Tetri – a plant mana from Mana Khemia 2.
Someone needs to write Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher Flay(vor of Evil). Seriously.
I've been marathoning Rumpole, an old TV series based on a series of books about a British defense lawyer, and written by the author of those books. It's interesting how the style of what we read and write creeps into our language and writing, which is why it is an extremely good idea to write for a game while playing that game, preferably on second playthrough. Or later… Anyway, I do recommend Rumpole. It's laden with wonderful snark, even if it's got that British nihilism-as-comedy thing going. Only one character ever got a happy ending, and he only got to be happy for two episodes running before his relationship with his child got retconned (twins? Since when?) into something more depressing. But it was hilarious and adorable while it lasted.
Ah, yes. Keep in mind that Roxis was raised Christian and regards a lot of the doctrine as self-evident truth. How he interprets things will be colored by that. If that seems incompatible with believing that stories of pagan gods have some truth to them, it's interesting to note that Christianity as laid out by the Bible's Old Testament is technically monist, not monotheist. According to the Old Testament, pagan gods do exist, and it names a few specific ones and describes them as possessing actual power (which is occasionally important to the plot). This comes into play in the famous 'render unto Caesar' decision in the new testament, and interpreting a monist document as monotheist was actually about ninety percent of the reason early Christians were persecuted. The commandment was, "thou shalt not have any gods before me." ...Roughly. Let's not get into how little the commonly mentioned commandments have in common with what was actually on the tablets.
Ceasar existed, and it was okay to pay him taxes since it was his money with his face on it anyway. In mana terms, his element. It just wasn't okay to worship him, or money, to the extent of violating the commandment 'thou shalt not put other gods before me.' The stuff about how a man could not have two masters was interpreted by many to mean that they couldn't worship any other gods after God, either, and refusing to worship Ceasar led to persecution. Mostly economic, which is really very appropriate… Good luck trying to make sense of a lot of the New Testament out of that context.
Anyway, alchemy is the domain of Hermes Trismegistus, and Roxis, via his father's travels, is much more aware than most alchemists that alchemy isn't just a science. He believes that the Greek & Egyptian gods exist, or something that primitive peoples described in those terms exists, even though he certainly doesn't believe that all the myths are true, and that there's nothing wrong with following their rules and rituals/doing synthesis with a cauldron instead of prayer. It's their domain, after all. It's perfectly alright, according to his belief system, as long as he doesn't actually worship them, or allow his devotion to alchemy to compromise his principles. For instance, it's alright to make money to support one's family, but sheer greed is not ok. Alchemy to help the world is awesome, but alchemy purely for the sake of pride, or alchemy that does cruel things to humans or mana? Not ok.
"Vayne, for heaven's sake, close the curtains! We were down there overnight and there's class tomorrow! Some of us can't just catnap indefinitely the way you do, I need a good night's sleep!" It wasn't that Roxis minded rooming with Vayne, he was quiet, clean, and didn't leave dirty clothes lying around, unless one counted the piles of previously-clean laundry Sulpher occasionally requested for napping purposes. The one problem was that he was in and out at all hours. At least there wasn't any gossip about it: news of the new arrivals had quickly gone around the gossip chain, and Crowley's situation certainly wasn't unheard of. It was very Vayne-like to give up his room for the sake of the newcomer.
Roxis realized something. "Yes, I'm aware it's late morning, not night, but the point is I need my sleep!" He pulled a pillow over his head.
"Actually, it's late afternoon." Vayne came to sit on the side of the back, resting a hand on Roxis' back apologetically.
"You can't be serious… you kept me up trying to make sure I was alright for that long? I already told you I was fine, and so did Thorn."
Vayne looked at him, worried and disappointed. "Roxis, you died." And you didn't tell me.
"…Who told you that." That brought Roxis out from under his pillow to glare at Thorn.
Actually, Thorn hadn't been planning to. Normally, Roxis should have suffered for nearly going away from them like that, but, "It was my fault."
"What? No it wasn't, you weren't even there." Roxis' hand groped around for a pillow (one of Vayne's, specifically) to throw at him. For God's sake, he wanted to sleep, not deal with people's guilt complexes.
"It was my element. Feeling someone else's pain. The wish to make it suffer for hurting Dour, and ensure that it would never be in a position to do so ever again. My element."
That wasn't a matter for a thrown pillow to make him realize that he was being childish. That was a matter for a glare. Roxis sat up, rubbing the remnants of much-needed sleep away from his eyes and caught Thorn's while his right hand reached for his glasses on the bedside table. "My feelings. You are not responsible for them, I am."
