"Yes." He said, "I'm very sure valor has more than enough venerate or sacred casters to turn me to dust before I can even touch the sweet princess."
"Careful," Ivory said, "Some would think you court me." She laced her tones with the warning and saw he received it.
"Yes, yes." He picked a chiselWare from the desk. "But another interesting thing is there are no middleMind symbols, either."
Ivory raised a brow—an involuntary expression she could not quell promptly. Is there a meaning in his words?
"You see," He tapped the pointy spiral tip on his shoulder. "This friend of mine." Again, he spoke now of the protean orb. "It's unique in the means of its fast mentational capabilities. I dare say a saint might be slower in that contest of thought procession."
A possible heretical boast
"It grasps the information in a certain surprising swiftness. I'm amazed at its prowess." A brief redness swelled over his face. Blush? "In moments, it analyzes the foundations of symbols to pull upon functions from the connectivity."
"It sees the unseen world!" She surged before conscious calming. No point now. "How? You made it a caster? No, that's not possible. You couldn't have. A connection then? A link between you and it. A bond. By blood? You see what it does, and it sees what you do? Transfer of data, then? A connected psyche?"
Miralin moved to her, clasped her hands. "You see, don't you?" His tones came fervent. "The potential is infinite. Purely so. What can this achieve? A thinking ware. A substitute for the deadEyes and saints."
Ivory stepped back. Wait…This…She forced the calmness. A dose of mental powers upon her frenetic emotions. Now, she looked from the external perspective. His words, his tones. That mad glint in his eyes….This is about it, isn't it?
She glanced at that side, hovering orb—dark silver. Form ever changing as though it were a balled-lake, rippling, splashing, swaying. It happened again, Ivory thought. Yet another person had almost taken control of her.
"This was what you wanted, wasn't it?"
Miralin smiled sheepishly. "I'm sorry, Princess. You see, this is something that benefits all."
"Why then, did the hivemind not sanction it?" Ivory accused. "Why are you high fa'n only for your velis disk?"
Now, he frowned. "It's not a thing of consequence. The old often halts the young. This is the normal flow of things. But you." He cupped her hands—warm. "You see it, don't you? You are not a caster, but with this, you can think as one."
Ivory snapped, raising her hand. The dampening gesture. This stopped him.
"I am no beast to be led by anyone. I do the leading. That is my right, that is the will of things." She said, "What use do I have of a ware to boost my intellect? I outdo the casters in that regard. I am better. You are not. To require such things calls upon a possibility of weakness. Laziness. Not me."
She moved to the door. "More than a minute had passed, and yet you have not provided any usage to your presence here. Leave, and I might allow your orb a knowledge bereft from the hivemind."
This, she saw, startled him. A first. It felt good. To finally wipe that glee off his face.
"This helps everyone." He said.
"Feed your madness in another place. Not in the home where they are caged."
She opened the door—froze. Standing there, a woman, tall, dressed in chest silver armor, ankles too covered in special silver vembraces. She stood, eyes distant as though bored by the world. Nail—ladyCaptain of the seal guards.
She said, "Your training, your grace."
Ivory scowled within. Not even a moment for myself…All spent with the beasts called men.
In retrospect, the control over religion is only sustained in three realities. One, with the presence of a villain. Two, in a world of strive, promising salvation, and three, with the threat of damnation. Pray tell, which you think the theocracy uses?—Author unknown.
Ivory was thrown back, rolling over the sleek, soused floor. Dark grounds, transparent in the way her face, scattered hair were reflected. Annoying property. She groaned, swatted the rain trickling down her features.
Deluge from the overhead skies. Above was the high ceiling, a pedimented Roof with a round hole in the center. Dark skies flashed with lightning, booming, rain, like silvery dots fell through, washing the chamber within.
A vaster space, a polygonal Room. Multiple sides that, when viewed above, showed a large triangle. A true valor architecture. Within it, in the dimness, a tenebrosity lifted only by the lamps placed at the base of the walls. Lights, like low white slanted pillars.
Nothing else. In the room, nothing else outside the distant weapons shelves and the stage floor in the center. Glossy and deliberately placed below the overhead hole. The rain water, however was filtered out through the dark slits beside the stage.
