To rest, and to be

Chapter 68: To rest, and to be

/Have you ever heard a choir of more than a hundred folk?

It is a sight to see, and a noise to hear, something I had the pleasure of doing today. As of right now, I am far, far to the north of the cradle, high up and out, on the island of snow and ice, covered in high mountains, low valleys, and giant lakes of ice.

Yes, I know, most of you are here for the music, but I will get to it. Please, allow me but a few more moments for the travel. This is about a journey, after all.

Up there, the weather is harsh. The winds seem to cut through your very clothes, no matter how many furs you clad yourself in, and shoots the cold right in your bones. There, it lingers, gathers, collects, seeking to leech the very life from your body. Your lips go blue, your teeth begin to clatter, and even moving another step becomes a desperate struggle against death.

The snow piles high, fighting you on every single movement you make, and seeking out any cracks in your leathery shielding to invade, and bring icy water to your skin. Yet still, one must fight on, and I tell you now, that sight of an orange glow in the distance, of a hut with a warm fire, it will never again give me this much strength.

An icy grave is always up there, a looming threat, never yielding, always waiting, hungering, for those unfortunate souls that dare draw close. Yet, if one dies, it will at the very least be beautiful.

The sun, glittering on every icy crystal falling from the sky or blowing in the wind, stretching long tendrils of tender warmth through the trees, snaking its way to your frozen face. The fog, laying over an icy lake, the clouds, latching on to mountaintops and refusing to let go. Up there, in the north, it feels like you are closer to heaven than anywhere else, whether you are making the journey to a cold grave and ascent, or simply through working your way up to those rocky peaks.

Then again, simply may not be the word many would use for that.

But this has gone on for long enough. You were promised a choir, and you shall receive one.

I had the luck of getting a guide in these northern lands. The people here are not one for gold or glitter, their currencies are things useful for survival. Pelts, furs, grain, fish, these are traded instead of metal discs. To get into their good graces, I had to sacrifice a cleansing glass tube, masterwork of runes, built to filter out any impurities in water and make it safe to drink.

For them, it was an alternative to melting the snow, and would allow a family to certainly survive a little longer.

Still, this was only enough to be accepted, not to be tolerated for long. A piece of advice for you, stranger, when up in the north, always help out. Those who are useless will be abandoned, when the time comes, and their burden can not be shouldered. And usually, this is a time that comes soon.

And yet, with all of these troubles, death looming, and people thinking about survival before anything else, their sense of community and belonging is stronger than many other places. Share the meat of a beat you slayed with the only other man to help you do it. Take the only fish you caught on a day and cut it in half.

It is a sense of perspective I had not attained until now, and perhaps I will not do so again, for this was truly unique. And all of these people, each of them focused on surviving each day, they will meet. Not every day, and not all the time, but occasionally, they come together, and they sing.

Their voices sound out at the same time. Deep, powerful, with the hardened resilience required to live in such a place. Men and women, all mixing together, their words resonating, amplifying, and going out into the world in deep hums and calls.

Few instruments have the power to sound over such a thing, and not many of them are used, as they would be heavy and unhandy. Instead, they sacrifice pelts that are too thin for clothing, strapping them over wide, metal barrels, and slamming them with sticks, building timbals, drums, and other percussions.

Hundreds of them then call out, a force of nature, underlined with might booms as their warriors beat down at once. Their songs are a force of nature as much as they are a call, and many times, these are the prayers they offer to their gods and fallen heroes.

It is much different from the hymns and praising chirping of many southern churches, and also not the same as some of the tribal humming I had the pleasure of hearing down south, it is much more a call, a thunderous roar to those in the heavens that they have not forgotten them up there, and that they will not be forgotten down here, either. Every single man, woman, and child is determined to join the gods in their halls, to feast aside those mighty heroes and share their stories, that wish for glory so ingrained in their beings that nothing could shake it off.

And with that force, that wild, raging, primal fury they call out against the world around them, and the shout down on the mountains that they are here, and that they will never be gone!!/

A chapter of "Musico Telofio - The Journey", written by Kurt River.

- - - - - -

Seriously! System! Social etiquette??

Ugh, what a pain in the ass. He had really been focusing so well. Now he had to start all over...

Annoying, annoying, annoying. Still, at least these rewards were promising. A <Telekinesis Affinity Pass>? Time to appraise, perhaps. Yes, Mx. Appraisal, please do in fact do your job!

[<Telekinesis> affinity pass: A one-time use consumable item. Upon activation it immediately heightens the individual's affinity towards all manner of telekinetic abilities. This means that mastery gain, and manual skill acquisition rates are boosted, while their price in the shop is reduced. The amount is determined before usage, but will not be revealed to the individual. All boost are percentile, however only the price reduction occurs exponentially, while the boosts simply apply to the base amount.]

