PoR fic, part 3
I suspect everyone is thoroughly sick of this fic by now, but here is the section that comes after 'Portals' (which is in fact the start of the event-fic) and before the other two main chunks I've posted so far.
(I still have about twenty other distinct scenes in my outline...)
----
Aquillien's talk makes surprising amounts of sense; it's simply that he makes too many assumptions about the nature of truth, and then proposes entirely impractical experimentation.
There are too many people clamouring to contribute, so she does not say, "I do not see any reason why truth should necessarily have the property of consistency."
Marissa appears to be attempting to demonstrate a reasonably important result; as far as she can tell, it is something along the lines of "all other things are equal much less often than you would generally assume them to be". But she is speaking slightly too quietly to overcome the silence all the way to the back of the room, and there are triangles and circles and geometrical constructions, besides.
The drawing of diagrams has a certain meditative quality, and for once she does not flinch from the memories that they invoke; a part of her is grudgingly beginning to admit that some elements of her childhood were not, in fact, unremittingly awful.
She does make a contribution in the discussion following Mari's talk.
"There is an alternative formulation which is quite popular," she attempts to explain, "that reality is that which when you stop believing in it, does not cease to affect you."
Iulian makes some kind of mental effort, and informs her that there appear to be some things he cannot cease to believe in.
"If you cannot cease to believe in something," she retorts, "then surely it is a thing which is affecting you?"
He gestures as if to concede the point.
Meanwhile, Tabor is explaining that this following performance was devised by way of an explanation, or exploration, of the value of lyrics in music, following a discussion with Ylenrith on the subject.
It is a rather accomplished operatic composition containing no actual words, but instead noises imitating some variety of domestic feline, some of them deliberately amusing.
This primarily serves to remind her of the incongruity of baring one's teeth as a sign of mirth, as opposed to a display of threat.
Tristram Dyer then steps up, and is attempting to illustrate some problems which clearly are some kind of sample problem in a field of mathematics which he is attempting to disguise as something more anecdotal.
This is mostly obvious because of the many mis-aimed assumptions that need to be taken in order to make the problem specification conform to the underlying schema which he obviously has in mind.
She points out a couple of them - "The real answer is to determine what the Eternal's motivations are"; "If it is telling the truth, then you need to discern how it is modelling you and therefore what it thinks you will do"; "I'm assuming you are supposed to be motivated by avoiding punishment?" - but it seems somewhat unkind to continue.
Would any Imperial citizen worthy of the name really choose the option in which they minimised their suffering - in such a straightforward, physical variety, in any case - at the expense of another? She supposes, sadly, that the answer is yes, but she still cannot quite comprehend it.
Her attention is drawn by the Coven of Umbral Reflection's attempt to assemble a large Signs and Portents casting group, and she encourages it to be announced; after that, she feels that she rather has to head out with the announcer; and also she has not contributed to Signs and Portents for a very long time now...
----
She had followed along to the casting hall with the full intention of joining in, and it was only after she had enquired about the number of volhov's robes available that she had actually thought through the implications.
She had never previously been particularly particular regarding the making and breaking of coven bonds. Coven bonds in the Army of the Citadel tended to be fairly utilitarian and situational, at least in the ritual auxiliary squads in which she had begun her service; later, she had been around some people who insisted on maintaining their home spire's bond, but she had always been entirely willing to bond into any coven that would have her.
But the idea of breaking her bond to Shatterspire - even momentarily, even for solely pragmatic reasons, even with plenty of the spire around to swear her back in - was almost... vertiginous.
There was not even a sensible reason for it. Alcuin was right there. But even understanding that he was probably the most pragmatic one, she was still only almost certain he would cheerfully swear her back into the coven. And she still couldn't quite bring herself to just ask.
(Of course, later that evening, she would find herself saying to the others: "We can do it if we form up a temporary coven - Marissa's not going to be involved, so she can swear us all back in afterwards." Out loud, with words, without a second thought. The river delights in making a hypocrite of her.)
