trans_9 | Out of his element [OPEN]

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Out of his element [OPEN]

When he'd first read the word 'tavern,' his reaction was... mixed at best. Master Lord Thom of Trebond had never set foot in such a place, and that alone was almost enough to avoid it, or even to cancel the whole meeting before it ever began.

But he found himself curious, powerfully so, about what the Test that he took in the Tower entailed. Perhaps this Counselor Kang wouldn't have much more information than Lord Bight, or perhaps he would. The man at least did not try to overinflate his knowledge of the subject.

His first reaction upon seeing the tavern was probably incredibly comical to anyone watching him. His face took on an expression like he couldn't believe what he was looking at, mouth slightly open, head tilted to the side. Was that supposed to be a dragon? Who in the world thought that looked like a dragon?

Perhaps the artist had partaken of the fare while he constructed it. That would explain quite a bit.

Thom squared his shoulders like he was walking into battle, not into a place some of the crew would consider to be the best on the ship. He entered the front door and took a moment to look around, gathering himself. Where was this Kang he was meant to speak with?

The mural on the wall caught his attention first, and then his eyes found the bartender, and he spent an even more comical moment looking back and forth between the two, his eyebrows knit in a puzzled expression.

He didn't want to approach the bar - too many people sitting there - but the impossibly tall winged creature behind it was who he needed to speak with. He took a seat on a barstool, his shoulders stiff with tension.

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Kang had been too busy talking with another patron to see the initial look Thom had given him, and really, he'd grown so used to it on Stacy that it didn't even bother him anymore; he didn't understand why there were so many humans, especially ones from worlds where they were the only race, but that was a question he knew he'd probably never get an answer for.

He did notice when Thom sat down, though, and excused himself from the conversation. He got the impression that this one was nobility from the way he carried himself and the obvious unease of being in the tavern. Nobles tended to be stuffy, and avoided taverns.

The amount of magic radiating off of him... it had to be Thom. Kang could almost feel it in the air like thick fog.

"Would I be correct in assuming that you are Master Lord Thom?"

It took all of Thom's breeding and willpower to school his face into the pleasant expression he adopted for Court. What he wanted to do was back away, possibly out of the door entirely. "You would be Counselor Kang, then," he said. Did people in taverns bow to one another? It seemed like an awkward proposition to Thom, so he stayed seated. Neither did he offer his hand. He shifted uncomfortably for a moment. Should he order a drink?

He would, he decided, if only to fit in. "Might I trouble you for a wine to go with this conversation?" To be honest, it was a good idea to steady his nerves as well. Kang was enormously tall.

Kang knew that look for what it was. It was another thing he was used to. "That'd be me." He fetched a clay mug of wine for Thom and leaned his elbows on the wood of the bar to try to look a little less intimidating.

"Like I said earlier, I might not be of much help, but I will try to answer what I can. My kind are sorcerors, not wizards; none of us have ever had reason or much inclination to visit any of the towers." They probably wouldn't have been welcome, either, but that wasn't important to the conversation.

Thom had a blessed moment of pause when the wine arrived, as he went through the process of tasting it like an aficionado. His sister probably would have laughed at him, but living in the palace had given Thom a taste for wine and a drive to learn about it. "Interesting vintage," he said finally. It wasn't bad, exactly, and Thom supposed he shouldn't expect quality from this ship. It was just... young. He could tell the production was rushed. Not enough oak.

"You have never visited the towers personally and yet you know about them," Thom said. "The layman's perspective is one of the many things I am lacking. If I were raised in your world, I would have some idea of what to expect. As it stands, I do not."

"I'm not really a wine person," Kang shrugged. He didn't like the taste of it, preferring ale and stronger liquors.

He nodded, "Anyone that didn't know of the towers had to have lived under a rock. There were originally five, but only two remained in my point of the timeline; this one at Wayreth, and the Tower at Palanthas. How much did Lord Bight tell you?"

"That does not surprise me," Thom said, and then immediately continued, hoping that Kang wouldn't notice he said that. Sometimes his tongue honestly got away from him. "I know that each tower represents an Order, which cleaves to one of your gods, and derives their power from the gods." Academia. That's what he was good at. "Wizards travel to the tower to undergo its test, during which they may hope to join a particular Order but are not guaranteed entrance. The test is quite dangerous and those who fail often suffer fatal consequences."

