Eternity RPC Board
With anyone but Nevina, apple of her eye and object of her idolatry, Elke would have offered her reply straightaway. Proudly, even. Maybe with a dash of bragging in the right company.
But given that she was, indeed, with Nevina, the answer did not yield itself so freely. After all, this was the woman to whom she'd looked up, with whom she'd been infatuated, even, since she first heard her name mentioned in passing in a brief chapter of an obscure book penned by a lesser known author and shelved in a section of the collegiate library that presented itself rather a home to spiders and mites than a smorgasbord of interesting literary selections - what if Nevina thought Elke's field of specialty to be silly or frivolous or impractical? It was a foolish reason, the young human knew, but knowing was not the same as being able to do anything about it. The potential sting of being dismissed by one's heroine was a powerful demotivator.
"Aaaahhhhhmmmmm," came a long, ponderous, time-biding noise from Elke. Dried evergreen needles, in fact no longer green, and pebbly yellowish soil creaked and crunched under the weather proofed leather of her boots, plumes of aerosolized dust exploding around her footfall in the sparsest patches of leaf litter.
"This and that," the young woman offered at first, but quickly decided such a vapid answer was even more unbecoming of one who claimed herself an intellectual than her true response would be. "I do like to dabble, I mean. The reading of omens and divination are my natural suits, but..." Her voice tucked itself into a softer, contemplative tone. "I suppose what really interests me is the study of magical energies. The laws of conservation, and the like." It was not a glamorous answer. So many of her fellow students held a love for spellcasting and potions and all the dazzling, romantic parts of magic that Elke could only wish she had, but she fancied herself more a physicist who happened to apply her knowledge to the magical arts rather than a mage with a penchant for the hard sciences.
The glint of a silver-scaled fish appeared briefly above the churning water as the creature made its cameo, not seeming to notice the two women traveling along the embankments of its home or anything other than the buzzing insects that hovered just above the river's surface. In a blink, it was gone, submerged again and now with a fuller belly. Swarms of lumbering gnats caught the light spilling between the trees like clouds of dandelion seeds.
"And more specifically," Elke continued, her mood becoming more comfortable, more mellow as she discussed the thing that was her passion. The thing that filled page upon page of her diary with related equations and observations and hypotheses. "What I'd really like would be to discover a way to perform magic with less damage to life energies." It was a lofty and, by all practical means, unobtainable goal, and Elke knew this. There were dozens of mages, magicians, witches and alchemists before her whose goals had been shared, and yet - here they were after centuries, still requiring the exchange of one energy for another.
"To cause less harm in spellcasting," Elke summarized. "To self and to others. While still being able to perform strong magic." In essence, the subtext read, to be a miracle worker.
A jagged and abrupt rise in their path wrapped up her discussion momentarily as she and the elf searched for the best way to scale the tiny cliff, searching for sturdy, gnarled roots and well-anchored stones where they could have a safe foothold. Beside them, the roar of a waterfall, short but incredibly powerful, attempted to drown out their conversation. The steep grade lasted only for a few paces in length, the dropoff raising just above Elke's head, and then they were above the whitewater and could resume their quick stroll anew, the water rushing past them downstream as they moved towards its source.
"I've made some progress," Elke noted. Not proudly, no, but almost reassuringly, as if she, herself, needed to hear that the entire idea of making magic without sacrificing life energy wasn't an unachievable dream. Though in truth, her progress thus far had been minute, limited to finding small energy stores in recently shed cervid antlers and tapping into the tiny reserves of a freshly plucked fruit.
"Promising results," she agreed with herself, and then passed the torch. "I don't know much about your origins, Pr--". No, Nevina had already rejected that title. "Lady Nevina," sounded fine, though. Just Nevina, as she'd been instructed, sounded too familiar, too disrespectful an endearment coming from someone like Elke - a toad fart - to someone as awesome as Nevina. "How did you find your path?"
A structure - obviously man made - interrupted the organic scenery and the conversation as they rounded a small blind, rising up as a marker of human civilization in the rugged wilderness. If this was their destination, they had reached it much more quickly than Elke had thought based on Nevina's description; they'd hardly trekked at all.
But as the pair approached, it became clear that this village was not now, nor recently inhabited by human life. Regardless of what turned a man into a beast, there had to first be a man, and this place was devoid of them. Surely this was not the intended destination.
A crumbling well formed of smooth river rocks greeted them first, and the remains of wooden houses still teetering on their main beams stood shyly behind like a team of lost horses. Their thatched roofs had caved in, the hungry, gaping mouths of the cavernous rooms below swallowing the dusty straw. Time and weather had erased all but a few glimpses of what was once a footpath. One viewing the scene might have been able to imagine how the town - if about four buildings and a well could be called that - would have looked before its decay, but now only a few skeletal traces of civilization remained.
There was life here. Plenty of it. But none of it human. Thousand-legged insects slithered through the square frames that had once housed window panes into the berry-laden brambles and black truffles that had seized their chance to make a life in the packed dirt floors of the abandoned homes. Every corner on every building found itself full of birds nest or beehive, and the soft pattering of something like tiny rodent feet gave away well-camouflaged positions.
"I wonder what this was," the mageling pondered aloud. A waterline on the old wooden beams indicated that this area was prone to flooding. Perhaps the old inhabitants had simply grown tired of needing to scrape the mud and mildew from their walls each spring?
