Private Tales To Calm and to Control

[Maseno Luana]

The loss of his father and elder brothers was not something Maseno talked about freely unless prompted by another directly. Though his life at the Academy began quite early on, his position within the Luana family granted him some concessions few other Initiates were offered. He'd been able to see his family on a regular basis, and for this he was deeply grateful - perhaps greedily so in his younger years. Now? He felt guilt. Things were different now after the Revolution, but still many Initiates not of noble blood had not seen their family since their arrival.

Upwards of ten or more years. He couldn't fathom it.

A somber smile drifted her way as they cantered abreast following the road, "Not to worry. These sessions are about you, so do not fret on feelings of conceit or self-centeredness," he did chuckle at that. What a curious thing to say.

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Livia scowled at his chuckle, shooting him a look of protest. "What a very reassuring thing to say..." But not for long, Livia could not help but let out a light laugh. "Gods, what a relief." She further mused with sarcasm lightly dripping on her words. "It is simply much too hard to care about others." Livia grinned.

It had taken her quite some time to figure out how to navigate friendships and more coming to the Academy. It had been the cusp of Revolution, and the pressure of putting up a fight, to defend herself and make herself look stronger because she feared the letter going to her family to say she was dead devastated her. That kind of starting experience had left her distrustful for so long, and even when she did break past those walls she built, she still put herself first.

"You know... growing up, my father made me feel important. That I was chosen for a reason. The way he doted on me... I was glad to feel more than just a daughter bound to leave her family and marry into another. My mother would teach me discipline, made anything I used to find joy in into a lesson... She used to say it was to protect me, to give me skills to lean on in the future... but all I have left for her is disdain, whereas my father, I feel guilty taking his life despite learning what he did to me." The smile faded to something soft, a ghost of what used to be. "My brothers never had these relationships with our parents..." And that had been her very first taste of envy.

Maseno Luana

 

[Maseno Luana]

Well, he hoped he was catching her humor right and that she wasn't actually so conceited. The boy responded to her grinning sarcasm with a smile of waning concern. Livia did seem to have some good earnesty to her, which was reassuring in many ways. None of the Initiates he had ever come to know in any capacity beyond surface level was void of their own trauma and tribulations. They all had regrets and fears, just some were less willing to admit it than others.

"Magic has a way of tipping the scales unfairly, doesn't it?"

In more ways than simply on a battlefield. The possession of magical powers had the power to alter a child's entire life in Vel Anir and every single Initiate of the Academy was proof of that.

"Would you give it up?" he asked her curiously, "If you could?"

 

[Livia Quinnick]

"Would you give it up?"

She pursed her lips.

"If you could?"

Livia let out a nervous laugh before opening her mouth several times to answer. It was difficult, bittersweet her options. "I wished I could go back to the days I had the tracking magic. It was such a small gift for the Quinnicks, and my brothers too have a morsel of it's true power... we would play a game where we steal each other's treasures, track it down in the most unlikeliest of places... but after my corruption magic took hold, it was not my own magic that went askew. I was an unbalance to my brothers." And it was not until recently that Livia had figured out she had been the cause. Her brothers blame grief, just as Livia's hair lost it's colour at the ends. Grief did not play tricks on their magic, not like this.

"But now that I have lived a life as an Initiate the past three years, I feel as if I could not go entirely back to who I used to be. If I could, I would want to leave the noble ties and try my hand at the pearl trade." She grinned, hopeful. "Pearls used to be the largest luxury trade the Quinnicks were part of. It's what brought us the gift of being titled a noble house back in the day."

Maseno Luana

 

[Maseno Luana]

"Hmmm," Maz made a thoughtful sound, "there are more options now for us. You just might have a future in pearls, if you wish to make it so."

The Revolution had broken traditions and provided new doorways for many people, not just the Dreadlords of Vel Anir. If Livia so chose, she could doff the responsibilities of her house to make a living in their business and perhaps provide more support for their prosperity than a simple arranged marriage ever could. She needn't even give up her magic to do it.

He'd thought on this for his own self quite a lot. In the end, Maseno had no true grasp of his own future. There was far too much at play to have any semblance of a decision.

