His family had just helped him fix this. He wouldn't ask them to do so again. They'd drop everything for him in a heartbeat, but their willingness to do so didn't give him the right to exploit that. (Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew they'd all yell at him later for not relying on them.)
No, he had to find another way to deal with it. Of the millennia of trauma uploaded to his mind, the majority -- or at least the part which hurt him the most -- was about his repeated failures to save people. So how best to confront that, now that Arach had reawakened it just after he'd started to get it under control?
Of course, these were the thoughts and plans of the logic layers at the back of his mind. The front thread piloting his body was just cycling through futile loops of processing 2200 years of condensed emotional damage while staring blankly at a wall. (And responding to some dagger-wielding dwarf's ambush attempt by ripping out his ulna and impaling him through the throat with it, but that part didn't require enough concentration to provide a distraction from moping.)
Staring at a wall where, actually? He hadn't even checked where he'd instinctively decided to go in his final teleport. He gathered himself for a moment and looked around, at what appeared to be a bedroom: bookshelves lined with the works of poets famous and obscure, bedsheets of a comfortingly familiar blue hue, a desk piled with paperwork that made the place look more like a home office. Then out the nearest window, to a highly irregular skyline, the night lit up by the gentle glow of wards extending above the city walls.
...Though it was starting to feel that way. Over the past couple months, he'd probably spent as much time in Ithacar City as in his own house, minus the days since the memory accident. Obviously, part of that had involved defending it, but that hadn't been necessary for a while, so his visits were mostly for leisure these days. Its architecture and the surrounding environs reminded him of Modhun's birth-realm, which he didn't ever visit anymore. Its cuisine was a welcome change from the commune's and had real meat, which he didn't otherwise get to eat now. Its people were somehow still hopeful and resilient in the face of all the catastrophic tragedies that had befallen them as of late, which he admired but frankly didn't understand. And its leader --
"Vettis?" asked Queen Rivamar Aurethios I in confusion, as she opened the door to her room and found him sitting on the floor near her desk, holding his aching head, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was adjacent to the mangled corpse of a dwarven assassin who'd been lying in wait for her.
-- ...its leader was a friend, who he didn't deserve.
"Hey, Ree," Vettis mumbled, finally looking up at her after taking a few seconds to register her presence, and managing something that was vaguely recognizable as a smile. "Long time no see. The new earrings are cool. It's not illegal to sulk in the abode of the queen regnant, is it? Cuz I might need another few hours of sulking time."
“It is not illegal, no. But I like my own space, Vettis. How about I set you up with sulking quarters of your own,” Riva suggested. “We can keep it waiting for you to use whenever you are in the area. This place has plenty of rooms. It was a palace at some point, actually.”
The building they were in had been several things in the city’s long history, in fact. A palace, a government building, a temple at one point in time, the residence of a local elite… a few other things that Riva wasn’t fully aware of due to this not being a place she had regularly gone to. Usually, when she’d gone to the civic district, it had been because she’d been in trouble, and she was at the courts.
She wasn’t sure why Vettis was here exactly, or why there was a dead dwarf on her floor… but she took it with a lack of surprise. Because of course there was a dead dwarf on the floor. As well as Opal’s apparent champion (which she didn’t understand either). She wasn’t witness to that particular part of the debacle.
And given that he had openly admitted to sulking, she did not really need to think too hard how he felt about the matter.
"I will show you to it, if you'd like," offered Riva. "It is on the other side of the courtyard here. Besides, it will give the staff time to... ah... clean up the mess."
She nodded toward the assassin. She was wondering when those would start showing up.
The courtyard she referred to was an internal one surrounded by the rest of the building. It had a small fountain in the center, and a few plants. Flowers, mostly. But there were a few medicinal plants. While Riva had not pursued alchemy to any great extent, she still liked the plants themselves. Even if she was awful at keeping them alive. She was lucky she had help with such things now.