"I lent my power to them. To you." And reason had been drowned under that outrage.
"Thorn!" Oh, that was beyond the pale. "What have I told you about helping like that? And in a shadow game! When it's my will and my feelings that are supposed to be on trial? No wonder I lost, if those weren't my feelings! It was as good as lying under oath, my fault or not!" Goddamn idiot! "And I thought it was my fault that I'd gotten myself killed! I was beginning to think that I was an utter failure when it came to the only type of alchemy I have any talent for!"
"You aren't. It was my mistake." Apologies were insufficient when someone died.
"Again?" Vanitas materialized in beastman form. In midair, too, because otherwise he and Vayne were too short to loom over Thorn menacingly. "Again! You're the one that hurt his ambition!" Damaged those bright hopes? Damaged Vanitas' own element, in his chosen one, his pactmate?
Normally, slapping someone's face might have been seen as petty. Normally, a slap didn't leave clawmarks, blood dripping down Thorn's cheek. This was an invitation to a duel, a declaration of war. "If you ever, ever do that again," Vanitas hissed, "then I'll destroy you."
"Vanitas, he's an aspect of you," Roxis reminded him, putting his glasses on. Thorn? Thorn was going to pay for this, but Vanitas had already suffered enough.
"Even so." Vanitas' voice was quiet, serious, and hateful. This was his most precious person that had been hurt. The part of Vanitas' power that rested within him, the bright will he held at the heart of him and slept within, beloved and calming, that had been attacked. He disappeared, turning his back on Thorn, returning to Roxis' side.
"I would deserve it." So Thorn was not going to argue with Vanitas' words, even if he did look down and away, not meeting Roxis' eyes again.
Thorn's admission and Vanitas' attack had knocked the wind from Roxis' sails. Now Thorn was looking pitiful, so he put his head in his hand, sighing. "No one died, not permanently at least, but Thorn… It's the same as Vayne and Vanitas. You can't just go around using your power on people without asking. I know this is probably a little hard for you to draw the line on, because your power acts on everyone's hearts constantly, and I was calling on my willpower and determination, but that was mine, not yours. I know your element and its ramifications are absurdly complicated by humanity and I'm not expecting you to master it overnight anymore than Vanitas did, a certain fight with Isolde springs to mind, but can you please listen when I tell you that something is important to me? I told you the last time you tampered with my feelings related to a shadow game that you ran the risk of killing me, and I was right. I may have come back this time, but I'm not going to be around forever…"
"Yes, you are," Vanitas interrupted.
Roxis tried to fight the urge to groan. He didn't want to have this argument with Vanitas now, not when he was already dealing with Thorn and an overprotective Vayne and he'd barely had any sleep. "Vanitas…"
"You'll just have to make the ruby prism." Or become a vampire. "That won't be difficult for you, and then you can live with us forever in the Land of Mana."
"I'm flattered, Vanitas, but it's not that simple…" Although Klein had said that it was, and he had already intended to try to make one for Jess, he'd as good as promised. Not that he had any idea how he was going to go about that, but he clearly had to, just as he had to deal with his mana.
Roxis realized that he had a headache. He should have remembered to eat something before he went to bed, they'd run out of decent food on the way down, after giving it to the rescuees. The only thing they'd had left was the green vegetable soup that turned out to be one of Jess' potions in disguise half the time.
The frustration and being awakened like this certainly weren't helping either. "No: I'm not fine. I have a headache, I'm hungry, and I'm dead tired. Are you happy now, Vayne?"
"Of course I'm not happy, I just wanted to be sure that you were alright and I knew you weren't." So he'd been stuck wondering why Roxis was lying to him, what he was concealing, and how bad it was. "What happened to Dour?"
"Dour… Dour?" Roxis repeated, and this time it was a request for his mana to appear. "Are you alright?"
Dour nodded, but didn't look directly at him. "Es."
Roxis held out his hand. "Let me see the other side of your acorn." He knew when someone was just pretending to be fine, when they were that obvious about it. There was a difference between shyness and disassembly, and Dour had even less talent for lying than Vayne. Less practice, perhaps.
The gouge was still there. The wound was still fresh, green instead of browned over. He touched it carefully. "Will plant stimulator fix that, or will I need to make anything exotic?"
"It scarred a mana?"
Roxis jumped when he heard a female voice coming from right behind him. Only it wasn't Pamela that had been looking over his shoulder. Even worse. "How long have you been here?"
"I came in with Vayne," Professor Isolde told him, arms folded. "You're not very observant, are you?"
