An Aged Man is But a Paltry Thing

A cold wind stung Valens’ eyes. The sting itself didn’t much bother him, but he hated how it accentuated the lack of sensation along the centers of his eyeballs.

He walked at the head of the company with the novitiate, Rufio, letting his legs unaccustomed to rough game trails set the pace. To make out his face in detail, Valens had to focus his gaze on the young man’s hair or neck; his peripheral vision had recovered fully, but even sixty years after his blinding, his vision still had a blurred streak across its center.

Rufio looked up, and noticed the angle of his gaze. “What… uh… what kind of monster slashed you across the eyes?”

“Man.”

“If someone was trying to blind you, it doesn’t seem like they did the job all that well.”

“They did the job well enough for a normal man. Someone with less Nephilic blood would probably have gone blind to cataracts, anyway, in the decades it took me to heal this much.”

“So you were blind, for a long time? How’d you get by?”

“I took bounties for monsters, same as I do now.”

“...While blind?”

“Well, I begged, at first, but about a year of that wore too much on my pride to continue. Blessedly, I already had a decent grasp on the Earth Discipline, and there are Earth spells for sensing tremors through the ground, or for tapping into the sensations felt by plants through their roots. Still, I needed to work my way back up from doing the glorified pest control most monster-hunters start with. First, it was helping shepherds with ordinary wolves, then banishing a few Moroi that were haunting some little-used backroads–”

“Moroi?”

“A hairy little sort of vampire-thing. Usually, they come about when someone places a curse on a pregnant woman. More often because a lesser curse was botched, than because someone wanted the child to be born a bloodsucking monster.”

“Do all monsters prey on the progenation of humans in some particularly vile way?”

Valens cast a glance back at the company. Atia had been sticking close to the young Rhatian for much of the trek, but now she hung near the back of the column to speak with Ereleuva. Even so, he lowered his voice.

“I would assume you already know something of the Leupin’s habits. How much?”

“I was the only one to escape a caravan the was beset by a warband of the Bolthoi, with a Leupin in tow. I saw it select a captive. At a distance, yet far closer than I would’ve liked, I saw their ritual that night. What it did, and what was standing there over the aftermath in the morning.”

“The Moroi and the… larval form of the Leupin share a trait most monsters do not, in that they are born of women. But it is a common pattern, in those creatures we class as monsters, to darkly reflect some part of the human experience, mocking our virtues or cruelly punishing our vices. Werewolves are men transformed by a curse, but that curse must find wrath or gluttony in their hearts to take root. Dragons seem to emerge into the civilized world only when greed has hollowed out the virtues of civilized men. And the bog-hags that lure children into their huts to eat, well, they live to sew confusion into the correct paradigm by which children should trust certain adults, and avoid others.”

“You speak from long experience with monsters. The irony is not lost on me, that your gravest injury was at the hands of your fellow man.”

“I will not say that all mankind is no better than the monsters, but we go now to a landmark in the wilderness where we must be on our guard, on account of the monster that dwells there. Some places in civilization are no different, on account of the men that occupy them. If you are sooner or later going to leave our company and make for Aureliopolis, Rufio, you should keep well away from politics when you get there, and from the major chariot racing teams.”

“Was it politics that cost you your eyes, then?”

Valens gave him a hard look.

“If I don’t pry overmuch.”

The old monster-hunter smiled. “My nephew and I got into some trouble, many years ago. We stepped into a pair of very high offices. He had a plan to put the Empire on track to its former glory, you see, and I meant to support him in that. If it had all worked out, I would probably be sailing to Aureliopolis, right now, getting ready for a triumphal parade after restoring Rhatia, Ethperra, and probably a few other western provinces besides to the Empire. But, we ran afoul of actors who were well-practiced in amassing power, if lackluster at using it.”

Rufio nodded, though his expression still betrayed wonder at some detail Valens had glossed over: how high these offices were exactly, or how plausible it really was to restore the western provinces, or some other matter. “What happened to your nephew?”

“He may be dead, but I doubt that. He had– unusually, for one of his sex– an affinity for the Lunar Discipline, and could establish direct links to convey thoughts and feelings mind-to-mind. He and I had such a link, and he once described the sensation of one being severed as ‘like a piece of your brain being cut out mid-thought’. Now, it’s possible that sensation was lost among other such pains,” he gestured to his eyes, “but I think it more likely he’s still trying to play the game, and has been unable to use the link, or unwilling out of fear. Until recently, the Nikaphoreans had a stranglehold on the capital, and rooted out the Celestial Disciplines with a vengeance. Who can say how much of their influence yet lingers?”

“Well, I would start to think ill of him, if he waited much longer to reach out after the overthrow of the heretics.”

“There is purpose behind everything he does. We were bested by circumstances outside his control; otherwise, I have no doubt we would have succeeded.”

“...Though you are unlike him in some ways, and not insignificant ones, you do remind me of another gray-haired Nephilic I know.”

“Men are meant to be fleeting things; lingering long in this world, even if it’s the result of admixture with something other than Man, tends to give us certain idiosyncrasies. But who is it I remind you of?”

“The master iconographer to whom I was apprenticed. Nephilic blood in Rhatia usually comes with patrician breeding, which he had, though for many generations such blood has provided no guarantee of wealth. He is probably much older than you; he lived through the Aleani invasion, though more than one generation of that people has since been born, lived, and died in ripe old age without knowing a homeland besides Rhatia. He is unlike you, in that he is largely resigned to practice his craft in much the same way he always has, until he dies. If you are so staid in your ways, then I have missed the signs. But the commonality I see is this: he spoke of me, and of his past apprentices– even those who had not amounted to much– in much the same way as you speak of your nephew. He would feel the need to qualify that those others have not yet amounted to much. He went to great lengths to teach me the Fire Discipline, despite the near-total lack of potential in my blood for Elemental magic, because a few spells to precisely control the shape and intensity of a flame were essential to his process for gilding and applying certain pigments, when creating an icon. Once the idea crossed his mind that I might possibly surpass him one day, he threw every effort he could into giving me the tools I needed to succeed– even putting enormous effort into teaching me magic that would, for one such as I, only be marginally helpful. All that is to say, if I reach Aureliopolis, I’ll expect to see you there, sooner or later. I just hope your nephew will be worth your grand return to the capital, and all the trouble that will inevitably follow.”