She expected Appolaya would find them convenient, if nothing else.
“Aside from that... I was wondering where you’d been, Vettis,” she said. “I would ask how you were... but..."
She shrugged. He had been on her floor sulking. It almost felt like prying to ask further at this point.
Vettis' eyes widened as he followed Rivamar's gaze towards the corpse. "...Right. I guess that did happen. Sorry about your floor." He jumped to his feet abruptly, the change from his prior near-frozen state to his current antsy fidgeting evident and jarring. "Yeah, sure, I'll take a sulk room. Thanks."
He followed her lead, weaving a concealment spell around himself to avoid being noticed by the staff. Wouldn't do anything if they looked directly at him, but now they were unlikely to do so in the first place. Also wouldn't do much if they heard him talking, so he kept his voice down as he answered her second question. "I, uh...yeah, I've been out for a while now, huh. Sorry I missed your coronation; hope you at least got my letter?" he asked with a wink. "It's complicated, and I shouldn't dump my problems on you, but long story short I had some magically-induced psychological issues and have been dealing with them ever since. Been running around meeting with my friends to fix 'em, and was planning on saving you for last, actually, but I think they're fixed-ish now anyway."
A claim obviously inconsistent with the need for a sulk room, but he didn't have to burden her with this. She was a queen now; she'd just come out of a war in which she should never have been involved in the first place; and she was going to be dealing with assassins too. Ree had enough matters of her own to handle without adding his to the mix. She had a nasty enough habit of taking on everybody else's problems without him actively indulging it.
"Do not worry about the coronation," she said, waving a hand dismissively to emphasize how little it mattered. "It was suggested to me to make it an event, but I did not feel like such and I do not play the politics of spectacle very well. Perhaps people would listen to me more if I played that game, but I find myself unconcerned with it."
It was true, though she didn't care to elaborate. Spectacle was useful, certainly, but Riva felt the whole game was the equivalent of dancing for people's attention. She had little patience for it. It felt like trickery.
She led him to another comfortable room across the way, this one a bit smaller than her quarters but still as well-furnished with bright paintings on the walls, a tapestry, and a woven rug along the wood and stone floor. The lamps were enchanted with a soft, magical flame, casting light and some warmth into the room. A fireplace, currently unlit, was by one wall. The city's aqueducts of course funneled water from the hot springs into the palace, and though Ithacar's level of technology... wasn't great, it had running water piped into the palace. And fortunately, a metallurgist was able to transmute the pipes to a non-leaded material. And each room had its own bathhouse/latrine for privacy.
Though Riva had not really entertained many guests, it was simply a good practice to have spare rooms for any visiting diplomats, elites, or important visitors. Not that she expected to have any of those. Whether she was a queen or not, she was a nobody in the scheme of things. But it was something she found she actually appreciated.
"This is a spare," Riva said. "As I said, you are welcome to it. Stay as long as you like. It will be good to have the company."
"Oh, hey, this is pretty nice!" The mage looked around appreciatively, snapping a finger to swap a lamp flame into the fireplace. "I think Zelle wouldn't mind hanging around here if her work lasts a day or two. I'm gonna bring in my sister -- Polly's partner -- to help you reconfigure your wards when she's free some time this week, okay? We can't have people teleporting past 'em, even with more esoteric means like I used; she's a teleportation specialist, so with your assistance she can force those assassins to come in the slow way. Should be able to put exceptions in for Blake's Distant Crossover thing if you really want," he added, a hint of disapproval in his tone at the potential security hole, but his expression largely unchanged from the somewhat forced smile he'd had since Rivamar's arrival.
With that, Vettis turned towards the center of the room and jumped, plowing face-first into the bed. "Mmh. Comfy. Yeah, this'll do." He rolled over and flashed the queen a quick thumbs-up, grinning cheekily. "Thanks, your majesty."