On it, Nail of Valor was thrashing its princess.
Ivory, again, was air-launched, slamming into the floor. The pain, thankfully, was halved. She stood, touched the dark bracelet on her left—a special ware. A pain accumulator, some called it. The inventor was unknown to her. Its usage, however, was not.
A thing that absorbed the pain symbols meant to be felt. When done, the bracelet is to be given to another. They would suffer it in exchange. If not, after some time, the totality of the pain is returned to the progenitor. Ivory sensed a certain despotocracy in its use. Likely, darkCrowns were the recipients of that pain.
A hurtful thing…Yet, this was the way.
She heaved a breath, placed the sword atop her hand—that one was in a V bracing motion. Nail stood a few meters ahead, hand held freely over a wooden sword. Elastic wood. She moved. No, vanished.
Ivory knew the upcoming reality. Indeed—again, she was tossed into the air, turning over the ground. Pain distant, yet present. She scowled openly. What was this meant to achieve? Nail was beyond a redeemed caster. What hope did she have in stopping her attacks?
An inefficacious exercise.
Somehow, she saw a punishment infused in the training—an argon-styled castigation.
Nail looked to her. "Shouldn't you be focused?" Her tone was dull.
"What use is it?" Ivory crawled to her feet. "I can't even see you."
"Feel me, then."
"Perhaps an extra ten years of experience might drill that into me."
Nail blurred. She heard a voice, half-muted by the wind. "You have the time for it!"
Ah!
Into the air, the world twirling through her senses. The roof, the dark walls, the rain. All blurred into a mash of flash colors. It was a familiar scene at this point. A thing to anticipate.
She met the floor, felt the sword pressed on her back—Nail. She said, "You seem distracted for this."
"I'm distracted because of the uselessness of it."
"Practice—"
Ivory interrupted. "You are beyond me!" She slapped the sword off her back. "Maybe get me a vested caster to duel against. At least I can see their motions."
Ah, the boredom on Nail's face. She said, "This was not said by the Highness."
Of course, the supreme command. Ivory stretched away the pain. "Be slower."
"I am."
"Even more." Ivory regarded her. "Feel yourself weighed by a mountain. Cast it if you have to, but become slower."
Nail's brows knitted in briefness—a physical trait to her acceptance of something.
Hopefully, this helps. Ivory took to the stance. A supposed military movement taught now by Nail. She, of course, could barely bring out the full might of the act. Miraculously, it steadied her nerves, breath flowing out in sequence from mouth to nose.
Nail moved steps away, an adequate distance of four meters. She nodded, seeking confirmation.
Ivory gave it and prepared herself. Now!
There was no need for reaction—in moments, something solid had smashed into her form, body tossed into the air.
Mist this!
She came down with a violent thud, her awareness registering the ache as something substantial in comparison to the prior, even with the braclent ware. Ah, the pain the recipient would endure. Ivory allowed herself a moment to sympathize with the unknown. A scene popping into procession.
A man, sprawled against the earth, quivering from the intense agony. For some reason, her mind imposed that scene in the currentness; she, prone on the ground. Would that be allowed? That moment of deliberate—accepted weakness? What if someone walked in and saw it?
Naturally, against Nail, she could lose, but was she expected to? The miraculous thing—that was the event expected of her? To win. To always win. Ivory propped her hands over the glossy floor, felt the cold rain, drenching. Her head snapped back, water sliding down her face.
I must always win!
Nail came close. "Your grace?"
Ivory moved, poised, and stabbed. Unlike Nail, her weapon was true oredite. Sharp enough to cut through a man like butter. The blade met a halt, Nail, sword in hand, sided, Ivory's stabbing at the flat.
That was a foreseen thing. She surged, hacked down, sideways, left, down, up. All the patterns she had just imprinted into her foremost awareness. Nail read them. Each attack parried, each blow stopped. No connection to flesh. Ivory, contrastingly, was riddled with bruises—no cuts, but enough to near blemish the skin. That couldn't happen.
The jewel of Valor must remain so.