A more pressing question came to mind, then - previous topic of discussion on academic origins forgotten, "Do you think the werewolf might have stayed here before it reached Myerleigh?"
But given that she was, indeed, with Nevina, the answer did not yield itself so freely. After all, this was the woman to whom she'd looked up, with whom she'd been infatuated, even, since she first heard her name mentioned in passing in a brief chapter of an obscure book penned by a lesser known author and shelved in a section of the collegiate library that presented itself rather a home to spiders and mites than a smorgasbord of interesting literary selections - what if Nevina thought Elke's field of specialty to be silly or frivolous or impractical? It was a foolish reason, the young human knew, but knowing was not the same as being able to do anything about it. The potential sting of being dismissed by one's heroine was a powerful demotivator.
"Aaaahhhhhmmmmm," came a long, ponderous, time-biding noise from Elke. Dried evergreen needles, in fact no longer green, and pebbly yellowish soil creaked and crunched under the weather proofed leather of her boots, plumes of aerosolized dust exploding around her footfall in the sparsest patches of leaf litter.
"This and that," the young woman offered at first, but quickly decided such a vapid answer was even more unbecoming of one who claimed herself an intellectual than her true response would be. "I do like to dabble, I mean. The reading of omens and divination are my natural suits, but..." Her voice tucked itself into a softer, contemplative tone. "I suppose what really interests me is the study of magical energies. The laws of conservation, and the like." It was not a glamorous answer. So many of her fellow students held a love for spellcasting and potions and all the dazzling, romantic parts of magic that Elke could only wish she had, but she fancied herself more a physicist who happened to apply her knowledge to the magical arts rather than a mage with a penchant for the hard sciences.
The glint of a silver-scaled fish appeared briefly above the churning water as the creature made its cameo, not seeming to notice the two women traveling along the embankments of its home or anything other than the buzzing insects that hovered just above the river's surface. In a blink, it was gone, submerged again and now with a fuller belly. Swarms of lumbering gnats caught the light spilling between the trees like clouds of dandelion seeds.
"And more specifically," Elke continued, her mood becoming more comfortable, more mellow as she discussed the thing that was her passion. The thing that filled page upon page of her diary with related equations and observations and hypotheses. "What I'd really like would be to discover a way to perform magic with less damage to life energies." It was a lofty and, by all practical means, unobtainable goal, and Elke knew this. There were dozens of mages, magicians, witches and alchemists before her whose goals had been shared, and yet - here they were after centuries, still requiring the exchange of one energy for another.
"To cause less harm in spellcasting," Elke summarized. "To self and to others. While still being able to perform strong magic." In essence, the subtext read, to be a miracle worker.
A jagged and abrupt rise in their path wrapped up her discussion momentarily as she and the elf searched for the best way to scale the tiny cliff, searching for sturdy, gnarled roots and well-anchored stones where they could have a safe foothold. Beside them, the roar of a waterfall, short but incredibly powerful, attempted to drown out their conversation. The steep grade lasted only for a few paces in length, the dropoff raising just above Elke's head, and then they were above the whitewater and could resume their quick stroll anew, the water rushing past them downstream as they moved towards its source.
"I've made some progress," Elke noted. Not proudly, no, but almost reassuringly, as if she, herself, needed to hear that the entire idea of making magic without sacrificing life energy wasn't an unachievable dream. Though in truth, her progress thus far had been minute, limited to finding small energy stores in recently shed cervid antlers and tapping into the tiny reserves of a freshly plucked fruit.
"Promising results," she agreed with herself, and then passed the torch. "I don't know much about your origins, Pr--". No, Nevina had already rejected that title. "Lady Nevina," sounded fine, though. Just Nevina, as she'd been instructed, sounded too familiar, too disrespectful an endearment coming from someone like Elke - a toad fart - to someone as awesome as Nevina. "How did you find your path?"
A structure - obviously man made - interrupted the organic scenery and the conversation as they rounded a small blind, rising up as a marker of human civilization in the rugged wilderness. If this was their destination, they had reached it much more quickly than Elke had thought based on Nevina's description; they'd hardly trekked at all.
But as the pair approached, it became clear that this village was not now, nor recently inhabited by human life. Regardless of what turned a man into a beast, there had to first be a man, and this place was devoid of them. Surely this was not the intended destination.
A crumbling well formed of smooth river rocks greeted them first, and the remains of wooden houses still teetering on their main beams stood shyly behind like a team of lost horses. Their thatched roofs had caved in, the hungry, gaping mouths of the cavernous rooms below swallowing the dusty straw. Time and weather had erased all but a few glimpses of what was once a footpath. One viewing the scene might have been able to imagine how the town - if about four buildings and a well could be called that - would have looked before its decay, but now only a few skeletal traces of civilization remained.
There was life here. Plenty of it. But none of it human. Thousand-legged insects slithered through the square frames that had once housed window panes into the berry-laden brambles and black truffles that had seized their chance to make a life in the packed dirt floors of the abandoned homes. Every corner on every building found itself full of birds nest or beehive, and the soft pattering of something like tiny rodent feet gave away well-camouflaged positions.
"I wonder what this was," the mageling pondered aloud. A waterline on the old wooden beams indicated that this area was prone to flooding. Perhaps the old inhabitants had simply grown tired of needing to scrape the mud and mildew from their walls each spring?
A more pressing question came to mind, then - previous topic of discussion on academic origins forgotten, "Do you think the werewolf might have stayed here before it reached Myerleigh?"