• Closed • Only Memories Remain

[Doran]

Zi’da 3, Arc 710

After A scholar of blades

The Mortalborn spun around just in time to see Sintih fall. He immediately dropped his sword and extended his arms to catch him and keep him from getting hurt any worse than he already was. He didn’t know what exactly had happened, apart from the fact that the boy had apparently used some sort of magic, but losing consciousness like that couldn’t be normal. In all the arcs that he had known Beira he had never seen her in such a condition, and she had not practiced one, but several domains.

He placed him on the ground as quickly and gently as he could and frantically checked if he was still breathing and if his heart was still beating. Don’t you dare die on me! he thought as he placed his index finger and his middle finger against the side of his neck. You are all that is left of her. I promised that I would keep you safe. She’ll never forgive me!

When he felt a pulse, he let out a sigh of relief. He hadn’t even been aware that he had been holding his breath until then.

The boy still hadn’t come to though, so the Mortalborn took off his cloak and draped it across his body so that he would stay warm before he knelt down next to him so that he would be able to detect any changes in his condition and so that Sintih would see somebody familiar when he finally regained consciousness. As he looked at the face that was so eerily similar to Beira’s and yet so different, a thought suddenly entered his mind. What if …?

“Forgive me”, he whispered and abruptly reached for Sintih’s hand. “But I need to know.” He needed to know how exactly she had died and if she had been in any pain. Nobody had been able to or willing to tell him what had happened to her, and he had blamed himself since he had received that letter. If he had been there, with her, he might have been able to prevent it. If he had taken her away from her family, he might have been able to save her and give her the life that she deserved. She had died much too soon.

He needed to see her one last time even though it would cost him dearly. Unlike his father’s abilities his own always came with a price, pain, weakness and sometimes even worse. But he would probably never get another chance. He doubted that Sintih would agree if he was awake. He didn’t know how he could possibly explain himself to him. Would Sintih even believe that he was the son of an Immortal and that he had been alive for nearly four hundred arcs? He’d probably think that he was using some sort of dark magic.

This was the only way …

[Sintih]

Sin opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling of his room. He knew from experience he'd fall asleep again if he remained in bed so he forced himself to sit up straight. The single sun rose above the horizon, having been moving about the sky on his own for some thirty odd trials now. The light of the sun lit up his room as Sin slid his legs out of bed and yawned deeply. He scratched his head and headed for the door. Despite the early hour, the noise from outside was starting to begin, the many people living in Andaris beginning their day.

He was halfway down the stairs before he remembered something, a conversation with his parents. Sin quickly turned around and moved back up the stairs. "Mother? Father?" Sin pushed the only other door on the second floor open to reveal another bedroom, this one with a large two person bed in it. Sin walked over to it and pulled the sheets back, seeing nothing but shards spread out all over the mattress. "Congratulations." Sin sighed softly, untouched by the scene before him. He pulled the covers back fully, over the end of the bed before proceeding to gather up all the little shards of crystal in the bed.

As he piled up the various sized crystals, Sin stopped to take out two of them, each one about the size of a finger and put them aside on the table next to the bed. The candle from last night had melted down to a little stump, which told Sin that his parents had been up late talking about something important again. He placed the two crystals next to the candle and checked the bed once more for any crystals he might have missed. Satisfied with his work, Sin left the room and headed down stairs, taking his father's backpack from near the door and heading back up. He emptied the bag out and dropped it all on the ground, quite unceremoniously. There were just some survival tools in it and a flask for liquids. When it was empty, Sin started to push the crystals in it.

All in all, the crystal filled up the backpack quite nicely. "So little left? I guess that how it goes, hmm?" Sin said to himself as there didn't seem to be anyone else in the house. A break later Sin closed the door behind him, fed, washed, clothed and backpack on his back. He headed into the crowd and towards his destination. Several breaks later, Sin stopped the horse he'd rented near the front porch. After all these arcs, the place still looked like someone lived in it. It had been difficult at first but Sin had gotten over the loss of his ancestral home. Seeing it now, Sin couldn't even muster up those feelings if he tried. He tied the horse to one of the many fence posts around the farm. It was only a short walk from there so the horse could rest and eat. As Sin passed the house, he noticed the window that once belonged to his bedroom. Many memories came to him at once. He'd spent many arcs in there.
Beira, in all her glory, was sitting with crossed legs at the end of his bed. Her eyes were closed when Sin peeked through his. For a while now, they had been sitting there like that, legs crossed, eyes closed. He understood his mother was doing something but she hadn't explained quite what it was. He was going to learn magic from her, he knew that much, and he shouldn't disturb her until she told him so, so he was doing that. All in all, the whole magic learning was quite boring so far, just sitting. Sin shifted a bit and pulled his shoulders back to stretch his back when he suddenly felt like he fell sideways.

