Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ataya heard the heavy creak and groan of the wooden steps that lead to the upper-level of Taliuma’s small, weathered and ramshackled library. Being quite nearly a literal hole in the wall to begin with, visitors to the main floor were rare enough and those who ventured to the second fewer still. Yet, even with his nose in a book, Ataya’s ear recognized the familiar complaints of the architecture, and he narrowed his eyes a fraction without so much as looking up from the text before him. It couldn’t be Ismiril — that boy was long gone now, and for that matter didn’t make the steps fuss nearly so much as this newcomer did — and the follow-up reverberation of heavy, uneven footsteps only cemented this thought. No need to pay them any mind, then.

Except that they were approaching.

Ataya stopped reading before the visitor arrived, but kept up the guise of it just the same under the idea that if he looked busy and uninterested then perhaps the intruder would catch on and move on without disturbing hi—

“Good evening.” A deep, baritone voice. Thick, vaguely accented with a hint of foreign heretage and, most crucially, wholly unfamiliar. “May I sit with you?”

“No,” Ataya quipped before looking up from his text. A moment later, though, he did look and immediately after, he blinked.

It was unusual, Ataya thought, that he was genuinely surprised by anyone’s appearance. He and his sister were too ‘odd’ looking themselves to go about judging anyone else based on their oddities. But in this case, whatever he had been expecting — and he wasn’t even sure what that had been — was entirely different from what met his eyes. The man was massive. That much he could have guessed from the weight of his steps to some degree, but even that failed to do justice to quite how, not only tall, but heavy the figure before him must be. Heavily scaled and reptilian in the face, slightly stooped, clawed, tailed, and clearly old, Ataya wondered if he was perhaps a khehorian. The dark, empty sockets where his eyes ought to be, though, suggested that he just might be a fellow hybrid.

Ataya shifted his crossed legs beneath his book and tilted his head, expression still critical, but more open now, his curiosity peaked. As he reached up, tucking a loose strand of hair behind his ear with one hand, he placed the other in his book to hold his place. “Why?” he asked instead, amending his position. “What do you want? And how did you manage to scale the steps up here without breaking at least one beneath your weight? The staircase has to be at least as old as you are given only how much it bewails every burden placed on it…”

Ataya narrowed his eyes as the other sat. Wary. Suspicious. What was this strange, old, reptilian man doing, not only approaching him and interrogating him without cause, but sitting next to him, so close and genial — familiar even, as though he actually knew him?

When he went on, though, speaking with all the easy companionship of an established acquaintance as he shifted the topic to Ataya’s book, Ata found himself — in spite of himself — listening more closely. The man hadn’t commented on, or even seemed to notice his race, and, perhaps even more of note in this particular instance, despite being significantly older than he, the man wasn’t talking down to him, but engaging him. He hadn’t chuckled at Ataya’s choice of reading material and made some stray comment about its weight and how oughtn’t he perhaps be reading something a little more ‘appropriate?’ More than that, he hadn’t so much as assumed that Ataya hadn’t yet read this other book he spoke of and left the question fully open to the possibility without a trace of mocking in his voice.

Ataya hummed and eyed the other, expression inquisitive and judging. “I’ve not yet,” he admitted, “though I imagine I would have if I’d found it amidst these shelves. I do try not to give too much credence to any one author’s version of a history, though he does write with a fairly level tone…” Ataya hesitated only a moment before adding, “Do you know where I might find the piece you mention?”

Anything which delved more deeply into the inner workings, mesh and overlap of magic automatically ranked high on Ataya’s interest list.

Ataya listened intently.

Though still passively wary — that was an instinct, by now, his willingness to trust chipped away by the lessons already taught to him in his young life — he found himself genuinely intrigued regardless, his curiosity peaked and ears open.

“The college of sorcery…” he repeated after listening, bottom lip disappearing between his teeth briefly as he chewed on a thought that made his brow furrow. “I don’t suppose they allow hybrids in to view their libraries, do they.” Though partly intended as a question, it came out sounding more like a begrudged and resigned statement. “And I doubt the tome is here…I’ve inspected most all of the shelves by now, though it is hard to keep perfect track without some structure of organization…” He tilted his head, processing the new term, mentioned later. “Order of the Onyx…?” One eyebrow arched skeptically. “If I bet, and if I had the coppers to, I’d bet ten it’s an oblivionite organization. Do they not think everyone already understands that their skin is dark? What is it for? And would they permit me to borrow a copy?”

He highly doubted it. The question was almost a joke in and of itself — of the humorless sort. How was he supposed to get his hands on books if the only libraries that let him in were the broken ones so poor they couldn’t be bothered to keep anyone out? After a moment’s debate, he opted — almost to his own surprise as much as any — to voice the frustration aloud.

