Kasimir

[TAG: RP, 909 words] xlv. tiles Kevan kept his fist closed about the admissions tile he’d drawn out of the cloth bag. It sat in his hand, occluded, and yet strangely weighted. One by one, students went over to the admissions staff—today, it was Leif, from the Chancellor’s office, escorted by Inesta, who formed a brooding presence to the side. The mere, brute fact of Inesta’s presence was a chilling reminder of the skindancer threat that lurked among them. To tell the truth, between shifts at the Medica and his studies in Siaru, in the history of technology, and with Master Anders, Kevan was beginning to feel worn down with work and a dislocated anxiety he couldn’t quite name, and the skindancer threat had almost slipped clean off his mind. (Percyl, though. And Jenali. Names written on his mind, no matter how he tried not to carry them. Master Bob speaking of the physicker’s attitude. “You have a good heart, Re’lar,” he said, more than once. “You must learn to distance yourself from it when you treat a patient in your care.” No more a contradiction than El’the Aksel’s lessons and discourses on the Lethani and Ademic thought, Kevan had realised. The tale about mistaking the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself. Where one tradition of thought met with another, ran into another: Ludhan writing about the limits of language, the need to leave behind the foundations that had once lent you support. “My propositions,” Ludhan had written, “serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)” You didn’t need pitch, once you learned the focus and the Alar needed for the basic Sympathetic Binding of Parallel Motion. You burned your bridges, once you had crossed, leaving only a memory of smoke, and a premonition your eyes had once watered. A thought of strange finality. He supposed he was in that sort of mood today.) Kevan nodded a greeting to Leif as he slipped his hand into the cloth bag, felt about, and removed a tile. And now it sat there, in his closed fist, and he found himself strangely reluctant to see it. There was some power to not knowing. Knowing locked it down, turned uncertainty into hard and certain knowledge. You could always pretend, when you didn’t know. There was an ambiguity there. No longer, once you had set upon the path to knowledge. Students milled about the area, jockeying to see what each other had got. Already, some students held fingers up in the air, indicating what slot they’d gotten, and that they were willing to trade for it, or outright sell it off. “Kraem,” Soren muttered, staring at his tile. He flashed it to the group of them and everyone winced. It wasn’t the worst: Valerra’d picked up an early morning slot on Luten, and had declared she was warding off bad luck for the entire group, seeing as no one could pick a slot that was worse. Owyn’d offered to trade, gamely saying the Masters couldn’t really do their worst, as he’d had a light class load that term. “Don’t tempt them,” Jarvik’d said, darkly, swatting at his ear. Still, Soren’s tile was pretty awful. An early afternoon Shuden slot, and the last Kevan remembered, Soren’d deadlines all the way through Luten, leaving him little time to prepare for the exams. He drew a deep breath and opened up his fist. Told himself to rip off the bandage as fast as he could. “You lucky bastard!” Soren hissed. Mid-morning, Felling. Late enough in the span that he could expect to have time to prepare, and before lunch, but late enough the Masters were alert but neither hungry nor grouchy. These things mattered, even if you thought they didn’t. Without allowing himself to think too hard about it, Kevan said, “Trade you for it.” He reached over and took Soren’s tile, dumping his own in his friend’s hand. “You can’t! Your schedule is an utter disaster—” “—Tell that to Issal,” Kevan said, amused. An old joke. A dark joke, though the stories of the early Alchemy class had already faded away, but he’d always had a sharp memory, sharp enough that it startled people, how much he remembered. How easily it came. He’d sometimes only studied for Siaru vocabulary tests a few hours before Master Isaak administered them, and generally performed well enough. “I’m fine,” he said, loudly, when Soren looked blankly at him. “I’ve got enough time, I’ve been preparing half the term, and Idris keeps reminding me Master Bob isn’t going to drop me to E’lir or throw me out of the Medica when he’s spent most of the term working us all so hard.” His mind screamed about what he was going to do for Master Alys’s exam, let alone Master Anders’s, but he willed himself not to think too hard about it. He would manage, somehow. He had to. Easier if he didn’t think about whether he trusted his own abilities. Easier if he thought, merely, I have to do this. He closed Soren’s fingers over the tile. “Keep it,” he said, again. “I’m fine.” “If you’re sure…” Soren trailed off. “Yeah, I’m fine,” Kevan said again. Swallowed down the painful feeling of luck undeserved. After all, he’d managed this far, hadn’t he? Edited to add: [OOC: Perhaps unwarranted/unwanted from me, but simple solution potentially- Clearly the only way Sarenrae found out is by stealing your food and eating it, food theft is wrong, against the Lethani, unethical, Conduct Unbecoming, file complaints against Sarenrae, Sarenrae gets punished, the Masters unfortunately also punished you but she is punished therefore there is some justice in this broken world we live in. Also clearly your food is not oversalted how dare she she's delusional send her to the infirmary /Chernobylmemeout]

[TAG: RP, 688 words] [OOC: Join the club... Thoughts on NKA? I respect V!Ash on NKA. Have a theory but not quite sure it's right.] xliv. syllogism “How many of you remember what modus tollens is?” Master Anders was asking. He surveyed the class, and waited. “It’s a valid argument form,” offered Jahan. “I certainly hope it is,” Master Anders replied drily. “Can you say a bit more about what it consists in?” “Logic is concerned with the form of an argument,” Jahan continued, tentatively. “If an argument has a valid logical form, this means the structure of the argument is such that it is impossible for the premises to be true and yet the conclusion false at the same time.” “Good,” Master Anders nodded. However, he was still idly tapping his chalk against the chalkboard. “Logic, to put it simply, is concerned with the form or structure of an argument. To say an argument is valid is to say that if the premises are true, then the conclusion is true as well. Put another way, the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the argument. Now, E’lir Jahan has talked about the structure of the argument. Does anyone else—not Jahan—care to explain what the structure of an argument is?” “The structure of an argument is what’s left when you abstract away from the particulars of the argument,” said Renlin. “‘If it’s raining, then the ground will be wet,’ and ‘If I don’t study for Admissions, my tuition fees will be higher than the Karykos Mountain Range,’ are both statements that fit the same overall schema, ‘If P, then Q,’ where P and Q can be any statement or condition.” “Correct,” Master Anders approved. “Although I suppose your tuition fees won’t be ‘higher than the Karykos Mountain Range’ if you can at least demonstrate a grasp of modus tollens. So someone finish this for me. What’s modus tollens?” He looked about the classroom. “Come on, come on, you all know this by now, you’ve passed the midterms, and it’s a basic valid deductive argument form.” “If P, then Q,” recited Kevan. “Not-Q, therefore not-P.” “That is the correct schema, yes, Kevan. Can you offer an example of this form of reasoning?” “If I’ve studied for Admissions, then my tuition fees will be manageable,” Kevan replied. “My tuition fees were higher than the Karykos Mountain Range, therefore, I didn’t study for Admissions.” “Well, I see the topic of Admissions and tuition fees is on everyone’s minds today,” Master Anders said, lightly. “Sir, it is that time of the year…” Kevan pointed out. Master Anders acknowledged the point with a nod. “So, this is an example of modus tollens. Keep in mind that logic is about the way the premises relate to the conclusion. In other words, this is about the structure of inference—we’re not interested in whether the premises and the conclusion are really true, only how they relate to each other, E’lir Donall,” and the addressed E’lir put down his hand. “If we care about the truth of the premises as well, what do we call that?” “A sound argument,” Renlin offered. “It’s easy to get misled and to think that the Admissions syllogism isn’t very good—” “—I studied, and my tuition fees are atrocious!” declared Ulven, to general laughter; nervousness mixed with amusement all over. No one liked Admissions. It was easily the most stressful time of the year. “Yes, but that’s the point, isn’t it?” Kevan spoke up. “That’s taking us back to the truth of the premise, because here, the objection is that you can study and work your heart out and your tuition fees will still murder you during Admissions. “But the point here is that if we grant this statement is true, then the conclusion must follow with necessity. That’s validity. That’s why modus tollens is a valid argument form.” “Good,” said Master Anders, drawing their attention back to the chalkboard. “So suppose that you’re trying to perform modus tollens on a boat at sea.” He paused. “Actually, I’m not sure how many of you can perform it, even if you’re not at sea.” Kevan winced. Probably not the chain of long deductions that Schechter was writing about, in today’s assigned reading on epistemic risk, at the very least.