In the next moment, Sin was floating in empty nothingness. He could see a myriad of colors everywhere he looked and his own body was well defined in this mosaic of color around him. He turned around and looked down, seeing nothing but endless colors below him as well. He swung his arms around, beginning to panic in this strange environment, this alien world. His mother appeared in front of him, holding out her hand to him. Sin managed to grasp onto it and pulled himself towards his mother, who promptly hugged him. Safely in his mother's arms, Sin looked around at the wonder around him. The more he peered into the colors around him, the more he realized they weren't just random or chaotic but they were showing him things. He could see trees and people, animals, empty spaces or monsters roaming the frozen peaks of mountains. He saw the bustling city, many races mixing together and moving about, a storm on the ocean and half fish mer moving across the ocean floor. He could see a little farm house as well. It looked so familiar and he stretched his neck to get a better look at it. He managed to zoom in a little closer and kept going and going as the house grew in size. When it approached at a rapid pace, Sin turned to hide in his mother's embrace, prepared to crash safely in her arms. When the crash never came and Sin peeked out from one eye, he looked at his mother, sitting at the end of his bed, smiling at him. "We'll start practicing tomorrow, dear."
Sin looked at the hole he'd dug in the soft ground next to a brook. The backpack stood leaning against one of the trees that formed a small shaded resting area in the open fields around it. To call it a forest was a big stretch but the shade provided ample opportunity to rest. The fields around this place were owned by three different farms so it had quite a bit of traffic during the harvesting season. It was quiet now and Sin was the only person there. He pulled the backpack closer and opened it up. The crystals within reflected the light of the sun in a beautiful rainbow of colors as he poured them in the hole. Sin shook the backpack as he held it upside down, making sure all the pieces were out before he started filling the hole back up with the dirt he'd just dug.

His hands were dirty from digging the hole but Sin didn't really care. The took his father's knife and walked around the little brook, looking for and cutting off a piece of dead bark from one of the trees here. In very crude letters, Sin carved two words vertically on the bark, one next to the other. "Mother, Father. I hope you like it." Sin stabbed the bark into the loose dirt he'd dug before stepping on it, making sure the ground was solid again. Walking in place for a few trills, Sin did his best to press the dirt down. Once his hands had been washed in the brook, Sin threw the backpack back on his back and started heading back to the farmhouse he'd been born in and lived in for the first ten arcs of his life.
There was a bright white flash before Sin could see properly. "I'll never get used to that." Sin said, his voice sounding like a combination of musical chimes. A first look at the world around him showed him nothing but bright, white crystals forming various buildings around a circle shaped square he was standing in. All around him dozens, if not hundreds, of crystals were walking about, all of them shaped like people. Sin didn't seem surprised at the sight. He started walking away from the bright white light behind him and passed various crystal buildings and people. It looked like a capital city made out of crystal.

As he walked, Sin obviously had a goal. His steps were deliberate and without hesitation as he stepped up a set of stairs to a building a little higher than the others around it. Not so much that it stood out from a distance but clearly different from the ones around it from up close. As Sin walked up the crystal stairs and towards the crystal door at the top, his reflection grew larger and larger in the crystal surface of the door. When he stepped up the final step, Sin came face to face with a thin crystal humanoid. It lacked anything in the way of facial features to discern anything by.

Dressed in light fabric robes, the crystal humanoid seemed to be made up of many smaller pieces of crystal, unlike the others he'd seen on his way over. Near his forehead, the crystal man wore something akin to a crown, two larger pieces sticking up to the dark sky above. The reflection reached out and touched Sin's crystal hand as he placed it on the door. I look so thin... As Sin imagined himself from Idalos, the image from his mind flickered over the crystal man in the reflection and the Eidisi seemed to fit right over the crystal reflection in front of him, as if both were from the same.

