated- eyes covered the entire organ, although where the normally white sclera resided a darker and less illuminated green was present. Her hair was split in the middle, one side a brilliant flowing silver-white, the other a more mundane dark nut brown. Her wavy hair flowed down her face; cut off at her shoulders. Twin long pointed ears pierced through her locks, pierced by various intricate piercings just below the tip, and a ring at what could be considered an ‘ear lobe’.
Her dress was rather scandalous by the social conventions of the current era, although drawing on his knowledge of the seventh empire, this dress and ‘lack’ of modesty barring a generous cleavage paired with metallic chain beads linking to a collar of wired-metal around her neck would be considered the height of fashion. The more Victorian and subdued trends leading towards suits, dresses, and so clashed with the more ‘classic era’ fashion of dress that she sported.
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An odd fashion of clothing considering it was so cold within Paraval, although for all he knew she hardly felt it due to her bloodline. The white hair was quite indicative of a frost-elf, although it seemed her bloodline was a mongrel line, as her eyes were that of a jungle or woodland elf from the Great Eshal forests. The split hairline with dual colors was an obvious allusion to her mongrel bloodline, bearing it with a unique pride that only those educated on fae customs would ever find of important note.
Roslin Paraval may be the wife of one of the most powerful men within the Empire, but she was, in the eyes of other elven societies -or what passes for society in their eyes- of mongrel blood and was a lesser because of that. It was of little wonder that the empires of man throughout their history picked up a wealth of citizens with elven blood in their veins, not just half-humans, but the elven ethnic groups were in fact ethnostates as well.
The woman seemed to be something of a wild-child, at least in his eyes; the piercings were a fashion atypical of Imperial society and belonged to more tribal customs. It was done moderately, merely to her ears and nose, although if his eyes proved keen then he could possibly see indentations of bar piercings through her thin dress. The gauche stories that his grandfather had saucily told him were undoubtedly true; this woman was indeed a ‘dragon beneath the sheets’ as he’d been told merely by first appearances.
Of course, knowledge of her salacious activities held in the ‘privacy’ of her husband’s home held little weight in his judgement of the woman. He was more so invested in sending his most subtle of pokes at her magical presence, humming in both consideration and a bit of confusion when he felt no reprisal from his scanning gestures. He was sneaky, yes, but he felt no such magical prodding or divination being elicited to his person. Whenever he was in high-society he was always washed with such prods and unsubtle gestures of tracking charms, divinations, with some even having the gall to wipe his saliva from his goblet and later use it in information gathering rituals!
He’d obviously developed counter-measures in diverting such peaks into falsified readings or just failures in the magics. Some were too powerful to be stopped, so they needed to be tricked, others were too subtle to be tricked, so they needed to be sputter and fail.
From his investigative probe he surmised that the woman held a considerable weight of soul and metaphysical presence. Most magical practitioners observed one another based on how much energies and magics they could shove within their puny flesh-sack. Cedric could store fifty-times as much magical energies within a piss-poor gemstone carved and faceted with runes and enchantments of magical storage, drawing on it just as easily as he could his internal reserves.
Expanding them was important, as increasing one’s flesh-sack’s tolerance to magical phenomena was how one resisted getting cursed, or their spine being teleported out of their body. However, it wasn’t an accurate measure of power, and instead Cedric developed a different metric, and one that was more reliable.
The Metaphysical Scale, as he called it, ‘weighed’ the observable presence one’s spirit and soul held on the superimposed astral realm. It was like a visualization of gravity, except the masses in this case were an individual soul and how much of the space they passively affected by their mere presence. None he’d observed, from his mother to his grandfather, could hide this presence; even he hadn’t found a way to obscure his ‘mass’ and ‘gravity’ within ‘space’.
The Metaphysical Scale was important as while one could have a lake’s worth of magic, the ‘gravity’ one’s spirit had was the active force lifting the ‘water’ or ‘magic’ out of the lake and directing it to their will. The mind and brain were the computer programing the magic, shaping it to one’s vision. One’s mental strength and willpower governed the simple ‘grit your teeth and push’ mentality it took to crunch out intensely detailed visualizations of magical phenomena a hundred times in a row without deviation. However, the spirit was the muscle, the winch and pulley, the engine and torque, the force and gravity, that allowed magic to move.
