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[Egann]

NOTE: This occurs during So it Begins. The next post will be Egann's POV, then back to Lester, etc. until I come to the end.


Lester pushed open the door and climbed the stairs before emerging onto the patio.The Koridian sun was at its peak, but the awning ensured that the Silver Scorpion's patrons would not broil the way they normally would have.

And Egann had told him this was a "bit below average" by Arbiter's Grounds' standards in the letter. He kind of regretted it, really. Speaking of that old Sergeant, he was the bar's only patron at the moment, sitting in the back corner playing with a puzzle. Lester hadn't even needed to look to know that's who it was, in fact, Lester was pretty sure he could have been led up those steps blindfolded, spun around three times, and still point a finger straight at the man. He could probably tell you exactly what he was up to, even, but it wasn't like he could tell you what kind of puzzle. Sometimes he'd get flashes of that stuff, but usually he felt colors rather than seeing shapes. Egann was unique, anyway. Ever since Lester had tried to put his mind back together, there'd always been a funny echo to it, like a mirror with a crack.

Before the Cataclysm, he could never have done any of that. To the best of his knowledge, his abilities hadn't existed at all before then, or perhaps he had born a seed that sprouted to counter-act the insanity. Controlling his telempathy was a doozy, though. Emotions -colors- flowed just like water, and if anyone felt anything with any vigor it would naturally spill from their mind into your own.

Casym of Wyrms. The fear of a thousand dying men inundating his defenses. Just clutching to sanity had been like clinging to the corner of a wall for dear life as a tornado raged around you, relentlessly ripping at your grip in it's unguided desire to banish you to the nether. Ironic that he was immune to the Madness of Lazu, but the fear in a miniscule skirmish had devastated him.

Lester sank into the chair across from Egann. "Hi, Sarge."

Egann didn't look up from the bar-puzzle, a game where you made oddly-shaped blocks come together to form a cube. Egann loved his brain-teasers, and from the looks of it he was really having a hard time with this one, one foot sticking out of the cube no matter what he did. Egann took a swig of his drink and the echo was in control before the glass touched the table, his fingers now in an unconscious flurry. Fifteen seconds later the two dozen piece puzzle had been completely disassembled and put back together. Correctly. The echo faded into the background, leaving Egann to marvel at the cube and wonder if he could do that again.

[Egann]

Egann put the puzzle-cube down on the table to look at Lester.

A puzzle's only interesting if you don't know how to solve it.

Lester straightened his back. "I'm leaving. Leaving Koridai."

The funny thing with Lester and his telempathic abilities was, sure he might be able to read your emotions, but if you knew that the easily overlooked tingling in the corner of your mind was actually his feelings, you could read him right back. He'd never been very good at lying, anyways.

"On to a land with fatter cattle?" Egann sighed.

Lester shook his head. "I have a feeling that there won't be any cattle to speak of where I am going. My abilities...before they just appeared, I used to think that I was special, as if my own experience was the ends of the universe. Now...the more I use them, the more I feel that it's everyone else who's special and I'm just a cog. I won't do killing for anyone; not even the Goddess."

A wry smile crept across Egann's cheeks.

Still holds himself to a different standard than everybody else, though. It's just the other way around, now.

"Koridai doesn't think that way, though, Lester continued. "Koridai stands for the Goddess Chikara being special and the rest of us being...ordinary. I don't belong here."

He's lying. At least making an omission, anyway. You can feel him holding something back, but you aren't going to push him, are you?

"Any idea where you're going?" Egann asked. "Other than 'not here.' "

"No." Lester looked at the table. "No, not really."

"Hmm." Egann started staring at the table as well. "You know, my father told me a story once -more a parable or a fable than anything else, really- about a man named 'Ser Valiant for Honour.' He was always so preoccupied with keeping his honor he forgot the other things of this life and wound up killing himself to keep fictitious scraps of honor as the world burned down around him."

"So what? You think I'm Ser Valiant for Love or something like that and have to watch those I care for die?

"Without knowing what you're doing? Yeah. Something like that." Egann straigtened up. "Besides, with you leaving Koridai I can tell you the truth. I'm going to kill the God of Chaos. I'm going to kill Lazu."

Edited by Egann, 15 December 2010 - 10:26 AM.

[Egann]

"I'm going to kill the God of Chaos. I'm going to kill Lazu."

Lester would have said it had to have been a joke if Egann weren't shaded with a thourough seriousness. As well as a firm resoluteness and a happy giddiness almost to the point of tears. "Egann, that's not possible. Diel can't do it, so you can't for sure."

