Willeonis and Stel

Stel awoke.  Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night.  He couldn't say why.  He was comfortable under the mef furs, a little nest across the room from the fire.  He dreamed, but he didn't remember any of it.  So, he was awake.  

 

A voice.  A small, but insistent voice.  It was coming from one of the sticks in the wall, or rather from the little ring hanging on a chain hanging on the stick in the wall.  Willeonis.  

 

Stel pushed his way clumsily out of bed.  His thigh ached from where Leor managed a kick, and his eye stung from where he'd managed a punch to Stel's face. More sparring, and nothing was working against Leor.  No magic worked.  Leor could not be teleported.  Motivary couldn't touch him much.  Magecraft made him turn his head a bit, here and there, but nothing was overwhelmingly charming to him.  He could be hurt by fire, and he could be cut by swords, and he could be thrown about, kicked, punched, and his bones normally broke like anyone else's, but magic against his mind, almost ineffective.  

 

Willeonis' voice didn't care Stel ached all over.  It kept calling him to get up.  Stel took the chain from the stick on the wall and lifted it up and over his head.  He took the ring between thumb and forefinger and looked through it, knowing full well he'd see nothing but the floor.  Sometimes, he half expected to see Willeonis' face through it when he called, but he couldn't say why.  Perhaps, he had in mind an improvement to this artifact.  

 

"Stel, my lad, are you awake?"  

 

"Yes, Old Man, I am."  

 

"You sound tired.  Are you well?"   

 

"Well enough.  What is it?"  

 

A pause.  

 

"Come to my house," finally came through the ring, a little softer than before.  "Are you sure you are well?"  

 

Stel rolled his eyes.  "I am.  But what is it?"  

 

"I will tell you when you are here.  But do hurry.  Perhaps you should heal yourself or drink something before you come.  I will need all of you to help me."  

 

All of me, Stel thought.  What does that mean?  

 

"I shall be there soon.  I'll be better."  

 

There was a hissing sound as the last of the resounding air and voice came through the ring and the connection was broken between them.  Willeonis almost always had a sort of jaunty way about him when he called, but he almost sounded apologetic at that last.  Not at all like that.  

 

"I know what we're thinking," said Stel behind himself.  Stel turned around and faced his double, who did not wear the ring he around his neck.  It was not the only thing different between them; the second Stel was completely well, standing straight, well-groomed (attractive even in peasant's clothing).  

 

He reached out to his bedraggled counterpart and took his hands, and after Stel blinked he was better.  Now the other Stel, the second one, wore the bruises, cuts, scrapes and blacked eye Stel had once worn.  He was still groomed the same, his hair still washed, his clothes still cleaner, and he did not even seem to notice the wounds he had taken on himself.  

 

"What are we thinking?" asked Stel.  

 

"We are thinking we know why Willeonis will summon us to his home.  You know the reason you are training Leor, why Leor even exists among the Aethren.  Rather, you know the reason perfectly well, don't you?"  

 

"I have considered it, but I don't think Willeonis would do such a thing.  Not to one of his disciples, not even to an apostate, and he's not an apostate."  

 

"But there is the conflict in the Counsel.  You know it.  You feel the suspicions.  You've heard the whispers in your sleep.  You know Willeonis' First Law cannot stand.  It is nonsensical, and repugnant.  The Counsel, if they have any sense of what they are doing, will force him to resend it."  

 

"What right does the Counsel have to demand anything.  Willeonis taught every one of them every bit of their magic.  Without him, there would be no magic, would there?"  

 

"Wouldn't there?  Apparently, the real reason behind all of this is Xenoreth has discovered the Second Source.  Though he doesn't say it, you know as well as I do, he thinks Willeonis is hiding this source from the Counsel.  He thinks Willeonis is keeping his position where he is through this...act of treachery."  

 

"That's tantamount to blasphemy.  No, I don't think so.  No.  Willeonis gave us the magic he was given from the Highest.  If Xenoreth has found a Second Source...no, it cannot be.  There is no Second Source."  

 

"Then, how does Xenoreth get his workers up from the grave?  Where do his walking dead come from?"  

 

"It is Aavemancy.  Nothing more.  He is moving the aaviri through the bodies of the dead."

 

"You don't truly believe that."  

 

"I have been summoned to Willeonis.  I must go."  

 

"What if there is a Second Source?  What would that mean to you?"  

 

"What would it mean?"  

 

"Yes, what would it mean to you if there is a Second Source?"  

 

"I...there is no Second Source."  

 

Stel stepped out into the night.  All around him the Sea of Grass rustled and whispered, like a vast ocean hissing with the tide.  Among these pleasant breaths of blades rubbing together were the sounds of the driggits and impbirds, the distant howl of gremlins, the occasional bleat of a nern.  He walked due west, the question the other Stel asked him still haunting him, echoing through all the normally pleasant sounds of Stel's home.  What would it mean?  

 

He came to a stone he'd made, finding a promontory of rock and cutting it clear across with a perfectly directed portal.  Around this platform he'd placed several magepillars to prevent grass from growing anywhere on or around the remaining stone.  The pillars formed a square around the almost circular stone platform, and within this square, absolutely no plant life, fungi, or lichen grew.  Not a single spore found any purchase here, from the ground to the level of Stel's eyes.  

 

In the center, or roughly the center, of the platform was a pedestal, and upon this pedestal was sand.  The mage stones had several purposes around the platform.  The first kept plants away.  The second prevented people from seeing Stel's house who were not actively seeking it out or within a certain distance from it.  The third, however, took the sand left behind after Stel used it for his purposes, and put back on the pedestal whatever happened to fall off.  

 

Stel enjoyed for a moment the warmth of the sand, all day in the sun, still not quite cool from the night.  Then, he sighed, and began the arduous task of writing out the jump to Willeonis' house.  Willeonis' house could not be reached without invitation from Willeonis himself.  Stel, for a shivering moment, wondered what would become of the place when the old man finally passed away.  His finger stopped, but he did not take it from the sand.  Why had he thought that?  Willeonis was, practically, Stel's father.  The books Willeonis had written loomed large in his thoughts.  They were not really books, but journals, pieces of nern and gremlin skin with little etchings and scribblings, the material for ages of thought perhaps, though no one really knew for certain.  And these were all Stel could think of, all he could put his mind on in the whole of the house.  The unfortunate eye of his mind saw the old man's skeleton rotting, or not rotting, for eternity in that old shack in the middle of Allorinia, but in his mind he merely stepped over Willeonis to get his hands on those books and scrolls, all the knowledge Willeonis would waste in his death.  

 

His finger was there, in its place, when his mind returned to it.  He continued to form the glyph, his finger wandering about like someone in a tiny hedge maze, finding it's way back and forth, sometimes coming within half an inch of a previous path, sometimes crossing it.  In his mind, it was difficult to focus, and this was unacceptable.  He'd never get there, if he couldn't form the proper maps and make the proper steps.  This might take hours, and yet his finger was preparing to make the last stroke in the sand, the stroke that should open up the Sark and carry him through it.  

 

He stopped again.  His thoughts lingered in that house before him.  He took his finger from the map he'd made, then he swept all the sand from the stone pedestal with one swipe of his hand.  The sand fell like water, forming single rivulets.  Some of it never hit the platform, while the rest fell and turned and crawled back up the pedestal right back to the surface of the top, where it had been when Stel found it.  He went back inside his house and went back to sleep, never minding the sunrise behind him.