[TAG: RP, 613 words] [OOC: What.] [OOC: Literally what sort of clowncar is this Tehlu-damned game even. @Araris Valerian, I assume this affects your read of Wonko in a positive light?] xliii. archives Kevan liked the Archives, liked the scent of old paper, ageing leather. The pages rustled softly as you flipped through them, drank in the hushed sounds of students perusing tomes and scrolls. Perhaps it was the thought that there was so much knowledge in the Archives, crammed on all the shelves, to the point the Archives didn’t always know what they had. (Inevitable disruptions by the death of a Master Archivist, or warring Master Archivists, one succeeding the other, or the Lannis Massacre, so many years ago, and the death of the then-Master Archivist, and the collection of El’the and gillers stepping up to try to keep the University running. That, Valerra had said, was the point at which some of the great changes happened, and why wouldn’t they? The entire leadership of the University had been replaced in one fell swoop; the new Masters had different ideas, different perspectives on how the University ought to have worked. Kevan wondered if Master Anders had seen those days, and did a three-day search in the registers, breathing in the dust of the old storerooms and handling the records—as the scriv insisted—with cotton-gloved hands, feeling strangely as though he was in the Medica once again, with Master Bob instructing everyone to clean their hands, put on the sterile gloves, which were then spritzed again with a mild disinfectant. Master Anders was the second Master Rhetorician to succeed the position since the break.) Ikran Abantja had boasted of the University’s Archives in his Farewell (and condemned it, in the same stroke), where he wrote that the greatest minds of the Four Corners had known much less about far fewer things than the Archives had lost in their collection. He liked books, liked reading. Liked the idea you could flip open a book, and give voices to the dead, that someone distant, or dead could speak to you through the pages. (Unlike the story knots, where the knowing was lost, except for the few like his grandmother who remembered, and he supposed he’d done a little remembering of his own, in the end, passing what little he remembered on to Eithne, who was, herself, trying to catalogue story knots in the Archive’s keeping.) There was a certain enchantment to reading, and a certain desolation to reading the end of a book, intoxicated on the ideas you’d come upon. A sense that you were part of a conversation with those who had once been living, breathing human beings, like you, with their own priorities, their own urgency. You could come across a line so beautiful, so perfectly-phrased it stole the breath from your lungs and returned it at the denouement. Even from the start, when he’d encountered the Archives for the first time as a fresh-faced young student, he’d quickly made himself at home among the stacks, and taken to reading books on philosophy, travelogues, on languages, anything he could get his hands on. There was a hunger in him, a sense that he was making up for lost time, for what the schoolmaster in Tirnagh couldn’t impart to him, making up for being who he was, born to the circumstances he was. (Some of the children of nobles had their own books. He hadn’t grown up with any, and he’d read everything in the schoolmaster’s collection from cover to cover.) Perhaps that was the first sign he hadn’t been a good fit for the Fishery, Kevan thought. He’d had his heart in the Stacks, more than he’d had it in the Fishery. He’d wanted to make something that would last, and he wondered, sometimes, if he should have been looking to books rather than to Aturan roads.

[OOC: W00ts one hour of sleep I am a god >> I don't disagree about the differences, just feel for whatever reason that my gut just thinks it's that flavour of RP + activity profile. I don’t think Dingo is right and really wish I knew why. Might be because I kind of don't feel Drake is a you kill despite that being defeasible.] Ah soddit imma drop OOC for now it's a pain and mobile is hell. See I don't disagree but Naming's one role though. And my read of foundational Archives is it gives a binary answer which is absolutely helpful but it's like staking on one Seeker and one half action tracker. I don’t really disagree about the exe being weaker but an expelled SD still can't hit anyone other than expelled and Imre students, which functionally advances our wincon and cuts down their actions available. I don’t know if I think it’s Evil per se but it's something that popped out to me when rereading. 1. 2018 if Vulture counts, I was deliberately not acting like me though. Extreme kelspeak. Otherwise probably somewhere like QF3. Alv totally @ me for a change in playstyle when no drek my playstyle changed it was the first time I was a Villager >> 2. Don't disagree but have noticed some Elims will push me no matter what. You and Sart did actively consider sussing m in LG82. 3. I'm mostly torn because I still feel I tend to butt heads more with V!Sart cf. Heron in AG8 and I also feel Sart's votes have been in CC territory which I take to be more E!Sart indicative. I'd just really like to get more out of Sart to make the call but that doesn't feel realistic at this juncture. 4. As a side comment I'm playing an Inquisitor of Sarenrae in a campaign right now and codeswitching between that game and this is brutal. Nothing to do with Sart other than an "I see what you did there dawnflower"

[OOC: My gut is that this is a closer parallel to LG93 and LG94 for Ash. I don’t have anything to support this, just sort of feel it's the case. (Agree I could just go read them but it's a function of how ham I want to go again.)] Edited to add: Personal note I am still reconsidering the Sart vote. Not fully sure. Do not know if have time to relook once more before conference. Good night y'all I am going to take an hour to sleep >>

[TAG: DISCUSSION, 687 words] [OOC: I wasn't going to put too fine a point on it but: E!me arguably had zero incentive in calling early M2 for the Village to pick up the pace and then receding into the background - I either let y'all kill yourselves by chilling while you guys also chill off, or I go full Village leader mode. There's no point in trying to gain Village credit but also not following through. On further reflection, Wonko's point about Village acquiring info roles feels a bit wrong-headed for multiple reasons including that targeting is ultimately parasitic on strength of thread discussion, and thread discussion unfortunately has to be guided by the threat of penalty, i.e. voting, or Elims don't feel pressure and don't expose themselves. I also sort of feel he's overestimating some of the roles, e.g. Linguistics E'lir is a passive that doesn't really give you a boost until later on when spying begins, or when players get expelled. I don't know if it's because the game was different when he played. Drake and JNV are not me kills, simpliciter. You can argue I'd have a vested interest in defeating that meta, but given I just royally stabbed Drake and JNV in the back in the game I played right before this, and also had to substitute out because I felt very bad about my role in the mess and was just an emotionally compromised mess by that point, I think it's a tall order to believe I would be okay with killing Drake or JNV that early, or that my team would agree to pull that on me. Keep in mind I also explicitly asked Stick, who replaced me, to spare Drake if she could. Drake was V reading me and we'd planned to do some shenanigans together (the stuff he wanted the Ceald for) which was vaguely in scope for my RP, and which I could have used for my advantage, if I were Evil. There's no utility to killing him early when he's still in a position to help me out. (There's a further argument that leaving him and Archer, whom I V!read, to brawl things out would be very helpful here.) Similarly, JNV tends to trust me and to reveal information to me. (Cf. Ruin.) Anything gained by being against meta is also lost if my team immediately kills JNV, including information and the chance to try to nudge JNV into helping us. SDs have a lot of planning to do this game and as much as you guys apparently have a high opinion of me, it's taking basically all my bandwidth and attention/energy to 50k, and I really don't think I'll hit it before I die/get sabotaged, much less to try to work with a team in a doc and to help plan while I'm at it. Hell, there's no point in posting egregiously over the wordcount chunks of what, 1.3k words? It's a valuable resource to be saved over time. I'd be more focused and stick to 400 word drabble chunks. It's clear the 50k isn't just a shield - I'm not using the RP to sit back and relax even though I could. I think there's a difference between hardcore Villaging and being present and still doing basic Village stuff, e.g. refusing to vote for anyone I feel I have a decent read on, and actually asking myself about those reads and interacting with people in the thread. I think the complaint from Wonko about my being shielded by RP basically seems to misconstrue what I'm doing and also presumes I'm not actually doing anything Village-side ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There's a couple of meta reasons too, I'm not bothering to point them out because they're not very fair to people. Simply put, if you needed a sign from the SE gods, I don't really know what to say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Now I'm curious however about Sart as now that you bring my attention back to him again, V!Sart and I tend to butt heads more than E!Sart and I, so I don't really know if I'm missing something here.]

[OOC: To be clear, I am wearing a gloating smirk that you got hit by the exact same situation, if you're also V, which I am currently believing for the moment I'm not making an especial point. I'm gloating/amused. I was, arguably, also basically just pointing out the flaws in Sart's and Wonko's argument about me in that same way. That's just about it. The Sart parallel is what makes me entertained.]

[OOC: Highlighting again more directly that you read me as E/E with TKN for this very same thing... :eyes:]

[TAG: DISCUSSION, 210 words] [OOC: Does your line of reasoning account for/include the fact that C1 elevations are determined by your pre-game submissions, if not GM RNG? C2 elevations are the ones based on EP submissions. EP submissions lag elevations by one Month/Turn. I swear to Tehlu I've explained this to y'all multiple times >>] Edited to add: [OOC: My understanding is they don't - if you go for Pipes, you get the standard 2 EP boost determined at random. If you have other information from the GMs on this, I'd like to hear it.] [OOC: Honestly I've given up and am just eating the penalty if I have to, though IDK if I am being penalised.] Edited to add 2: [OOC: Notice that it's either/or. You only control your starting EP - at least off the rules - if you have submitted an essay. You do not choose it otherwise. Either way, since EP submitted during Term 1 Month 1 only affects Term 1 Month 2, you simply cannot draw any conclusions based off the elevations announced in the write-up of T1M2 because those are just based off RNG and pre-game submissions, all of which are based on the player side in a state of ignorance about the game distro. Good luck if you want to guess El and Wilson.]

[TAG: RP, 472 words] [OOC: I am consistent :eyes: ] [OOC: 30k :'D I am making Progress! I am a god! I am starting to go insane from the amount of writing and am starting to cheat because who needs tense consistency or quality just write!] xlii. chicken soup “You look like hell,” Jarvik said bluntly, as Kevan set his satchel down on the table and then flopped into the empty seat and leaned forward, resting his head on the table. “You and half the University,” Kevan muttered, closing his eyes for a brief moment. “What?” Kevan raised his head and stared at Jarvik. “Telling me I look like hell. I know I look like hell. I feel like death warmed over, and I haven’t been able to get much sleep.” “Why aren’t you sleeping, then?” Jarvik asked, matter-of-factly. As if it was so simply solved, Kevan thought. Not for the first time, his mind went to the bottle of pain relievers that Idris had written him a scrip for. Half a spoon did knock him out for a good few hours, alongside relieving any pain he felt. But you had to be careful, with these things, to avoid dependency, or abusing them. He knew that. He allowed himself the momentary temptation, but then reminded himself he knew better. “Shifts,” he muttered. “Every Re’lar in the Medica swears it’ll get better. I don’t know if they’re telling the truth or if we’re all telling each other comforting lies in the hopes we’ll make it to the end of the term. And have you seen the El’the? They’re jumping as soon as their alerter goes off. Sometimes they even swear they’ve felt it go off when there’s nothing there.” He flopped back down again, bonelessly, and closed his eyes. “And I got caught dozing off in the Archives the other day by Master Alys and merciful Tehlu, you never want to get caught falling asleep by Master Alys. She read me a long lecture about my health, and then some, and I swear her scrivs were covering their mouths to hide the fact they were laughing at me, by the time she got into the chicken soup. Tehlu, if you’ve ever loved me, please end the term already.” “What chicken soup?” Of all the things, Kevan thought, Jarvik had to fixate on the chicken soup. “It’s just soup, Jarvik.” He lowered his voice, hastily. Despite the privacy of a study carrel, they were still in the Archives, and the Archives were still Master Alys’s domain. “But don’t ever let Master Alys catch you saying it’s just chicken soup or she’ll explain why her chicken soup will solve anything and everything from measles, exhaustion, an immune system that’s been fried to hell and back, amputation, infections, colds, and the plague itself.” “That’s…some chicken soup,” Jarvik said, hesitantly. “Listen,” Kevan growled. “She’ll tell you everything about the herbs and the cilantro and the lemon juice and the stock and each step of preparation and making the soup in excruciating detail, why don’t you go ask her?” “...I’ll pass. But you’re looking more lively already.”