Saturating one’s body with magic through meditation allowed one’s flesh to store magic. It was a faulty -and surprisingly mainstream- belief that one’s soul was the ‘bowl’ that magic was stored within, but his observations and theories noted that the soul was inviolate -except in the cases of Black Magic like Necromancy- and neutral magics could not permeate into the soul, thus invalidating the belief that the soul was the container for magic. Magic could be ordered and gathered through meditations, ‘calling out’ to ambient energies to suffuse one’s flesh with magic, forming what was called ‘the first drop’.
Cedric had engraved in his bones through invasive surgery using a crude golem configuration -he was still figuring out golem craft honestly, it was complex stuff- runic configurations that optimized the storage of magic within his marrow. As magic was stored within his marrow, carefully and procedurally expanding the amount of magic stored within the organ, the blood produced by his marrow was high in magic. As his blood circulated throughout his body, his entire body was saturated in magic, allowing his body’s functions to passively, if slowly, expand his innate magical reserves.
The painite gem on his unnamed wand could store roughly seven times the amount of magic he could within his body, making such energies redundant; but redundancy was always a good thing to have. He normally had jewelry and gemstones but deigned not to wear them as they were ‘gauche’ within Paraval’s culture, although it was normal to see merchants with multiple rings on each finger and golden grilled teeth within Yal-Hest.
Cedric wasn’t really expecting to need a hundred times more magical energy than he could reasonably use; with his wand he’d need to cast dozens of his most powerful spells back-to-back to drain them of their stores. It just wasn’t practical to run around with a thousand gallons of fuel for his car when he was only going to use like, three at most in a serious fight. Perhaps if a siege or demon invasion happened, he’d want a hundred gallons, but at that point he was doing something wrong in life.
Big magical reserves were more ‘reserved’ for people like War Mages who used massive spells to devastate entire armies but were obviously high-value targets and those spells to a while to set up as it were. Cedric was prepared and capable within the realm of combat, if inexperienced, but if he was in the position to be fighting entire armies then something had gone horribly wrong.
Arriving before Roslin, Cedric bowed neatly to the woman and gave his respects with an arm crossed over his chest. “Scion Alkahest gives his respects to the Lady Paraval.” He intoned, keeping his eyes to his feet as he waited for permission to look up.
The silence was broken by repeated clicking of the plates, Cedric letting out a mental sigh as he kept himself bowed and staring blankly at his feet. This continued for a minute, the clinking stopped, and he waited another minute.
“Are you going to sit?” The woman asked, with Cedric taking that as permission. Straightening he gave a firm and stiff nod and rounded the table to sit across from her. He ordered himself nicely at the table, keeping his hands in view and sleeves roughly open.
Balduran came around to his side and left an open plate before him, a rich salad, a plate of cheese and bread, cuts of salted meats, and a bowl of assorted fruits. A light lunch, fitting for ‘first lunch’.
He used the two-pronged fork to neatly pierce together some cheese and the local equivalent to a grape, chewing thoughtfully, “You have great food at your table, Lady Paraval.” He commented neutrally.
He heard a suffering sigh, “Has that brat Yoz been filling your head with this nonsense, boy?” The woman’s face twisted with disdain at his father’s name, “I come back from my weekly hunts and find my husband and grandson passed out within the men’s bath house; not aware my grandson was even visiting the city! And it seems he’s a groveling fool just like the rest of the so-called ‘high society’.”
Cedric blinked, smiled genuinely and chuckled, “Etiquette classes were somewhat enjoyable for me. I tend to use them when in doubt to not give offense.”
“Enjoyable?” The woman stared expressively, slightly gobsmacked by that statement, “Etiquette?” She shook her head like she’d heard him say the sky was purple.
It wasn’t, it was blue. Sometimes there were meteorological events that dyed it purple though.
“There weren’t a lot of people to speak to in my youth, and learning how to deal with the ass-licking snobs at the balls was an endeavor worth putting effort into.” Cedric’s eyes drifted with brief memories.
The woman cocked her head, “Is that why your voice is so growly? To scare the little girls away from the unapproachable mage?” She asked with a bit of light teasing direct to his attire; many cultures had their own attire for wizards, wisemen, and mages. His clothing fit Paraval’s more modern culture for those individuals to a T.