So, instead, she finds herself passing critical comment over the ritual technique of the assembled contributors - the Umbral Reflection and one lady from Phoenix Reach - as a way to pass the time while anxiously waiting to overhear the results.
Her criticism is unjustified; once the magic is discharged, they do all in fact pull out notebooks, apart from the novice who joined the group. She attempts to provide her notebook, but someone else is already performing this action and they opt to wait for their previous offer to resolve rather than accepting hers.
Someone asks her if they've finished - was it Barak? - and she tells them that it should be safe to approach the participants, but not a good idea to disturb them unduly.
Unsurprisingly, the coven do not just recite their newly acquired secrets for the audience, but by inserting herself into conversations in which they are attempting to work out what they mean, she gets the general idea.
It is not a good idea.
Afterwards she blames it for being a kind of nesting idea, which is all kinds of ironic, given the portents and how it turned out. A cuckoo's egg in the realm of Day. A number laid by a dragon, a whole number between three and four, which flees when it is discovered.
Why does no-one in this room know how to define the integers?
Where has the suspicious dark-cowled 'naga', now outed as a herald of Night, got to? And what is it doing in the Halls of Knowledge at all?
----
The announcement floats by; the next talk, one of Iulian's, commencing in a 'short minute'.
On returning to the JCR, she can tell that she is too distracted. She listens to the conversation around the herald, but she wants to be in two places at once; and Livia appears not to want to go into the regio, and is in any case right here.
Flees whenever it is discovered.
"Livia," she asks, "will you watch that herald for me?"
"Watch it for what?"
"Make sure it doesn't go anywhere. Watch what it does."
"Do I need to stop it leaving?"
Allegra looks appraisingly at Livia, and decides that she cannot ask that of her.
"Stop it if you can. Tell me what happened if you can't."
And with that she sweeps off towards the regio portal before Livia can go back on her tentative assent.
She attempts to pay some attention to the talk, which has already started, but it is simply not going anywhere; something about light towers and the heliopticon, and the different transmission characteristics of each.
For a moment she manages to get as far as idly wondering whether her lack of ability at working out how to read the flashes and her lack of ability with picking up the vocabulary of Commonwealthsprache are one and the same thing.
But it is clear she doesn't actually need to be here, and she can't see anything that matches the signs well enough to give her any further information, so when it is remotely polite for her to do so, she leaves.
----
Livia seems very anxious and glad to be relieved of her herald-watching duty.
The conversation around the herald is interesting, but somewhat opaque; it almost gets away once, but for some reason it returns; and then it is lunch and the only convenient place to sit is not quite in view of the creature, so she has to keep craning her neck to reassure herself it has not disappeared again.
She mutters darkly about the portents, and attempts to convince Nicassia that the herald shouldn't be left to the supervision of the young naga of Umbral Reflection alone - but it appears to be a futile endeavour to convince anyone that perhaps the Night coven full of Night-lineaged youngsters might be doing something in collusion with a creature from the Night realm that those who would prefer to align themselves with Day might later regret.
So she follows the night herald out of the lunch-room as it draws its 'new friends' away, because it looks like nobody else is treating it as anything other than an entertaining diversion, a game or a harmless toy.
They settle in the MCR, and so she does too.
From their conversation, she gathers that the creature has made various demands - luxury and relaxation, discovery, novelty, learning and success. And the naga are - as is natural for their kind when faced with this kind of delightful mystery - attempting to fulfil them.
Of course, Iulian manages to interrupt the gathering just as one of the green-haired naga is massaging the night herald's feet, because everything needed to be in place to make it more difficult to convince her spiremates that people associated with Endsmeet were worthy of respect within their individual fields.
(She did not see her own mistrust as being in the same category. Her mistrust came from a position of respect - she expected these people to follow their own objectives - she did not expect them to be incompetent in doing so, quite the reverse, but instead she expected that in this case their interests simply did not align with hers.)
The more she heard, the more convinced she became that she could not let them finish fulfilling its desires and allow what it wanted to come to pass.