“It’s difficult to learn properly when the only places I have access to are the ones most no one wants to be in anyway. One day, I’m going to find all the libraries on this earth that will let me walk in them,” he said. “And maybe a few that won’t. And I’ll read everything in them, whether they like it or not.”

“Magic.” Ataya said it immediately. Before his mind got a moment to consider that perhaps he ought better hold his tongue. Before he considered that he truly did not know this man and had no reason to trust him. But then, what was this? Was it trust? No, he reasoned. Just one, simple fact. “Magic interests me more than anything else. This library has too little of it. All the libraries do. Their concept of it is limited and it does not stretch where I would like it to. I know there is more out there to learn, and I will find it, but I doubt it will be strewn out simple…if it were, everyone would know by now. Perhaps some do.” He frowned. “In any case…I read the histories because they tell a lot, even if they don’t intend to. There are stories there of persons who did things, accomplished things, cast great magics and curses and wonders that aren’t laid out in the simple books that describe how to draw on a power and make a ball of light in your palm. I want to learn that — all the beyond that no one knows how to do anymore, and then, once I know it, I’m going to step again and do things no one has ever done before, not in all of history…”

His brow pinched tighter, thumb skimming over the corner of the text beneath him. They were big words. Bold, overarching statements that anyone could make. He knew this. And he was well aware, too, how ridiculous they must sound, coming from the mouth of a thirteen-year-old hybrid child who spoke with the mixed accent of a dovaa mother and desert renegade. But he assured himself he didn’t care — not really — he would make the words true in time, and it didn’t matter if the old stranger listening believed him.

Yet it did, on some level, and that frustrated him more than not, for he couldn’t pin point why.

“Why are you here? And what is your name, you never told me.”

Ataya snorted.

A mentor. That was what his father had aimed to be for he and his sister: a teacher, guiding them and their studies of combat. All his father had ever accomplished in him, though, was frustration and disappointment. To have a tutor of magic, though — a master of spellwork, guiding his learning and helping him to delve into areas he may not have even thought yet to consider — that would be a dream. But an impossible one. Even his mother, despite her talents in dovaa magic and happiness to teach him what she knew when he was young, was ever at least as much a fighter as she was a caster, and she did not dabble outside of her own field. And who but her and his uncles could he trust?

No one.

“No one would have me,” he said aloud. “And even if they would, I wouldn’t have them. How could I trust them? No one actually wants to train a sheron-skinned mess-blooded halfbreed, and they wouldn’t know the magics I want to learn, regardless. Purebloods are scared of spells older than they are and shun them like everything else they don’t understand. One day that will be my advantage, and I’ll learn it on my own.” He studied the older man. Upon catching a glimpse of a third eye, though, shadowed under his hood but visible from Ataya’s low angle, a flicker of something resembling giddiness bubbled in Ata’s chest: the man was hybrid. He nearly grinned, somehow privately, overwhelmingly satisfied by the simple tidbit. “And it wouldn’t,” he said. “Change the meaning of anything, that is. But I’d like to know anyway. It’s something people do, you know, when they introduce themselves? And you were the one who approached me, so I think it’s only fair.”

“Kazqueth.” Ataya let the name sit on his tongue, testing its weight and shape when spoken aloud. It was a strange name — or certainly one he had never heard before — but with an interesting balance to it, he thought. Weighted twice with a finish that leant itself to allowing one’s tongue to linger at the roof of their mouth. “Kazqueth, Kazqueth…”

His gaze flicked sharply upwards again at the offer that followed and narrowed immediately after, his lips pursing into a crooked line: half bemused and half outright suspicious. A huff followed the look. What made the old man think he could just smile like that? Like any part of this was normal, or worse yet, amusing?

“I haven’t told you my name yet,” Ataya quipped. “You don’t know me or what I’d like to learn, specifically. You don’t even know where I live. What makes you think you could teach me? What makes you think I’d let you? I just said I wouldn’t not but a minute earlier. Just because you make for a decent conversation doesn’t mean I trust you, you know…”

Ataya narrowed his eyes, squinting ever more suspiciously at the odd, odd man before him. Approaching him was one thing, sitting down another, and all the dialogue in between — well, Ataya didn’t suppose he minded that so much — but whimsical prophet talk? Open-ended winding statements about futures and fate and names and trust which took up breath but really said nothing? He snorted.

“Of course I’ve a great future ahead of me,” he quipped. “Because I will make it so. But if you didn’t care to learn my name you could have just said. I’m not offended.” With that, he turned his attention firmly back to his book, insisting with as much silent mental force as he could muster that his company get up. When he didn’t, eventually Ataya glowered, closed his book, placed it away and stood. “Fine. I’ll go.”

And he did, grousing the whole while about the absolute strangeness and stubbornness of his previous company. No matter his sentiments, however, Ataya never did forget the man’s name.