Sin pushed and the door opened without a sound. Inside, his parents sat, waiting for him. "Took you long enough." His mother chimed in her clear voice. Her chimes always sounded happy when she spoke. "What was so important that you called me out class?" Sin chimed back, his chimes slower and more hesitant. "We wanted to talk before you wake up." Rudi's chimes were deeper and longer but no less clear than his wife's. Beira and Rudi looked completely different from their son here. While they still had little cracks on their features and seemed a little more blocky than he remembered them, both of them looked like exact copies of themselves back in Idalos. Rudi, rugged, strong, with hawk like features, smiling at his son. Beira, a little plumper, wise and knowledgeable beyond him, smiling at her son.

[Doran]

As the Mortalborn delved into the boy‘s mind, he suddenly found himself looking at the false Eidisi who had apparently just woken up. Sintih didn’t seem to be particularly concerned which he found strange to say the least. Should somebody whose parents were dying not be completely desperate? Why was Sintih not crying? Why was he not screaming in anguish? Did he care so little about the two people that had given him life?

Or was he maybe looking at the wrong memory? He had wanted to see the trial of Beira’s death, but his abilities were not always the most accurate, and the mind was a complicated und unpredictable thing at the best of times. As he considered the possibility of having made a mistake, he wondered if he should withdraw from Sintih’s mind or maybe try again, but in the end he decided to remain where he was. Maybe he would not see her death, but he would see her again, and that was the most important thing anyway.

He followed Sintih to his parents‘ bedroom. Upon seeing the crystals where he had expected to find two Eidisi, he furrowed his brow. He couldn’t make sense of what was in front of him. What had happened to Beira and Rudi? Why had they turned into crystals upon their death? He had never heard of anything like that before. What exactly were they? Not Eidisi, that much was obvious. But what else? And why was Sintih congratulating them? Was life considered some sort of punishment among his people?

His confusion only deepened as Sintih proceeded to gather his parents‘ remains – for that was what the crystals likely were – and put them in his backpack. As he realized where the false Eidisi was going, he felt a sharp pain in his chest for a moment. He immediately recognized the farm house even though he had only been there once, arcs before. He had persuaded Beira to move. Up until that moment he had been convinced that he had done the right thing, but now he could not help but wonder if she had missed her old home.

He decided to delve deeper. He needed to know more about what had happened to Beira. He needed to find out what exactly her family’s secret was – and if there was any way to bring her back. If there was no real body, could a fragment of her still exist somewhere?

---
Instead of listening to a conversation between her and her family, he found himself looking at Beira, sitting cross-legged at the end of her son’s bed. She looked exactly the way he remembered her, and for a moment the desire to touch her, to take her into his arms was nearly overwhelming, but his abilities didn’t work that way. He could see what the person he touched was seeing and hear what they were hearing, but he could not interact with their memories. That was the most important difference between his powers and those of a Dreamwalker. He would never be anything more than a bystander, forced to watch, but forever unable to intervene, no matter how much he wanted to do so.

In the beginning this memory was just as confusing as the first, but after a while he realized just why the world around Sintih suddenly seemed so strange and colourful. Beira had initiated him. He had never known Sintih as anything but a stubborn and spiteful young man who overestimated his own abilities by far, but Beira would never have initiated anybody if she hadn’t been completely sure that they would be able to handle it, especially not her only child.

Maybe, he considered, Sintih who had always been so weak and sickly was simply more skilled in the mental department than in the physical department, although he had yet to see him make any great discoveries. Maybe, he thought, there was still hope for Sintih though.

He decided to move on to the next memory despite the fact that he could feel the beginnings of a headache. He still hadn’t found what he was looking for, the one thing that would finally allow him to make sense of the mystery. There was a strange sort of hunger inside his soul now.

---
He saw Sintih standing in front of a hole that he had dug next to a brook. For a moment he wondered why he had not simply had his parents buried in a graveyard like most people would have done, but of course that had been impossible. People would have wondered why Sintih wanted to have a bag full of crystals buried and asked where the bodies were. Beira’s – and thus Sintih’s and Rudi’s - real nature was still as much of a mystery as ever to him, but he was convinced that they had had a good reason to keep it a secret. Maybe she had been like him, forever fearing those that sought to kill her for the magic inside her soul.

She would have liked it here, he thought as he took a look around before he finally moved on. He could feel that he was very close to the solution now. He only needed to delve a little deeper. He just hoped that Sintih would stay unconscious a while longer – and that he would not feel any different when he woke up, that he would never realize that he had been inside his mind. He had no idea how he would be able to justify what he had done.