After some time pressing their horses along the road, with the sun now high in the sky, Maz brought his horse up along a bend just beneath a large hill marked by a single, massive oak tree.

"Do you see that tree?" he nodded as he loosed his reins to give his puffing horse its head, "that is our destination."

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Her eyes easily found where he pointed out, and Liv grew quieter. Was it nerves she felt? She was unsure what it was that Maz had planned, but the journey here seemed to go quicker than she thought, unable to truly comprehend what would now be asked of her. It was a daunting task to open herself to every truth she had kept hidden beneath, what she had ignored for so long.

"How did you find this place?" She asked, eager to keep the easy conversation flowing before they turned to what they came here to do.

Livia remembered what she had written the night before; the free flowing writing digging deep into her despair as a new Initiate and the many thoughts and emotions she had to simply hide and not deal with because she did not want to appear weak at such a crucial time as the Revolution happened upon them all.

"You would think I would have a spot like this with my magic, but I have not ever been able to find something so peaceful." Except for Silas' bed, but she rather let the blush creep on her cheeks than admitting such an intimate thing. Nor would she mention how often she had that tether tugging at her to move.

Maseno Luana

 

[Maseno Luana]

"I didn't," Maz replied lightly with a smile as he thought back to the first time he'd been brought here, "the Archon did."

He did not know the full story of how Zana had come to find such a place, but it supposed it hardly mattered. In the end, it wasn't simply the serenity and escape it offered, but something much more invisible. With a breath of anticipation, he leaned forward and swung his leg off his mount, boots hitting the ground. Reins in his hands, he nodded for Livia to follow and lead his horse off the road and into the tall grasses.

It was not to the oak tree that he moved initially, but to a small copse of trees where he tied his horse off where it could cool off in the shade and waited for Livia to do the same. Then it was a slow approach to the foot of the hill, but before ascending, he stopped and turned to face her, hands folding lightly at his back. Livia was quite a bit shorter than he, made all the more pronounced as he stood a few strides higher on the rising slope, but he did not look down upon her with any sense of betterment.

It was the same curiosity as before.

"What would you say if I told you I could ... turn off your magic?"

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Liv followed Maseno along the incline, looking up at the taller Initiate and furrowing her brows. He was thinking something, his lips parting just before thoughts turned to audible words. A question for her.

She stopped dead in her tracks, staring at him with narrowed eyes. She scrutinised him, waiting for a tell that would indicate he was not being truthful. But this was Maseno Luana. Infuriatingly well mannered before she spent time with him. "I... I do not...." Her brows furrowed deeper. She was scowling now, pursing her lips as she mulled over the idea.

"I would not believe you."

It could not be that easy. To dangle that information before her... it felt like the easy way out. "That some sort of test?" She asked, slowly climbing the steep hill with heavy footing, now marching past Maseno. Of course, she had never been here before, but her magic steered her the right way. Upwards was not a hard direction to follow.

 

[Maseno Luana]

The boy raised his brows and followed her progress as she bypassed him and continued up the hill, "That is a fair response."

He stood there, watching her walk up and away from him, and waited for her to notice what was happening the further up the hill she went.

"No test. No tricks."

It started ever so subtly, the dulling of her powers. The further up the hill she walked, the more she would feel them abate. And by reaching the top of the hill and the base of the tree, it was as if all the wind had been sucked from her lungs as the very aether of magic was simply vanished from her being.

Maseno watched and waited patiently where he stood.

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Livia trudged on ahead, determined to put it out of mind the sheer hope Maseno almost brought out in her. To have a reprieve from the underlying headaches, the restlessness of not sleeping at night, and the constant tug and pull of magic...

Slowly, she began to lose sense of it, sense of her directional magic. She whirled around, looking down at Maseno who still seemed so tall despite behind downhill from her. "What did you do, Luana?" Her brows deepened to a furrow, olive eyes narrowing. Livia raised her hand, calling forth her corruption magic but all she felt was absence. She had never been without her magic, except for that time in an ancient ruin when it had been reduced to a weak buzz.

"Maseno." Livia's hand curled to a fist, as if she were about to use it against him. She did not. "What is this?"