Cedric blinked. “Ah, no, a lab accident. I inhaled some fumes, fixed the immediate damage to my lungs, but forgot to treat the damage to my vocal cords. Never bothered fixing it.” He grinned, “Why, is my voice soothing to you?” He played up a bit of a Southern American accent into the common tongue, the accent drawling nicely with the homogenous language and his mangled deep cords had it hit octaves his natural voice otherwise couldn’t.
There were cases of individuals whose vocal cords were damaged due to things like regurgitating stomach acid, a medical condition that damaged them into having perpetually deep bassy tones. Cedric was an audio engineer as a part-time hobby, mixing songs and playing around with software, and while he lacked the musical wit and talent for singing lyrics off rip, give him some written lyrics and he could likely belt out a nice song.
He gave a deep laugh as the woman surprisingly gave him a bashful glance.
“You have a voice deeper than even my husband’s.” She fanned herself with a paper fan, “And what is this about a lab accident? You’re an Alchemist?” She asked with a raised eyebrow, imperious and matronly.
Cedric chuckled, “I was a boy. Well, I guess that means little to you; I am still a boy to you, and likely will forever be even when I have a beard to my knees.” He chortled.
She slapped her fan against the table playfully, “Are you calling me old, grandson?” She threatened.
“Why never! I’m sure you’re still a fox-lion in the sheets, grandma.” He gave her a wag of his eyebrows, “The old Jotun sure gave me plenty of details for me to be confident of that.”
The woman growled and glared towards the manner, “Well that ‘old Jotun’ will surely become a Frost Giant sleeping alone in the halls.”
Tossing a roll of meat and cheese into his mouth, Cedric chuckled and continued teasing her, “Need some more psychedelics? Bedroom aids?” He wagged his eyebrows.
The woman furrowed her brow, “You have the capital to purchase those goods?” She uttered, confused, and frowned matronly, “You should save your money for more important things, Cedric.” Although as she said so she bit her lip and teetered, “Although I wouldn’t mind taking some of your stock off your hands…” She said with an ever so slightly sultry smirk.
Cedric realized that she didn’t know he was the producer of Parallax Production’s product line, and grinned. From his coat pocket he pulled out a rectangular box of hardened tempered glass, inside white tablets rested. Cracking the boxes plastic lid open, he tapped out a few tabs into his hand. From his boot pocket he pulled out a rectangular thin bar, and with a flick it reveled itself to be a blade.
Crushing the pills into a fine powder using a flick of telekinesis, Cedric cut the powder on his knife and inhaled a line. Shaking his head and with wide eyes, he hooted, “Damn, that always kicks.” He rolled his shoulder and felt himself become more aware of his body. The highly concentrated healing tablet he’d snorted was designed to heal and repair the most difficult and minor of wounds. Brain damage, dead brain cells, restoration of cartilage, old wounds, micro-tears, along with a bit of a kick to one’s energy levels and a dose of xanthine and alchemically produced amphetamines, with this drug having what he called alkalamphetamine. A personal invention of the salts that amphetamines were based on.
It also might be laced with something like cocaine, if not a stimulant. Magical cocaine that came from neuistrania phentomalice, a plant that held a deadly neuro-toxin that when ingested killed within three minutes; often leaving an individual with dead nerves if they survived. The specific chemical chains were extracted and refined into a more dilute version that when paired with the healing properties of futalmagan espora, a fungal agent that had high levels of natural neural bio-chemical restorative properties acted together to cull-and-repair bad neural growth.
Cedric was on these pills, taken daily, to reduce the strain of the enchantments on his mind. His mind, his entire brain, was active at nearly all times; even when he was asleep, he had dream-charms specifically engineered to give him dreams about experimenting with magic. He did some of his best work half-dead from sleep deprivation and finished his best work after sleeping like the dead and high-off his gourd having snorted an entire container of the stuff.
Hesitantly taking the offered blade, his grandmother watched as he crushed up the second pill and she mimicked him in lining it on the edge of the blade. Raising it to her nose pierced by a ring of gold, she inhaled quickly and turned her head, coughing immediately as she dropped the blade with a clatter on the table. Shaking herself as she recovered, the drug hit quickly, a tingle felt within the head, then expanding through the bloodstream and throughout the entire nervous system.
