2019-04-03: You Will Know The Water

• Cutscene: You Will Know The Water
• Cast: Seraph Lanval
• Where: Indeterminate
• Date: April 3rd, 2019
• Summary: Seraph Lanval, who has made a solemn vow to a force of nature across worlds, must learn the water of Filgaia. As the Oracle of Schturdark, Lanval takes his first lessons as he takes a necessary rest following his reawakening to this role. (SPECIAL THANKS: players of Sephilia Lampbright, Seraph Boudicca, and Ida Everstead-Rey for critical feedback!)

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Filgaia was saved from disaster, once more. As soon as everyone found themselves out from the purified Ley, Lanval's strength started to leave him. He was far more exhausted than he'd have realized. It was the pulsing lifeblood of the planet that kept him together after he expended almost everything in that burst of power born from a union between elementals of different worlds.

Even then, the role of explaining what had happened with him and fellow Seraph, Boudicca, had to be shared between them both within the purified Ley. Their newfound relationship with the powers that sustained Filgaia enabled them to comprehend much that needed spoken through them. To speak them again was a trial unto itself, so soon after their victory over the Adversary of Man and their steadfast companion.

Having left the warmth of Raftina's love behind after having had to deliver news most dire about the existence of Obsession, he was no longer able to maintain the manifested projection that the Resonant could interact with. It was back in his vessel, a bottle so clean and clear as to be a mirror. What strength was left in which to interact with the corporeal world, he expended in refilling it with enough water to fill it half-way. It was all he had left to give.

When he noticed his vessel being returned to one of his closest traveling companions, he rested easy and allowed his senses to drift into a meditative slumber. It could have been something like death, his essence having nearly come within immeasurably small margins of losing whatever rules or quantity of something goverened his ability to be a conscious entity. To still be considered 'alive.'

A feeling so very strange to Seraphim, elemental spirits blessed with the breadth and depth of mastery over the aspect of nature they embody. They never 'ran out.' They simply just were, ageless aspects of nature with a will of their own. Plucked from the cusp of the terminal stage of Hellionization all his kind risk suffering - the transformation into a Fell Dragon - by a miracle, in a way he went from the brink of one kind of death into another. A feeling, he thought humbly, reflected ever more strongly of Boudicca's conviction and strength for the nature of what she now lent herself to.

His consciousness was not left to wander by itself for long. No, it never had the chance to. From that moment forward, it was a place - a state of being - he shared with another.

Oracle, a voice spoke.

To describe it as such was only a close equivalent to the idea. The voice was not so much a sound, as to be parsed within the sensory perceptions of a mortal. To use quotation marks around what was said would have failed to capture the character of the feeling that coursed through the water within the bottle. It was something felt, and understood.

Oracle, the voice spoke once more. It was no louder. It was no more urgent.

Lanval listened to what mortals would call words, for lack of better to describe it. The world inside the bottle expanded beyond the physical space it occupied, as Lanval felt himself drift outside of the water he felt familiar.

The water of Althena's world, of which he was part. Hers was a world of plenty, a world of paradise. His gift, his blessing, was one of the ability to impart a more celebratory atmosphere. Mirth. The Mirthfull Wellspring, as his true name approximately translated to. His expressions of his element reflected that. Pure, clean, beautiful water fit for an eternity of a celebrating an existence without want by Her grace.

Oracle, the voice spoke once more. You, who sacrifice for the world the traitor Althena left behind. You, who would shoulder the burden. You, who give the name as a sacred vow.

You will know the water of Filgaia.

When the Shaman's call was answered through the all-consuming miasma of contradiction and negativity, Lanval felt the reach of the refreshing mist of a crashing wave's aftermath. The steadiness of a gentle rainfall. The cleanest, purest water of another world. Water at its peak strength, the greatest of its health, its platonic ideal. Water met with water, water of different bodies that flowed into one another. Water with the same shared destination - Filgaia's salvation from its latest malady.