[TAG: RP, 844 words, CW: implied death/abandonment, also pretty dark.] [OOC: I wondered if Archer felt you were being defensive. But I don't feel the lack thereof is a very good you tell anymore - it's clear you've learned to control it in the last couple games. I think there are other, more relevant factors to look at ] xli. kenosis There are nights, still, even now, when Kevan dreams of his father. When he was younger, young enough to understand what it meant, when his mother said he wasn’t coming back, that “not now” meant something longer than the next month, or the next summer, he’d dream of his father, trailing kelp-draggled footprints and the salty scent of the sea in his tiny room. Dreamed his father sat on the edge of the bed, ran his fingers through the tangles of his hair. But his father never said a word, in those dreams, and when he’d told his grandmother, she made him do some ritual that Kevan couldn’t quite remember, all those Yllish words and superstitions (things that had fled, had been quashed with the onset of empire, of civilisation), and laid boughs of holly, the fireside poker, and salt across his window-sill and the threshold. When he was older, Kevan dreamed of his father, standing knee-deep in water. They’d lived by the shore of the Centhe Sea, when he was very young. He remembers collecting shells, running in the sand. He remembers tasks, interspersed with play. They moved, some time later. He doesn’t remember why, only that his grandmother was ailing, and so they went, and came to Tirnagh in the rolling green hills, Tirnagh with the sheep, and it’s Tirnagh that Kevan thinks of when he speaks of home, even now. (Sometimes, he dreams of the Centhe Sea, and he dreams of his father and the two are one.) He dreamed his father was walking into the ocean in the night, each step taking him deeper, where the sand gradually gave way to blackness. In his dreams, he chases after his father, always, calling out, wanting to understand, and Jair never answers, never looks back. (In some dreams, his father holds him under the water, and in others, he’s holding his father under, and they struggle, and Kevan asks why and his father looks down at him, solemnly, water sluicing through his cupped hands like a blessing, like a strange benediction and says, “Just as I cannot tell you the answer, so you cannot ask me the questions,” and he wakes up with the sharp tang of brine in his nose and wonders what the hell kind of dream that was anyway and feels the ache in his chest anew.) Even now, even at the University, in the Commonwealth, he discovers that old sorrows don’t ever leave you, not quite. The first time he had the dream again, he startled awake, and nearly woke both Jarvis and Soren up when he almost kicked free the small step ladder leading to his bunk. The dream came and went over the years. What he knows is what his mother says—“Lost at sea,”—and his mind fills in the gaps (his father was a mariner), asks the questions his child-self was too young to ask, re-examines the things he was too young to understand, as though having the answers here and now can change the past, as though it can somehow fill that gaping void his father’s absence has opened up in him. (They suspect, of course. Neither he nor his mother nor his grandmother say it aloud. He was old enough to understand there was a terrible sadness to his father’s eyes, when he thought Kevan wasn’t looking, sometimes even when Kevan was looking, when the mask slipped, and young enough not to understand how to name it.) There are nights, still, when Kevan dreams of his father. Even now, even with the song of the Omethi drowning out all memory, all thought. (Sometimes, he’d like to walk into the Omethi, let it wash him clean of all thought, all emptiness. All of this terrible sorrow and brokenness.) There are nights, more often now, where he can’t sleep, because the emptiness inside is welling up, threatening to engulf him, and sometimes Kevan wonders. His father’d never really spoken of it, but the more Kevan remembered, the more Kevan wondered, the more he wanted to know, even though there were no answers now, even though there never would be. Sometimes, it’s too much to bear, even to give to sleep. Sometimes his mind throws smears of the day back at him, reminders of where he’s failed, where he wasn’t enough, where he wasn’t very good at people, where he wonders sometimes if there’s something broken in him, because he doesn’t even know how you can screw up this whole business of being human, and he can’t stop all of it from flooding his mind, can’t run from it. (Sometimes, he dreams of his father, of asking his father, “How did you bear it,” and there is no answer, and Kevan wonders if this is because there is no answer to give, only the water, as his father pushes and holds him under and he can’t breathe until he wakes up, taking in great heaving breaths of air, until his body remembers he’s in his bed, on land, and his father is lost at sea.)

[TAG: RP, 1309 words] [OOC: Wow, is our PM on AI not good enough for you, should we start talking about superconductors too :eyes: Anyway not me people just added me to a few of them which is pretty annoying as I'm just here to RP and chill.] [OOC: Half my brain kind of wants to say that's E!Mat but at the same time I also kind of believe V!Mat D: And I don't feel that tell is useful anymore because I think it's clear to everyone Mat gamed the hell out of it previously.] [OOC: Cycles are now 45 hours, likely due to everything stabilising on the GMs's end. Rollover is at 7PM MST, or 9AM in GMT+8.] xl. first First, there is Eithne, descending, with her hair aflame, tied back, and the knotted necklace about her neck, wire from the Fishery, but he knows the knots, knows the time their fingers have spent making each loop. He taught her on rope, but she moved on to wire, working the loops in with pliers, and why wouldn’t she, why wouldn’t she wear their shared history proudly around her neck like a torc worn by Yllish kings and nobles of old? They are throwing him a party, all of them, all his friends, meant to celebrate his elevation to Re’lar. Kevan doesn’t know how to feel. It doesn’t feel real, being elevated. Not so fresh off being Master Artificer’s despair, and the walking disaster of the Fishery. He can’t bring himself to believe that there is a kind of light at the end, after all. Being competent at something. (Even if the elevation feels undeserved, even now. Not like that. It doesn’t feel earned. He knows Master Bob would point to the patient, would emphasise every life saved in his Medica is a victory. But it doesn’t feel earned, and Kevan isn’t sure there’s anything Master Bob can say about this that would take away that lingering sense of wrongness.) There is Eithne, descending, with her hair aflame, in the lights of the tavern. More people than Kevan thinks he knows are crashing the small party; most of them drop by to shake his hand and congratulate him, make some small talk, and move on. (He doesn’t like being fussed over.) Jahan doesn’t seem to realise that, as he moves in, crowding Kevan, talking to him amiably about Moore’s paradox and while Kevan appreciates the discussion of the paradox, the room is shrinking on him, or he is moving back, his back pressing against the wood-panelled corner of the room, and Jahan is between him and the way out. And there is Soren, loudly talking to Jahan, steering him towards the drinks. He flashes a quick apologetic look over his shoulder, a quick wink. The party was meant to be a small one, but somehow it got out of hand, Kevan supposes. He doesn’t know that he knows that many people. He has always felt as though their lives briefly touched, and then drifted apart again, like boats on the Omethi at night, drifting down past the Stonebridge. (Some of the students do this, pole down the river on narrow boats. Part of Kevan has always wanted to try, but he’s never had the time, lately.) Deon congratulates him in Yllish. He laughs (he can laugh, at how terrible Deon’s accent is) and thanks him in Siaru. Valerra and Jarvik are determined to drown everyone in alcohol, and Soren stares suspiciously at the metheglin Valerra has procured. “In our Re’lar’s honour,” she says. “As if I’d let you touch one of my own brews.” “You do Alchemy,” Soren retorts. “I think any reasonable person would run far, far away from your brews.” Soren and Jarvik are determined to drown everyone in alcohol and the toasts get steadily more bawdy, and the poetic references become steadily more crass, the more they drink. Kevan feels the rush in his veins, the world slipping away, receding, the emptiness numbed about the edges for the moment, and reaches for the metheglin again and then stops short. He can’t drink metheglin without thinking of home, really. For no particular reason, the home-longing wells up in him again, at this very moment, and he mutters an excuse and says he needs to get some air, and heads out for a moment. Get some air, compose himself. The revelry had crept up on him, but most of it has dissolved away; perhaps something about that particular blend has jarred something loose in his head, stirring memories and the home-longing with it. (It never fully goes away, does it?) First, there is Eithne, descending, with her hair aflame, but this is earlier; now, he leans against the porch of the inn and takes in long, steadying gulps of cool night air. He can feel the heady buzz in his veins. It’s still there, just…faded. Receded into the backdrop, the noise of the world for the moment. He’ll have to go back in soon. This party is for him, and for a moment, Kevan powerfully hates himself, hates the fact the emptiness is still there, hates how he can’t seem to let go and relax into the moment. He’s supposed to be having fun. And he was, sort of. As much as he knows how to. Later, there is Eithne, and the metheglin, he likes to think it is the metheglin, both of them not quite sober, and she is kissing him, in the light of the moon on the porch, and Kevan’s damned mind just goes blank, and then jars askew onto a tangent. The knots are pressing against him, and he thinks he can make out what they are, probably peace, his mind latching onto that, the feel of the knots in his fingers, the way you craft apologies in Siaru—Eamen apologising in Siaru when Master Isaak remarked he’d recovered; either wit, or just utter folly, Eamen’s Siaru was never that strong, one way or another—the twenty-nine arguments against finite frequentism they’d covered in Master Anders’s classes, and logical syllogisms. They speak at the same time, having separated. “I’m sorry—” “Sorry, I don’t know—” He smiles, weakly. They’re both past sobriety but not exactly drunk and maybe it makes things worse, or better, depending on your point of view. “You look wonderful tonight,” Kevan manages. A striking figure. He can appreciate that much. “I know,” Eithne says, shakily. He lives too much in his head, too little in the world. He knows this. The words don’t always come out right, and he doesn’t—doesn’t want things to end badly. “I’m not good with people,” Kevan says, at last. “But…I’d like to think we’re friends?” A question, at the end. Pleading, perhaps for clarity. Or, oh, feck, he’s not finding the words he wants. Whatever they were, before this. “Of course,” says Eithne, in Yllish. “Of course.” In Yllish, certainty is not expressed literally: “The sky will fall,” she says, a non-sequitur. First, there is Eithne, descending, with her hair aflame. Later, there is Eithne, leaving. Kevan doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what to do about this. He should understand this, but he doesn’t: all he knows is that his mind went blank, and he froze, and all the knowledge, all the Rhetoric and Logic classes in the world can’t provide him with a map or compass in this terrain. Later, they’ll ask him if anything happened. They go back to the room, separately, one after another. Renlin will ask him what happened, will make a suggestive whistle; Valerra will read the strain in Eithne’s smile and the edge to Kevan’s, and shut down that line of jokes. It doesn’t cast a shadow on the rest of the night. But how could something like this not overlay his memories of the party, the night? Later, Jarvik and a few others are playing; a simple mix of lute and drum and flute, Valerra is pulling him into the dance. Soren is laughing, whirling about with Idris, and Kevan feels a surge of raw envy, doesn’t know what to do with the emptiness inside. He’s touched, grateful that they went out of their way to hold a party. (“An excuse,” Jarvik says and winks. “Merciful Tehlu, this has been one hell of a stressful term, and I think everyone just wanted an excuse to cut loose and have fun.”) He’s determined not to ruin it for anyone, if he possibly can. (Too late, the guilt whispers. But he doesn’t know, will revisit the moment, but he can’t change it.)

