"Stuffed animals is an interesting design choice," I say, making sure to keep my voice devoid of any kind of tone that might suggest that I'm judging. I most certainly am not, to clarify, but I've been misunderstood before. Her office, which isn't overly large as I would have otherwise expected, is made of stone, of course, but the stone is perfectly flat and lacking the texture that the walls in most of the building have which leads me to believe that Sytoria has done some of her own remodeling. The walls are mostly bare, however, save for some maps that are pinned over each other in such a way that I can only see some of the top one. It's a map of Esh.
The floor is mostly clear, as well, but the rest of it? The rest of it is overrun with stuffed animals. On shelving, in front of the one window, the one I must have heard everything through, that seems to lead outside—which is interesting to me due to the spatial expansion Spell that I assumed would have made a window impossible; I figured the delineation was the fact that it's two separate spaces—on top of abandoned furniture. All animals that I don't recognize, too.
Some of them have four legs, others six, and others have none at all. Some have horns while others have large mandibles. Some of them are cute and some of them are absolutely horrifying, enough that I would have expected them to be on a horror movie poster rather than turned into a plush toy. They're all actually very well made. To the point that I suspect magic is involved in some manner. There's only one thing about them that's similar, though.
Each and every one of them is purple.
Luckily, Sytoria seems to take it how I mean it, which is as a neutral observation rather than any form of ridicule. I mean, I don't think anyone would dare do that in the first place, to be perfectly honest, judging by the Aura she's wielding. I've commented on it several times since coming in contact with it, but it's truly just that intimidating. I wonder how powerful she is compared to the average person on this world. Or at least, the average person who's actively trying to get stronger combat-wise, if that makes sense. How strong of a warrior is she compared to other warriors? There. That's what I'm trying to say.
"Ben gets them for me whenever she comes back from an assignment. If it's not directly in a town, she'll travel to one nearby and buy a purple stuffed animal for me. She's been doing it since we met, actually." Sytoria is looking at the biggest pile of them which seem to be sitting on a discarded desk with another new expression, it seems. This one seems to be mirth. Her scent is one of love.
"Ben?" I ask, confused. She is definitely in love with this Lieutenant Colonel lady, so who could this Ben person be? Are the people on this world polygamists? I suppose I can't judge anyone's culture. Earth humans are because of the general expectation that you be with one person your entire life and that you can't possibly be in love with more than one person. I don't have an opinion on the subject, honestly. I've never been in a relationship, let alone in love, so I can't say for certain how I feel about it.
Sytoria nods. "Benna. She's the Lieutenant Colonel I've been talking about. I suppose I can't really hide from you how I feel about her so I figured there's not much of a point in trying. Plus, none of the others in Esh would believe you if you told them I actually have feelings beyond my placid authoritarianism, so there's no real danger of me letting down my hair, so to speak."
She has, too. Not the hair thing, but her whole demeanor has changed since entering the office. It's softer, more relaxed. I'm uncertain why the change happened at all, to be perfectly honest, because I'm a random stranger she met less than thirty minutes ago. Everyone in town seems to view her as a paragon of professionalism and a stalwart guardian who has the emotional capacity of a bear, from what I've gathered so far. So for her to break such an act so soon for someone like me is interesting to say the least.
"Can I ask why you'd think that no one knows about you and the Lieutenant Colonel when your office is, um, kind of …" I trail off, searching for the right word, "a very clear sign that she loves you?"
Sytoria actually laughs softly at that. It sounds the way I'd imagine a cup of coffee would sound if you captured the feeling you get when you drink it and turned it into audio. Deep, rich, powerful. Bitter, but sweet, too. Honestly, she sounds the way voice actors on Earth wish they could sound. Probably something to do with magic. Essence, I suppose I should say.
"I only let those four in here and all four of them are directly related to me. Some might claim nepotism but they've all earned their spots as my grunts through blood, sweat, and—I'm sure—no small amount of tears. They know not to breathe a word of what they see in here because I'll kill them," she responds. I look for any sign, or scent, of a joke at the last bit, but I detect none.
"Is there something wrong with you and Benna being in a relationship? I'm not from around here, so I suppose I wouldn't know, but I don't see the problem." Gods, I hope it's not another world where people hate other people for no fucking reason.
She looks at me, tilting her head, expression curious. "Why would you think that?"
I furrow my brows. Am I missing something? Weird way to respond. "You're going out of your way to hide that you and Benna are together and have threatened to kill your family if they tell anyone about the stuffed animals?" I say, uncertain, though I'm not sure about what exactly.