Cracking another, Cedric laced his gums with the powder. The effects of the drug were rather immediate and profound, in that it held active health benefits to those who consumed it, as regardless of who one was, everyone had some form of nerve damage, no matter how minute. Cedric had some of the criminal slaves he’d captured report that he remembered what his mother’s face looked like, having only seen her last when he was a boy of three years old. The man’s crying and profuse thanks had Cedric’s paltry sense of mercy decide to give the man a quick death.
The effect of the drug would need time to work to that extent, but from the energetic look his grandmother was giving the entire yard, he knew she was experiencing the full effects of the short-term experience. When Cedric needed focus, he got focused. Amphetamines were made for people with attentive disorders, however, Mages and those who used magic were neurologically divergent as a baseline. These were designed to help his biology keep up with his abuse of it.
“What are those?” His grandmother asked, seemingly intensely interested in him as her focus shifted to him. It was honestly a bit unnerving to have his grandmother’s beautiful and slightly uncanny features stare at him unblinkingly and with such intensity.
“Alkalamphetamine Duoestro, short-hand product name; Mind Pills.” He shook his container.
“Alkal…” She furrowed her brow, and cocked her head with intense interest, “Are you in contact with Parallax Productions? Do you know how to contact them? Nubinor and I have been dying to get our hands on more Spirit Bond vials, even if we’re likely to be outbid by those damned Tachibana or the Xong.” There was true need in her voice, although not quite desperation.
It always amused Cedric how many diverse cultures there were within the Orestien Empire. Not exactly a one-to-one replication of the cultures that he thought of when they were summoned, the Orestien Empire was truly expansive as a continent expansive Empire. Some families and houses that were now powerful and rich nobility within the Eighth Empire, were once slaves, foreigners, and foreign mercenaries or prisoners of previous Empires.
The nature of the Empires, whether they were rising or falling, was to convert everyone within it into the Imperial Creed. This failed spectacularly, as everyone was proud of some form of culture or history, save wherever the capital was established. The capital through generations would create ‘Imperials’, but when the Empire fell and a new one would rise, the capitals would shift, new cultures would be created and ‘Imperials’ would become a part of the ‘Old Empire’.
Continue this process eight-times, fit in foreign invasion and cultural assimilation of foreign races and not just foreign human ethnic groups, and things quickly became a mess. The Xong and Tachibana were powerful houses that were both merchant ‘clans’, residing on powerful positions to govern trade-waters, as the storm-winds dividing the Shattered Sky Continent that the Xong and Tachibana hailed from with were too powerful and dangerous for the experimental Sky Ships to dance within.
They were powerful as the Vermillion Empire that ruled the Shattered Sky Continent had great limitations on foreign trade, with the Xong and Tachibana being deft hands at subverting those limitations.
The two clans were looked down upon as being extremely foreign, with even Dwarves and Gnomes looked upon more fondly and familiarly than the ‘foreign agents.’ However, they were the ones who brought silk, teas, magic stones -that they called Spirit Stones- and all manner of foreign goods to the western shores of the Orevale Continent.
“Hmm. Would I happen to know a profoundly talented alchemist, one who is an extreme enigma to even the most powerful of houses, desperate to know their identity in attempt to obtain their most priceless and unique of goods?” He chortled and raised his arms, “You’re looking at him.” He chuckled.
His grandmother blinked, then gapped, “Your Parallax Productions?” Roslin stared uncomprehendingly, then a spark of shameless guile appeared in her eyes, “You wouldn’t happen to have any more Spirit Bond would you, grandson?” She asked with the batting of her eyelashes.
His lip twitched. “That…” He sighed, scratching his neck.
“What would happen if you forced a man to drink Spirit Bond, and you drank it yourself? A random man you found idly attractive.”
His grandmother blinked and frowned immediately. “We’d become friends at the very least. If he wasn’t scum, then we’d become friends; even if I’m too loyal to Nubinor to ever consider adultery and that was all we’d ever remain, depending on the character of the man, he’d either obsesses over what he could not have, or accept that fact and enjoy a friendship.” The ‘Mind Pills’ were working as she immediately answered with deep and insightful thoughts.