[TAG: RP, 562 words] [OOC: A small point in Mat's defense, which I'll agree isn't decisive but felt should be said anyway - I liked Mat's callout of the inactivity here on p1. You can argue it's performative, because it is, but I also feel E!Mat has generally been content to just sit there and let the Village die with lowered activity. I think it matters he didn't call it out in LG94 and LG95, for instance, because his team benefited from it, and E!Mat tends to be more reactive, so he also gets to blend in with his reduced WiM. I also say this isn't decisive because IMO, pointing out inactivity is one thing - I'd rather give credit for going out there to actually do something about it. But credit where credit is due, anyway.] xxix. sarcasm Kevan was fairly certain this assigned passage in Siaru had it out for him. He glared down at the text that Master Isaak had assigned. The Master Linguist had announced two weeks ago that he felt they were beginning to be able to wrestle with higher level texts now. “This is after the midterms,” Master Isaak had said, almost-cheerfully. Far too cheerfully, Eamen had subsequently commented, as the disheartened students gathered to glare at their new assigned reading materials. “After the first half of the semester, all the weaker students, the ones who were treating this as a class meant to fill out foundational requirements for credit, something you can just smoke your way through, have all been culled out.” Kevan blinked incredulously. “Well, not literally culled,” Master Isaak corrected himself, and then promptly undid that reassurance by saying, “Not yet. Anyway, out of the thirty students taking Basic Siaru, you are the twenty-one survivors! So naturally the final exam will be more difficult, and you can start to handle some slightly higher level texts now.” Kevan glanced around the classroom and was gratified to see everyone wore the same variance of expression: from looking as though they were seals Master Isaak had hit over the head with a club, to being utterly stunned and poleaxed, to increasing incredulity and complete horror. Master Isaak smiled. It was the most terrifying thing Kevan had ever seen in his life. “Your true education begins now,” he said, in Siaru. And Tehlu help him, Kevan understood it. The rumours that Master Isaak had been possessed in his sleep by skindancers soon circulated the University after that, spreading like wildfire. “It’s utter rubbish of course,” Deon told him. “You new students are all so dramatic. Master Isaak loves to pull that one every once in a while, keep the classes on their toes. But he doesn’t do it if he doesn’t think you can handle it. And—he has a very strange sense of humour. I sometimes wonder if it is a Vintish thing.” “Tuan volgen oketh ama,” Kevan replied. “I should be telling you that!” The assigned text of the week, however, was supposed to be a simplified primer to Cealdish politics, which Master Isaak had insisted was within their capabilities, though Kevan was beginning to doubt that most severely. He glared at it. The grammatical forms, he had to admit, were not too difficult. Master Isaak was right in assessing it to be within their capabilities, though he struggled at points to decipher the sentence structures and there were words that just didn’t make sense to him at all, and he had to thumb through his worn copy of an Aturan-Siaru dictionary just to puzzle things out. It was a puzzle he was slowly deciphering, but the process was painstakingly slow. Master Isaak seemed to like flinging students into the deep end, occasionally wading in to retrieve one of them. Master Isaak was walking around, peering at their work, and checking in on their progress. Occasionally, he corrected a student who needed help. He paused by Kevan’s desk. “This passage is a bit difficult for your level,” he admitted, in Siaru. “How are you finding it?” “Very easy, sir,” Kevan said, unthinking, in the same language. He hesitated. “Is it possible to be sarcastic in Siaru?” “Re’lar, you are sarcastic all the time in Siaru!”

[TAG: RP, 763 words, ANALYSIS, 416 words ] [OOC: K. I may not be hard-Kasing this but I also won't vote for someone I feel okay about as that's counterproductive and #feelsbad. If that gets me crocked, put me in a cell next to Drakebro. Sometimes we just can't bring ourselves to vote on a player we think is Village even in pursuit of personal lulz/50k (sorry TKN) and that's ok. No: Archer No but maybe ok no: TKN, Steel, TJ, Mat, Szeth No Opinion: Araris, Ash, Sart, Wonko, STINK I note that No Opinion has some suspicions mixed in and in some cases, players I am deliberately trying to avoid having an opinion about because if I felt they were Evil, I might feel obligated to go hard against them which is counterproductive for me as I plod on in my chill, RPful game. I will, I think, go for Sart here. Sart, Sart. I think I've yo-yoed quite a bit on Sart and Wonko. I feel quasi-CC voting is a bit more of a Sart tell, while weird takes are more of a V!Sart tell. I don't really know how I'd read Sart's votes in this game - the vote on me IMO is a fairly CC vote, and the TJ vote had a one-liner behind it, so...eh whatever Sart can take dual pressure I guess. Part of me just wants to double up on Ash but my gut isn't down with the Ash vote somehow and IDK why I need to go back and re-read. I guess I can see TJ's complaint about Dingo vibes but honestly am feeling LG93/LG94 Ash more where he got dinged for being there quite a bit. IDK. At the same time I feel mechsegue Ash can be E!Ash so I'm all over the place rn. Honestly I don't have a good reason to V!read Szeth it's basically gut off that one utterance and it's clear Szeth is around and looking at the thread but not really showing up? @Szeth_Pancakes Yo bruh you still there? Stay alive my dude. Ngl low key wanna vote Wonko again but also not sure that's wise. Just - urgh. I feel it comes down to whether you feel Wonko's mech clarification is V or not, and I thought so at that point, it was a fairly stable vibe/tone read, but at the same time, still bothered by the time I let Mat's perspective slip go by without challenge and then he was Evil... @Araris Valerian Yo what's your Wonko case] xxxviii. sense of touch The Omethi flowed on, beneath the Stonebridge. Kevan sat by the bank of the river, leaning back against the bole of the ageing willow, beneath the shower of weeping leaves. He’d brought with him the assigned text on predicate logic, he just felt—tired. (A memory of a conversation, a sinking tiredness in his bones. His father, and the last time Kevan ever spoke to him.) (“I swear we don’t see each other very much anymore,” Soren muttered. “Sorry,” Kevan said. “I don’t like the slots I have at the Medica, either. You’re taking a history class next term though, aren’t you?” Soren nodded. “Maybe. I liked it.” Archives, of course. He didn’t comment about Kevan’s new schedule, or make any reference to his elevation. But it hung there, between them, unspoken. Soren was happy for him, of course. Kevan just hadn’t counted on how much it felt like he was leaving his friends behind. Re’lar work at the Medica was exhausting and demanding. “Well, let’s take something together. Drag Val in as well, if she’s down for it.”) He found himself thinking about that argument again, to Soren and Valerra and Jarvik, all arguing about the records left over from the time of the last incursion, the time of Master Namer Solon. You wondered, in the absence of records, about the lives of the students in those times: what they studied, what they wrote about. You wondered about the original text, Devan Lochees’s manuscript, Kvothe’s own story told in his own words, if such a thing was possible, if it wasn’t just a conceit by the man named Chronicler, and what had been lost with the text and what had entered the story through careful pruning, careful insertion by the arcanist Rothfuss. You wondered about what any account, any student’s account of these times would say. Perhaps he wouldn’t enter into them at all. Perhaps he would be but a footnote as the students battled the skindancers, Admissions, and just tried to survive and graduate with their guilders. As they learned and loved, and encountered all those sorts of events that happened to you, in the course of a life lived. He wondered again, about what was left unsaid (excised) in Egert’s ledger, where it crossed paths with E’lir Devare’s account. Watched as the Omethi flowed onward, towards and past Imre, and ever onward, where it would eventually criss-cross with other rivers, flow into lakes, and at long last, at the very end, merge and spill out into the sea. Two students were crossing the Stonebridge, laughing. He saw the woman take the man into her arms and lean forward. How flesh intersected with flesh. Newer languages digging themselves into older ones, running together. Aturan spilling into what was left of Yllish, and Eithne’s doomed attempts to resurrect a language mostly-dead from the barest of bones. A complaint of the devastating unfairness of the Advanced Sympathy midterms written into an account of a skindancer incursion at the University. How they were writing, written all the time, one into each other. How this was history. (“It’s the sense of touch,” Jarvik opined, after a night with too much scutten. Enough drink, Kevan thought, seemed to bring out the philosopher in just about anyone. This was not always a change for the better. “What?” Soren wanted to know. “You know,” Jarvik gestured, vaguely, with the hand holding his glass. “That’s driving everyone in this place nuts.” “Jarvik, you’re drunk,” Kevan said. He’d started to decline more drinks by the time he felt the rush of heat, the hint of numbness and disconnection. “You know I’m right,” Jarvik insisted. “It’s the sense of touch, I’m telling you. We scurry around, here and there. Name this. Sympathy that.” “I don’t think sympathy is a verb,” Soren observed. “Do you think it’s stopping him?” Kevan wanted to know. “We spend so much time locked away in our own private worlds, I think we miss that sense of touch, of…you know. Connection. Belonging. Whatever you call that crap. Sometimes we just crash into each other to feel something.” Jarvik reached over to pour himself another glass of scutten, and Soren and Kevan reached out at the same time, to stop him. Brushed past each other. Connection, Kevan thought. The knowledge someone else was there, real; otherwise we’re locked in our own private worlds. Heading home in the dark, stumbling, Soren reaching out a hand to steady him. We’re each of us alone, Kevan found himself thinking. What else could you do but hold out a hand in the dark?)