And then, for some inscrutable reason of its own, it gets up, and leaves the room; and no-one else makes to follow it; so she gets up, and leaves the room, and does not let it get away.
(I still have about twenty other distinct scenes in my outline...)
----
Aquillien's talk makes surprising amounts of sense; it's simply that he makes too many assumptions about the nature of truth, and then proposes entirely impractical experimentation.
There are too many people clamouring to contribute, so she does not say, "I do not see any reason why truth should necessarily have the property of consistency."
Marissa appears to be attempting to demonstrate a reasonably important result; as far as she can tell, it is something along the lines of "all other things are equal much less often than you would generally assume them to be". But she is speaking slightly too quietly to overcome the silence all the way to the back of the room, and there are triangles and circles and geometrical constructions, besides.
The drawing of diagrams has a certain meditative quality, and for once she does not flinch from the memories that they invoke; a part of her is grudgingly beginning to admit that some elements of her childhood were not, in fact, unremittingly awful.
She does make a contribution in the discussion following Mari's talk.
"There is an alternative formulation which is quite popular," she attempts to explain, "that reality is that which when you stop believing in it, does not cease to affect you."
Iulian makes some kind of mental effort, and informs her that there appear to be some things he cannot cease to believe in.
"If you cannot cease to believe in something," she retorts, "then surely it is a thing which is affecting you?"
He gestures as if to concede the point.
Meanwhile, Tabor is explaining that this following performance was devised by way of an explanation, or exploration, of the value of lyrics in music, following a discussion with Ylenrith on the subject.
It is a rather accomplished operatic composition containing no actual words, but instead noises imitating some variety of domestic feline, some of them deliberately amusing.
This primarily serves to remind her of the incongruity of baring one's teeth as a sign of mirth, as opposed to a display of threat.
Tristram Dyer then steps up, and is attempting to illustrate some problems which clearly are some kind of sample problem in a field of mathematics which he is attempting to disguise as something more anecdotal.
This is mostly obvious because of the many mis-aimed assumptions that need to be taken in order to make the problem specification conform to the underlying schema which he obviously has in mind.
She points out a couple of them - "The real answer is to determine what the Eternal's motivations are"; "If it is telling the truth, then you need to discern how it is modelling you and therefore what it thinks you will do"; "I'm assuming you are supposed to be motivated by avoiding punishment?" - but it seems somewhat unkind to continue.
Would any Imperial citizen worthy of the name really choose the option in which they minimised their suffering - in such a straightforward, physical variety, in any case - at the expense of another? She supposes, sadly, that the answer is yes, but she still cannot quite comprehend it.
Her attention is drawn by the Coven of Umbral Reflection's attempt to assemble a large Signs and Portents casting group, and she encourages it to be announced; after that, she feels that she rather has to head out with the announcer; and also she has not contributed to Signs and Portents for a very long time now...
----
She had followed along to the casting hall with the full intention of joining in, and it was only after she had enquired about the number of volhov's robes available that she had actually thought through the implications.
She had never previously been particularly particular regarding the making and breaking of coven bonds. Coven bonds in the Army of the Citadel tended to be fairly utilitarian and situational, at least in the ritual auxiliary squads in which she had begun her service; later, she had been around some people who insisted on maintaining their home spire's bond, but she had always been entirely willing to bond into any coven that would have her.
But the idea of breaking her bond to Shatterspire - even momentarily, even for solely pragmatic reasons, even with plenty of the spire around to swear her back in - was almost... vertiginous.
There was not even a sensible reason for it. Alcuin was right there. But even understanding that he was probably the most pragmatic one, she was still only almost certain he would cheerfully swear her back into the coven. And she still couldn't quite bring herself to just ask.
(Of course, later that evening, she would find herself saying to the others: "We can do it if we form up a temporary coven - Marissa's not going to be involved, so she can swear us all back in afterwards." Out loud, with words, without a second thought. The river delights in making a hypocrite of her.)
So, instead, she finds herself passing critical comment over the ritual technique of the assembled contributors - the Umbral Reflection and one lady from Phoenix Reach - as a way to pass the time while anxiously waiting to overhear the results.