Cedric nodded, “I brewed that potion when I was eleven, teetering on into puberty. I was not aware of House Alkahest’s laws regarding affection towards servants, and I was a ruthless individual who cared little about how I wielded Mind Magics.” Cedric sighed, “Lonely, I chose a girl; we bonded, I crushed her mind, we had copious amounts of sex, and then she was killed; hung before me.” He swirled a glass of water, casting a clearer mind on the trauma.
Roslin flinched, reaching out to comfort her grandson, for she immediately sympathized with the thought. She loved Nubinor; but time was a cruel mistress. Yet, even as their passion was but embers, she’d have razed the nation if her love was ripped from her. Now? Now that those embers were roaring, their spirits bonded, their very souls bound together?
It was painful to consider.
She saw her grandson apathetically swirl his glass of water, and the soulless, blank eyes had her shiver. He nodded to himself, “I learned a valuable, if painful lesson brewing that potion.” He smiled, although it had no warmth, just bitterness and pain. “I was wrong to fear the potion. Just as I am wrong to fear magic.” He mused, “Just the user; that is all who is to blame, and all is who to fear.”
He gazed up and seemed to be surprised to find his hand laced within her own and stared at her strangely as the compassion and care in those eyes seemed odd and unfamiliar.
Painful paranoia leapt into his throat, and a horribly candid question filtered through his mouth, “Why is Lord Patriarch Alkahest and his Heir so…” He grimaced his mind catching up with his mouth. ‘Why are you two so different,’ Was the unasked question.
Yet, he’d already spoken too much, as Roslin grimaced and rubbed her grandson’s hand with her thumb. “Yozef and Yoz…the Alkahest line…they’re a brutal people. The Yal-Hest is a harsh desert, and it requires a culture of strong, immovable leaders to guide its people. Yozef was once a tribal leader, surrendering to the emperor and my husband’s armies during the conquest, being folded into, and quickly rising to a position of power within the emperor’s retinue. His concerns are entirely for his people, the power and stability of his house, and then to his personal power-base.” Roslin sighed, gazing at the intensely interested young man. “Sometimes he gets that order confused.” She muttered bitterly.
“As the still-acting Royal Magister to the Emperor, Yozef requires presence and a visage of indomitability without weakness, which means he must show no weakness, and his house is indeed such a thing. His house must flourish without his action, left in the hands of his heir apparent, Yoz and his wife Selwyn.” Pain filtered into Roslin’s eyes.
“Selwyn was my star.” She admitted, “She was my apprentice and my little girl who was always curious, always wanting to learn. Nubinor and I yearned to cultivate that, her ambition, for such a thing could only help serve her in life. She grew up too fast, leaving for the Old Academy when she turned seventeen, and never looked back. She appeared for formal events, and each time I saw her, what started as a level of suitable and proper distance became abject alienation.” Roslin sighed, resting her forehead on her head, “This is likely due to how House Paraval raises its children.” She whispered.
Cedric perked up, “Oh?” He leaned forward with interest.
Roslin sighed, “Nubinor and I came from very humble beginnings. We do not treat our children as nobles; we treat them as our children. I taught my daughter magic, but I refused to spend our wealth to access rare resources and materials. In hindsight I see that Selwyn desired so much of the world. She wanted access to the most obscure and forbidden of texts and threw fits or silent protests when she was denied. She wanted the finest gowns, the finest rings and gemstones. The most powerful of wands, the greatest of teachers. She wanted us to push her career along through the Old Academy, use our influence and acclaim to grasp what she was not ready for.” Roslin grimaced, “She even used servant staff to hide a young woman’s death while in school.”
Cedric didn’t react to that; he’d murdered for less than what he assumed was jealous envy or some petty dispute. What she was describing of his mother’s youth fit perfectly into the mental model of the woman he had; spoiled, prideful, patronizing, inflated sense of self-worth, always critical, an all around toxic human being who yearned and was never satisfied.
“You tortured her.” Cedric muttered as he leaned his head on one hand, listening in. His muttering caused Roslin to jolt in surprise.
“What?!” She exclaimed.