[TAG: RP, 435 words] xxxvii. distance He saw Isaal around, sometimes. Whispers followed Issal as well. Kevan was beginning to think there were only so many things the students at the University talked about: who was sleeping with whom (Eamen and Rethis weren’t any longer, and that really didn’t matter, shouldn’t matter), who the skindancers might be, who their next target likely was, the latest major accident the Fishery, the chemists, and the Alchemists had collectively managed to cook up, and the newest two Re’lar at the University, always accompanied by the chorus of how they’d managed it so fast, within a month of promotion to E’lir, within the same term. (And always, the name. The shadow of the name. Kevan was beginning to detest Kvothe.) In truth, he found Issal’s achievements much more impressive. Kevan had only worked hard, had only gone from a failing E’lir in Artificery to a passable E’lir in Rhetoric and Logic and Master Bob had, for inscrutable reasons, decided to elevate him in Physicking for that incident at the Medica, even though Kevan knew nothing (leaving all commentary by Kratan of Vagrus about how this was the beginnings of wisdom—set it aside for the moment as sophistry; he really did know nothing, or at least just enough to be aware of his many inadequacies), whereas the Latrian had swept his way up to E’lir and then Re’lar in the same term, barely a month apart. Did Issal struggle beneath the weight of those unarticulated expectations? Kevan didn’t know. They moved in different circles, the Alchemist and he. He’d told the Masters as much in his appeal for readmission: he wanted nothing to do with the Arcanum. Felt that people were too quick to place such a high level of prestige on arcane subjects, too quick to dismiss anything that a University student could study without ever being admitted to the ranks of the Arcanum. Did Issal struggle? How did he breathe, or move, beneath the weight of whispers, the weight of expectations? Sometimes, Kevan wanted to find Issal, and just sit down and say, “Percyl talked to me about you,” as though that was some kind of introduction (a terrible one, in his view) and ask him how he dealt with all of this, because it was driving Kevan up the wall. Next, he thought wryly, they’d crock him too. Maybe they wouldn’t even need a skindancer to go after him. One way or another, you didn’t just go up to another Re’lar you didn’t know and start talking about how it felt. Kevan watched, from a distance, and wondered about other minds, other lives.

[OOC: Ask Drake and Mat—Drake made it, Mat renewed it. Something about overthrowing the nobles and developing class consciousness. Given Archer claimed you made a Nobles PM, I’m not sure you have a leg to stand on here :eyes: RIP I have run out of pre-stashed RP time to write more in conference :sob: ]

[TAG: RP, 332 words] [OOC: As I stated a couple posts and on D2 as I was putting down my thoughts to decide who to vote, I felt your mercenary D1 skewed a bit more Village. Drake mentioned this and I agreed with it. That's probably also a part of the mindset with which I approached your vote. But that being said, I can't say I strongly V read you but even had I suspected you for it, I also didn't have a strong incentive to push you since again, I kind of need to be alive to hit 50k. Fundamentally it's so far been a balancing act of chill and not being very chill the moment something too egregiously weird or bad or wrongheaded as a take shows up but we know I’m very good at staying completely uninvolved and switching off hard Village mind >> Which probably explains my frustration or explosion in the Commoner+Ruh group PM when TJ just seemed to ignore all my arguments and I didn't know where he was pulling his Steel read from.] RP tag fixed later. xxxvi. crash Kevan wasn’t surprised when he received the grade for his midterm oral exams for Siaru, printed neatly on a slip of paper bearing his name in Master Isaak’s neat handwriting. He’d passed. It could’ve been worse, he told himself, and he certainly hadn’t expected anything more after the disaster that was the oral exams, having been set a group of tasks that he struggled with. Writing essays in Siaru was one thing, however tentative his grasp of the Cealdish language really was. Translating a simple text was doable, if touch-and-go at points. His grades for the translation and essay midterms were at least gratifyingly acceptable, which was to say, decent. The bloody oral exams however had Master Isaak set them the task of describing a painting, except that Kevan hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on in the painting or what the painting was about and doubted he would have been able to hold forth on it in an illuminating way, even had the exam been set in Aturan, which it most certainly was not. Master Isaak simply raised an eyebrow as he handed the neatly-folded slip over. There was a clear question there, even if it was unasked. What happened? Not that it was something Kevan really wanted to have to say too much about. He merely shrugged. Some of the other students were whispering. He…disliked that new distance that had opened up. Wondered if he would get used to it. Still, the unspoken name hung over him. So far removed from the University. So long ago. And still, his name cast such a long and deep shadow. He wasn’t a second Bloodless, damn it all. If the others wanted to spread those sorts of whispers about Isaal, they were more than welcome to. He didn’t want people to look at him, talk about him as though he was the latest morning star, risen to glory, crashed down to earth at the first light of the sun, damned and doomed.

[TAG: RP, 630 words, DISCUSSION, 300 words] [OOC: I didn't object to the votes—I objected to really bad reasons. TKN being pretty honest about being mercenary is fine with me and he clearly states as much at the end of M2. Perhaps if I'd been hardKasing I'd care about the lack of discussion but too bad I don't. Wonko arguing I'm suspicious for RPing and thus being untargetable in a landscape where early Village lacks kills should raise eyebrows since the obvious question is—why are you thinking about targeting? Is this a perspective slip? Sart trying to justify a vote on me by blaming me for not including other players in RP is rich from a guy who hasn't really been posting anyway. And of course, after LG95 and repeatedly agonising about murdering Drake and insisting Drake win with JNV, these are the two players I'd let my teammates target, sure. Let me put it this way: a blatantly "for reduction" vote is understandable and I even noted earlier on M2 that I V!read TJN very lightly for blatantly mercenary voting. But nonsensical claims deserve to be called out. Even if Sart hadn't voted me, if he had made the same claims and voted Ash, I would still @ him because that's simply nonsensical and a touch hypocritical that players CBA to be the change they want but are expecting me to do it for them. I am not the Village donkey and I am going to loudly say no, it's not my problem, too bad.] RP tag to be fixed later. xxxv. stress Kevan woke up in a cot in the Medica with a start. There was something he was missing, he couldn’t remember what it was, and for an unnecessarily long moment of panic, he was terrified he’d fallen asleep on shift. Master Bob had been quite clear that he expected his Re’lar to take turns working shifts at the Medica. The E’lir didn’t have what it took to lead a shift—and Kevan, so newly-promoted, so painfully aware of how little he still knew felt fear surge through him; the idea of being presented with a patient he didn’t know how to treat—while the Re’lar were expected to both step up as well as to acquire experience as physickers. Pain throbbed in his head; light prickling, residual flashes of knots cording about his skull and temples, and then he remembered in vague, smeared flashes: Jarvik and someone else, Talin coming by and checking in on him, and the intense pain in his head. Jarvik. He’d been supposed to have a study session with Jarvik and the others. The realisation had him sitting bolt upright; a move Kevan immediately regretted as the residual throbbing became a sudden sharp burst of pain and nausea banding about his head. Message received, loud and clear. He carefully lowered himself down flat again and tried to ride out the abrupt tidal surge of pain. He pressed a hand gingerly to his head, trying to rub away the warm tightness he felt there. There was water in a stoppered bottle by the cot. Kevan reached out for it carefully and unstoppered it. He had to force himself to lean upright, just enough to drink slowly. Dehydration would just make the pain worse, and he’d enough to deal with. “Oh, there you are,” Idris said, standing in the doorway. She was another Re’lar in the Medica, the most recently-elevated before he had come along, and Kevan expected she was relieved not to have to carry that weight any longer. “What happened?” he asked. “Talin and two of your friends brought you in,” she said briskly, coming over and checking his vitals. “Your friend—the loud one, with the scruffy beard—thought maybe you were being attacked by malfeasance or something. I know Percyl’s crocking has the entire University on edge, but really.” “It wasn’t then?” Idris snorted. “Of course not. You’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, haven’t you?” Was he? Kevan didn’t know. He gave the idea some careful thought, but concluded that he at least didn’t feel stressed, which had to count for something. He felt, he supposed, a powerful sense of obligation. But he didn’t feel as though he was drowning under it. (But he wasn’t the best at knowing, wasn’t he? You saw more clearly, in others. Easier to diagnose someone else than yourself.) “I don’t think so,” he said. And then concession: “But Admissions are looming after all. It’s that time of the term again..” Idris rolled her eyes. “Admissions, of course. And you didn’t remotely think about taking a break.” He had. In fact, he’d felt as though he’d spent a decent amount of time slacking off, really. From what he could tell, other students were more sidetracked by the hunt for the skindancers than to care for their studies. “I did take a break,” Kevan muttered. “Well, it looks like you didn’t take enough of one,” Idris said. “From the looks of it, you came in with a pretty awful tension headache. I’ll write you a script for a bottle of pain relievers. Take it when you need, and don’t overdo it. And for Tehlu’s sake, you’ve already made Re’lar this term, they’re not going to throw you out on your ear during Admissions. Learn to take a break and stop stressing out!” Edited to add: [OOC: Kind of wanted to say this but felt it was too combative but whatever: Don't want me to engage you? That's easy, don't say drek that's so sus or so hypocritical or ridiculous that I can't force myself to ignore it despite chilling :eyes: ]