A little convoluted, but certainly nothing to whine about. I mean, hell, if it reduced the Skills's price by anything more than two thirds, he was good to buy it. Wait.

FINALLY!!!!

HE WOULD BE ABLE TO GRAB THINGS ONCE MORE!!!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! NOTHING COULD STOP HIM THEN!!

So yeah, it was like, totally chill, you know.

[Anecdote: Rewards are handed out based on the individual's wishes and thoughts. The pass used up a substantial percentage of the reward. Thus, the other drops may seem underwhelming.]

Really? Not much in Mercury's eyes to be frank. A free Skill evolution was more than decent, especially if they got pricier down the line, and he would never say no to gaining a level. Wait, he hadn't gained it yet?

[The 'level' the individual has gained can be freely applied to most parts of the systems. Examples: Character level. Skill level. <Function Inaccessible>. Inventory.]

Oh-ho. Well, well, well, if that wasn't a treat. A level to allocate freely? He'd have to give this some more thought then. This reward was quite good, really. Honestly, by now Mercury was almost sorry for bitching about it at the start.

Though he definitely had to think a lot on how to use this level. He didn't wanna waste it, so finding something that was hard to increase was key. His inventory he could increase with gold eventually. His "character" level would increase over time, same with his Skills. Though there was one Skill he didn't quite know how to increase. <Shop>. His very own, perfectly unique power.

It was still sitting there, at level 1, taunting him to go buy another potion, why wouldn't he? It might increase its price fivefold, but you know, that's all just par for the course, no?

Haaah. For now, he'd just save it. There was no way of figuring out what a level would add to <Shop>, and maybe he'd get a better Skill to use it on as well. He was fairly sure it wouldn't work on abilities.

[Affirmative.]

There you have it. Thanks, Mx. <Appraisal>, very kind. Although now he was left wondering what the hell that inaccessible function was. Had he not seen everything the system had to offer yet? Ah well, no use fretting about it, he'd see eventually.

Finally, what was that about increased evolution growth?

[Increased evolution growth: Increased evolution growth.]

Sigh. Which 'growth rates', if you could?

[Mana, health, stamina, strength, vitality, dexterity, agility, intelligence, wisdom, willpower, luck, mastery, Skill points, Ability points, chance of receiving special evolution, chance of gaining Skills, chance of gaining additional benefits, increased access to features.]

Ah. Everything. You know, maybe sometimes he should just take things as they are written on the tin, without prancing about it so much. This felt a little like he was being mocked, after all. Stupid walls of text.

[Stupid individual.]

"What was that?!" Mercury blurted out loud, landing him a very confused look from a half-awake Lucia.

"Ah, sorry. I-I was... talking to myself," he stuttered, a little flustered. But the priestess simply stared at him silently for a couple of moments, before closing her eyes and dozing off once again.

"Haaah," Mercury gave a long, but quiet sigh. Surely, he must have imagined that, right? No way that good old <Appraisal> would get snippy with him, right? What a pain, what a pain. All this systeming was exhausting, maybe it would be best if he also got a bit of sleep...

And after a couple of minutes, the slow, soft up and down in the carriage had worn down Mercury's defences. Sleep had claimed the cat once more.

Except for the part where at those times he was also just as free as usually. Waking up back in his own mind, Mercury stretched his body. He'd gotten more used to the feeling of his <Astral Body>, and ever since he finished up his <Mana Veins> by getting them all the way through his claws, it felt much more complete. Sure, he wasn't quite done yet, his teeth and inner organs still needed some work, but he was getting closer.

When he arrived, the mopaaw quickly looked around to check for Uunrahzil. 'Old Uunrahzil,' he reminded himself, like they would have done. It painted a small smile on his face, such silly antics from something so old. No, perhaps it was because they were old that old Uunrahzil still acted childlike from time to time.

Ah, whatever. Apparently, he was alone for this little nap. Well then, what to do indeed? He was feeling a little bit exploratory. Maybe it was worth a try once again, heading towards those far off landmarks. Or should he go to work on <Mana Expansion>? Wait! Didn't buying <Telekinesis> take priority?!

No, actually, none of those did. It was a priority to actually sleep for once, get some rest in. He still had yet to figure out how the hell he was lucid while dreaming and still got all the rest he needed every single day. It was strange, to say the least.

Well, who acres. For now, all he had to do was lie down in the soft grass, close his eyes and drift off into sweet nothingness...

- - - - - -

Pul. The man sighed as he thought about his own name once again. Pul. Pul. It really was too short, wasn't it? None of the grace of Atlantis, not the strength of Atlas, and not flowing as smoothly as Glaciel. It was dissatisfactory, and so to make up for his name, he had to be better.

Right, that was his purpose. To defy the very nature of his name, a nature that demand he be stupid, weak, perhaps pathetic, and generally below average. It was a name bestowed upon him by his parents, traditional folk aiming to support him, saying he never needed to do his best, but what would they ever know? No, no, no. Pul wasn't satisfactory.