When he said it out loud, it sounded so definitely similar to the Ordeal of Knighthood that he decided then he would have to tell Alanna about his test should she ever awake on the ship. Or perhaps he wouldn't - she'd never told him about her Ordeal, despite how much he'd asked about the magical nature of the Chamber. She'd be fascinated too, he was sure.

Unbidden, the image of Roger staring out from Alastirra's eyes made some of the color drain from his face. No, he wouldn't share that with Alanna. Let her think Roger was dead once more, forever. The man could haunt Thom forever if he chose.

Kang had noticed that, but it amused him more than anything, and he didn't comment on it. "That sounds about right. All the Tests for the past... 400 years had been done in the Tower at Wayreth; it's impossible for anyone to find unless it chooses to reveal itself. Or, it was, back on Krynn. Some sort of spell, I think, to protect it from attack after the Kingpriest started going after wizards."

"That would explain some of the runes on the inside edge of the outer flagstones," Thom muttered. He could almost see them in his mind, and without really thinking about it he dipped his finger in the wine and began sketching some from memory onto the bar.

Such a thing wouldn't have drawn a second glance at school. Thom hardly thought about it himself - if he wrote them, he would re-familiarize himself with them and would better be able to recall them later. "It is stationary, though?" he asked. "Or is it some kind of... mystical traveling building as well? No, impossible - the very idea. Even with the Sorcerer's Dance, you risk the mortar falling out from between the stones, and that spell set in the flagstones would require re-laying every time."

He looked back up at Kang like he'd momentarily forgotten the draconian was there. "Wizards are distinct from sorcerers - and mages as well? They are mostly used to refer to the Gifted in general, at least in the Eastern Kingdoms, although any graduate of the Circle of the Gods would not be referred to as anything less than a mage."

"You can read them?" Kang asked, surprised. Even Aibghalien, who used the exact same style of magic, hadn't been able to read them at first. It was the same system, but a different language. "No, it moves around. I'm not really sure how it works, though I have heard from one source that it's because it was moved to another plane, and they can control where the two planes meet. I don't know if there's any truth in it."

Well, there was a bit of arrogance. He quirked an eyebrow ridge slightly, "Wizard and mage are interchangeable, but yes, sorcerors like me do things a little differently. We use the same spells, but we don't have to memorize them daily. The downside is that we don't have access to the more powerful spells as quickly."

"Read them as I would my own language? Not yet. However there are several spells in a similar language, if it's not the same one, contained in some of the tower's books. I have been able to identify several repeating runes, and most of them have to do with obfuscation or protection of some kind. I'm close."

He would be closer if he could use his magic to experiment with the runes, but after what happened during his test Thom hadn't used it at all, save to continue untangling. "Memorized daily? Nonsense - once you know a spell, you know it. The Gift is more about manipulation through the mage's own willpower than external spells. However, Words of Power and Command and other such spells are usually the province of mages with higher education. They are difficult to use and the consequences for misuse can be fatal."

"That's still impressive." Kang shook his head. Thom probably had a bit of an advantage, like Aibghalien, in being skilled in magic already.

"Magic doesn't always work the same way on different worlds," he pointed out, somewhat amused. Why was it always difficult for some people to realize that and accept it?

"Of course it doesn't," Thom said. He had no problems accepting the fact that magic worked differently, but that didn't make it any less ridiculous to have to memorize one's repertoire daily. Still, maybe 'ridiculous' shouldn't be his word of choice for describing one of the principle points of physics in Kang's world.

"The orders of magic - how much material difference is there between them? I've already caused a bit of confusion with this," he said, tugging at the sleeve of his black robe. "On my world it signifies one who as attained Mastery, and from the sound of it the same applies on your world?"

He took another sip of his wine. He drank slowly, only enough to taste. With the state of his magic, drunkenness was not advisable.

Kang fetched his mug from where he'd left it behind the bar and took a drink, "Material difference? I'm not sure what you mean by that, but all three orders have the same amount of power, relatively. It's simply a matter of the types of spells, what they use them for, and the particular god they follow that determines the color of their robe. Switching allegiances without getting permission from the head of your order results in you being labeled a renegade and hunted down."

"Hm," Thom said, pondering the implications. "Your gods are not present on the ship though, to your knowledge - I only say this because I have seen or felt no sign of my own, and the gods of my world enjoy being meddlesome. If they are silent, it is only because they are absent."