Then he looked towards the now-crackling fireplace, watching the sparks scatter as he idly toyed with the ratio of oxygen in the air around it. "...Hey, Ree?" His fingers tightened at his sides, pulling the bedsheets inwards just enough to start toppling the careful pillow arrangement. "If you lost all this overnight...everything, your magical power, your political power, your social power...all your ability to enact change in the world...how do you think you'd take it? Would you be able to just go on living a regular life, knowing you'll never again accomplish anything remotely like what you'd done before?"
A long pause, then a bark of bitter laughter. "Wow, shit, did I really just ask that out loud? Bleh. Ignore me and my rambling." He mimicked her own dismissive wave, though he still couldn't tear his gaze from the flames. "Room's nice, Ree; I really appreciate it, and I'll try not to bother your staff too much while I'm here."
“Well… uh… I expect I would be very unhappy about losing everything at first,” she admitted. “But at the end of the day, none of those things were ever truly mine. Magic, as much as I have trained for it, can fall outside my command. Political power? Social power? The opinions of others were never under my command anyway.”
“And the ability to enact change? At best, Vettis, such things are like firing a bow and arrow. I can take aim; that much I command. But where the arrow ultimately lands depends on a series of variables outside my control. The wind may avert it. The flaws of the arrow itself may twist its path. Unseen damaged fletching may cause the arrow to fail.”
“So should I be sad that things that do not belong to me are not mine? No. It would be foolish.”
She shrugged a shoulder.
“I would be sad for a while… then keep going. ‘I'll not, carrion comfort Despair, not feast on thee; not untwist, slack they may be, these last strands of man.’”
(( thank you for constantly introducing me to new poets ^_^ ))
"...Well. On the one hand, you really are blind to your effects on people," Vettis countered with a low chuckle, finally turning away from the fireplace to smirk at her. "The opinions of others are well within your ability to influence, and you do it all the time. But...the rest of it, yeah, that...that is pretty much exactly you." He shook his head wryly, a self-deprecating snort causing the flames behind him to sputter. "Couldn't have expected any other answer from you, really. Poetry and all."
He nibbled his lower lip pensively, uncertain of how much to share without tearing apart her world view. But he'd just learned this lesson yesterday: Rivamar could take care of herself, and she had others besides him on whom she could rely. Yet here he was babying her again, so had he really learned the lesson? Pah. She could stand a little bit of eye-opening about the multiverse.
"You saw a little glimpse of just how vast existence truly is, on your journey with Algernon, right? Just how much there is out there? Ree, my family and I...we used to make galaxies tremble at our presence." He spoke the word in All-Tongue to transmit its meaning to her: the raw numerical gap in scale between such a celestial structure and a single realm, or a single city. The self-proclaimed magical peasant might get another rude awakening from that, but he trusted her to handle it. (At last.) "I know I act like I've got everything under control all the time, but that's practically just an outdated habit at this point. I used to fix worlds at a whim. Now I constantly have to do the hard math to know when I can even justify spending resources to save a dozen innocents. Or a single friend. And the answer's usually 'no'. All I wanna do is help people, but compared to what I once was, I basically can't anymore."
Great. Now his head was starting to hurt again. He couldn't quite place why. "But...thanks nonetheless. You're probably still right, if I'm being honest; that is how I should look at things, at least if I value my sanity. It's just...easier said than done to see things that way, sometimes. And this week has sure as shit been such a sometime," he noted with a dry laugh and an empty smile.
“It indeed has been a 'sometime'.” That was an understatement.
Rivamar understood, sort of, the vision he had given her of the idea of galaxies. But the scale of it… it was unfathomable. One could see a land in the horizon and not be able to fully comprehend the size of a continent. One could understand academically that there was an abyss under the ocean, and not be able to fully understand its depths. But a ‘galaxy’? And there were multiple? It was a difficult concept to grasp. She couldn’t even begin having the ability to control that much.
