The Cavalry Arrives

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

[I am changing the name of the informant Cani girl from "Azliet" to "Nalche". I don't want to have two Cani women with six-letter names beginning with A on the same skyboat. Also, Nalche fits the standard Srineian phonetics, and Azliet, while a common Cani name, does not. -bb]

Vae: [appearing in a cheery blossom of Locador claws] “Hiio, Sythyry, everyone!”

Some Wizard Or Other: “Aieee! A nendrai! A nendrai is come! And already am I weary!”

Me: “Hallo! What are you doing here? Is something terrible happening on Strayway?”

Zascalle called out to Vae, “Vae! Help us, save us!”. Vae was wearing her earmuffs, though, and could not hear Zascalle’s direct request. I paralyzed Zascalle for some minutes with a spell, which probably saved her life or at least her spiritual integrity or something. (Spiritual structural integrity, I mean. She didn’t have much of the other kind.)

Vae: “The terrible it is!”

Me: “Oh, heavens. What’s going on? Why aren’t you there?”

Vae: “The she-Cani has no Cani emotions! Not a speck of salaffan or deffa, no proper sense of hierarchy!”

Me: “What — Thiane doesn’t? “ (Thiane being the only she-Cani around.) “You can’t mean Phaniet or Arfaen, I hope!” (Phaniet, I am sure, suffers from no such defects. Arfaen seems to be normal in that regard as well.)

Vae: “Not that is her name, but Nalche is her name.”

Me: “Who?”

Vae: “The child-woman who told you about Zascalle’s decampment! The punishment they make for her, and all because of her lack of those emotions and for her consequent betrayal of them. The asylum she asks of us — of you!”

So, she’s wrongfolk, but not traff, or something. Most of my clients are traff, but we do have a variety of other sorts of problems as well.

Me: “Well, I’m none too impressed with Cani who have all the right emotions just now.” I glared at Thiane, who whined and tucked her tail between her legs. “Have Kantele talk to her, and Phaniet, and see how she’ll fit in.”

Vae: “Not a bit can they do so! The prison of torments and darkest captivity have they made for this Nalche, and it’s a rescuing she shall need.”

Me: “Oh, one of those. Well, check with Bwipin and Rehit to make sure it’s acceptable in Srineia to go rescue someone out of her parent’s prison and scoot them away off-branch. If it is, the wrongfolk can try to do it if they think they can manage, or I’ll be back, um, sometime, if they need heavier magic.”

Probably a bad idea. But I felt like doing something that helped someone today, to counteract all the punishments I’m inflicting.

Vae: “The yes!”

Me: “She can live with us for now. I’ll give final approval, or not, when I get back and recover and get to meet her for real. If I say no, tell her we’ll … oh … we’ll work out a good place to drop her off.”

Vae: “The good! The messages of yours I shall deliver to the eager tongues of Phaniet and Jyondre! And how are you, Sythyry? And did the money come back to you from Zascalle and Thiane? And are these wizards quarrelling with you? And do they need to be destroyed, or will a simple tormenting-up suffice for them?”

Me: “I have made peace with the wizards, or, rather, I have cleared up the few petty disagreements that arose since we last spoke, since we officially never were at anything but peace and never mind anything anyone said about hiring an assassin. I am dealing with Zascalle and Thiane myself.”

Vae: “The happiness is upon me! The worry was on me earlier, and on all who dwell in Strayway, that some doom had fallen upon you from a surprising quarter, and you were in some desperate battle.”

Me: “Oddly enough, not this time. I just had to capitulate on all my disputes. Expensive and embarrassing, but easy enough. Though, I greatly appreciate you showing up in what would have been the nick of time had I actually been in a battle!” It is good to have friends, sometimes, even if they are psychotic monsters and not actually necessary.

So I sent Vae back to Strayway, to give the wrongfolk the news. She popped off cheerfully … but left a gaggle of invisible elementals around to watch, and to zoom and get her if there was any trouble from the enemy wizards. Unnecessary. The enemy wizards had already won, as far as they were concerned.

Comments

[arenhaus.livejournal.com]

“Aieee! A nendrai! A nendrai is come! And already am I weary!”

:D

Bard, aren't you afraid that if Sythyry ever learns how you translate zir diary, zie'll sic a pet nendrai on you too? ;)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[I mostly hope that Sythyry is fictional! But insofar as zie is real, zie enjoys bons mots and literary (and other) homages as much as I do, so I think I'm probaby OK. -bb]

[arenhaus.livejournal.com]

Speaking of which, what is the source of magic in Worldtree? The gods grant the daily allotments, all right, but would their magic work in this universe? If Sythyry, with aid of Vae if necessary, could punch through to here, would zir magical weapons and grafted spells still work?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

It's from the gods. It works in all the universes that I have heard of people reaching. Of course, they're reaching them using that particular magic most of the time. It frequently works better than here, as if the gods were showing off.

I haven't done much of that though, and I hope not to.

[Bard looks distinctly evil.]

[rowyn]

Maybe you shouldn't say things like that where the gods can hear you, Sythyry. D:

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Where else could I say it?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Enchanters study things that are pleasing to the gods... surely you also study the things the gods hate?

Put all the things all the gods hate together in one massive temple of diety aggravation, and then stand inside -- no gods will want to even look at the temple, let along what you're doing inside it.

[rowyn]

D:

The terror!

[rowyn]

... although I do rather like the idea of a !temple. Maybe make it out of everything the gods don't care about at all, so they'd be too bored to pay attention to it?

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

The problem is that what one god hates, another might love. Especially as their moods shift!

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Well, as far as I can tell, our universe is a collaboration between Flokin and 'Here' -- all our stuff is made out of fire, and our time is made out of space!

When the origin story is 'first there was nothing, and then it exploded', what other explanation could there be?

Flokin and 'Here' are on good terms with the rest of the gods, so the magic would probably work fine. Especially mutoc.

... don't tell the Nendrai.

[alex-muridae.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid it's so very, very much more more then that. On the tree, layered and patterned magic make up everything; on this side of the Gaping Gulf of Mythos and Reality, we have a similar base concept in that matter and energy are indeed one and the same, but from that point onward it gets so very much more confusing, to the point of being downright counter-intuitive. When such quanta as quarks have a charge that comes in three flavors (colors, if you will) as opposed to two, a bond so strong that if you move them far enough, they spawn new quark/antiquark pairs for fear of being alone, and various bits of mass and energy can be spewed out and gobbled up by other particles, we're dealing with quite a bit of very deep magic, and a set of rules well and truly different from any noun or verb.

It's kinda exciting, actually...