"No, I have no need to hide it. In fact, Benna and I own a restaurant together near the residential portion of the Hole. It's called Violet Violence. Benna loves the color of my hair, if you haven't picked up on that yet, and goes out of her way to do things that remind me of that. I just mean that I value loyalty in those that serve under me and for them to betray the presence of any of this, regardless of how innocuous, would mean that they would be more likely to betray me on much larger issues, as well. That's why I would kill them. Not because Benna and I are a secret." She sits down at her desk, then, the one not covered in countless stuffed animals, and motions for me to take a seat across from her.
The chairs—like everything else in this whole building, basically—are made of stone, but it shapes itself around as soon as I sit on it to make it more comfortable to sit on. I don't know if that was manual on Sytoria's part, or if it was a function of some sort of enchantment on the chair I have no way of knowing about, but if I have to endure a little ass-hug from a stone to make sitting comfortable that's fine.
"Ah, okay, I was just wondering. Where I'm from it's somewhat frowned upon to be in same-sex couples, so I was making sure that wasn't the case for why you were acting the way you were. Or that I didn't slip up and say something I shouldn't to someone I shouldn't, in the case that it were true."
She smiles softly. "No, Benna and I are perfectly safe to be together. I apologize if such a thing is common where you're from. There are no such restrictions that I am aware of on the entire continent of Drajora, so that somewhat solidifies to me that you are not from here. I'm not aware of any such practices on Zephryn, either, but I haven't had reason to spend much time there so I can't say I'm an expert on the topic."
I nod. I don't really know what to say.
"You're wondering why you're here, I'm sure, and why I've stopped acting as I did at the gates," Sytoria states, her head resting on her arm atop her desk, leaning forward in a decidedly much less proper fashion. It's striking in almost the opposite way that her "Major Sytoria" persona is. Probably because of that persona, honestly. Her demeanor has shifted so much as to be almost entirely different. She seems more comfortable now, though. Like she'd been wearing a particularly tight suit all day and was suddenly was allowed to take it off.
I can empathize with the feeling, although for different reasons. Which brings me to the fact that I've thought about being autistic more in the last few hours than I've probably thought about it in the last few years. It also makes me realize that perhaps this is another reason Aethos recommended the Zenithal as the race I should choose?
The sensory issue was always my biggest grievance with the neurotype and everything else was simply how I was treated because of the way I processed information differently than them, resulting in miscommunications and subsequent meltdowns because of the fear of my intentions being misrepresented or misinterpreted.
The first seems to have been taken care of by the racial change and the second seems like it will be taken care of as my peers gain the ability from soul sense. I imagine this ability makes things much simpler in quite a few areas of life, social and otherwise. Legally—if they have legal proceedings here in the way Earth does, anyway, and not just corporal punishment and executions—truth would be much easier to discern with a few checks and balances in place. It cannot just be on one person to say if someone is lying or telling the truth because that person could be lying.
"You don't focus very much, do you? At least not on any one thing at a time so far, I can tell. Your soul has a flighty quality to it that is reminiscent of the smaller fae and their tendency to be mercurial, for lack of ability to come up with a more specific word to describe what I mean," she cuts in and I realize she'd just asked me, not even ten seconds ago, two questions. Well, not exactly, but she implied they were questions while somehow making them into statements. I feel my face getting hot.
"Oh, yes, sorry. I know what you mean, although I've never met any of the fae. My community is very tight knit to the point that outsiders are frowned upon very voraciously, shall we say. I tend to get easily … sidetracked, unless I'm doing something that my mind otherwise finds more intriguing. Not that you're not important, or anything, in case that's how my words were received," I can tell that she is not offended. If anything she's still giving off the scent of amusement that I described earlier. An interesting pet, or a funny little creature she came across on a walk one day and decided to take home. The comparison is ironic, to say the least.
"I am not offended. It's actually a symptom of those with a middling Focus attribute. You have a dense soul for someone of your level, I can tell, so I imagine that your stats would still be much higher than most others at your level, but Focus is somewhat of a proportionate relationship, rather than one of sheer numbers as many of the others are." Her eyes leave mine and her scent radiates nostalgia. Something about that made her start reminiscing on her past.