----
He found himself in a world totally unlike his own, a world of shimmering crystals, populated by crystal people, foreign beyond measure and impossibly beautiful at the same time. As he admired the sights around him, he wondered if he was the first outsider ever to visit this place, what its name was and why he had never heard of it before. Was there any way to come here outside of Sintih’s memory or would this be the first and the last time he would ever see the crystal city?

So this is what they really look like, he realized as he saw Sintih’s reflection. Beneath the facade of an Eidisi existed a creature made of crystals. He watched with bated breath as the boy entered a house. As he realized just who was waiting inside, his heart skipped a beat. It was her. She looked totally different in this body, and yet he recognized her almost instantly. How? Why? How could it be that Beira and her husband still existed in this dreamlike crystal world when they had died in the waking world?

He wanted to reach out to her, to touch her and see if her skin felt like crystals as well. He wanted to ask her what was going on, but of course she would not be able to hear him. Why had she never told him? Why had she kept her true nature from him all those arcs? She could have trusted him. He would never have betrayed her. He would have understood. But then he remembered that he had never dared to confide in her either.

He had never told anybody that his father was an Immortal, but had spent his entire life pretending to be human. For a moment he could not help but wonder what would have happened if they had told each other their secrets, if they had been honest with each other from the beginning. He looked at her, to burn that image in front of him into his mind forever, and then he abruptly withdrew from the memory and returned to his own reality.

As he let go of Sintih’s hand and tried to fight the headache that was much stronger now something suddenly occurred to him. “Yludih”, he whispered. That was what Beira was. That was what they all were. Yludih. He knew that he should stop now, before the side effects became too severe, but he needed to find out one more thing. He needed to know what Beira had seen in Rudi, why she had married him and if she had really loved him. He reached for Sintih one last time.

[Sintih]

The view changed every few trills now, leaving more impressions and moments behind than real clues. Beira, looking young and beautiful as Doran remembered her, wearing her university uniform, walking in a house and being greeted by Rudi, young and handsome, who put his hand on her stomach. "Hello, little guy."
Rudi and Beira, standing over a crib with a tiny baby in it, both of them looking with worry and fear written all over their faces before Rudi put his arm around Beira and kissed the side of her forehead.
Beira, sitting in a rocking chair, holding her hands out towards a tiny little Eidisi as it tried to walk the few steps from Rudi's hands to hers, everyone smiling.
Through an all too familiar window, Beira, smiling, and Sintih looking out of it, watching Rudi working in the fields all by himself as the sun quickly passed from morning to evening.
Sin, young, holding a wooden stick and swinging it at his father as he blocked it, both smiling before Rudi started running and Sin tried to chase him. Countless more similar images flashed by with Sin slightly bigger and stronger every time, still losing every time.
A young Eidisi proudly showing Beira the shiny rock he had fished out of the brook with Rudi standing behind him, smiling at Beira. Similar images with different objects and once even a big centipede.
A closed door and voices behind it, Beira and Rudi arguing. Many nights of arguing as Sin lay in bed, listening. The stone walls of the house showed it to be a city house.
Sin, sitting in a chair, tucked into layers of cloth, watching from his balcony over the crowd in the street below, smiling and waving as his father returned home.
Rudi taking some off the weight of his son's backpack onto his own as the two were hiking. Different images linked to these events of father and son traveling together for a trial at a time, always coming home before sunset. Setting up a tent together, gathering berries, watching a fire burn below a juicy looking rabbit, Rudi throwing Sin in a river as both were naked, swimming together
A hazy image of Rudi, seen from the something he was carrying in his arms, out of breath, panting as he ran for someone's life.
Three Eidisi sitting around a table, slowly eating in peace. Content.
"Ugh..." Sintih stirred and shifted, pulling his hand away from Doran's touch to rub his forehead. A long whimper slipped through his lips before he opened his eyes. What was he doing that he his head was spinning so much? Temporarily confused, Sin looked up at the figure leaning over him. "Father?" Sin blinked and blinked again as the blue shaded skin and scars unblurred into a slightly tanned human skin and a trimmed black beard. As the memories flashed past, Sin remembered blinking behind Doran and swinging his sword at him. He quickly pulled away from Doran as he realized who was holding him. Sin tried to roll away from Doran, over the cold morning grass he had been lying on.

