Author’s Note: Hey everyone! Here is the Work in Progress for Chapter 179 I hope you guys enjoy! :D It took me a while because I wanted to try my hand at writing a poem again, so I hope it turned out alright ^^; The revised version for Chapter 178 will be releasing tomorrow some time before the full release of Chapter 179! :D
The Transgracian Academy for the Magical Arts. Exhibition Hall. Grand Arcade. Central Thoroughfare. Prosperity Row. Local Time: 2225 Hours.
Assistant Chairman Lord Ferrian Fiswisk
This… was supposed to be another in an unbroken chain of repetitive cycles.
Mana-deficient!
A cycle my forebearers too had faced.
…
Enfeebling aquatic!
…
It was an inevitable reality.
Weakfielder!
…
Nullhander!
…
It was a… dressing down, based solely on one’s physical shortcomings.
Blubbery buffoon!
Clumsy Clod!
Dawdling Dullard!
Or in the newrealmer’s case…
Aura-less!
Commoner!
Mana-less!
…
A shortcoming of incredibly far-reaching implications.
Whereas our first candidate was condemned for the shortcomings of our physical form, one adapted for life beneath the waves, and scarcely for land…
The earthrealmer was instead condemned for something far worse. A handicap which would likewise stunt her aspirations for civilization, and thus, her only way out of her primitive newrealm status — magic.
She was… by all extents — impotent — a barren desiccated floodplains forever in the grips of an eternal drought, incapable of ever bearing fruit.
She was a lost cause.
Her very presence here defied reason… but not all possibilities.
Her people could have simply been ‘lucky’.
Her mages and primitive peoples perhaps stumbling across the means of portal magic in a hope and a prayer… only to be answered by a reality expecting a people capable of sustained greatness.
I had expected little of her.
Even though my heart ached for a shared plight in fate’s cruel shortcomings — a shortcoming we eventually overcame through magic — I knew for a fact that the newrealmer lacked even this small blessing.
For without magic, she lacked the tools not merely to thrive, but persist as a viable civilization.
Her kind, her culture, would be subject to the wilds as with any common animal.
Her armor, while antithetical to that notion, was no doubt the culmination of her people’s final refusal to fade softly into the night.
She likely arrived for assistance to those ends.
And the guild?
Well…
It would provide that aid, for the price of social reciprocity.
Just as it had done so for so, so many more newrealm candidates that had walked through those doors.
…
Just as it had done so to our own first candidate, many, many millennia ago.
It was just as well that they spat it out,
That our kingdoms were primitive and backwards.
Yet they sung sweet songs and spun hopeful tales,
Of our place beyond the frost.
So sure we were and excited we became,
Thus we signed with our blubbery hands,
A bargain they said,
A fair trade they claimed,
A deal to seal our fate.
They offered us ships where our currents ran,
Hoisting sails without need of wind,
And so we sailed needing maps and tools,
Of which they were happy to provide.
And from those tools we found need of hands,
Eschewing the useless fins that once fought the quill,
From clumsy paws fighting water and ice,
To craftsman’s fingers that now forged our fate.
Yet still remains that ancient ledger,
Stored deep beneath the palace walls,
And while its ink may have long since worn to dust,
The terms written within yet still remain.
We’d signed our own agreement, in hopes of bettering our future.
We’d signed away decades, centuries, millenia, in the hopes of reaching similar heights.
And we succeeded.
…
I’d hoped the same fate would become of the newrealmer.
I’d hoped, for her sake, and the continuity of her people as a viable civilization, that a deal could be struck despite the odds.
And yet…
The odds were defied… in ways I never could have ever imagined.
…
30 Minutes Ago
“My heart aches for the fate of your peer, Prince Havenbrock, Princess Dilani.” I offered.
“And I, your sanity, Lord Fiswisk.” The avinor princess rebutted, garnering a look of utter perplexity from myself, and a growing grin of knowing mischievousness from the lupinor.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The proof of burden you seek is one which shall challenge your preconceptions. It will defy your perspective on reality, your faith in the eternal rhythms of the patterns of newrealm concessions. I only warn you out of good faith, Lord Fiswisk. This, I implore you to consider.”
…
The princess was correct.
Her words were not one of malice or misdirection, or even a bluff born out of malevolence.
It was a genuine warning.
One which I now palpably felt, as I stood amidst a gaggle of fellows, incapable of holding their own.
“But how?!”
“Yes, how?!”
“Indeed, HOW?!”
Yet their arguments felt… banal, trite, and uninteresting, as something within me compelled my motions towards the haphazard pile of metal.
There I stood, tall, proud, a product of millenia of sacrifice.
Yet in the face of these metals, these dead materials, I found myself feeling anything but.
Here, staring, glaring, sensing, and re-sensing, I saw the materials of a civilization at their zenith.
A people capable of forging wealth from the earth, untold riches from simple rock, in a manner otherwise impossible without magic.
Here, a mana deficient candidate had stood her ground, pleading a case that defied all expectations.
She didn’t need the guild, or its sponsors, nor any deal.
Here, she defied convention, by proving herself capable of taming nature to her will.
…
Hollowness filled my heart.
An aching entered my soul.
I felt the yearning for milelnia lost.
I felt my knees aching, from an untold number of Kings, Dukes, Lords, and Counts, all prostrating themselves at the foot of our sponsors.
We’d done everything right.
We’d followed the path.
We’d arrived at its end.
We were now accomplished and storied!
Just as every newrealm had once done!
And yet…
Here the newrealmer stood, circumventing the cycle, breaking the chain.
“Heh… hehhehe…”
What was I feeling?
Jealousy?
Rage?
Bitterness?
Resentment?
What was it that ate at my heart and soul?
…
“Lord Fiswisk? Did you have something to say?” A voice broke me out of my descent into self-inflicted madness, as I turned, only to return a smile.
Futility.
That’s what it was.
A sense of… futility. For all that time spent… against a newrealm that should have done the same… but didn’t.
“I was merely pondering to myself a few thoughts about the newrealmer, Lord Rilka.” I offered politely through a smile that was not my own.