"Oh?" Egann's eyes lit like he'd been expecting this response. "You know. I'm greatful for my suspension. Since I got back from Komitta, I've been thinking on that same question. Why can't Diel kill Lazu or the other way around? They've been at each others' throats since before the dawn of time? Is it because they can't? Or just because they won't?"

Lester sat back.

"I thought you wouldn't understand right off the bat," Egann continued. "Fortunately, there's another way to put it which you might understand. Remember how Selena survived the Goddess trying to kill her? How is that possible? The short answer is that it's not. The Goddess is a fiction that Chikara and Lazu are one and the same in the avatar. They are not. Lazu sought to strike Selena down, Chikara resisted him to protect her daughter."

Lester sat back and remembered. He'd touched both Selena's and Chikara's minds, and he'd thought he'd felt an inkling of deep feeling for each other, buried -deliberately buried to be that deep- in the deep crevicies. On the other hand, he'd also kind of been expecting -if not outright looking for- something like that, and touching people's minds sometimes acts like a mirror, projecting a mirage of your expectations. Had it been genuine? Or had it just been a figment of his own imagination projected on them? Lester had no way of knowing. "So, you're saying Diel and Lazu can't kill each other because-?

"-Because they feel for each other as brothers. So they created us to do their dirty work. It's like this world is great chess board for them to play on, you and I are pawns, Steel and Rhia knights, Selena and Chikara queens. And the moral is this; though the lowliest of pawns can become queens by touching the back rank, the only thing that changes for them is how useful they are to someone else. We are damned to never be able to become a player -to wield the power of the kings. Each round of battles is a new game with new pieces slain, until a piece comes to end the cycle and takes the power to choose for itself it's own place and role. and kill its own king."

Watching the cracks spread and spider across his mind was like lightning from a shadow, forking inexorably onward, its path crisp and motion swift, yet somehow simultaneously slowed by the gravity of its own motion, its own finality. Egann was nearly to the point of tears.

"And the real irony is that Diel and Lazu are really one and the same," He continued. "Can there be division in divinity? Is there such a thing as time in eternity? No."

Lester sighed. It looked like he would have to do it again, after all.

[Egann]

Egann's head felt like it had been rent in two again. Not pain, never pain. More a disconnection. An awkward connection, really, how the simple thoughts of getting his berrings seemed to cast reflections. The gentle touch of his body heat's shadow, wrapping close to him, the soft give of a lump under his head, a slight weight from above, a bed.

He opened his eyes. A room from an inn, that girly kid, Lester, sitting patiently in a chair.

"Welcome back, Sarge." Lester exeuded impatience and a bit of premeditation. How could that be? "You took a pretty bad blow to the head. What's the last thing you remember?"

Hanging out with Ransom.
"Hanging out with Ransom."

Lester exhaled. "Komitta. That was...some time ago. Why did you come to Koridai?"

"To garner the favor of the Goddess as one of her retainers. If I had a relapse, you thought she'd be able to undo what she did to me. If she were interested, anyways. But you know that, you were there."

"Just making sure you still knew it." Lester sat back, feigning discomfort, releasing relief.

"Lester, I've never seen you pull off a lie." Egann slowly started to sit up. "Try as you might to cover it with your face, you broadcast the truth to anyone with an ear to listen. What are you hiding-?"

Lester's worry answered the question succinctly. "...I...lost it again, didn't I."

Lester looked away with hesitation, then nodded.

"Did...anyone die this time?"

Lester shook his head. "You never lost it completely. You started going on about how you were going to kill Lazu and some other stuff that didn't really make sense...then I started to feel the suture crack."

"....Do you have any better ideas as to what's going on with me, then?"

Lester shook his head again. "I still think your exposure to the Madness of Lazu started to split the chaotic and ordered parts of your mind. I can guess about more. The Madness resonates with the chaotic portions of a person's mind, while your mind is predominately order -as demonstrated with your lightning. Normally order magic would mean you would be able to resist the effects of the madness, but that's assuming your mind remains intact from exposure..."

"So I can't use magic to the extent I should because my chaotic portion of my personality is resisting me using order magic?"

"Yeah, probably."

Egann sat silently for a long moment.

"Did I really say I was going to kill Lazu?"

Lester nodded.

Egann smiled. "I must have forgotten. I came to Koridai clutching the hem some old lady's skirt on the vain hope of relief, like some child to his grandmother. I...I try my best. I try to be strong. And yet somehow I always wind up...feeling...."

"Like an infant in the land of giants?" Lester finished for him. "I'm guilty of the same. In my scramble to become who I wanted to be, I forgot who I was. Very nearly killed me at the Chasm of Wyrms."

Egann shook his head and started to get up. "Kill Lazu. The things I would do to convince myself that my life is not a meaningless fidget while I wait for death."