The present exists with the future and pasts influence(27MT)

[Torc Blackfoot]

Chyril 27th MT

Torc awoke in the morning thinking of all the events in the past few days had enlighten him too the realities of what he was and what he wasn’t. In a way he had felt like an island onto himself. A man that had to bear the weight of the world and all its decisions as well, yet he had learned that he wasn’t alone. Kaelara, though she believed him to be insane, Weyl`n, the dwarf hated magick but at his core he was a good man and a potential friend, and then there was Nyrellon, little had been known about her but in a way she felt like the age and layers of time were as much a part of her as it was for Torc. Torc was ready for help and understanding, because if he truly had to stop this entity of the land then he would need that very thing.

Torc wore woodsmen’s dress as he left his inn. As Torc walked to Nyrellon house thoughts of magick and divination spoke to him.

The one truth of magick, ‘Everything is energy’

Time isn’t just one stream… it waves from the future and the past shaping the present. Destiny exists and so does the past. Influences in the world are being molded by both. I exist because I must and because I was created. I would have been born regardless of who my parents were because I had a role to fulfill. Yet, all my experiences have jaded me and provided me with knowledge and wisdom.

In order to see the future I must see the past. The great wheels of time turn, and events began again. Once, a great city stood here, instead of Pax. Yet now the wheel of time has turned and another city is in place. The land remembers the horrors of the past and wants another chance and yet another gear has changed. This town though danger my not be the same as it was in the past, there could be danger in the present.

The wheel of time rotates, the gears change but the great strokes of the One continue. If I destroy the land without the knowledge of the danger that it perceives I destroy the towns salvation. If I agree that the danger the town is trying to prevent is worth ignore the clash of times then I condemn the populace to the mistakes of dead. The land is forcing the wheels to once again be of the past, when it needs to accept the present and future adjustments.

The wheels of time can be turned back, but then we forget the greatest gift possible, the gift to change.

As Torc approached Nyrellon’s door he realized that throughout time Torc’s mage staff was scattered. The wheels turn and with each turn pieces were scattered till he choose to bring them together. The difference between an apprentice diviner and a master diviner was his ability to not just predict events through time, but to influence and prevent mistakes of the past as well as mistakes of destiny. It was within Torc’s power to summon his mage’s staff from the wheels of time, just as a battle mage’s staff would be won in battle. Torc needed to know his defining moments from the past and future, and within those moments the shards of his mage’s staff was hidden.

All this time he had been looking for someone to hand him his staff, it had always been up to him to reach forth through time to gather it. For a brief flicker, Torc wondered if the Oracle of the Gibbets smiled now, had Torc passed the once Archmage’s test? Had he now progressed in his understand of himself and his role that the Oracle would give him the next riddle? Did the Oracle even care about the tutelage of one wayward student? Torc wondered, but in the end he had found an answer to his own inter-development. Something, he wondered if any other diviner had done in a while.

With three knocks on the wooden door, Torc awaited the young girl to answer once again.

[Guido Cercatoro]

Torc’s knocking was answered almost immediately by the familiar face of Ines. The young girl looked tired and strained as if she had not slept well. She brushed back her long, dark-hair with a small, delicate hand, the little finger of which was adorned with a slender silver band. The ring was inset with a red gem that sparkled as it was caught by the sunlight.

“Good morning tide, mage. If you have come to see my mistress, she has only lately arisen, so it will be a few burns before she can see you. Perhaps you might like to have some breakfast in the kitchen whilst you wait?”

If the hedge-mage assented, Ines would lead him to a small, spartanly furnished kitchen. In the middle of the kitchen was a large, sturdy table and four chairs.

“Please take a seat and help yourself to anything you wish.” The young girl pointed towards some bread, cheese and that lay on a wooden board and bowl on the table. “Are you now recovered from your exertions?” As she spoke, the young girl stumbled slightly. It was evident that she was exhausted but she collected herself and sat in a chair, grabbing hold of a piece of bread which she began to nibble.

[Torc Blackfoot]

Torc smiled at the young girl Ines, “Good Morning Tide, young lady. I would appreciate what ever you my offer.” Torc bowed to the young mistress, wondering about the silvered ring. It seemed strange that someone so young would be trusted with something so valuable. And the ring could probably feed the family at least for a month. Aye, it was a little strange. As he entered the dwelling he let his eyes roam, trying to pick up clues as to what happened after his last visit.