At first he wanted to say something like, 'as though you would be, in my position.' However, she might have been fighting longer than he had, he doubted she'd been allowed to take a nap by the Vice Principal – and how had she found time to come here and irritate him? Not to mention that, as an expert in predictology, she was certainly trained to be constantly aware of her surroundings. No, mere lack of sleep was no excuse. "Yes, it scarred him. I suspected as much. That was what prompted my outrage." To harm not just a mana's physical manifestation but its element? For Dour to be harmed, right in front of Roxis, taking a blow meant for him?
"You're unusually concerned for your mana," Isolde commented.
"My mana are unusually concerning." She should know, she'd concerned herself with Vayne and his affairs.
Isolde chuckled: he'd got that right.
Roxis got out of bed, looked towards the hook on the door and realized he was still wearing his coat. He hadn't got undressed at all, except for his boots. He would have to change his sheets again, he noted as he reached into his pocked for the plant stimulators. They were as good as nectars for reviving the plants he'd grown to fight for him. Better, since they used more common materials and wouldn't be used by any of the others unless they were out gathering, which was a perfectly good use for them as long as they shared the materials. Which they would, the workshop was good about that, except for Nikki sometimes, when it came to edible materials. "Put it down on the floor, but in case it germinates, try to keep the roots from growing into the floor?" They were on the second floor here, and students were responsible for repairs.
"Why are you here, anyway?" he asked Isolde as he carefully poured the first one on Dour's acorn manifestation. "You certainly don't care about my health, you made that quite clear when you killed me."
"Normally, the health of a student would be none of my concern, but you're a suspect, not an ordinary student. And Vayne dragged me over here."
"Oh, yes, Vayne. The way he did last time, when he told you about my father?" Roxis had forgotten about that, in the midst of all the other bad news, but a chill ran through him when he remembered that his father would already be heading here, into Isolde's clutches. He was able to muster a death glare, at least for an instant, before examining the cut again and uncorking another stimulant.
"Your father, right. Thank you for reminding me. Yes, Vayne bartered all his secrets and yours for your health. He was so worried about you." That he'd made Roxis' situation more worrying.
"Vanitas said that he wouldn't let you hurt me." Roxis didn't know if that extended to his father, but he could at least try to seem confident. "We didn't have a chance to discuss this before, Vayne, but I wouldn't have thought you were the type for blackmail."
"Blackmail?" Vayne didn't know what he was talking about.
"Or perhaps that isn't the best word. Forgive me, I'm not feeling well." In any case, it was cruel to extort assistance out of Isolde like this, which was both unlike Vayne and damn stupid, since angering Isolde enough might drive her to get creative and find a way around Vanitas.
"Is there anything I can do?" Vayne asked.
"After Dour is alright, then I'll eat something. I'm sorry," he apologized to his first mana, putting down the second bottle and reaching for a third. "In all the excitement, I forgot about you. I should not have." A pact was an alchemist's oath as well, to Lilith and all mana. Normally it wasn't the mana that needed help, but that just made it more important, didn't it, to help them when they needed it. It wasn't like Dour asked for, well, anything.
Dour shook his head, patting the stimulant into his acorn. "Itz ine."
"No, you're not alright, not yet, but it is looking better." Roxis handed him a bottle to drink, in case that helped, while Roxis poured another over the acorn. Oh for heaven's sake, now the floorboards were sprouting. Just buds so far, thank goodness. He should have put down a potionproof cloth first. He shrugged off his coat and put it under Dour's acorn as it suddenly sprouted roots and a few thin branches. "It looks like drinking it is working better. That's right, a plant would absorb this potion, drink it in through the roots." Or any potion. He handed Dour another bottle, and, uncorking the one he took out for himself, carefully lowered a root into it.
A few more tiny swallows, a few more seconds, and the tree grew before their eyes, spreading leaves that seemed to have a familiar shape even though Roxis was certain he hadn't seen any quite like them before.
He certainly hadn't known any trees to have leaves with writing on them before. Much less hieroglyphics.
"What's this?" Isolde wondered, kneeling down next to him to get a closer view of the leaves.
"Hieroglyphics," Roxis marveled. "I knew you weren't the wood mana, but these aren't huffin leaves." His mana wasn't the mana of any ordinary tree. He'd wondered at the fact it was able to acquire Yggdrasil leaves so easily, but the Tree of Life's leaves didn't have writing on them. The Tree of Knowledge, perhaps?
Still, why hieroglyphics? And these cartouches… Roxis' eyes widened. His brain was still fogged by the lack of sleep and his rude awakening, but for some reason he was able to make this horrifying connection in an instant, just his luck. "The mahkoa kha renput."