This is insane. I can smell nostalgia? Why does that even have a smell? And why do I recognize what it smells like? Do animals on Earth smell things like this? Were all those werewolf stories I read actually more on the mark than any of them could have realized? Do they have werewolves here? Probably. There are nearly 2500 different species in this Universe, 193 of which are right here on Ackellia, so I imagine there are shifters here, too.
"This is a huge deviation of topic, but do you have werewolves here?" I blurt, changing subject. She smirks, chuckling, and sits back in her a chair a bit. Her posture is still straight—it's probably unconscious at this point—but remarkably less so than it had been outside her office.
"We do have many different members of The Children here. Before I answer your question, and give you a bit of history for you are apparently lacking in it, I am curious as to how you arrived at that question from my statement, however," she says, her eyes clearly indicating it had been a question she wishes for me to answer.
"I smelled your nostalgia and I remarked on how it's interesting that I smelled such an emotion at all, as well as how extraordinary it is that I could identify the emotion, which made me think of some fiction I read in my youth about the capabilities of werewolves and the like. This led me to wonder if there were any around here, as I've never come across any living in my community. I've literally never seen another race aside from my own and human up until this meeting with you."
"I can tell you are being truthful, which is all the more intriguing to me. The Children are everywhere on Ackellia. Simsamgranor of the Ephemeral Form, the Father of the shifter race, is still very active among them, often traveling to different settlements where larger populations of their people live. This tells me that where you come from does not have a large population of The Children. The other thing that tells me this is that you used the term 'werewolves,' which is quite an outdated term of address and is now considered derogatory from the mouths of those not of The Children."
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She is not angry, or admonishing, simply stating what she has noticed based on my words and behavior. That blunts the sting of her last statement, though it does nothing for the embarrassment I feel. I mean, I had no way of knowing that, so my embarrassment should rightly be minimal, but she wouldn't know that beyond my claims of having lived in an isolated commune so "should" doesn't apply in this case. I don't want my ignorance to come off as me being some kind of bigot!
"Relax, Zed. I know that you are largely ignorant of the outside world. There is no need to be experiencing such a degree of shame. I merely wish to correct your misconception and edify your ignorance. Okay?" Her voice is soothing and I can feel a calm radiating from her Aura, most likely by design. Auras seem to be incredibly versatile. I make a mental note to start on that meditation as soon as I possibly can.
I nod. Not much else I can really say. I don't owe her an apology even though I have the overwhelming urge to give her one, anyway. I stuff that trauma firmly back in its box. Unfortunately the only material I have on hand up there is cardboard, apparently.
"The prefix 'were' is Altarian for the word 'man.' Altarian, both the people who lived under that name and the language they spoke, are long since dead—though many pieces of it still exist in the languages that people speak today—and the territories they once resided in have all been razed, histories thrown away or suppressed, and artifacts from that time are regularly destroyed upon their discovery. Do you have a guess as to what might be the connection between the two statements I just made?"
My brow furrows. "I would imagine they did something unforgiveable? The only thing I know of that is firmly banned is Enslavement magic, and that seems like something you would try and erase a culture because of. Did they have something to do with its perpetuity, or perhaps its conception?"
She nods. "Yes. Great deduction, by the way. The Altarians were trying to create something that is known as an ecumenopolis. Are you familiar with the term?" I nod my head to indicate that I'm familiar, though my confusion grows.
Altarian is obviously the Earth equivalent of Latin. On Earth, "Were" is the Latin prefix for man, though there are no such issues with its usage as there are with the term here. Ecumenopolis, however, is a Greek term, as far as I'm aware. It's interesting that the two would be related with each other in this Universe. Of course, not everything is going to translate between the two, and there is no reason to expect that anything on Earth will be the same or even similar here.
I suppose there might be some System/language discrepancies at play, but I can't be certain. Nor do I particularly care to look into it, though I'm certain there's some historian or linguist somewhere around that would love to regale me with the details if I wanted. Instead of going down yet another spiral while speaking with Sytoria, I answer.
"A city that encompasses a world, which I imagine would be even more impressive on a world as large as Ackellia."
"Your education is very interesting to me. You know some things that others would be hard-pressed to have knowledge about, but then common things that most would at least be familiar with you're ignorant of. It makes me wonder what this communes purpose was if not to raise you all in a specific manner. Education doesn't seem to be a point of focus."