 

[Maseno Luana]

Ah, there it was. His expression shifted to one of contemplation beneath a slightly furrowed brow, "Honestly, I am not certain." Pushing off his heel, the Initiate slowly ascended the hillside to join her, then pressed on to the very top where the oak tree proudly grew.

"The Archon believes that at one point in time, this was may have been a Portal Stone," Maz spoke as he rounded the girth of the massive tree to the other side where the hill flattened out just enough to host a large, round and jagged stone slab. It was circular in shape, and it did appear that long ago in its history there were runes carved around the perimeter, but by now they had mostly worn away.

"Whatever the case," he paused by the slab and gave it a look of consideration, one arm still held at his back while his right hand lifted before him, "there exists no place for magic within its presence. We have taken to calling it the Void Stone and I come here every so often to... breathe."

He flexed his fingers and turned his hand as if attempting to summon any single thread of his powers. There was none. Simply natural air and the sunlight filtering through the great oak's canopy.

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Livia did not know what to say or feel in the absence of both her magic.

There was one persistent thought: she was weak without her magic.

But she followed Maseno, watched him walk around the oak, and point out the stone slab. She listened, hands restless by her side, eyes narrowed. Livia felt unsafe, without magic or proper weaponry. It was as if a threat was imminent. Anxiety filled her as Maseno spoke of Portal Stones, and that there was no mistake that their magic did not work here.

But he was not disturbed by the absence of his magic. Maseno was content, carefree that the very thing that sets them apart from normal humans was gone.

"And what did you feel the first time coming here?" She asked. Did he feel the panic she did?

 

[Maseno Luana]

"Scared, naturally," he admitted freely, "it was like someone had taken the blood from my veins or the air from my lungs."

Her own ability to stand there as she was without fleeing from the sensation was rather respectable indeed. Maseno recalled with great clarity how he'd refused to climb the hill once he had been made aware of its nature.

"I was much younger at the time ... ten summers, I think," his eyes narrowed in thought, "but I could not bring myself to go anywhere near the top of the hill for several visits. Now I come here when I need help finding inner peace... or just a quiet place to take a nap."

A smile spread across his face, well-humored in nature.

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Ten summers. It perplexed her just how young her cohorts had been with their magic, when she was close to four years with her own corruption magic. She never thought much of her compass magic growing up, only that it made her a winner each time herself and her brothers played their favourite game.

"A nap? I can barely sleep at night..." Unless she was beside Silas. He gave her peace of mind better than anything else she had tried in the past. "So then, you come here often?" She asked, brushing her fingers against the bark of the oak tree.

Livia had to accept it. If danger did come, she was not truly defenceless, and then there was Maseno. She had no doubt he would not leave her behind.

And so she sat, finding a comfortable spot amongst the protruding roots. "It feels as if something has been cut off from me... a missing limb..."

 

[Maseno Luana]

"Yes, I remember you telling me of your sleeping troubles," Maseno remarked calmly as he moved forward, carefully ascended the stone slab like a dais to stand at its center. With each successive visit he'd paid the stone, he believed he had become more intrinsically connected to it. Not through magic, but through some unseen, unconnected energy. He could feel at the very edges of his being a faint swirling. Like a vortex.

Like the remnants of a great surge of power that had leveled the original stone and left behind a great scar in the ether. He stood there with his back to Livia, facing the landscape before them. Rolling country hillsides fringed by forest. The green was vibrant and the day was clear. They had been very lucky indeed with the weather. Warm sun washed across him where he stood, and he closed his eyes to drink it in, both hands now quietly folded at his back.

"Not as often anymore," he said, thinking that it had been many months since he'd been here last. Years ago he made an effort to visit as often as he could, which between missions usually meant once a week.

Maseno inhaled deeply, slowly, his mind stretching out to find those barely-perceptible flows around the stone. He was greatly distracted by Livia's presence and his task of helping her - he would not be able to find them today, but it would not stop him from trying.

"Yes," a nod was the only movement his statuesque form made, "magic is a part of our being, down to our very soul. It is tied to us from birth like a fingerprint, though that does not always translate to our ability to control it. But, I did not bring you here to learn control over your magic. I brought you here to better understand yourself without it."