Lanval did not yet know the water of Filgaia. He saw the water of Filgaia. He felt the water of Filgaia. He did not truly know of it. Taken leave of any outside stimulus by the mortal existence, it was now that he was to begin to know.

Water was necessary for all life to live, to grow, to flourish. From the humblest blade of grass, to the most titanic apex predator. Water scarce had say in where it was or what would happen with it. Its shape dependant on the earth that would hold it where it would find rest, its mass fractured piecemeal. A thirst slaked here and there. An amount skimmed off the top to climb the sky. Water would oft yet rejoin water by any number of means, compelled or deposited by any number of forces.

Consumed. Moved. These were easy concepts to grasp, between two distinct but joined bodies of water. It was water's nature.

Altered.

Injured.

Lanval was not ignorant of the way water would oft be shaped. Nature itself passively shaped it. The falling of leaves and flowers. Miniscule grains of dirt and rock scraped it at any depth. Creatures great and small alike would impose themselves within its body to be born, to live, and die without so much thinking anything of it. Each left their trace within the water, and shaped everything of it. The color, the scent... water gave and enabled life.

Water was beholden to outside forces, its desire to be at rest ever challenged. It was not without power. Water sustained life, but could just take it as soon. It smothered where it lay, and not all could thrive within it. So much could move at once, culminating in a quantity and force that would occasionally be enough to shatter what stood in the way of its journey to come be at rest. In this way, it had the power to destroy.

Lanval knew the way of water as was common between worlds.

Altered. Injured. The emphasis was renewed. Altered by wills more complex than the beasts and the plants that roam Filgaia, of needs beyond sustenance. Injured by such actions, untreated and left a lingering pain.

Lanval thought, at first, of brewing fine drink. This was alteration. The manipulation of water through numerous processes so that it would possess a character beyond what nature itself offered the thirsty. Fermentation could happen without willful mortal intervention, but it was an alteration they had took to and mastered.

He also thought of the way in which Malevolence - and another sinister force, the Malice he had become acquainted - would effortlessly infest and transform the water. For forces both good and ill, joyous and tragic--

Altered. Injured. Once more, it was spoken. The concept was key to understanding the water of Filgaia. The words were repeated not with irritation, not with desperation. It needed to be conveyed.

Lanval felt the alteration of water that left it burning. Burning, in ways that did not involve fire. Burning, in ways it would consume much like fire, stripping away its environs in which to feed a hunger it could never sate. Injured, for the pain it left. He knew not what made it so, but he would know that this was water.

Lanval felt the alteration of water that left it with a feeling of energy unchecked. Something as though within it were an energy that competed with itself, and had no room for anything else lest they were to become sick and disfigured. Injured, left to fester for untold years. He knew not what made it so, but he would know that this was water.

Both these examples were of water altered, and injured. Altered by the wills more complex than the beasts and the plants that roam Filgaia. Claimed for purposes that suited their needs, altered to means contrary to ways of which Lanval was not fully acquainted. Every so often he was surprised by the means in which water was mastered and utilized, beyond even his own imagination as a very being of water. It injured, through the thoughtlessness of the consequences of these alterations.

The altered water, once more by the wills more complex than the beasts and plants, would join with water anew. Was it unwanted by these wills? Why would the altered water be joined with the water that had not yet been altered this way? More water among the unaltered would be altered, and returned to the unaltered, and thus render it injured.

The altered water's nature spread further and further across the water of Filgaia. It would thin, but it would not abate. The altered water, in turn, altered the water about it further. The water that gave life could no longer give. The water that would ache. The water that would hurt. The water that as altered... disposed. Dispersed. The water that choked. The water that was injured.

The water of Filgaia was vast, but the water of Filgaia was tested. In doing so, so were the other essences of Filgaia.

