Of truth and light

Keleero had spent a moment of his morning in the Bathing Chamber, as he though of it, going over his work on the walls. It would be a long time until the images were anything like the Great Weave of Steepside, but he'd managed to keep adding the most important parts: the losses. The Weave had never bothered with those, unless it was an elf of significance who had passed, preferably in a bloody and 'glorious' manner. This weave would be different. Keleero had sworn that to himself, in a minor but still shaky act of rebellion. The history of this 'holt' would be an accurate one, where all events of note were recorded, not just the ones that met the leaders' approval.

He might even get someone interested in his work, one day. Teach them to truly read it and not just see the shapes. He found himself missing Sefu and quickly pushed that emotion aside, wrapping it up with practiced ease and shoving it to the back of his mind with other, similar thoughts and feelings. Remembering the past was valuable. Wallowing in it was a mistake.

Lost in these thoughts, Keleero didn't notice someone was in the Beacon Room until he'd already entered it.

"Oh, good morrow to you, Flint." He did his best to keep a neutral expression. Flint had no regular routines or time of sleep that Keleero had managed to keep track of. That they now found themselves alone together could be a perfectly reasonable coincidence. Still, he couldn't help but feels as if he'd been expected. "Do you wish to break fast together?"

Keleero set about the now routine task of cooking. It was almost soothing, doing such an everyday thing in the company of another. But only almost. For as many days as he'd now been in this place, Keleero had spent far longer in Steepside Mountain. Letting your guard down around others either got beaten out of you (sometimes literally) or you didn't live to be his age.

It took him a moment to place what conversation Flint was referring to. "Ah yes, the dangers of magic."

Stirring the pot of broth he'd started on, Keleero chose his next words with care. It had been a good while since that day and he'd had time to both meditate on his own knowledge of magic and how it matched and clashed with the snippets he'd picked up here and there from others in the 'holt'. Of all elves here, past and present, far from all had any histories of magic gone rotten. That was no reason to fully drop his guard, but even in Steepside the risk of magic on its own being a danger had been minor. And this world had two moons, like his own, but unlike Flint's previous, unsettling home, which logically meant the horrors Flint knew couldn't be there, waiting in the forest or behind the mountains.

"What exactly would you like to discuss?"

Better leave the topic of choice to Flint, to avoid showing his own worries and fears too clearly. Besides those, Keleero was also eager to discuss the concept of planets and suns, but didn't want to let that show too much or too early either. No reason to show someone else had knowledge he desired - that'd only give them the upper hand.

(OOC: A very logical conclusion, though Keleero is definitely confused by it XD)

IC:
Only a long life of practice hiding his emotions kept Keleero from openly gaping at Flint's question. He did allow himself some reaction: a raised eyebrow and a light frown. On the inside however his response was far more than the light puzzlement he tried to display outward.

First things first, though. "Am I correct in my understanding of 'space' as being somewhere beyond the sky? Above it?"

With that question formulated, Keleero had given himself enough of a pause to get his bafflement and confusion more under control. Enough so that he managed to formulate somewhat of an explanation, no matter how seemingly absurd the question had been; the madness of the world Flint came from might have caused Gliders to truly become weightless. Maybe. Such a surreal thing to imagine!

"I would not." It seemed best to keep talk of this topic direct and confident. "I am more comfortable gliding than walking, yes, but the higher I am from whatever ground or floor I've started from, the more effort i have to put in to staying there. Unless I start by jumping from a very high point, of course." Though he'd rarely done such a thing - it would have required leaving the relative safety of Steepside's interior to go for such flights. "What made you think I would? Have you observed such occurrences back on your home planet?"

Keleero tried to picture that. A place so far above the ground that you could only see clouds, or possibly not even that. The place the High Ones had traveled through, the deep dark nothing between worlds, that only the Palace could keep you safe from. It made him feel small and yet strangely comforted.

"Thank you for clarifying that." He chose to show his genuine gratitude to Flint, deeming this display of emotions, however brief, to be worth the risk. He needed to show vulnerability in some form to create an alliance. "My people lost a great amount of our history a long time ago. Or rather, chose to lose it. It's good to confirm some of the knowledge we kept isn't completely inaccurate to the truth."

When Flint explained his reasoning, Keleero bit back an immediate protest. He had left the mountain. But no, not since before Flint arrived, so how was he to know? Still, it unnerved him that others knew his habits so well, his routine, no matter how nonsensical being unnerved about that was here. In the myriad of tunnels and halls that made up Steepside, it'd take effort to keep track of a single elf's comings and goings. But here? How would Flint have failed to notice him not leaving to go outside? Unsettling, to be unnerved by something that simply made sense.