If he found he'd inadvertently pledged himself to some foreign god, Thom would be less than pleased. He didn't even pledge himself to local gods.

"Ours were fairly meddlesome, too," Kang said dryly. "If they were here, we'd probably know. They'd be pissed about their world being taken from them."

Thom was quiet for a moment, watching the light flicker in his mug of wine. If the gods were not here, and the Tower no longer shielded its location from all but those who were meant to find it, what was the purpose of the test he had been given?

"At least I know I won't have a deity coming after my soul," Thom said. "It was troubling enough when they simply made it known they were displeased with me."

Kang blinked, tilting his head to one side slightly, "What possible reason would one of the Krynnish gods claim you?"

Thom shrugged, but there was a small smirk tucked into the corner of his mouth. "One of the ancient masters of the tower has apparently bound his soul up in the arcane energies as a sort of protector. He demanded I undergo this test before he would allow me to remain in the tower."

He was still alive and sitting there, so obviously he had passed. He'd earned his mastery twice over, as far as he was concerned.

"Ah, I heard a little about him. He was giving Aibghalien a bit of trouble for a while there, too." Kang shrugged. "You didn't need to worry about the gods anyways. People were still able to take the test even after they left the world."

Kang had given him more information in that simple sentence than most of the conversation put together. First, that while wizards from Kang's world appeared to align themselves with gods, they apparently did not get their power from gods, or there would be no more wizardry. Second, if they did not receive their magic from the gods, then those spells Thom had discovered would most likely work for him.

The possibilities were endless. Thom took another drink of his wine and licked his lips at the end of it. He was already the most powerful mage living, but with the education he could get on this ship, he would soon be the best as well.

"You mentioned that your kind were more sorcerers than wizards," Thom said. He sat a little straighter on the barstool. Whether it was confidence born of his train of thought or confidence born of the wine was still unsure. "What kind of magic are you capable of?"

"I'm not really all that powerful, but I also... took a break for a few years." That was one way of putting it. Kang shrugged again. The only reason he'd picked magic back up again was because of Mei-Xing pointing out how dumb it was to refuse to use a weapon against the Ohm. "I'm decent, though. I can show you a spell, if you'd like?"

"I would be most interested," Thom said. "Is it an incantation, or nonverbal? Many of the spells from your world appear to require incantation."

He'd been studying, obviously. He was slowly devouring the books in the Tower in between bouts of struggling to separate Roger's diseased Gift from his own. It was taking a toll on his body. The ground he had recovered by bleeding off the excess was gone, mostly because of Thom's habit of forgetting to sleep. The fever, thankfully, had not returned.

Kang thought for a moment, and then reached into one of the pouches on his belt to pull out a piece of gum arabic, with something very tiny stuck to it. "Most do. Most also require some sort of component, like this, or a focus. Ristak pur koivannon, sha pangit felori."

He disappeared abruptly, invisible.

Thom's eyebrows snapped together at the language, listening carefully. The consonants sounded similar to the harsh sounds of Old Thak, but the ancient and current language of Carthak both lacked 'v.' He stood when Kang disappeared, lifting his hand. The light of his Gift cast ruddy, brown-red light across the space behind the bar.

"No shadow," he said. "Impressive. Amateur obfuscation spells almost always leave the shadow. What sort of reagent is used for this spell?"

"Gum arabic and an eyelash," Kang said before popping back into view. "Why, I don't know. It's what works, though."

"It's obvious," Thom said. "The eyelash, at least." He paused. "Well, it would be obvious if it's the type of invisibility that effects the viewer's eye instead of actually making you invisible, which is one of the more reliable ways of invisibility. Gum arabic is a standard binding agent - an eyelash is too delicate a component to anchor something, that's what the binding is for."

It might have been an interesting explanation, if Thom hadn't delivered it all with such a know-it-all tone.

Kang shrugged. "I was never all that interested in finding out how the magic worked." He'd been more interested in things related to engineering, even if he'd had the time to devote to study.

"How can you hope to use it effectively if you don't know how it works?" Thom asked.

Maybe the wine was getting to his head. That was the only explanation for why he was being snippy with a seven-foot-tall lizard man.

Then again, Thom could probably defeat him with little effort. Kang did not sound like a great sorcerer.

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Out of his element [OPEN]

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