"So," he began, twisting just slightly at the middle to look back at her, "tell me what you are feeling right now. Everything, anything. No emotion is too small."

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Liv could see why Thraah had such a raging fancy for this guy. He looked so calm, so effortless in his stature that when he turned to look at her, Livia straightened up a little under his gaze.

"I feel..." Livia sighed, tearing her gaze from Maseno after he turned. Her gaze fell on the ground before her, her brows furrowing as she had to take the time to think of her answer. "I feel out of place. Weak... you know, nothing without my magic..."

She she sighed, throwing her head back to rest it against the trunk of the oak. "And then I feel frustrated. Frustrated that I think like that, that without magic, I am nothing. Nothing special." It certainly brought to light the true nature of how she saw herself. Prided herself in the unique aspect of her magic. Anyone could be a tracker, but not just anyone could find something that wished to remain lost.

"Without my compass magic.... I feel off course."

Maseno Luana

 

[Maseno Luana]

"You are far more capable than you believe."

Encouraging words offered on a faint smile. Maseno raised his brows at her and loosed one hand from his back to gesture at her, "You survived the academy for at least a year before the Revolution, at the infantile stages of control over your power. That is a feat in and of itself."

Livia would never know what their lives had been like, growing up at the academy from ages as young as 4. Even Fennec had been there longer than all of them - Maseno wasn't sure if she'd been born there, but she was the only one he knew of that had been there longer than anyone of their year. It showed in the way she lived, though having Harkenov as her direct Dreadlord Mentor likely helped in that specific case.

"Come," his hand beckoned gently, "join me on the stone."

 

[Livia Quinnick]

After a moment of thought, she got to her feet and slowly made her way over to where Maz stood at the stone's edge. He was taller than her, but she could see the out to the picturesque view. Hillsides and forest. It was... peaceful to look at, and the sounds of nature called back to them from where they stood. Livia let out a breath she did not realise she held, staring out to the rolling hills.

"Fuck." She crossed her arms. "All of that was worth to see this."

Liv lifted her head to look to Maseno, a light frown knitting her brows together. "You know I only survived because I killed with how uncontrollable this magic was back then... at least I got to stay in my bed for a while without anyone shaking me awake." She did not have friends back then either... not until the past year she began to open up after seeing everyone else had someone to go to... that was not for distractions in bed... Livia cleared her throat, looking back to the view. "Well... at least these days everyone knows I know where the killing blow is no matter what." She shrugged.

 

[Maseno Luana]

"Mmm," Maseno rumbled in reply, contentment easing back onto his face as she stood next to him at the precipice of the hillside overlooking the wandering valleys beyond.

"Many of us only survived due to our lack of control over our magic," he could distinctly remember numerous instances where his own powers had acted out of instinct or self defense to protect him, completely out of his own control. Lucky, perhaps, or was that simply power? He had not yet been confident in defining the fine line between the two.

"There you are," he said, "moments ago you thought yourself weak and unremarkable. Now you hold confidence in your knowledge of how to kill." His gaze shifted askance to look at her beside him, "You also told me that you do not allow yourself to feel because it is all too much."

"I thought perhaps, giving you a chance to feel the lackthereof would give you some perspective. Maybe some peace ... at least for a short while. Without your magic there, constantly pulling you to find things that do not wish to be found, or the corruption needling you with uncertainty, you can focus on just yourself."

"Oh those things you've been too scared to feel."

"Your grief. Your anger. Your hope."

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Livia scrunched her face as Maseno noted her reluctance to process her emotions, to let them be felt. "Sometimes it is just easier..." She reasoned, crossing her arms and turning to meet his gaze with a saddened expression. "To just tell yourself it is not worth it."

The girl snorted a laugh, turning her head as her eyes fell to the middle ground. "Of course, that wall is chipped, cracked, and beaten in some places. I... pushed away someone because I was the most real with them than I have ever been with someone. He made me feel safe, understood, and.... I hated that someone had seen me so vulnerable. As if they could use that against me." Liv shrugged, eyes glistening and she inhaled heavily, exhaling as her head turned to the vista before them. She lowered herself, scooching forward enough to let her feet be shy from the edge.