"I understand your reasoning, but I can assure you I haven't been inside caves all of my life. I have, on occasion, when circumstances demanded, ventured outside." Far more often in Steepside. Before Elyro's reign, he'd even enjoyed some treks beyond the mountain's then-safe walls. "I prefer to stay inside. Especially here. It's... more comfortable." Safer.

"If a glider loses control of their magic, they fall." He remembered far too many such falls. Some accidental and minor, but some...not. "Luckily, losing control tends to be gradual, so if I pushed myself to fly too far and too fast, my descent would be a gentle one." Unless he'd been knocked unconscious. "I'm not saying what you're envisioning is fully impossible, but in my experience, one would have to encounter magic far more stagnant and rotten than that of our beacon," he gestured at the currently inert stone in question, "for magic to go that wrong, to leave you floating off into the sky. And magic that foul makes itself felt long before you're directly upon it."

He almost asked Flint if he'd seen elven bodies floating off into the sky where he'd previously been, but thought better of it. It was too morbid a question. Though he knew Flint had ever truly 'met' two other elves, his mother and brother, Keleero still had a hard time picturing a world completely devoid of all other elven presence. Surely, he thought, no matter the scale of the catastrophe there must have been some trace of the elves of that world, if only through dead bodies and skeletal remains? The world Flint actually had described surviving, over and over, was too horrific and alien for Keleero truly wrap his mind around.

"Stagnant magic is dangerous, yes, but a far rarer danger than simple violence or accidents. I've made long studies of the phenomena," probably longer than Flint had been alive if Keleero had estimated his age correctly, "and in all that time, I've only encountered it twice, despite my people have a great number of magic users. It requires extraordinary circumstances to come about - or be created.

"What was done to your world, by your ancestors and the humans there, it sounds to have been on a far grander scale than anything I could ever imagine." An understatement if there ever was one. "You said your planet had come loose from around its sun and was spinning away from it. If you had a whole world full of magic users, fighting a war, I could see that happening. But here?" Again he gestured at their surroundings, the small cave, the few furs and other comforts around them. "I don't see how that could happen here. It is good to be cautious, yes, but worrying about a very unlikely danger can distract from the dangers that are ever present. Tell me, have you sensed anything 'wrong' with the world here? Anything like the twisted magic you grew up surrounded by?"

Because if so, Keleero had to reevaluate a lot of his world-views immediately, and that was the last thing he'd wish for today.


((OOC: Keleero of all elves telling anyone to not worry about a seemingly unlikely danger is of course throwing stones in all the glass houses, but he doesn't see the irony of it himself XD To him, his worries about other elves and their intentions are 100% rational))

Keleero simply nodded along to Flint's words about his people's lost histories and his dislike for the tunnels. The first Keleero could understand - if the whole world was falling apart, what time could there be for record keeping? The second he decided not to confront. It would do no good to reveal that he himself felt similar discomfort, but about leaving the mountain.

"I cannot feel magic in the way I suspect you do. But corrupted magic is different." Keleero fumbled for a metaphor that would work for the both of them. "Like the difference between a living animal and a rotting carcass. I would never notice a mouse hiding nearby," unless it was in the caves and he could use his rockshaping to find it, but that was a neither here nor there. "A dead mouse? That starts to smell, eventually. Magic is the same. I cannot sense if a tree has been changed by a treeshaper or a lantern has been lit by a fireshaper, such as yourself. But if the magic in the tree rots, even someone without your particular skill should be able to sense that change."

At least elves could, as far as Keleero had experienced. He had no idea if animals or humans could detect the danger before stumbling right into it.

"In a way, yes," he said to the comment about shared ancestry. "The High Ones had many Palaces that left the old Homeworld, as its told in our histories."

"If your world once was like the one I grew up in, and the one we're now in," and Keleero dearly hoped this was a different world than both his and Flint's, "I'd argue such drastic changes were due to magic going wrong. I admit I haven't been to your world," and thank the High Ones for that! "so I can of course not be sure. But I have learned of corrupted magic granting what seems like 'life' to things and there have been elves who lose themselves, their magic becoming their only purpose. It is not what I would call natural life, but it is an existence of a kind."

Keleero placed his elbows on his knees, steepled his fingers and rested his chin on top of the triangle they formed, thoughtful. "Maybe it started small. Maybe it came creeping. It is fair to be vigilant. But this is not the Homeworld of the High Ones. If it were, we would be as the High Ones were, creatures of ever changing fire. This world, like mine, often resists the changes of magic. Maybe the elves of your world tried to change that? Maybe it was even the humans." As mad as that idea sounded. "Either way, even with a slow creeping change, we will see it coming, as long as we guard against it. For as I've understood your explanation, the ruin of your world didn't exactly happen over night, did it?" It was a genuine question. The more knowledge they had about a disaster, the better they could work to prevent it ever happening again.