Perhaps it might have been, had he come from a lineage with a powerful name, but he did not. And thus, Pul was all he had, 3 simple letters strung together into a clumsy string of noise, a sound that people would call to get his attention. That's all it was, a moniker, a name.

After all, that was his purpose. To defy the very nature of who the world wanted him to be, of what a Pul ought to be, to go against the very purpose instilled in him. It was his purpose then, to be flawless.

That was him, Pul, the perfect, the smooth, the flawless, the gracious, the strong, the elegant, the infallible, the glorious, the beautiful, the flawless, the beloved, the popular, the terrific, the sensual, the mysterious, the flawless, the enchanting, the diligent, the passionate, the accomplished, the flawless, the amazing, the cordial, the immaculate, the flawless, the great, the flawless, the flawless, THE FLAWLESS!!!!

Narrator here. Maybe we should add a deranged to that list.

And in order to achieve true perfection, Pul had long since decided that he needed to see all that is wrong with the world, and try all the things vile and strange, so that he may come to understand what exactly it is that he must avoid. Of course, he would also need to try out all the things that are good, to build his picture of the world, and truly acquire enchanting and mystery.

After all, he would prove it to them. To all of them. He would prove that he, Pul, was the greatest to have ever lived, the smartest, the bravest, the overall most perfect. The ideal that everyone else could simply follow, that all other isyns could look up to him. A large back to follow.

For this reason, Pul always kept himself pristine. A man of smaller stature, sure, at 1.60, but certainly never dirty. The pure ice making up his skin was always perfectly smooth and transparent, with a slight blue hue to it, although many parts were hidden by the pale suit he wore. His hair was a rich black, thoughts its tips faded into white, and the frost covering his face sometimes made him look pale. For that reason, he always carried a handkerchief, perfectly folded and tucked away of course.

His eyes he also took good care of. Most isyns would care little, simply knowing where water is in the air, yet Pul refused to rely on such a thing. Instead of their usual, milky, blind eyes, his were of a deep, rich, blue, full of vibrancy and life.

Still, he understood that this was perhaps not something all of his kind would enjoy, and as such, he simply took this as a particular fancy of his. After all, that was not quite a problem, simply a difference of opinion, not plain wrong from the very core of its being.

This was something he hadn't known when he set off on his journey though, and he was proud to have learnt it, although he was less excited about the wisdom's source. Magma, a lavin he could never quite get along with. Their race was the polar opposite, and for all the cool, calm perfection Pul held so dear, Magma was just a fiery, everchanging and moody.

Yet, apparently, there was a crowd that appreciated her for it. Thus it could not be wrong, however much he disagreed with it. Or perhaps it could, and the crowd was entirely wrong, all of them... He had to travel for longer to figure it out.

Magma wasn't the only one to have taught him, luckily. There were many other he had met in his life. Eric, the dryad, a man as loud as he was likeable, dense as a piece of hardwood, yet never one to hold a grudge. Pul had learnt a lot from him, although it was difficult to abandon his rigidness as easily as the drummer would have him believe.

More than Eric there was also Oliva, the beastkin. They were not of true blood, as Pul had heard, yet he could not understand what it meant. The true kin had always declined any attempt of making contact, after all. He shook his head at the thought, it was truly too rigid, that much he had learnt. Oliva themselves had been a more patient teacher than Magma, the fiery woman losing her temper whenever he didn't understand immediately, while the raccoon would simply laugh him off and wait. They were truly a kind soul, and he strove to emanate that same warmth.

And of course, he could never forget about Wilhelmia, the woman at the very front, putting herself out there for all to follow, unapologetically. She seemed to almost put her flaws on display, not shying away from them, or even trying to correct them, but embracing herself as she was. To see such a thing... he never would have dreamed of it at home, but now, he wasn't. Those people had opened his eyes, metaphorically, and physically, to the very world around him, and he would forever be thankful to them.

Even if talking to the lavin was a giant pain sometimes. Also literally, whenever she slapped his back. Her armor may stave off the heat, but it certainly didn't diminish her force.

Ah, he had neglected yet to think about his role in their circle. He was the pianist, supporting the backbone of the rhythm, while giving a melody for the others to follow along with. A quiet support and leader, it was something he very much so cherished, not any less so due to its difficulty. Even the very instrument he played on seemed to be a rarity, something Wilhelmia had found somewhere far away.

He cherished it, truly, for it was a very tangible thing that he could practice and work out any flaws on. Frankly speaking, he saw it as a metaphor, and perhaps even an illustration of his very self, his core, one that he could shape and perfect. Until he had done so, he would not rest. For he, Pul, would be truly flawless, after all, that was his purpose.

Perhaps he would achieve it today, and if he did not, he would give it his very best once more the next.