"It's largely individualistic. They talk at you as you grow. You absorb little of what they tell you because it's less about the learning and more about having an excuse to say they'd told you but it's not their fault you didn't retain it. Then they base their intelligence hierarchy around those who follow their doctrines best and can operate within the bounds of what they deem acceptable. Those who can't are ostracized, leaving them to fend for themselves. You learn what they want you to know and your attempts at learning what you're interested in are judged based on whether it's socially acceptable or not. It's a great place to live," I say, answering without much attempt at censoring my speech. Save for specifics, of course. Perhaps once she senses the bitterness I feel for my "commune" she'll not try and send me back.
She couldn't if she wanted to, but she'd probably try and find a large Zenithal commune on this continental island of Zephyr, wherever that is, and it would be just my luck for her to find one. No thanks.
"I sense your anger. Perhaps it is a good thing that you are no longer there, no? Anyway, I was explaining something. The Altarians were attempting to create an ecumenopolis. They were very much not going to be able to do such a thing. If you are aware of the pre-system population levels, you'd know that there were nowhere near enough people to inhabit every area of the planet with a dense enough number to maintain said population. Nor would they survive the incredibly hostile conditions." She scoffs. The idea of attaining such a thing in the first place under such conditions is laughable to her, apparently.
"You can imagine that if Confluences are a problem today, where the population is somewhere around fifty billion people and the System aids in the circulation of the Essence to decrease the severity of such occurrences, it was worse then. Much, much worse. Beasts spawned by a Confluence might regularly reach the equivalent of an individual with a White ranking today. Such a thing happens perhaps once or twice a year now, and those White rankers are sent to deal with the threat. Typically it can be detected as it's happening and thus the damage is largely contained, but not always. How do you suppose the population survived such occurrences back then?"
"Either they had people powerful enough to battle the Beasts, they had enclosures or crafts that they built to defend against such threats, or they just ... died. If the first was available enough to be the sole reason, then I'd imagine the population would have been much higher than it sounds like it was. The second is more likely the reason those that survived did so at all, let alone long enough to gain the power necessary to do battle. I do have a question, though. How did anyone survive if White ranked Beasts were being spawned that often?"
"That's where I'm leading the conversation. Altaria was a nation of craftspeople and researchers. They lauded the use of the soul to impart power into objects that would better their own lives and further their purposes. They didn't much care for those who could not do the same. Before the System, the only way to get more powerful was to stumble upon it, have someone with it to aid you in acquiring it, or steal it from others. So if you did not already have it, or the potential to gain it, then you weren't people to them. Less than excrement."
She pauses to see if I'm following her. I don't know where she's going with it, or how the term "were" has anything to do with the story she's telling or the Enslavement magic ban but I am listening.
"Those in power did whatever they wanted. No one was as powerful as they were, no one had as much magic or knowledge in general, so they got away with anything and everything. Torture, rape, murder, it didn't matter. There was no one who could stand up to them outside of those powerful individuals who fought the Beasts but most of them were already under their employ. They got to do what they wanted when they wanted so why would they fight against a system that benefited them so much?
"Thus, the practice of enslavement was born. Those who were considered less, no matter the race, because of their lack of power were treated as such. They were branded, collared, ensorcelled, experimented upon. Many of the modern advancements with healing magic are a result of the research recovered and expanded upon. Those tomes are kept out of public reach. For good reason, too. They also contained very, very vivid descriptions of the torture they inflicted, or deleterious effects they managed to invent, or heinous ways they killed the people they were supposed to be protecting."
"And they couldn't leave because, even though living under their protection was close to a death sentence, leaving it was a definite one. Why did they need to go so far as to invent Enslavement type magic, whatever that means, if they already were doing the things you described?" It sounds horrifying, for certain, just what I've heard and what she's hinted at but not explicitly said, but they'd gone even farther?
"Precisely. They had impunity to destroy and create methods of said destruction to their black hearts' content. In one journal I had the displeasure of reading upon obtaining the clearance for it, they describe their grievance over the fact that they must waste so much 'good material' on the 'filth' that littered their streets. They go over the benefits they'd gain from being able to instill in their population the compulsion to obey their overlords' wills without resistance. There are a hints at a few paragraphs where they go over some of the process of having invented such a thing that have since been destroyed by the Ban."
"So using their resources to enslave basically the whole population of a world was too wasteful to them, and instead of just stopping they invented a better way of doing it? How would such a thing work, anyway? The soul can't be affected by magic, I thought." I know for a fact that it's impossible considering Aethos themself had told me so, but I'm not going to say that, obviously.