"If it was too late, shouldn't I be dead twice over then?" Keleero asked, with only a modicum of sarcasm. Being able to sense magic, to feel it, was a definite boon when dealing with corrupted magic, but if you always relied on others regarding it, you'd be setting yourself up for a trap. Better to develop skills to detected rot on your own, if in a more roundabout way. "I will not assume I could survive the world you've come from, much as you likely wouldn't have survived where I grew up." At least not under Elyro's rule; the poor young elf was far too open with his emotions to play the level of mind games required for that. "But do not underestimate your fellows, even though our skill sets don't overlap." That could be a deadly mistake.

"What did it send? Say?" Here he was genuinely curious. "I've heard of magic echoing words instilled in it, once it's gone wrong enough. And elves who've lost themselves to their magic are, though changed, still alive, I'll agree to that. But rock," he gestured at the walls around them, "is rock. It has no life in of itself. For it to gain life, something would have to go horribly wrong."

Generations of a world passing as it got twisted further and further from its natural state by magic run amok - it was a bone-chilling prospect. Then again, Keleero had witnessed and experienced other things that used to turn his stomach and now merely left him numb when he though of them. Flint's seeming calm about such horrors as he'd experienced made a kind of familiar sense to Keleero; if he'd been in a place to do so, he might have seen Flint's situation as a mirror of his, if warped.

"He?" It took Keleero a heartbeat to place who Flint might be referring to. "Your brother?" Another thing that hit closer to home than Keleero would have liked. For a moment, he lost himself in thoughts of his cousin Dakran. Did he yet live or had Hamitee's sharp words gotten the two of them in trouble for the last time? Was Hela still lord? Had Ashre...

With a deep, centering breath, Keleero pushed all thoughts of his previous home aside. He could not help anyone there anymore, so dwelling on them was meaningless. Still, he wanted to keep working on the foundation of an alliance with Flint and brushing aside his worries likely wouldn't aid in that endeavor.

"Maybe one day, the Beacon will bring your brother here. After all, Mahrak and Nightbird met before it brought them here, even though they didn't arrive simultaneously." It was a small, unlikely comfort, but it was the best Keleero could think of. He wasn't good at comforting lies. "What was-, is he like, your brother?"

"I suspect the main difference between the corrupted magic from your world and the one in mine, is that yours has had far more time to grow and spread unhindered." Keleero's methods of detecting signs of rot would be little help in a world that was all rot. "Since this place here thus far has proved to be more like my home, I think I shall be safe using my method."

He pushed aside the unsettling images Flint's vague descriptions conjured up out of his own imagination and what experiences had been shared with him by his kin, through sending. There was plenty of other danger here, far likelier to actually show up to stab him in the back or tear him apart, that he needed to save his worries for dealing with. All he could do was hope the Beacon wouldn't see fit to snatch him up one day and send him to the planet Flint had left behind.

Keleero took in the string of madness Flint recalled, the words making little sense and yet not being complete nonsense. "That sounds like either an elf who's lost their mind and form, or a great deal of things with words imprinted on them from generations of corruption. Either way, I doubt it had any true meaning. Not meaning like words have to you and me." He couldn't be sure, of course, but it was what made sense to him based on his knowledge of magic and how it could go wrong.

When Flint spoke of not being able to feel the life of the world around him any longer, Keleero had to bite back a comment. He didn't want to make this conversation any more confrontational than it already had brushed against being (at least in his mind). Even rock had a certain 'presence' to it though he supposed people without rockshaping magic would have a hard time perceiving that. And he had been the one to say rotten magic couldn't be truly alive so arguing for any kind of 'life' in the world around them would just weaken his own trustworthieness.

Instead he focused on what Flint said of his brother. "It sounds like you complemented each other well. If he's anywhere as capable as you, I'm sure he can survive, even on his own. Surviving together is always easier but we all need the ability to make it fully on our own. I'm sorry the two of you ended up in a situation where that trial of life became so...seemingly permanent."

Better change the subject, before things got too emotional. "With all this talk of the dangers of magic, I wonder, would you prefer a world without it?" Because Keleero very much wouldn't. Magic could go wrong, but so could a cooking fire, and trying to live without such things wouldn't keep you safe, only leave you vulnerable and weakened.

He hoped Flint was a kindred spirit in seeing both the dangers and the use of magic, but he wanted to be sure before committing any further to this alliance. He could offer lessons in the control of magic, even though their magic gifts differed, but that 'favor' would be little point in offering if it'd only be rejected.


(OOC: Excellent source of inspiration! I love the Area X trilogy <3)