[TAG: RP, 389 words] xxxiv. pain Pain knotted itself about his head and squeezed, and it was all Kevan could do to weather it out, to sit through it, ebb and flow, like the great tides of the Centhe Sea. Pain squeezed, winding itself into tight, thick red-black knots of thorns about his skull like crusted blood, throbbing through his skull, and every shuddering breath he drew in was filmed over with the red lightning in his skull. “You look like hell,” Jarvik had said bluntly, a few moments before Kevan dry-heaved—he hadn’t been able to manage dinner—and slumped back into the corner (climbing into bed was too much effort, he’d tried and the movement had brought the nausea surging to the front of his skull, pain blooming in bright pinpoint starflowers behind his eye sockets.) At some point, Jarvik had come back with—“Talin,” Kevan croaked, because Talin had insisted he was Talin, and not ‘Re’lar Talin’, had in fact insisted even before Kevan’s elevation, and Kevan hadn’t been minded to fight him, not on that. Talin felt for his forehead, and frowned. “You’re burning up,” he said, and Kevan hadn’t realised, hadn’t been shivering, the tightness in his head and the pain had at some point taken over everything. “Could it be malfeasance?” someone not Jarvik nor Talin was asking, Kevan wasn’t sure who. “Unlikely,” Talin said. “I think he’s just sick. But I’d like to get him to the Medica for monitoring, just in case.” He peeled back one of Kevan’s eyelids, and Kevan shrank back from the bright glow that briefly covered Talin’s outstretched hand. “Pupillary response is normal,” Talin said briskly, checking both eyes. Pain hammered through Kevan’s eyes at the light, redoubling its efforts to crush his head. “Any sign of bruising?” “No,” that someone else said. “Unlikely to be concussion from a fall then. Help me get him to the Medica,” Talin instructed, and Jarvik was saying something, Kevan wasn’t paying attention, not through the haze of pain, but they tried moving him, and he thought he was about to be violently sick again—the room pitched and shuddered and the knots of thick, heavy wire, the sort they used in the Fishery, convulsed about his skull. He closed his eyes and wondered how long it would take for the pain to go. It followed him into the dark.

[TAG: RP, 1183 words] xxxiii. elevation “Congratulations, Re’lar Kevan,” Master Anders said, the moment Kevan stepped into the classroom. Kevan had dreaded this moment, a little: dreaded he might catch a flash, a glimpse of disappointment in Master Anders’s eyes, had in fact come to class early, perhaps because of that, perhaps in spite of that. He found himself flinching, as though expecting a blow to fall. But all he saw was Master Anders’s good-humoured smile, and warmth in his pale eyes. “I…Thank you, sir,” he said, numbly. Felt as though he had left himself, or become a ghost, watching himself speak with Master Anders. In a way, he’d always expected to be raised by Master Anders, at a more seemly time. (Always the shadow of Kvothe lingered, if you moved too quickly, broke too many things. Whispers abounded, of him and Issal, a quiet student from Latria who’d taken some Alchemy alongside Percyl, or so Kevan had heard. Moved too quickly. Advanced too fast.) (You’re advancing too quickly, said the voice, the one he knew too well, too intimately. Kevan had learned by now that rising too quickly, or even good fortune, was begging for the world to smite you for pride. You didn’t crave good things, or wish they’d happen to you. You didn’t deserve good things, not really, not truly; believing otherwise was pride and if you were proud, the world went out of its way to trip you up and grind your face in the dust, and he only wondered what hell there’d be to pay for it later on.) What could he really say? “I’d expected it to be you, sir”? That seemed to demand, to articulate expectations he never would have had, in a thousand years. Master Anders was the judge of whether he was ready, not Kevan, and in Kevan’s own, sincerely-held opinion, he wasn’t. At the same time, who was he to argue with Master Bob? He’d been enough of a coward, the words caught in his mouth, the patient’s blood still drying on his hands, but oh, he’d saved him, and part of Kevan wasn’t even sure how, wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing at all, but the Omethi was singing in his veins, in his blood, and his head was calm and somehow he wasn’t throwing up or being violently sick and the patient lived, and Master Bob was suitably impressed, and apparently short enough of Re’lar (he wouldn’t allow himself this, not the slightest: you did not make Re’lar within the same bloody term at the University, that was the stuff of legends, of Kvothe the Bloodless, of delusion and arrogance, not of fallible human beings, the quintessence of dust.) He didn’t know he wanted this. He liked the Medica, after all. Liked learning to save lives. Liked the feeling of bone-deep exhaustion, the sort of good tiredness (not the bad one, he pushed away that thought, the way he’d learned to force away the emptiness and the tiredness that crept in late at night, and the memory of the last time he’d seen his father, because he’d never known, and sometimes he’d ask and ask and in his dreams he was chasing after Jair, but there was never any answers, and there would never be any anymore.) It was a small way of making a difference, and he’d fought through the nausea, braved through the discomfort and learned it told him something important. “I think,” Percyl had said, before everything went to hell in a handbasket, “A Kevan that cares about people is better than a Kevan that doesn’t care.” He had to believe it. Master Bob spoke a lot about the physicker’s distance: the need to care, but the need to keep a clear head. Another connection in his head: Sophocles and the piece of ice held tightly in the fist by children. You could not hold on to it too tightly, for the cold bit at you. And you could not let it go. A songbird, perhaps. The Adem would have likened it to a songbird. He felt woefully unready. He knew too little, was still struggling to meet expectations in Advanced Sympathy, for all that Master Sympathist was kind. He’d given his word not to let the Masters down, as you did when you met supreme, unexpected grace—kindness extended—that you were most certainly unprepared for. And yet. Even now, the world could surprise you. People could surprise you. Master Anders said, “I presume you’ll be continuing your studies with this department.” No hint of a question. Kevan had wondered. Sometimes, in the face of such events, he wouldn’t have blamed Master Anders for questioning his commitment to his studies. He’d submitted his re-application with Master Anders’s support, after all. The Master Rhetorician had championed him, had fought for his readmission. Walking away felt like poor repayment. Even now. “Sir, of course,” Kevan said. The words caught in his throat: he couldn’t find the right words for what he wanted to say. That taking to his studies in Rhetoric and Logic felt like a bird taking to the skies, or a wild salmon leaping upstream, returning to the spawning grounds. It felt like what he was born to do. There was the Medica, and the bone-deep satisfaction of lives saved. What you set against the dark and the yawning void in the core of your being at night. And there were the texts he studied, often with Master Anders’s guidance. Questions you asked, and sought to answer, if you were at all human. Perhaps precisely because they were human, because this was them, this was the human condition. “Do you remember the third chapter of the Precepts, E–Re’lar? The first line?” Master Anders had stumbled on the word, just a little. “If I am not for myself,” Kevan recited, “Who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” “Self-obligation,” Master Anders said, softly. “Duties to the self. Kehant Duhen, writing in the eighth century, saw this as the unwavering heart of all ethics. Indeed, as the most fundamental question of ethics in the first place: what duties do we owe to the self?” He looked at Kevan, setting aside his dog-eared copy of the assigned reading for the lesson. “Kevan,” he said. “Whatever it is you study, I think you will be a credit to the University. And I think you should pursue what you choose to. No more, no less.” If not now, when? Kevan said, fumbling for the words, “Master…I like Rhetoric and Logic.” Wholly inadequate, but since when weren’t words? Experience, desires; these were often larger than the words you used to try to structure it, to impose some sort of formal limits on it. Some way of conveying it. “Well, then,” said Master Anders, and Kevan understood that too, that it was a blessing, that, perhaps, he would have had the Master’s blessing, one way or another, and the immensity of that trust and regard staggered him, made him feel unworthy. You did not expect kindness. But you received it, regardless.