When he'd done a full roll, Sin pushed himself up off the ground, his head spinning as he did. Holding himself in the half pushed up stance he was in, Sin shook his head and tried to blink the vertigo away. He'd been in such an advantageous position to finally teach this man a lesson but now he was lying on the ground here with the world spinning around and hazy vision. "What the... uhhh... What did you do to me?" Sin looked at Doran, seeing more of a blurred form than anything specific, as he forced himself up on his knees, both hands firmly on the ground to keep him from spinning out.

Forcing himself to stand, refusing to be seen as weak in front of this man, Sin pushed himself up one leg only to fall right over and sit down in the grass. He shook his head again without much effect before locking his eyes on Doran. One, two. Breathe in through the nose, mouth closed. One, two, three, four. Out through pursed lips. Repeat, focus on the rhythm to calm yourself. Just like the doctor ordered. Sin repeated the same breathing exercise until the spinning slowed down and then stopped. His eyes never left the human in front of him.

[Doran]

The view changed so quickly now that it made the Mortalborn’s head spin. None of the brief flashes of memory revealed why Beira had fallen for Rudi, a man that was neither a mage nor a scientist, but they all clearly told him one thing: That she had loved him, and he had loved her. The scenes that he witnessed were so sickeningly sweet that it was almost unbearable. The fact that she was even more beautiful than he remembered made it worse. She seemed so happy in those memories, so carefree. The Beira he had met in that farm house had been but a pale shadow of her former self. What had happened?

He saw Sintih as a baby, Sintih taking his first steps, Sintih playing with his father. The scenes were happy for the most apart, apart from one. He couldn’t help but wonder why Beira and Rudi were arguing. The boy had said that it was because of him, but he found that hard to believe. He had never told Beira of his feelings and that he had wanted to do nothing more than take her away from her family and make her his. Was it because he had persuaded her to move back to Andaris – or because they were so worried about their son?

He saw the family peacefully sitting around a table and eating. Part of him was happy for Beira because she looked so very content and in love with her husband, but another part of him was almost overcome with jealousy. If things had gone differently, it could have been him, sitting there with her, although he knew now that he could never have given her the child that she had wanted so much. She was not the Eidisi he had thought she was.

---

As the memory ended and he returned to his own reality, he felt confused and disoriented for a moment and held his head that felt as if it were going to break in two. As he looked at the boy in front of him again he realized that he had begun to move and quickly let go of him. “No”, he replied curtly and in a harsher tone than was necessary as Sintih spoke. “I’m not your father.”

“I didn’t do anything”, he proceeded to lie. For a moment he had thought about asking Sintih about the Yludih and the crystal city to find out if there was a chance for him to see Beira again, but now he realized that he could never do that. The boy would not understand what he had done, and he prayed that he would never find out.

If he wanted to find out more about the crystal city, he would have to do so on his own.

“You used magic, overstepped and lost consciousness. I merely tried to make sure that you were still alive.”

“Careful”, he warned him as he tried to stand up and promptly fell again. “You should wait a bit before you try to get up again. I think it’s best if we end our training for today”, he decided.

“Are you in any pain?” he asked and tried to hide the fact that he felt quite weak himself.

[Sintih]

The breathing was helping. Even if it hadn't been designed for mitigating the effects of overstepping, the breathing exercise helped Sin to calm down in general as well which was, he suspected, the purpose of the exercise. Not so much to regulate the amount of air taken in but to help calm the user down so their breathing would regulate itself. The spinning feeling in his head slowed down to a bearable tilted feeling as he was sitting, staring at Doran. "I'm still alive." Sin felt like he wanted to say something meaner to the man, something snarky but he couldn't muster up the strength to be angry.

Sin did feel a slight prick of success as he saw Doran remained on the ground as well. He wasn't sure but it looked like he'd managed to at least hit him somewhere painful. But the prick vanished as Doran asked him if he was in pain. Why did he ask? It wasn't like he cared about Sintih. He'd shown it quite clearly when they first met. From his words before, he knew Sin had overdone himself with magic. Perhaps using it in anger wasn't the best idea. "There's no pain. Just dizzy, my head won't stop spinning." Sin admitted with a sigh.