"After the dance..." Livia began, breath shaky, "I needed to tell someone what I saw... It was me that found Joel Schmidt... my magic lured me outside and... I kept it to myself for hours."

"It ate at me, made me restless, and all I could think of that I needed to tell someone..." A tear fell down her cheek. Was this not a memory to reflect on, the very boy she then told that her feelings were of love for him? "I am going to ruin things... and that is not my corruption magic at play. That is me, as a human, having these thoughts."

I do not deserve him, they were dark thoughts that seeped into her mind, even at her happiest in his presence.

"Fuck. I should have brought wine, or something..." If she were going to dredge up her feelings, she needed something to help cope.

 

[Maseno Luana]

He listened quietly, the only movements of the young man that hinted at his life that of blinking, breathing, and the shift of his robes in the slow wind. Livia clearly had a lot to unravel, as he suspected most Initiates did, and he felt both pleased that she could begin to do so in his company and relieved that she was allowing it to happen. As guarded as she was, as they all could be - had to be for so long in order to survive - so few of them had exercised the ability to feel.

Allowed themselves to be vulnerable.

To be human.

"I would encourage you to forgo vices such as alcohol when you work with me," Maseno said after a pause of silence to consider, "it impedes the mind's ability to comprehend our emotions. Blind acceptance is not true understanding and the mind cannot get past what it does not understand."

It struck him as curious that the first thing she offered him was the death of Joel Schmidt and how she had sought out another for comfort from her discovery. Most Initiates were jaded about the subject of death. That she would be so effected only proved to him that she was far more human than her classmates.

"It is not wrong for you to have those thoughts," he offered her with a glance down to her seated form, "you are human, Livia. The problem is you, along with the rest of us at the Academy, have been raised to believe otherwise. That our humanity is a weakness - I do not believe that is correct. I have found my greatest strength in my emotions."

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Liv sighed and dropped her head. "'Pain is weakness.'" That is what my mother taught me. I used to cry all the time how my feet hurt after a dance lesson, but the more I cried, the more she made me dance until my feet bleed into my slippers." She brought her legs up, wrapping her arms around them to rest her cheek on her knees.

A quiet settled before she continued, voice empty of the pain she should feel on such an experience. "I learned to stretch myself into impossible poses, to hold my form in elegant silhouettes... but if I showed anything other than a pleasant smile, my mother made me start the lesson anew." Her parents always fought for time with Livia, her father adoring her for her stronger magic, and her mother merely wanting to inconvenience her husband.

"So when I got to the Academy, it gave me cruel satisfaction to see that those that struck me down in training were amazed I got back up. I already felt that pain as a child and lived with it..."

"I... I am going to end up rambling on anything going on in my life. If you have questions, ask them." There was no better time than now. Livia craned her neck to see Maseno, giving him an encouraging and sad smile.

 

[Maseno Luana]

Maz returned her look with quiet understanding, his hands lifting in a gesture of giving, "My ears are at your disposal."

The power of listening could never be undervalued, but their time here for today was limited. It behooved him not to waste the opportunity to try and assist as much as he could.

"I'd like to revisit the exercise I had you do last night with the burn pages," he began, "as it is clear what you wrote on is a subject of great distress for you. It seems a good place to start."

"There is no need for you to speak on the specifics," Maseno reminded her, fully intending to uphold his words from the very beginning of the morning, "but dealing with these traumas becomes essential to developing better control over them. In this way, we do not allow our emotions to control us, but we can tap into them to bolster our control of ourselves. This extends into our control over our magic."

"If we cannot find some manner of peace within, we have no hope of controlling the chaos without."

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Stream of consciousness. That was what he intructed her to do last night. What else nagged at her mind?

Livia sighed and moved to lay on her back, closing her eyes and feeling the sun's ascent warm her. "I hate that I do not know more about this magic. What depths it consists of... because I am afraid of the control I need to let go to find that out. I..." a deep breath, and exhaling through her mouth in a sigh, "do not want to hurt someone. That would only hinder me, would it not? Being scared to face it means I can never fully understand it to control?"