Her criticism is unjustified; once the magic is discharged, they do all in fact pull out notebooks, apart from the novice who joined the group. She attempts to provide her notebook, but someone else is already performing this action and they opt to wait for their previous offer to resolve rather than accepting hers.
Someone asks her if they've finished - was it Barak? - and she tells them that it should be safe to approach the participants, but not a good idea to disturb them unduly.
Unsurprisingly, the coven do not just recite their newly acquired secrets for the audience, but by inserting herself into conversations in which they are attempting to work out what they mean, she gets the general idea.
It is not a good idea.
Afterwards she blames it for being a kind of nesting idea, which is all kinds of ironic, given the portents and how it turned out. A cuckoo's egg in the realm of Day. A number laid by a dragon, a whole number between three and four, which flees when it is discovered.
Why does no-one in this room know how to define the integers?
Where has the suspicious dark-cowled 'naga', now outed as a herald of Night, got to? And what is it doing in the Halls of Knowledge at all?
----
The announcement floats by; the next talk, one of Iulian's, commencing in a 'short minute'.
On returning to the JCR, she can tell that she is too distracted. She listens to the conversation around the herald, but she wants to be in two places at once; and Livia appears not to want to go into the regio, and is in any case right here.
Flees whenever it is discovered.
"Livia," she asks, "will you watch that herald for me?"
"Watch it for what?"
"Make sure it doesn't go anywhere. Watch what it does."
"Do I need to stop it leaving?"
Allegra looks appraisingly at Livia, and decides that she cannot ask that of her.
"Stop it if you can. Tell me what happened if you can't."
And with that she sweeps off towards the regio portal before Livia can go back on her tentative assent.
She attempts to pay some attention to the talk, which has already started, but it is simply not going anywhere; something about light towers and the heliopticon, and the different transmission characteristics of each.
For a moment she manages to get as far as idly wondering whether her lack of ability at working out how to read the flashes and her lack of ability with picking up the vocabulary of Commonwealthsprache are one and the same thing.
But it is clear she doesn't actually need to be here, and she can't see anything that matches the signs well enough to give her any further information, so when it is remotely polite for her to do so, she leaves.
----
Livia seems very anxious and glad to be relieved of her herald-watching duty.
The conversation around the herald is interesting, but somewhat opaque; it almost gets away once, but for some reason it returns; and then it is lunch and the only convenient place to sit is not quite in view of the creature, so she has to keep craning her neck to reassure herself it has not disappeared again.
She mutters darkly about the portents, and attempts to convince Nicassia that the herald shouldn't be left to the supervision of the young naga of Umbral Reflection alone - but it appears to be a futile endeavour to convince anyone that perhaps the Night coven full of Night-lineaged youngsters might be doing something in collusion with a creature from the Night realm that those who would prefer to align themselves with Day might later regret.
So she follows the night herald out of the lunch-room as it draws its 'new friends' away, because it looks like nobody else is treating it as anything other than an entertaining diversion, a game or a harmless toy.
They settle in the MCR, and so she does too.
From their conversation, she gathers that the creature has made various demands - luxury and relaxation, discovery, novelty, learning and success. And the naga are - as is natural for their kind when faced with this kind of delightful mystery - attempting to fulfil them.
Of course, Iulian manages to interrupt the gathering just as one of the green-haired naga is massaging the night herald's feet, because everything needed to be in place to make it more difficult to convince her spiremates that people associated with Endsmeet were worthy of respect within their individual fields.
(She did not see her own mistrust as being in the same category. Her mistrust came from a position of respect - she expected these people to follow their own objectives - she did not expect them to be incompetent in doing so, quite the reverse, but instead she expected that in this case their interests simply did not align with hers.)
The more she heard, the more convinced she became that she could not let them finish fulfilling its desires and allow what it wanted to come to pass.
And then, for some inscrutable reason of its own, it gets up, and leaves the room; and no-one else makes to follow it; so she gets up, and leaves the room, and does not let it get away.