He tried again to stand up and managed, although a little unbalanced. He got as far as the his training long sword stuck in the ground behind where he had reappeared. He leaned heavily on it for a moment, waiting for the dizziness to pass or lessen a moment before attempting to tug the sword back out. Much to his embarrassment his arms refused to create strength and Sin couldn't even pull the blade out of the ground. It was as if it was stuck in stone, despite it being not more than four fingers deep into cold dirt.

He placed both hands on the guard and leaned on it, panting like he'd just ran here from the King's palace. "It's too heavy. I'll get it in a moment." Sin managed to walk over to the benches around the training ground, placed for resting or observing other combatants. Without much ceremony, Sin plonked himself down on one of them, holding his head in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. One, two. Breathe in through the nose. One, two, three, four. Out through pursed lips. Sin focused back on his breathing to try and lessen the effects of overstepping until the symptoms went away on their own. All in all, he looked like he'd had a fun night last night.

[Doran]

“Obviously”, the Mortalborn remarked somewhat dryly as Sintih informed him that he was still alive. “Dead people can’t speak”, he added. He was relieved though. Beira would never have forgiven him if something had happened to her son while he was in his care. He wondered if they sometimes talked about what was happening in Idalos while they were in that crystal city together and if Sintih would mention their training session to her. Did Beira still care about the living, apart from her son? Did she still remember her previous life, and did she ever miss it? He couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was like to be like the Yludih although he had seen more and lived longer than most others.

While Sintih stubbornly attempted to get up again – surprisingly enough he succeeded this time – the Mortalborn remained kneeling on the ground as he didn’t trust his body yet. His head still felt as if somebody was hitting it with a hammer repeatedly – from the inside – and he was exhausted as if he had been running for miles. As he watched Sintih, he wondered if it would get better if he used his abilities more often or if he would only die faster.

He knew that he looked older now than when he had first found out what he was capable of – although not by much – but others of his kind, like Jesine, had even gained the ability to mark others and still seemed to be as young as ever. What was the difference between them and him? How had they been able to prevent the side effects?

The fact that Sintih tried to pull his sword out of the ground and failed distracted him from those vaguely unpleasant thoughts and gave him cause for concern. The boy seemed to be in worse shape than he was, although he had done less. With a sigh the Mortalborn rose to his feet and walked over to him. He wrapped one hand around the hilt of Sintih’s practice weapon, but realized that it was either stuck quite firmly or what he had done had affected him more than he had realized at first. He needed two hands to pull the sword out.

“Here you are”, he said as he sat down next to Sintih. The boy was breathing a little more easily now, he noticed, but he wasn’t sure if he could be left alone yet. “Does this happen to you very often?” he asked and wondered if there was any sort of medical treatment that could combat the side effects of overstepping. Maybe a combination of essential oils to ease his breathing and a mild pain killer, he thought, although he wasn’t sure what could be done about the mental effects of overstepping that were bound to exist.

“Maybe the longsword is still too heavy for you”, he mused as he recalled their fight. He had put his practice weapon away and was carrying his own blade again. “Maybe a short sword or a similar bladed weapon would be more appropriate. It doesn’t have quite the same range, but it should be easier to wield and is still quite an effective weapon.”

[Sintih]

I know plenty of dead people who won't shut up. At least Idalos dead. But you wouldn't understand if I told you that.

There was something about pain and internal suffering that overpowered the feeling of anger. Sitting on his bench and with Doran take a seat next to him, Sin found that he had very little in the way of anger or snide remarks to draw on. The spinning was slowing down, he hadn't overstepped that much, but for now focusing on his breathing was the way to go. If he took his attention off of that in order to yell or glare at Doran, he'd go spinning out of control right away. Sin moved his fingertips to his temples, trying to will his equilibrium to stay upright and stop running amok within his head.

At first, he didn't want to answer the scholar when he inquired as to Sin's current conditions. But as he was counting his breaths and shaping his lips to breathe out, he realized that he was sitting next to the man who'd first taught it to him and that he was still a doctor, of whatever variety. He didn't have to like the man to extract solutions from him and use them. "It depends. Like this it's usually only from using magic without proper control. Emotions are bad for magic. Otherwise, not really. I've learned the signs over the arcs and I know when to stop and take a break. It's also why in the nine arcs since we met I haven't passed a novice's skill in all this." Sin waved his hand over the collection of training weapons and the training field in front of them.