"The soul cannot, no. The mind and the body, however, most certainly can. They branded the babies with the spell array they invented, first. That way, each and every person of the upcoming generation that managed to survive would be entirely subservient to them and they wouldn't have to waste any materials they could be using for their research. They killed the people who rebelled against it. Then they branded the rest."
"Okay, so the Altarians are disgusting monsters. I understand that. I have so many questions but those could probably get answered by a book or something. What I don't understand is what any of that has to do with the prefix being considered derogatory? Is it just because it has roots in Altarian? That wouldn't make sense, though, because you said that other words have Altarian inspiration that still exist." I had thought I was better at extrapolation than I apparently am.
"The Children were created near the fall of Altaria and brought about their destruction. Simsamgranor, one of the few White ranked individuals, Ascended to Divinity. The first thing he did with his power is create The Children. He, himself, was born human but the Concept upon which he Ascended was that of the nature of Flesh and the power of change. This was not enough for him, however, and he sought the blessing of Vytria, the Goddess of Nature Herself. The story of the proceeding events is murky at best but the results were that Nature gave Simsamgranor her blessing. Simsamgranor invested his spark of Change and Nature invested the Concept of Nature's Predation. Thus, The Children were born."
"So they were literally created? They didn't occur over time the way humanity did?"
"Humanity was created by Algref the Naked. What do you mean by occur over time?" She's confused.
"Um, I was taught that over an incredible amount of time small changes occurred in the breeding pool of certain creatures based on environmental factors that led to different species being born and then further propagated. Breeding and nature vs. nurture and all that." There is very definitive proof of that on Earth. Is it really different on Ackellia? And by someone named Algref the Naked? Did that mean that every race was created? That there was an original God that created even the Gods? Damn. Good thing I'm going to live to be a few thousand years old, otherwise I would have nowhere near enough time to learn everything I'm coming across right now.
"You can speak to a member of any Church and receive their Patrons' words on the matter, but that is not a theory I've come across yet. It bears looking into, perhaps. I'm not the expert on the sciences, after all. I can only tell you what I've been told myself." So, in other words, I might be wrong, I might be right. Speak to someone more qualified. I nod. She continues.
"Anyway, The Children were diametrically opposed to the Altarians. They were immune to their branding and other Enslavement type magics because their bodies naturally healed the brands no matter the magic that was placed upon them and thus, when the array was broken, so were the magics' effects. Thus began the First Extermination. The Children, with the aid of Simsamgranor when he learned of the issue, exterminated the Altarians with abandon.
"That event in and of itself is likely dense enough to fill several hours alone with even what little I know of it, so I will be brief. The Altarians called them Werepeople, those under their purview adopted the nomenclature and much of the attitudes their overlords had, and despite the eradication of the Altarians, much of that hatred stayed behind for no other reason than it had become normal, imbued in their very flesh."
"So those who had been branded were stuck with them for life, or until someone could heal them?"
"Yes. They were largely unable to remove them because just cutting them off didn't work. It seemed to bleed through the flesh all the way to the bone. Considering they were placed over their hearts, you can imagine such a thing was pretty permanent. Except in the case of The Children. Healing magics were very undeveloped at that point and inexact."
"So the branded suddenly lost the people who told them what to do and basically gave them the reason for being alive and were stuck with them after they'd died. What happened then? I imagine it wasn't as simple as no subject, no power."
"You're correct. The branded went insane the longer they went on living after the one who had branded them died. Hallucinations, violent urges, hemorrhaging, aneurysms, strokes, heart attacks. Many of those who witnessed such events believed that it was The Children's fault, which is perhaps why general opinion of them wasn't positive. Of course, they did the world a great service by ending such a terrible nation but those who were affected didn't care about that. They only cared that their loved ones were dying horrible deaths because the Altarians had been killed."
"Oh, wow. That's terrible," I say. It's all I can think to say. Even after they'd been destroyed, they still affected the world to such a degree.
"So to use that term is to put them below you. In that vein, they are not man and not animal but still both and yet neither. Below whichever hierarchy you wish to place them in. So avoid using it. Call them The Children or by the species of Child they turn into. Don't call them beasts, either, for probably obvious reasons."
I nod. Of course that makes sense. It's dehumanizing, even if they aren't human, plus there are huge events where Beasts are spawned with the intent to kill people. I can imagine that puts a damper on being called a beast.
"So now that the history lesson is out of the way, this brings us to the real reason I wished to bring you here. What are some ways Esh can help you and how do you feel you can help Esh?"