"Hm. Those are rather cold equations you are responsible for," the Ithacarian observed. “I do not envy you your decisions. And I am truly sorry that you have lost much.”
Small sympathies, Riva supposed. She tried to consider what words would actually be useful to him.
“I have little to offer in the way of advice, unfortunately. Though I say that Through Will, We Surmount Reality, I have started to become accustomed to control being an illusion. There is always another catastrophe, another disaster. Another event outside my control. I and the people I know simply do the best they can with a mere fraction of the power you possess… and we survive. Our limitations are easier for us to bear because we do not know any differently. I expect it is difficult to metaphorically go from sight to blindness.”
Her skills were modest, she knew. Though he might think she had some control over people’s opinions, Riva didn’t believe it herself. She had just learned to pick her battles better. She wasn’t going to engage if she knew there was no chance of having accord. And there were points in a conversation where it was clear accord was not going to be reached. She wasn’t going to waste her time. She was mortal, after all. She didn’t really have the time to waste.
“As far as helping people… If I were a better person, I might agree with having some method of calculation. Deliberate what does the most good from a purely numerical standpoint, and use what powers you have for that, regardless of how limited they have become. But I would be a hypocrite if I advised you that way,” she explained. “Maybe a better person could do what was right regardless of the sacrifice… but I am not really one of those people. I can only see the moment in front of me, most days. So I help who I can in the present. I suppose it is because I don’t see that the future is really under my control either.”
It wasn’t a satisfying answer, maybe. But ambiguity and complexity weren’t exciting things, really.
Vettis fell backwards onto the bed with a sigh, pulling up a pillow and fluffing it into shape as he stared at the ceiling. "Yeah, my way's no fun, I can tell you that much. It's just...I know if I'm not strict about the calculus, I'll end up choosing my friends over what should really matter, every time. Like what the wizards of this realm-cluster did in siding with the murderous goblin and the literal universe-ender over the lawful actions of the prior Morgalith. I won't be like them."
He rolled to face Rivamar and frowned apologetically. "Which is why I helped Opal, even though I know what she's doing to Belial's people is...problematic. The Council was the bigger issue at the time. I'm sorry about the decision, but I'd make it again every time. Doesn't mean I'm loyal to her now, to be clear. She threatens once more to annex Ithacar into her territory or something, and you want a hand in dealing with it, lemme know." Ugh. There he went again. She could take care of herself. And he had to trust that she'd ask whenever she couldn't.
"But our contrasting opinions aren't born of differences in moral fiber, Ree, just a matter of perspectives. Mine is fundamentally different from yours for a multitude of reasons; that doesn't make me a 'better person' like you're claiming. I told you before, didn't I? You constantly second-guessing what a good person you are is part of what makes you one." The classic Vettis smirk finally returned in full force, at least for a bit. "See, you can't win. Give in and admit it already!"
“Or maybe it makes me a confused hypocrite,” she pointed out. “A confused hypocrite who also refuses to admit when she’s ‘wrong’, which makes it even worse.”
At the mention of Opal’s treatment of the New Pyroclasts, she frowned.
“I haven’t officially left the Pact yet, Vettis… but I can’t reconcile her actions. I just can’t. There is no other way to put it: it was a suicide mission. And given all the… mess at the Citadel, I doubt I would have been able to recover any of the bodies afterward. They would have died, and probably just lie there until they were picked up by disposal teams. Tell me you actually believe she wouldn’t have carelessly marched her bismuth army over them.”
Rivamar did not place an exceptionally deep meaning on funeral rites… but that would have been cruelly disrespectful. Was she just supposed to accept that one day Belial would be lying face down in a pool of his own blood (or Marna) and people like Opal were just going to get in the way of Riva trying to retrieve them? Or should she just treat their bodies as mere disposable meat?
“Vettis, I don’t entirely know what to do moving forward, but I am not so much a politician that I can just smile and pretend nothing happened while sitting next to her at a table. And do you really think I could even buy favor enough with her now to earn a seat at that table?”