As he lowered himself into a chair he noticed once again the young girl was tired. Had she been staying up all night? Had the Priestess been teaching her magick in which she was using herself up to quickly?

“I have recovered from my exertions quite well. Then again I lied in bed for a full day going in and out of world. How is the household? Has everyone recovered from the sickness?” Torc asked wondering whether he should even be here.

OOC: Sorry not sure what else to go on.

[Guido Cercatoro]

“My mistress is now fully recovered,” replied Ines. “However, I must apologise for my own tiredness. I used up much of my energy in attempting to heal a man yesterday.” A grim look appeared on her face and she told the mage the tale of her part in the attempt to heal Eron following the tunnel collapse of the day before.

(OOC: you can assume that Ines recounts her part in this thread )

When the girl had finished she stood wearily. “If you will follow me, please.” The girl led Torc back into the same room in which he had assisted the priestess so recently. The couch on which she had lain was now empty as were the other chairs in the room. A burn later the Nyrellon entered the room. She still looked a little pale but greeted the mage with an uncharacteristically broad smile.

“Greetings mage. I must thank you once again for your assistance. Without you…..” Her voice trailed off and she pulled her shawl closely around her shoulders. “Forgive me but we must get straight down to business. Are you still willing to help me delve into the past to see if we may forge a connection to the mage Baltimus? I must warn you it may be a dangerous and uncertain enterprise but I fear it must be done.”

[Torc Blackfoot]

Torc smiled and nodded his at the comment that Nyrellon was fully recovered. As he listened to Ines story there were many questions and ideas that came to his head. It troubled him listening to her use of pagan gods. He didn’t mind that she worshiped them, nor did he think she did wrong trying to heal the man. Granted it lead to his body’s death, but his mind was at least settled and he made it to the afterlife without undo sins layed on his brow. No what upset him was the idea that Ines called power from a heathen God and his blind singer did the same. The two converged and performed healing on the man.

The question was there, if Ines prayed and received energy from a being that was not physical nor aether… then was it a God? The Priesthood of the One teaches that there are no other God’s or Goddess’s just the One, and yet with that doctrine all other heathen believes were either worshipping daemons or some kind of aether entity that feeds off of them. Still this being had sent energies to try and heal the man. At least that was what Ines was saying. Slowly, he nodded at the right places and smiled at her.

“Rest Ines, what you did was settle a man’s mind before his passing and that is a good thing.”

Torc followed Ines to Nyrellon. He smiled, “No thanks are required, as a Hedge Mage, I believe from farmers to nobles everyone deserves magickal healing. You have repaid me with a meal, and though I suspect I should probably ask for a few more meals, that is all the thanks I need.” Torc said joking.

“Aye, I am ready Nyrellon. Life is dangerous just by its nature, if it weren’t it wouldn’t be worth the final price that is paid. Besides Nyrellon, it must be done, if we are too safe the people around us, the people who we serve, then we must search the past. We must do what we have to for the people who we serve, if we do not then what does that say about the value we place on life?”

[Guido Cercatoro]

“Unfortunately the dog whom I had hoped to use as a focus to trace back to Baltimus has vanished,” explained Nyrellon with a sigh. “All I have is this piece of scroll.” She picked up the torn piece of parchment that Vernon had retrieved from the tower.

“I do not know it will suffice but it is from Selderine and was written by the mage, so it will have to do.” The priestess carefully put the parchment on the table, smoothing down the frayed creases and edges of the scroll.

“The energy strands that link objects that have been dragged forwards in time from Selderine appear to ever try to pull them back to the past. I am hoping that we can attune ourselves to the energy in the scroll and follow it back to the mage. I do not know if this will work, but perhaps with our combined knowledge and power we can contact the mage.”

The grey-haired woman knelt by the table placing her hands on the scroll. “I suggest we begin by using our powers individually to inspect the scroll. We both have different perspectives that combined may provide us with some answers.” The priestess closed her eyes and began intoning a few scarcely audible words….

[Torc Blackfoot]

Torc thought of a thousand horrible things to say about the focus the priestess had to choose, but in the end it wasn’t by choice, it was probably the best that she could find, and that would have to be enough. Softly Torc settled down, clearing his mind of unwanted and unneeded distractions. Soreness in his back, feel of sunlight, or the smells carried on the wind. Torc relaxed and slowly allowed his mind to focus on the world of aether.