He held a hand up for peace and explained, “There is a myth…” Cedric started, “A kingly man once stole fruit and sustenance of the gods, and during their visit to his humble kingdom, he sacrificed his own kine; cooked as meal to test their mind. This man was known as Tantalus, which translates as, ‘to tantalize’.” It didn’t, but did act as a root for the word in English. “The gods punished Tantalus, sending him to an eternal torment. Within a pool of water that always receded before he could drink, while above him fruit hung just above; but the branches would slink from reach when he tried to eat.”
Roslin’s eyes decorated with realization.
“Selwyn, my mother; she wanted. She wanted and kept wanting. As a noble born, she was promised many things; yet was not raised in the way of the noble born. She was treated with love, kindness, and was showered with gifts; yet as she glutted, as she took, she grew confused when she could no longer continue to take. I’m going on a limb here to say you practice less-than legal and probably dangerous forms of magic?”
Roslin nodded, pain clouding her expression.
“And you taught her these magics, but warned her, and barred her from learning the real stuff. The dangerous stuff.”
Once again, his grandmother nodded, wetness gathering in her eyes as she dabbed them with a cloth.
“And in your mind, you never punished her, never struck her or corrected her in this way of thinking; but in her perspective, withholding what you owed her as your daughter was punishment; for you taunted her. You teased her with the tantalizing fruit of all your success, wealth, knowledge, and power. You treated a Scion as a child, and it spurned her pride.”
No words spilled from Roslin’s mouth as she tried to keep her composure.
Cedric stood silently, separating from the tight grip she held his hand within, and came to her side. He hugged his grandmother, burrowing his head into the crook of her neck. A sob left her mouth, Roslin babbling that ‘she’d failed’ with apologies and cries, of mumbled acceptance and shouldering of blame; countered in turn by Cedric’s forgiveness, his assuaging nature as he brushed away the perceived failure.
The emotions ran hot, and a period of comfort and vulnerability was shared between a grandson and his grandmother.
“It is ironic.” He whispered as he sat on the ground by his grandmother’s side, her fingers picking through his hair as she leaned back within her chair. “All that you gave her, all that you offered; it is what I wanted. Yet, I feel in some way, I became my mother.” He chuckled bitterly, “For if there is one trait we share together,” He rasped, “Is our avarice and greed.”
“Greed.” His grandmother spat, “Is it truly that which led to my daughter becoming such a twisted creature? Controlled and led along by greed.”
“Tis human nature.” Cedric mused, “The adulation, the power, the perceived freedom that tyranny begets. Think of the one who has it all; would you claim to call the emperor a man obsessed with such?” He asked.
The woman hissed and shook her head, “No. The emperor, he is beyond such things. He is driven. Driven to create an age.”
“The road to the hells is oft laid with stones carved in best of intention.” Cedric quoted poetically, having consumed many more ‘Mind Pills’ during this emotional moment. “How many emperors and great persons claimed destiny would lead them to such heavenly heights? How many failed? How many succeeded? History is often the greatest teacher, but in such cases as the emperor, I can only encourage him to try and fail; for only then shall he learn how to prevail.” Cedric turned his gaze back to look at his grandmother, “What do you think motivates him, is why I ask that. Motive is not often talked about or considered when spoken about the result. It tends to sully the grand image such individuals paint themselves as within the annals of history.”
Roslin thought for a long while, Cedric playing calming music with his magic as he waited. Her attention split between relaxing and enjoying the music and the extended lunch, and thinking about what Cedric asked.
“He is not concerned with legacy.” Roslin stated, “His children are not wastes, but neither are they being groomed as successor. The foundations of the Empire are their destinies.”
“That speaks well of the man.” Cedric noted.
“He is not a warlord; I just don’t know his vision. He is working, building towards something. I just can’t fathom what.” Roslin admitted defeat. “Wodin Rothsland; he was a young knight from a ducal house of the seventh empire. From knight, to captain, to warlord, to petty king, to diplomat, to king maker, to emperor. The titles just…fell upon him. He accepted them, but it was never something he took lightly; or even seemed to consciously seek.”
Cedric hummed at that information, “The individuals who are most keen to lead are those not worth following. Those who rise to the occasion, fall into the role, or are thrust into times of strife and leadership – those that pick up the banner and run- are most deserving of it burdens. Reality sadly dictates the opposite, for all it takes for great evil to grow is for the good man to do nothing; and as good men refuse the call to leadership, rot grows. When the systems of governance and the gears we spin our society upon are controlled by those with more ambition than sense, the empire becomes not a system of service to those it houses, but a furnace that consumes its people’s lives to fuel its function.”