Despite the spinning head, anger started to bubble up once more when Doran straight up insulted his father's weapon. The longsword was perfect for him, as it had been for his father. Yet, deeper inside, Sin knew the truth as much as Doran did. The sword was too heavy to wield and Sin couldn't bring forth the strength needed to make use of the weapon as one should. Grasping his fingers around the hilt of the practice sword, Sin managed to drag it closer to him so it stood, point down, between his feet. With both hands on the handle, Sin dropped his head forward and rested his forehead on the wooden pommel.

"It was my father's weapon and his style. I can't just abandon it." Sin had learned quickly that mentioning parents and some sort of hint at how he'd lost them was a good way to either gain sympathy or move a conversation away from something he disliked. The difference between short and long sword were so vast that it might as well have been a completely different weapon type. But he'd seen people use it to great effect during practice and many people not in the Iron Hand had a large knife or short sword on their person for protection so it was definitely an accessible weapon. Why couldn't you have befriended and sent me to someone I could get along with, mother?

But he couldn't just give up something he'd worked ever since his he'd held his first pretend-sword stick and swung it at the empty air in front of him. His father had praised his swing as that of a future knight. With his head resting on the sword, Sin couldn't help the chuckle that escaped his lips. He remained like that for a while until the spinning had stopped completely. Then he raised his head and turned his head to Doran. "If I would choose to learn to wield a lighter blade like a short sword, could you teach me to slap someone in the face with it using that move of yours?" Sin lightly touched the cheek that had been hit with Doran's Plow Guard counter attack before. The corner of his lips had the slightest upward curl to them.

[Doran]

“Then you obviously need to learn to control them”, Doran replied as Sintih informed him that emotions were bad for magic. “Meditate. Stay focused. A man that acts on his impulses can never reach true greatness. When I was younger”, he spoke. There was a faraway look in his eyes for a moment, strange, considering that he barely looked to be thirty and would still be considered young by most standards. “I sometimes struggled to control my emotions as well. Eventually I came up with a simple exercise. I envisioned a flame that burned all the thoughts and feelings that were in my way until only that one goal remained. It might work for you as well.”

He doubted it though.

The revelation that Sintih was still a novice when it came to magic didn’t surprise him. In fact he had expected it. In all the time that he had known the boy he had not shown himself to be particularly talented at anything, unless one counted being rude and willful. But then he remembered the memory he had seen again. Beira would never have initiated somebody that would forever be stuck at novice level. She would not have wasted her or her student’s time. Unless she was one of those mothers that were blind when it came to her children?

He considered that possibility for a moment, but found it hard to believe that Beira would be so misguided. She was one of the most intelligent and reasonable women that he knew, and thus he remarked, somewhat reluctantly, “Your mother had faith in you. She was the one who made you a mage, was she not?” He acted as if he were not entirely sure how exactly Sintih had been initiated, but could probably make a good guess.

He was torn now, between his loyalty to Beira, his somewhat illogical dislike for her son and the things he had seen in those memories that clearly told a different story from what he had witnessed so far.

Of course it had been his father’s style. Why was it so easy to anticipate what the boy would say? Why did Sintih never do anything unexpected or think for himself? What was wrong with him? “You should not do something just because somebody else did it”, he informed him. “You are not your father. You are not your mother. You are your own person, with your own talents. If you spend your whole life trying to imitate somebody else, out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, you will never excel at anything.”

Mentioning your parents would earn you sympathy with most people, but he was not most people. His father was a god, and their relationship was strained at the best of times. He did not want to be like Ziell, the so called Immortal of Peace who had let so many people die because he was afraid to spill a bit of blood and who was proud of that fact.

As Sintih spoke about slapping someone in the face, the Mortalborn furrowed his brow. The boy’s wording left much to be desired, but then he had never had particularly eloquent. At least he had decided to see reason rather than insisting on using a weapon that he could barely lift. “I can teach you a number of different moves”, he told him. “If you pay heed to my advice and remain respectful. I do not want something like this to ever happen again. Next time you might not be as lucky. You might actually die, and even I cannot bring somebody back from that. And finally, I do not want to hear any more death threats, especially if you do not have what it takes to go through with them”, he spoke, remembering how Sintih had attacked him and told him to die, a fact that would have been laughable if the boy had not lost consciousness immediately afterwards.