[TAG: RP, 967 words] [OOC: @Archer Sorry, kind of mentioned as much to TKN to get his side of things. Didn't have mental bandwidth to think through high level deception plays and wasn't interested but since he also PMed me about you and I was worried you guys were trying the same sort of play E!Araris and E!TJ used on me in LG93... It's the basis for some value of positive read on both of you, so. Once again y'all cannot respecc a guy's chill RPful game smhhhhh let me just hit 50k in peace :sob:] xxxii. lannis massacre Soren, Valerra, and Jarvik were arguing about something that had come up in the Fae Lore class being conducted by Master Alys. In light of the skindancer threat, Kevan’d expected the class to also have been oversubscribed, and from what Valerra’d said, he was proven correct. “We don’t have very good records from the last time the University dealt with a skindancer incursion,” Valerra was saying, “And it’s easy to understand why. The Lannis Massacre—” “—For those of us who aren’t taking Fae Lore, do you think you could explain what the Lannis Massacre is?” Kevan interjected. “It happened on Lannis, years ago,” Jarvik explained. “Master Namer Solon attacked all the other Masters with Naming. Accounts of what happened that day are incoherent, partly because no one survived, so everything is just everyone else trying to piece things together.” “Well, how do we know what we do about the Lannis Massacre then?” Kevan wanted to know. Something about it felt like—felt like Eithne’s one-Re’lar crusade to restore the fragments of lost Yll, the way you had to piece practices together from ten different tracts, seven of which were written by Aturans who exoticised practices they’d heard about from hearsay, and made even wilder by gossip, and three of which were translated poorly from story knots, and then lost because Yll had never had a written tradition: anything important was captured in story knots and sometimes you lost nuance, or depending on your point of view, gained far too much nuance. You used story knots for the big things, for tradition, for history, for accounts, rather than the small things like recipes for flatbread, though part of Kevan wondered if they were mistaken even in that. So much of how to read the story knots was lost, after all. “Malcalum Devare was supposed to be brought on the Horns, an hour after Rath was brought before the Masters,” Soren said. “He wrote an account of his discovery, and then some of the senior El’the had to take charge,” he glared at Valerra, “But the account speculates a lot about what went on that day, and people get over-excited about the fact that Devare is theoretically a primary source and ignore the fact that he was speculating about what went on in that room. We don’t know. In fact, we don’t even know that Master Solon killed them all.” “Don’t we?” Valerra countered. “Their blood boiled in their veins, Soren! The room was barred, and every single Master who wore a gram—they found the grams, warped into uselessness. That took Mastery of several Names at once, and I don’t care if you are a Master, the use of multiple Names points to Master Solon.” Soren sighed. “Look,” he said, “I don’t really disagree it had to be Master Solon. I’m just pointing out how little we know about the state of events, if even Devare, who’s taken as the premier source on the matter is just—speculating.” Jarvik said, surprisingly harsh, “He was basking in the notoriety. Being the E’lir to walk away from the disaster because Master Solon struck then and not an hour later.” “I think he would have felt shaken,” Kevan said. He tried to imagine it, to put himself in the shoes of an E’lir who had just discovered a massacre. Aware of how close death had come. Aware of the fact he had walked away from it, for the moment, by the whim of the then-Master Namer, or by the grace of God. “Probably,” agreed Jarvik. “After all, he’s only human. But he still made an entire publishing career out of it.” “And why exactly…” Kevan cast about for the words he was trying for. “Why did this come up?” “We’re discussing the Lannis Massacre in class,” Soren explained. “Part of it is Master Alys trying to explain the difficulty of piecing together what happened when there’s an event for which there’s no living witnesses.” “But they did have physical evidence,” Valerra objected. “And while I really don’t disagree with both of you about Devare—he still made observations about the condition of the bodies and the room. The El’the and gillers who took over weren’t in any condition to be doing too much forensics, they were too busy trying to keep the University from falling apart. This means that even if Devare exaggerated at times, there’s kernels of truth there to be found. No reasonable reconstruction of the Lannis Massacre can simply ignore Devare.” “You’re forgetting Egert’s records,” Soren objected. To Kevan, he said, “He was a senior giller in Archives, who took up the task of writing about the events several months later.” “The problem is that Egert focuses on everything that happens after the Lannis Massacre,” Valerra pointed out. “In fact, he has exactly two pages where he records the disposal of the bodies and the need to convene new Masters. He doesn’t even mention the condition of the corpses because they weren’t of interest to him.” “But if it’s Master Solon,” Kevan said, sensing they’d go on if he didn’t, and this was one question that had troubled him, “Why did he do it?” “The University was in danger,” Jarvik shrugged. “Who wouldn’t act?” “But…” Kevan stumbled, struggled for the words. “Those were Masters. Colleagues he’d worked with, for months if not years. And he called Names and burned them all alive. Destroyed their grams, and made sure they couldn’t escape.” And in doing so, he’d trapped himself in that same room. Master Namer Solon, Kevan figured, hadn’t intended to survive: he’d intended to kill every last one of them. The implacability of it all, the harshness it took to make such a decision, to write himself off… Kevan struggled to grasp it. Part of him, however, understood it only too well.

[TAG: RP, 596 words] [OOC: Because this is different from say how much the Village has been into things in recent games... /s I am a bitter old man I get it. As I said, why I'm done with hardKasing. Tbh slight V to Mat. Idc if cheap E!Mat takes the easy win and moves on.] xxxi. practice “Master Isaak?” Kevan asked, approaching the master as he set up for the upcoming lesson. Master Isaak was scrawling the main Siaru verb conjugations on the chalkboard, using the simple example of the verb for studying. Which was an uncomfortable reflection of the state of affairs at the University near midterms, but so was partying. Despite the ever present skindancer threat hanging over them as a dark stormcloud, life at the University went on. Students went to classes (or skipped out on them), fretted over midterms, locked themselves into study carrels in the Archives to study, held parties, caroused, played corners… Master Isaak looked up from his book. “Yes?” “Where would you recommend I look for more exercises on Siaru grammar?” Kevan wanted to know. “Is there a text in the Archives you could recommend? I’ve done what I could, but I’m still fairly weak in it and I’m quite concerned about that.” “Do the exercises in the folio,” the Master Linguist said. The folio had been distributed to the students, and copied via the sympathy press. Sometimes, Kevan wondered how the University had functioned prior to the invention of the sympathy press, which made possible the swift and flawless copying of documents, where once, Masters had to rely on paid student scribes who could be tired, who could lose interest or run out of focus, who could make mistakes or leave blotches on the paper… Most of the exercises in the folio, however, had been fairly straightforward, though one or two of them had left him scratching his head and consulting his annotated copy of Hammer’s Guide to Siaru Grammar. Some of them were odd things: you had to simply commit to memory the conjugation of the word for existence, because it inflected differently, as did the word for making, which made Kevan wonder if the Cealdim had any special regard for making. He wondered, as well, if anyone had ever thought to read into the meaningless ‘do’ in Aturan: theoretically inherited from contact with Yllish (again, reciprocity, Yllish grammar written into relations: you could not own, not without ownership transforming both the owner and the owned. The Yllish had changed their Aturan masters, just as much as the Aturans had transformed Yll.) Laughed at his own folly. Of course they had: students were wont to read into anything and everything. “The textbook?” Master Isaak suggested. “Do the textbook.” Which he’d gone through even before going into the folio, on the reasoning that working through the Siaru 1 textbook was bound to be more foundational than the folio. “...You’ve done the textbook already, haven’t you?” “Regrettably, yes sir,” Kevan said. “How about Foundational Siaru, by Tehim Rakis?” Master Isaak offered, after some thought. “Any scriv in the Archives should be able to locate you a copy—Rakis’s text is actually a bit dated and I’m not really sure I’d consider it as good an introduction to Siaru as the text we’re using, but all things considered, you’re only interested in the grammatical exercises, rather than the text itself.” Kevan nodded. “I’ll look for it, sir.” “Don’t forget to work on your written and spoken Siaru as well,” Master Isaak cautioned. “Grammar is foundational, but without vocabulary or practice in actually communicating in Siaru, it is of limited use. Get a classmate and practise with them, as much as you can.” Kevan’s thoughts wandered briefly to Eamen, and then he shook his head ruefully. Most of the class was preoccupied with midterms, or among other things, with the usual student pursuits. “I will, Master,” he said, simply.

[TAG: DISCUSSION, 187 words so it shouldn't count] [OOC: Shard seems to have eaten post. Argh. Love mobile. @Archer 1. That post was more aggressive to you but mid-writing, you sent me a PM soliciting my views on TKN and lobbying for E!TKN. That's not really a thing I see E!Archer doing. I think you'd let me keep staying out of things. Although I am still grumpy y'all can't respect the desire to stay out and chill >> I didn’t really want to delete the post so posted it anyway just to solicit thoughts but watered down the attack as I don't really feel as sold on E!you as I had been. Some value also of self-interest. If you're E and killed Drake for pushing you, you'd probably kill me too and then I wouldn’t hit 50k. So do I want to be pushing E!you? Hmmmmm. 2. Commoners can start at the Golden Pony. It removes up to two complaints on you. 3. @Araris Valerian What about that exchange with Wonko? Will fix for formatting later. Mobile is awful. And putting my RP here from my stash on mobile isn't something I'm looking forward to.]