Roslin swallowed, the words practically prophetic.
“When dogma clashes, and the golden fields rot, so do the brothers face the fathers, the fathers their sisters, and the mothers their daughters. The chains that we tie around our necks and eyes, the faith that blinds, leads men and mortal into heaven’s welcome arms.”
“The Seventh…” Roslin murmured in remembrance.
“First it is one’s neighbor, then it is the farmer, then it is the butcher; yet it is not you, so you do nothing.” Cedric rambled, eyes clouded with remembrance, “Then they come for you, and only then do you remember the cries of all those before you. You beg, you scream; yet none come to save you, for all have been taken.”
“Lessons of the Sixth.” Roslin whispered.
“Lessons to be repeated.” Cedric murmured, “History repeats, men refuse to learn, and so the gear keeps spinning. We, my mother, myself; all of us are products of this cycle. The endless rat-race we are placed within, of prestige and intrigue, subterfuge and lies; all for the prize of power. Young was I when I questioned; what gear do I spin? What gear do I turn and churn and whose blood do I feed the guttering furnace?”
“It was the best we had.” Roslin defended with no heat.
“The best we have.” Cedric agreed. “The strong man at the top cows the snakes that turn and churn his gears; a keen ear listening to a clockwork system that clicks and ticks discordantly. The stronger men who defend the machine look outwards; rattling blade and saber at all who take issue with the stack of smoke rising from the furnace. The young men are taught and educated. ‘Wield a blade at those who are foreign,’ they say, striking a boy’s form when they see weakness. ‘Learn the arcane to guide us,’ they say, testing the boy’s worth with each word spoken. ‘Lie to the masses and earn us gold,’ they say, ripping the gold from the boy’s heart as they dance like puppets ‘pon string.”
Cedric sighed, conjuring such a thing from magic, letting it dance and bounce to the movement of his fingers. “A boy now teen, growing into a man. The youth claims they are young, and so the boy sings. Tis a song of freedom, of innocence, love, wanderlust, and adventure; ‘surely there is more beyond the churning of gears’, the boy loudly proclaims. The men scoff, claiming madness and softness. The women roll their eyes, patting the boy harshly. The youth laugh with uncertain mockery. The boy knows his dream is folly, yet with the wisdom of a fool, sings his song cockily.”
“Such things are designed for a reason.” Roslin comments softly.
“Aye. This world is dangerous, and it is the fires and warmth of the furnace, the rattling sabers, and the mystic mages who keep us safe from it. The youth knows none of this; inexperienced and naïve, the youth believes himself invincible.” Cedric shrugged uncaringly, “Perhaps he dies, yet fool’s wisdom does so claim, on death’s door, there was no other way.”
Cedric clenched his fist, and the puppet vanished.
He cocked his head back, looking at his grandmother upside down.
He coughed; eyes cloudy with his overdose of Alkalamphetamine Duoestro. “Wanna get high?”
Roslin stared at her grandson, and several yet-to-processed facts suddenly clicked. From an entire conversation about treason and the nature of their state, an emotional breakdown after the realization of how she’d failed her daughter -and likely many more of her children- the revelation that her grandson was the brilliant alchemist and enchanter behind Parallax Productions…
Nubinor possibly knew already, but he wasn’t as educated on magical matters to understand the nuanced ramifications of what Cedric was doing at his age. He was on a level that master enchanters and alchemists threw their hands up and stated some cabal of legendary enchanters and alchemists were selling their products on the market.
Feeling exhausted in some manner, Roslin coaxed her hands through her grandson’s hair and gave a deep exhalation. “Please.”
“Trunk has most of my stuff, but…” He rifled through his clothing and grinned, pulling out his ‘emergency’ supply. It was a simple folded piece of what looked like paper. Unfolding it, he carefully separated it into perfect squares, then passed over a piece smaller than the pinky’s fingernail.
Taking the small piece of paper with amusement, she raised an eyebrow as Cedric placed the paper slip on his tongue. She copied him and leaned back in amusement.
Then thing… started…getting…
Strange….