Cryptic Recesses: An Arcane Interlude
No blossom compares to the gallow weeds.
~ Darkonian aphorism. Roughly translated: “Life seems most vibrant to those closest to death.”
* ~ * ~ *
Death concentrates the mind. Most have heard this from the fireside recollections of an old soldier, scarred with one battle too many. Others might hear it from the lips of a condemned sinner, lucky to escape the law at the last stroke. In each case, the experiences are broadly the same. A dilation of time. A compression of emotion. A clarity that strips away the incidental, and leaves the brain cleanly apprised of a naked certainty.Regardless, the gains in clarity from merely facing death are truly insignificant next to the clarity one gains from embracing death.
When one is free from humors and dura – liberated from the fleshy treachery of grey matter and the flux of fallible organs – all uncertainty and vicissitude disappears. All that remains is one’s purpose, purified by the flame of rational thought, unsullied by sentiment or qualm.
Understandably, very few have even heard of this elevated condition; fewer still have sought it. Of the handful to find their way to me, Scherbinung was the first.
* ~ * ~ *
Even among the variegated, cosmopolitan citizens of this realm, Scherbinung stood out. His features were angular and deeply carved, with a certain set to his almond-colored eyes that marked him as different from the average Darkonian. Distant memories suggested to me that he might be part-Olvish. He wore his black hair long, in a top-knot. His style of dress favored loose, flowing silks.None of this mattered, naturally, in the long run. The Becoming stripped him of his features, just as it consumed his strange eyes, his tied hair, and his foreign clothes. As it ravaged his exterior shell, it refined and focussed his intellect.
By the early months of 652, Scherbinung was already skilled enough to help with the groundwork in the Peering Project. Instructing him as a servant was easy – he had a precision to his methods which made my heavy-handed Reach unnecessary. His autonomy was a refreshing change compared to the rest of my servants, most of whom were literally mindless, and the rest who might as well be as far as my experiments were concerned.
Together, over the course of the year, we converted the High Tower into an arcane refraction well. This would be the first stage of the Peering Project. In the southern wall, we opened a massive circular window to the outside, fully twenty feet in diameter, and inscribed with runes and sigils. This was to be our Passage through the planar boundaries, and I explained this once - and once only - to Scherbinung. He only ever needed to hear something once. He gauged my teachings well, never speaking out of turn, and weighing his thoughts well before voicing them. Scherbinung was a model student.
The crows – normally gregarious and eager to serve – were absent during this time. It was as though they could sense the area’s growing magical intensity. When I needed them for a task, I would have to meet them lower in the castle, away from the buildup.
In a human, such reticence would have been annoying. But in an animal, this canny self-preservation was strangely gratifying to see. And who could blame them for keeping their distance? Even before we began our ley-markings, the area fairly hummed with energy. Cycles of the moon, high-altitude thunderstorms, and the gusty sloughing of the wind… all these served to channel latent energies into the tower. Thaumaturgical conduits stored them in the well, building steadily through the cycles of days, weeks, and months.
Scherbinung took over the purely mechanical preparations in the autunm, casting the spells with growing mastery, as I devoted myself to the paperwork. This was the most important step. As in any venture, careful planning was essential - and this held no less for the dead. Already free from the shackles of sleep, hunger, and boredom, our time was a great empty book lying open to fill, presenting new orders of efficiency far beyond anything human. Eyes that no longer needed light to see also no longer waited until daytime to read. To make the maximal use of this efficiency, one needed careful timetables and flowcharts.
A partial, but important, liberation for the mind lay in the realm of casting spells. A living wizard’s skull-full of porridge is subject to the cycles of day and night, and sleep and wakefulness. Now, after the Becoming, whatever physical remnants of the brain are no longer beholden to any cycle. The greatest liberation is the ability to sit down immediately after casting a wracking spell, and then remastering it all over again.
One benefit I will concede for the human condition, however, lies in the fingerwork. After several painful early experiences with the physical limitations of my own cadaverous tissue, I took to wearing a ring for tasks like writing, or measuring fine quantities of reagents. The ring possessed an enchantment that even novice apprentices would find trifling – the magic to handle something at a slight distance without touching, as if with a magic hand. Yet it was essential for one such as myself, with my necrological handicap literally and figuratively snapping at my fingertips, despite all the mightiest sorcery at my disposal.
An object lesson, if ever there was one.
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