[TAG: RP, 756 words] xxx. stone It was early in the morning, a few hours prior to his first class of the day, and Kevan’s feet had brought him here, not to the Stonebridge, but beyond it, to the banks of the Omethi as it surged on past the Stonebridge. He picked up a stone. It wasn’t flat, not the sort you used for skipping. It was light, however, and he discarded it and picked up another one, brushing the dust off of it. He was seven again, and his father wasn’t teaching him to skip stones, was telling him instead, “You have to find a stone that’s nice and weighty, the proper sort that sits heavy in your hand.” He went through the stones that Kevan had gathered. “See, this one’s no good,” Jair said, and flung it far out, so it skipped several times before sinking into the lake. “That’s a skipping stone, not the proper sort.” “What’s the proper sort though, Pa?” Kevan had asked, at that time. “Heavy,” Jair said. “It’s the sort of stone that carries a burden of its own.” He went on through the pile of stones that Kevan had gathered, weighting them. He flung one or two more away, small pale rocks that glittered with inclusions in the light as being too pretty, too insignificant. “Ah, there we go.” It was a rough chunk of dark rock, almost-black in the light. “Feel it.” Kevan took it in his hand and hefted it. It felt like the sort of rock you flung away from you; it was heavy in a way the other rocks hadn’t felt, and it wasn’t proper for skipping at all. “Well, if we aren’t skipping it, then what are we doing?” “Thing is,” said Jair, “Sometimes, there’s too many thoughts in our head. Sometimes they’re weighing you down.” Kevan considered that. “Like when you’ve done a whole amazing day, but you come home and you’re tired and everything’s tired, all the way in your bones,” he said, thoughtfully. “It’s sinking, and you’re sinking. It’s weird I guess.” Jair was silent for a long moment, his back to Kevan. “Yeah,” his father said, at last, very slowly. “Like that, I guess. Well, anyway. I’m going to teach you a trick, okay? Something to make all of that noise disappear. I want you to give those thoughts and worries to the stone.” “What?” “Talk to it,” Jair instructed. “Or write it down. Give it to the stone.” It felt different from those mental exercises the schoolmaster had, Kevan thought. It wasn’t like holding Spinning Leaf, or the Heart of Stone. It wasn’t playing Seek the Stone. He felt the roughness of the stone rasping against his skin, the weight of it, balanced against his palm. He imagined inscribing those wordless worries on it: the tiredness in his bones, the voices that told him he wouldn’t amount to anything, that he was wasting his time. One by one, he gave them to his stone. And then, when he was ready, he looked up at his father. “Throw it into the lake,” Jair instructed. Kevan flung it, a smooth underarm throw. Watched as the stone arced into the lake, sinking through the clear waters. “Imagine the water cleansing your mind,” his father said. “Sorting it all out, taking the stone and everything you’ve written on it.” He was older now, and he hefted the stone he’d picked. He didn’t know how to put it all in: that jumble of fear and inadequacy and guilt and the creeping knowledge he wasn’t good enough, had never been good enough, felt like an imposter, like everyone else was working with a set of rules he didn’t know, how he’d always said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, didn’t know, wasn’t enough— They threatened to overwhelm him, at first. But he’d picked a big stone, a solid stone, weighty enough to carry it all, and one by one, he inscribed them onto the stone. When he was ready, he flung it into the Omethi. Imagined the river accepting the stone, washing him clean in its waters. Understood, as he listened to the song of the river, that there was a rhythm to life, as there was a rhythm to the Omethi, to the tides, to the passage of students over the Stonebridge, and onto the University grounds. He breathed it in, and let the Omethi wash his mind clean. Then he headed back to the Archives, to get in a bit of study before Siaru class could begin.

[TAG: RP, 650 words, ANALYSIS, 807 words] [OOC: Given that Drake functionally had to be Elim attacked, and the Elims have no incentive to WGG this given that escaping is a d20 roll, this is a pointless statement. Tempted to V read but also cautious given Crocodile and history of deliberate 'slips'.] [OOC: I don't understand why you would, on seeing little content, therefore assume that all RP must be packaging analysis. That's just ridiculous on so many levels, and blast it, it's your sort of kayana yeah okay fine.] [OOC: Drake's suspicions on you, which he volunteered to me early on in our PM and was the basis of my V read on him, were because he felt you essentially were role phishing and it was a step too far to....eh honestly I'm just gonna summarise our thoughts even if it's putting more effort visibly into the game than I'd wanted to because might as well. It'll also summarise my going back and forth about you: Well actually I can legally just put mine down, I believe I have to summarise Drake's, but mine is legal: Drake solicited my view of you pretty early into the game. This was more or less my line of thought, edited for clarity/length: First level thought: typical Archer, V him is a bit more inclined to big/grand plans than E him, so I would lean a bit V just off that basis, plus he has to know that looks pretty bad. Second level thought: not a strong V inclination all things- Ok, anyway, second level thought: I could see a slightly V angle depending on what he does because I feel it's at the very least some form of reaction test. SDs guaranteed to want sight of that PM group. He's provoked a reaction. Even if they don't jockey to join, we'll probably see some paggro in the thread + assumptions they are being excluded, which would be indicative of a clear perspective here (think Mat, Fifth et al automatically assuming Roshar was a strong trust rather than chaotic conclave - Elims tend to assume Village circles are more solid or organised than they are if they have no sight of them.) That's something I would keep an eye out for. Village points if Archer really is trying to assess and weigh reactions, but then he has to put up, so as to speak, and anyway that's none of my business. Third level thought: I could see it as an E!Archer play to infomax but I'm not necessarily sure E!him would open with such a bold gambit. I feel it's more a you thing, so maybe plausible on a you/Archer team but also feel you would've just done it yourself rather than delegating to Archer. But I can't rule it out. Overall: very slight V lean, as usual, will revise, but also So my initial V lean was predicated on the thought you were doing a reaction test, but then I felt like I didn't see much analysis coming from that end, so I wasn't sure I could offer the V read, or at least keep justifying it. I chose not to flesh that out further in thread, both because chill RPful game, and because highlighting it would taint the test. It wasn't helped by the Steel defense vote, especially since M1 me thought Steel was Evil. (I'm not so sure anymore given utter inactivity.) Drake's sus was essentially based off three grounds: the AA move looked phishy and he didn't feel it was V!phishy, he felt you were too defensive, and he didn't like your Steel defense. I will say I am just very confused about you right now and want to know what you got out of the reaction test. Because I think an intuitive read of the Drake shot is that Drake was the main guy pushing you, but the other intuitive read is that it's meant to frame you. I think my bottom line is that I could and my reflex is to ascribe a weak V read on the basis of the reaction test, but that's predicated on my read being correct, and as Drake pointed out, it's easily countered by arguing you were E!phishing. I don't disagree about avoiding controversy but I note that bold plays are your wheelhouse, E or V. I am not sure where I stand right now on you. I do feel like you're genuinely trying to solve and I could see you v. Drake as a V/V barfight but then there are unpleasant implications that quite honestly I'm not sure I signed up for >> ] [OOC: Mostly being ok with most of the main trains, at least on my part. I wasn't okay with the Drake train but wasn't sure there was anything much I could do about it, so just shrugged and moved on.] xxix. party Kevan was packing his books and his notes back into his bag at the end of Siaru class when one of his classmates, another Yllish by the name of Eamen called out to him. “Hey, Kevan,” Eamen said, drifting over to Kevan’s desk. A few of their classmates tended to mistake dark-haired Eamen for someone from the Commonwealth: his Aturan was flawless, and lacked any trace of the typical Yllish accent. “Hey,” Kevan said, wondering what Eamen was up to. “Are you going for the party?” Kevan was tired enough—at least that was what he would tell himself; it was midterms season, after all—that it took him several long moments to register the question. He blinked. “The what?” he found himself asking. Eamen smiled. Some of their classmates seemed to find it disarming. Kevan allowed himself to concede they had a point. There were rumours that Rethis was asking Eamen to tutor her in Siaru, only those sessions involved a lot more than mere tutoring. “Master Isaak is holding a party for his new E’lir, but students in his Siaru classes are invited to join. You didn’t hear of it?” Kevan hadn’t. He supposed that the Siaru class was small enough, though he wondered briefly what had happened to the rest of the classes that the Master Linguist taught. “It’s midterms,” he said, for want of something to say. “You all have time to attend a party?” Great, Kevan thought, dispiritedly, but it was too late to take those words back. Now he just sounded judgemental as all hell. Eamen laughed, and slung a friendly arm about Kevan’s shoulder. “C’mon, live a little. There’re rumours that the class is haunted by the ghost of an E’lir who died at some point during the term. Shows up for class and for none of the class dinners, goes on about the midterms…” He—it was tempting, Kevan had to admit. Part of him wanted to. Maybe it was the friendly warmth in Eamen’s voice, the half-invitation there. Maybe it was because he was tired, and it’d been a long day, and he only had his rooms at the Gyre and Wade to go back to, with Soren and Owyn tied up with that scriv class, and Valerra spending extra hours on her end-of-term project in the labs, and Jarvik was occupied for that evening. Perhaps it was because Eamen’s words had made him realise how very lonely he felt, sometimes. He had friends, of course, but Kevan had never deluded himself: they’d probably drift apart the moment they stopped sharing classes. Something in him hated that thought, but a part of him was resigned to it. They were friends because they drifted in the same circles, took the same classes, were caught in the same currents at the University. When the currents pulled them elsewhere, they would go with it, caught in its wake like paper boats on the Omethi. You could want the warmth of that fire, brief flickers of human warmth, something to hold against the coldness of the world. But there were the midterms, and his tongue seemed to catch in his mouth, and he didn’t even want to consider hours of having to deal with Master Isaak outside a classroom, or classmates he barely knew, in a setting where they weren’t trying to conjugate Siaru verbs or decline them, or— His jaw firmed. Easier to deal with people in classes. And he had midterms. And he’d sworn he wouldn’t disappoint the Masters. Master Anders had gone out on a limb for him, after all. The way Kevan saw it, the least he could do was to keep his promise, and that meant studying hard. He shook his head, and slipped away, politely. “Thanks, but I’ll pass,” he said, lightly. “Give my regards to the others. I’m drowning in papers and deadlines right now, unfortunately. It’s one of those terms.”