"Oh, right, you read hieroglyphics." Isolde looked at him, frowning. She knew better than to believe in coincidences. Someone practicing Egyptian alchemy came to campus, and just happened to acquire a mana whose true form sprouted Egyptian writing?
Roxis shook his head. "That's not what this says. Mahkoa kha renput. The millennium items. The Millennium Tree. I thought the name just meant it was an old tree, but there's only one tree that would have the names of pharaohs inscribed on it." His hands stilled, his eyes no longer reading the titles listed on the leaf he'd taken hold of, carefully, to see what was on it.
The names of pharaohs.
When they'd just met a monster out of myths and legends.
Like the legend of the nameless pharaoh.
It was a bad idea to use water of youth in front of Isolde, but she already knew he had the recipe, and it was the only way to seal those names away, unsprout that acorn, without hurting Dour by plucking all of them off and burning them. Good, the cut didn't reappear.
After that, he had to sit down and catch his breath, heart racing as though… no, more than it did when he fought for his life. There was no way he was going to be able to convince Vayne that nothing had just happened. "Vayne, did you read that book of Egyptian mythology I managed to find?"
"I haven't gotten that far yet, sorry." Vayne went to his knees next to Roxis and put a hand on his arm. "Do you need help getting back to bed?"
"I don't need it, but I wouldn't mind help getting up." More to have someone there, a steadying presence than because he had literally gone weak at the knees or anything like that. "One of the legends of Thoth, patron of Egyptian alchemy and one of two aspects of the patron of all alchemy, speaks of a tree on which he and Seshat, the goddess of… quite a few things, actually, mostly related to legal paperwork, which is not a minor matter. It's the kind of thing wars are fought over these days, and back then, when writing was sacred, it was regarded with the respect it deserved. These were not minor gods, the like of Morpheus and Hecate."
Roxis would have wondered if he was babbling, taking refuge in his studies, except he did need to convey to Vayne how important this was. "There was supposedly a tree upon which they wrote all the names of the pharaohs. Some versions say that they also kept records of their reigns there, but that would be included in their names and titles… No, don't take me to the bed." He stood up, pushing Vayne away. "Grab my coat, will you? I need to find Iris Fortner. I need to ask what exactly that seal she was talking about consisted of. It can't be the same seal, it's too recent, but if she can summon Escalario, she might know something." A mana that had been human, or mostly human, and now dwelt in the land of the dead?
"So you're the mana of this tree, and it's the same one we have on campus?" Isolde tried to interrogate Dour, who quickly floated behind Roxis and vanished.
"The being that we encountered down there, the one we'd better call Zorc. He's mentioned in quite a few Egyptian myths and versions of them. He sought to destroy the sun god every night, and he was fought off by Set and Bastet. That was why the alchemist in the legend of the nameless pharaoh named his son Set, he hoped the power of the name would give him some protection against what his father had done and the curse he'd invited upon the entire land, but especially his family, by doing something like that. According to the Egyptians, the name is one of the five aspects of a human's… I would say soul, except some of these aspects are possessed by animals and mana." Beings that didn't have souls by the modern, Christian definition. "The name is one of those aspects. Names have power, even if nowadays it's mainly bards that make use of the power of names and words, not alchemists. The legend of the nameless pharaoh is that he sacrificed his life, spirit… all of his being, but especially his name, to seal away this evil."
"The way Iris' ancestor sealed Uroboros away?" Isolde wondered if they'd meant to seal this with it. It had reappeared when the seal began to weaken, from what she'd managed to learn from Iris and the others.
"I don't think that was it alone. The nameless pharaoh's seal is still intact, there are some very dangerous people who work to keep it that way. And yet Zorc is still active in this world because it's a force of nature, like Uroboros. Sealing the mana away didn't make all the dimensions stop existing." That would have been a disaster. "The seals are just locks on doors, on the worst weak points, but there are always going to be weaknesses in people's hearts, places for it to enter. It will always have to be fought off every night, every time things begin to seem hopeless and people forget that the light will return. That they have to hold out until then." Fight to defend it, fight for its return.
Roxis took a deep breath and began to tell the story properly. "A long time ago, Egypt was under attack. In order to save his land and his brother, the pharaoh's younger brother performed a synthesis of the darkest alchemy."
Isolde would have folded her arms if they weren't already folded. She still raised an eyebrow at him. "You're calling something dark alchemy?" So he admitted its existence?