Torc object was the might willow that he would one day make to clean up the rivers of the Mouth. Long ago, he had dreamt of his object, and it wasn’t till now Torc began to realize the skill and power needed to create such an object. Also, he had never realized the balance that it would need to survive once the waste was gone.

Yet it was Torc’s object and it allowed him to center, ground and shield. He felt himself slowly become the golden leave and white bark willow. Deep into the ground he felt his roots stink, he felt the security of the earth and rock. No matter how the winds of time blew he would forever be held in its embrace. And then the white glowing bark flowed over him. Within its crags Torc knew that excess energy’s and unwanted weave’s would flow down and between those crags to the ground and stone. His shield’s were living, able to grow and heal, able to adapt to its surrounds, they might never be as tight and perfect as a Ward Master, but they were healthy and for him secure.

As the quiet of the aether surrounded him, Torc began to feel the roar of the river of time besides the mightly willow. Too many mage’s divination was a raft ride into the river of time, but to a diviner it was something more. The analogy that time was a river, or ocean, was a close one. Yet it was the water in the air that fell down upon them as well, and as Torc learned time wasn’t just the past, present, and future. It was all three and nether. The past flowed into the present and future, but so did the other too. Things in the future forced events in the past.

So softly Torc allowed the golden leaves of his thoughts to drift down through the air and enter the river of time. He allowed those thoughts to search about the ebbs of the parchment looking for pathways into the past on the creater of the scroll. Yet, some of his thoughts focused on pathways into the future on when the mage would be returned. Events often repeated themselves, and though the mage lived in the past, he also would live again in the future. Torc checked for ebb that were outside of thoughts of past, present, and future. To truly talk, the mage might have parts of himself in the future and past to see results of his actions, but his thoughts might be outside the realm of time flow into it.

Torc expanded his mind to all angle and looked from within and from outside the ebbs of time. All things flowed into time and flowed once again out. The past, present, and future were the same, and the mage named Baltimus was three parts combined to be one. Forever to be repeated and yet different.

[Guido Cercatoro]

Torc allowed his mind to enter the aether and focus upon the willow. Once he had secured himself to this familiar image he sought to expand his senses into the dimension of time, picturing the flow of time as a river running beside the willow.

Close to the willow, the river ran slowly and calmly; further upriver, the water became choppier as it was being buffeted around by unseen forces, here and there were dotted whirlpools of swirling water; downriver, the river gradually came to a halt, frozen in place and seemed to shimmer and dart in all directions as if its course was not predetermined.

Torc found it difficult to reach his senses downriver but much easier to reach out into the choppy water.

The scroll bobbed around in the middle of the calm water; then, it drifted backwards, flirting with the edges of one particular whirlpool within the choppier water before being pushed back into the calm water. It was as if the disturbed waters were trying to snatch back the parchment from the calmer area of the river.

[Torc Blackfoot]

The scroll bobbed around in the middle of the calm water; then, it drifted backwards, flirting with the edges of one particular whirlpool within the choppier water before being pushed back into the calm water. It was as if the disturbed waters were trying to snatch back the parchment from the calmer area of the river.

Torc allowed branches of thought to grow upriver to the whirlpool. Softly, he let the spray from the whirlpool to land upon his leaves. Torc allowed his leaves to give impressions of the time and things that once were. Torc needed to make sure that this was the whirlpool in which the mage could be found.

Talking softly, “Nyrellon, I have found some energy strands that are linked to the scroll. The energy’s seemed to be rotating about a central event and also seem quite turbulent. I am letting my senses catch very small impressions from the event. Would you like to link with me, or after my impressions we disengage and try to find the event again?”

[Guido Cercatoro]

As the spray from the whirlpool touched the leaves of his tree, Torc sensed the same dislocated energy he had had felt when rescuing Angelo and investigating the stone cube. The energies were there and not there at the same time. The energy strands that flowed through to the present emerged from the whirlpool which clearly provided the link to the past, ever tugging the scroll which had escaped its grasp.

“I sense a disturbance centred on the scroll, although I perceive it differently to you. I will try to link with you so that I may see as you do.“The mage felt his hand grasped by Nyrellon and he sensed a warm flow of energy.