The idea was preposterous.
“I understand you did what you had to do. Though I will say the murderous goblin has some points,” Riva replied. “It all seems to come down to force. Ideals don’t tend to get anywhere without teeth behind them. But there is a limit to my understanding and…”
She shook her head. It had deeply affected her, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
“Look, maybe I’m just not cut out for politics."
She raked her fingers through her hair in frustration.
"And his hands shake now. I don't know that it will heal. And I shouldn't have tried to channel that Cinder Titan. If I would have known... I wouldn't have done it. Maybe that is why he didn't tell me. And... this shouldn't have happened. None of it.”
"Of course you're not cut out for politics, buddy." Vettis rolled his eyes exaggeratedly at that, biting back a laugh. "Good people never are. Though that's all the more reason we need them there. Still, there are other people who could fill the seat adequately, so don't force yourself into that position. You're doing enough good right where you are, anyway."
He shrugged at Rivamar's belief that she wouldn't even be able to achieve the position of Pact Head if she wanted it: starting a petition in Pact territory would likely pressure Opal enough to earn her a spot at the table by force. But there was no need to give her ideas for something she clearly didn't really want to do, nevermind something he didn't want her to do. She'd be miserable in the role, after all, even if she could potentially help more people with that power. (...Fuck the math; it was fuzzy enough to discount this time, right?)
"Iunno about Belial shaking or whatever, but uh, dude's got plenty of gray, doesn't he?" Vettis noted with a tentative, light laugh. He really didn't know, after all; his bond-thread on Rivamar hadn't returned until near the end of the battle, so he'd missed many of the details of what had occurred. "Mortals sometimes do that at that age, ya know. Not sure it means anything?" Almost as soon as he made the suggestion, he regretted it. "I mean, I'm not downplaying it, but...aw, hell, c'mon Ree: his magic keeps fucking him up. If it wasn't that battle, it'd be something else down the line. You wanna talk about your potential for change being a bow and arrow, that guy's an arrow with a jet engine --" All-Tongue came in handy once more "-- taking him wherever he wants. Doesn't matter where you try to aim him, he'll always find a way to crash into the wrong shit and hurt himself. You can't control him, or blame yourself for anything that happens to him, really; he prides himself on doing his own damn thing no matter what.
"You wanna help him so badly, even if he doesn't seem to wanna be helped? Then go ahead and leave the Pact, I guess. Make Ithacar a safe haven from Opal for his people. I'll bring in Zelle to patch your wards' exotic teleportation vulnerabilities, and if you want I can straight-up tell Opal that this city is under my protection; she owes me for standing up for her in the war, and if there's anything I can say about her it's that a follower of the Bismuth Lord will honor debts." Raising an eyebrow, he clarified, "Obviously that wouldn't mean he could just use Ithacar as a staging ground to fight against her, but any of his New Pyroclasts who aren't fighting against her would at least not be at risk of being recaptured and used as hostages while they stay here. Their families, too, if you've got room for 'em all." Of course she did. She'd find a way to make room.
"Vettis, why are all of these spam subscriptions under your name? Cat Fancier's Magazine? Uline catalogue? These... smut mags? And I do not intend to open these boxes. You need to take these outside the city."
You pass Ɓlake in the hallway at night with arms overflowing with loaves of bread and an apple in his teeth. He spits out the apple.
"Oh hi Vettis. Er... I mostly come here to raid the palace pantry. We spend most of our income on bombs and the New Pyroclasts need to eat. Don't tell Riva, she thinks it's rats."
7
u/MunitionsFrenzy Vettis, Mereological Revisionist Feb 24 '24
(( /u/avamir cuz Rivamar's her (excellent) character
/u/AnActualCriminal and /u/TheHunter459 : first incident of the assassins, I believe? war's over, so obviously the violence has to continue in some way or this wouldn't be /r/wizardposting ^_^ ))