[Sintih]

Control was indeed what he needed, control over his own body, his heart, his own mind and all the tools that his parents had left him with. It all needed to be controlled. He took note of Doran's exercise and promised himself he'd learn some sort of self control, something similar to this flame that the scholar spoke about but different. He'd rather hug a burning Aukari than to take on something that came from Doran. He would try it out, find his own way, manipulate and change it until it did what he needed it to do in the most efficient way for him to do it. Then he would claim all the glory for himself and never think of how Doran gave him the instructions to start off with every again.

He was surprised, though, that the man he thought nothing more than a leech on his mother had admitted to having emotional control problems as well. The few times he'd seen Doran that he remembered, Sin had always seen the man as devious and calculating, keeping everything close to his vest and his emotions under lock and key, completely useless for a scavenger such as him. But maybe there was more to him th-.. Sintih stopped his own train of thought before it got out of hand. No, there was nothing good about Doran apart from whoever cut and styled his hair.

When his mother was mentioned, Sin's head turned to Doran quicker than anything. There was the slightest hint of gritted teeth as he faced the scholar. What right did he think he have that he could about her? But his question touched upon a sore subject for the Eidisi. He wanted, with all his being, to answer that she was a great magician and that she had given him access to magic but Sin wasn't so sure if she had faith in him. Maybe if he hinted that towards Doran, the man might forget about her and him? He didn't really have a good reason for it but he did it anyway. "I thought so too. I thought she thought I had great potential. How little did I know back then..." The fact that his initiation in the magic had caused a near perfect and permanent sense of direction and distance between the two parties of the initiation was a fact he'd learned later.

The remark about his father's style and Sin's choice of weapon cut right through the residual effects of the overstepping. He pushed himself up from the bench, standing next to Doran, towering over the man. The longsword worked as a splendid and necessary cane in this situation. "What would you know? You were there for one trial and suddenly you're the expert, huh?" Unlike his previous outbursts towards Doran, this one was more controlled, a lower voice, more growling and no shouting. Realizing he was about to fall back into the exact same as before, after having just listened to a speech about how he had to control his emotions, Sin stopped himself there and sucked in a lungful of air. Refusing to use the flame Doran had mentioned, Sin just silently counted back from ten instead. For the ten trills it took him to count, Sin stood there quietly.

He could hear everything else Doran was talking about regarding his future training and he listened, although he highly doubted there would be any future anything for them. Why did everything this man said or did always riled him up so much? Something he'd seen through barely practiced magic had created a box around Doran in his mind that didn't allow any room for new impressions to join in. Even if Doran had tried anything with his mother, it obviously hadn't worked. She had remained home and together with his father and it had been tough for a time but then things got better and they all had a lot of fun. Of course they'd had hard times and problems, Sin had been a teenager like any other, going through a difficult time as a young boy close to becoming a man. But they had all survived and his parents had managed to achieve something very few Yludih ever managed. So then why did that one bit of time he remembered so vividly define a man so much for him?

If he could just turn off this anger or forget that short bit of time in his memory, all of this would have been so much easier. "I was stuck in bed for the first four arcs of my life. I had never spent any time with people my age when you showed up, six arcs after that. The first person I met around my age who wasn't the idiotic child of neighbor farmers was after spending about an arc in a bed in the city. Who else did you expect me to imitate from? The cool looking and smart doctor who came to my house to... to... to steal my mother?! The man who was such a genius back when she worked with him? Wasn't there anyone else you could lo-... like at that university?" Sin looked at Doran with sadness in his eyes before he walked away from the bench, holding the longsword with both hands as he dragged it across the floor towards the rack, putting it up against it. He didn't have the strength to lift the blade up high enough to slide it into it.

Sin put his back against the rack and just slid down, sitting down on the cold floor, feeling more exhausted than when he'd woken up from his overstepping just earlier. If he looked at him without that one bit, he actually thought that Doran was impressive. Even if he could only partially put the memory aside, the still thought that a man of Doran's age, with knowledge beyond that of people twice or three times his age, was impressive. He'd rather get pulled into four by a quartet of volareons than admit that to the man's face but through his mother, Sin had learned of and formed an image of a self-assured, handsome and square-jawed scholar, more poise than the king himself, some sort of flourishing, dashing rogue who's mind was his strongest weapon. Sin had had such an easy time relating to that image until it got shattered into a million pieces on that one trial, in that one bit.