After half a burn, during which time he continued to sense the river, Torc felt the presence of a new source of energy in the aether. She appeared as a bird alighting on a branch of his tree.

“It is very illuminating to arrive in someone else’s perception of the aether,” the bird chirped before flying over the whirlpool and then returning.

“The scroll clearly links to the past through this doorway. But how should we proceed? I can see only two options. We pull the energies as hard as we can. Perhaps we may alert Baltimus or pull him through to this time. Alternatively, we push the scroll back, perhaps with a message written on it.”

“Have you any other thoughts? If not, which of these options do you favour?”

[Torc Blackfoot]

Torc thought about his perceptions. To him it had felt more natural to connect the world of magic with the world of nature. Forever intermixed, the physical was just perceptions of aether and its manifestations, yet what one did in the tether effected the aether. Gateways and teleportion was the manifestation upon the tether that all places were one, because what separated them was just spacial energies movement between these energies or string both points together would make a portal. Yet the mage dealing with such energies had to know how they would effect with one another. Time was just another example, all times were one, forward motion had effects upon the past.

The whirlpool was a manifestation of missed times and circles of time which fed upon one another. Part of Torc job as mage that walked the golden path was to jeer humanity from circles of time. How could anyone progress as a people if they repeated the same mistakes as there fathers did? Torc had choosen a different path then his father.

Torc began to laugh. Well Archmage Maximillian you have done it again! The path you started on me lead to a place in which a mage of the golden path is needed. Was it coincidence that I made the journey here? Was it destiny? Did you use destiny as a tool to lure me here? Or did I fit a role that one of the wave from these whirlpools? We are caught forever in the streams of time and yet we use them as well? We who walk the golden path are here to break the cycles of time and yet I am ensnared in one? One day Archmage we will meet again, and I wonder what thousands of questions have asked of myself will I ask you.

As Torc turned his attention from the whimsical being known as the Oracle or Lich of the Gibbest another moment of clarity came upon him. Tree have there own language and there own point of view. He had laughed as a tree, but only in the aether was he able to understand the sound he made and the connection to what a tree did. He had wondered the forests for years with Blaire, and realized that the woods and her eternal beauty had a subtle language that forever talked to the hunters underneath them. Forever talking to one another… he wondered what he had shared with the great forest in his home village. Had the trees seen his first kill? Had the Trees cried at the lost of Blaire, had they rejoice when Torc buried him with them? Had the trees scream their frustrations at the town when Torc had? Torc wondered about his eternal connection with the woods and all her spendor? In the future he wondered if walk the scared ground of the woods and finally here the whispers of the trees?

“As you can see Nyrellon I am Old Man Willow forever ready to bend to the will of nature, but ready to stand against her fury. If I must choose I believe send a message with the scroll is the safer means of delivery, but if you struck with more foolishness then wisdom like myself perhaps we should try fishing?”

“For, Nyrellon, we stand at the edge of a water, should we not fish for the trout that lurks in this waters? If we must offer it a shiny bit of glass perhaps we should mold it to him? You did say he had a dog?”

Then Torc spoke a soft sound onto the wind, “You have seen something very private Nyrellon, perhaps one day I may see your vision?”

[Guido Cercatoro]

“As you can see Nyrellon I am Old Man Willow forever ready to bend to the will of nature, but ready to stand against her fury. If I must choose I believe send a message with the scroll is the safer means of delivery, but if you struck with more foolishness then wisdom like myself perhaps we should try fishing?”

“For, Nyrellon, we stand at the edge of a water, should we not fish for the trout that lurks in this waters? If we must offer it a shiny bit of glass perhaps we should mold it to him? You did say he had a dog?”

The bird chirped; a bright song filled with laughter. “Sending a message is probably the sensible course. I will return in a flicker.” The bird flew over to the scroll and landed on it as it swayed in the water. One small foot scratched at the surface of the scroll before the bird returned to Torc.

“Perhaps we may fish. Form a rod on which we might dangle the scroll as bait. Then perhaps if we act together we have a chance of pulling it back to see if our message has a reply.”

Then Torc spoke a soft sound onto the wind, “You have seen something very private Nyrellon, perhaps one day I may see your vision?”

“Alas dear mage, we follow different Gods. They permit us to act together on this but………..”

[Guido Cercatoro]

Archived due to player inactivity