"Thothian alchemy isn't dark, any more than all Hermetic alchemy is dark, but the prince performed human sacrifice. He might have used a village of tomb robbers, but it was still human sacrifice. At the time, they believed that desecrating a tomb was an order of magnitude worse than mere murder. Like suicide. A murderer only kills his victim, a suicide damns. Desecration destroyed. They believed that destroying someone's name and body, and tomb raiders would do that to keep the angry spirit from pursuing them, destroyed their victim's immortal soul. How could they be called back at judgment day if there was no name to call them with? That was what they believed, but it still didn't justify a massacre. Not the entire village, innocents and all. He killed ninety-nine souls, and turned their bodies to gold and their souls to power, but the hundredth, a child, escaped and sought justice. Zorc, who had tempted the alchemist into such a crime, used this desecration to enter our world. The pharaoh's son sacrificed everything he was to seal him away, and used his name as that seal. He is known as the nameless pharaoh because his name is the lock, and the key of that lock. That name vanished from everywhere. The tomb that they'd already begun to build for him, this was before they started building pyramids, the official documents… everywhere."
"And you think it's on your mana?" Isolde hated to admit it, but he might be right. "If it was written there by one of the aspects of Hermes Trismegistus…" That wasn't just any pagan god.
If she were to believe that Hermes Trismegistus existed. Admit that alchemy was more than just a science.
A science? Like herbalism?
No, alchemy was far more than that, and everyone knew it, scholarly arguments laid out in books and papers or not.
"The ancient name of this island, before it was called Avenberry, was Eden, wasn't it? If the gods and the mana are indeed related, and Zorc is a mana as well as an evil god, than where else would such a tree grow, but here or the land of mana? The nameless pharaoh's synthesis might have had enough power to change even something Thoth himself wrote, but…"
"But he was only human."
Roxis shook his head. "Not technically. The members of the Egyptian royal family in that era were… Like Anna, but far more so. They could perform summons and spells that should have been far beyond them. They could do things that would have killed any mere mortal, even a most accomplished alchemist. They may have been what Palaxius was trying to recreate, by imbuing himself with Lilith's power." He paused, remembering the lineage.
"When did you find out that he was trying to do that?" Thorn wondered.
"…Honestly, I'm not sure." So much kept happening, strangers and realizations, odd scraps of information and inspiration. "But that wasn't all he was trying to do, surely…" No. Later. Even if it surely had something to do with Thorn, and hence Vayne. "Vanitas? Could you make me feel like I've had a good night's sleep and something to eat?"
The kitten perked up. A wish to grant? "Can I clean your clothes, too?"
"That's probably a good idea." It was almost a tingly feeling, the change. "There, now I feel much better." He pet the kitten, although he knew that there was a difference between feeling well and being well. Sleep and dreams were necessary if one wished to think clearly, for instance, and the equivalent of a potion couldn't substitute for hours of dreams, the process Faustus governed. He knew that he was going to crash, after pushing himself like this, and crash hard, but it was important. "Where are Iris and Arlin?"
"Isolde's house," Vanitas told him.
Vayne had swung by the workshop on the way, to make sure they knew where they were going to be sleeping.
"Can you two take me there?" Roxis asked, dreading the next morning. Well, it was just Zeppel's class.
"But you do have talent for alchemy," Vayne argued, after the door was open and they couldn't talk about the previous topic anymore. Vayne didn't like Roxis saying he wasn't a good alchemist any more than Roxis liked to hear the three of them guilt-tripping.
Roxis' pace increased when Vayne said that, boots hitting the floor with almost unnecessary force. "No, I don't. Jess has talent for alchemy. You have an outright instinct for it." Being a mana. "It comes easily to Anna and Nikki, Pamela has the advantage of age, and even Flay orders the universe around like he orders around everyone else. I have to work at it. Do you have any idea how embarrassing that was? When traveling alchemists would visit, wanting to see our ancient library, and they'd pity us or eye our library and gardens and think about how they belonged in the hands of real alchemists, and they'd either be happy, incredibly condescending, or both when they asked how I was coming along, or offered a lesson to see how my skills really were? That's been going on as long as I can remember! Why do you think my father took his son along on trips where there was the risk of bandits or worse? If he'd left me behind another year, if I'd heard the words 'past glories' one more time, I would have killed someone." Just thinking about them made his blood boil. "I'd bet Iris Fortner was making heal jars in the cradle." Some people had all the damn luck.
"So you came to resent others for their good fortune and sought underhanded means of gaining the power and recognition of an alchemist."
"Oh, be quiet." It took a moment for Roxis to register that it wasn't Eital who had said that. "Professor." He'd just told a professor to shut up.
Why couldn't Vayne have just let him sleep?