The earth eroded, the soil poisoned of its ability to give life. The wind carried off the altered water, and enabled it to choke the seas of its rightful dwellers. Those who bore the sword in defense of their castle scarce had foundation for either to continue standing. The weakness was not unique to the water of Filgaia, for all of Filgaia had been strained as such. As one aspect would suffer, so would another, until all suffered.

Yours was to know that of the water of Filgaia's own, Oracle. The voice said, as though it were to recapture the scope of the communication, lest it drifted far beyond the domain that was of import between them. Just as the other Oracle who found their way that day was to know the fire of Filgaia, even with the hurdle their nature might have presented.

The sharing of the suffering continued. More examples of the water altered in ways injurious to the water itself were spoken. A sadness, a pressure... but an unceasing commitment. It did not feel of a complaint, or a fury. It seemed an impersonal recollection between a water of years far beyond another that had joined it. Unwelcoming, unyielding, and perhaps even unkind.

It was simply the water of Filgaia's plight, in truth and in whole. Lanval dutifully listened, for he must know the water of Filgaia as was his charge.

It did not terminate, so much as escalate, as the water of Filgaia conveyed one of the greatest pains in its recent memory. Lanval found the pain shared in the recollection of what he witnessed for but a moment in the twisted memory of the Anomalous Orb's distortions.

An unknowable creature who feasted upon the Ley, whose swelling presence destroyed all that allowed the water of Filgaia to resist Mother's fell influence. In an instant, it was strangulated from two ways. Lanval was not there for that time, and could have only experienced it prior as part of the Malevolence's proliferation in an assault upon the love of Filgaia. He only knew Schturdark lost their Guardian Statue, but not the circumstance of Rahab's emergence. He did not know they were one in the same.

The Anomalous Orb captured the form, but it did not capture the true depths of its feel. The emergence of Rahab, the Primarch of Muse, at the point where the water of Filgaia considered any such singular point its 'home.' It was as pure an experience as Lanval could have ever lived, and it was an experience nearly as intense as the final moments of his fading consciousness before the Malevolence stood to overtake him. The moments before Schturdark reached out and offered a means to fight back. Words failed to capture it.

Words instead filled in for the aftermath, in which Lanval endured. He remembered his vow, and his reason. The water of Filgaia heard his vow, and his reason. The intensity he was subjected to, to an outside observer, was beyond cruel. It was something no one should relive, or even live a first time.

The loss of a 'home.' The loss of a 'strength.' The loss of an 'agency.' Both beings of water shared this much, as an abstract, if not in the breadth of consequence. Schturdark lost their Guardian Statue at the seat of where the water of Filgaia stood strongest. Lanval lost their Divine Vessel as the zeal of Althena's Guard destroyed where it stood. Schturdark lost their ability to resist Mother's reawakening. Lanval could no longer prevent the Malevolence from thickening. Schturdark choked and sputtered from any moment where Mother even so much as spoke. Lanval could do naught but watch as the land he swore to protect saw holes in its armor exploited, leading to horrors unknown to that part of Althena's creation.

In this experience, Lanval surmised, Schturdark found one they could have conveyed this to in such depth. Their relationship was not that of equals. Lanval was the Oracle of Schturdark. A clear hierarchy was established. It was this moment most initimate that Lanval felt the establishment of another truth. It stepped beyond an act of desperation, beyond convenience, that saw them bound together.

It was presumptuous to say that he knew the water of Filgaia at that time. He knew only that he had its trust in that he would know of it, and be worthy to know the water of Filgaia - if just in the present they now shared together.

The present did not then come with a gift. The present came with the unyielding gaze of an aged mortal man, a shining light having surrounded them. The visage of which impressed itself upon the surface of the water that filled the bottle. Lanval, startled, had the strength to break the mirror-like sheen of the water's surface, and the sneering man's face distorted and shimmered.

The cleanliness of the bottle itself served as an adequate theatre in which to host the intruding image, and there was naught to be done. They spoke. They spoke many words. They spoke of a destruction that ruined the land, and the desolation they felt. Other examples followed, each attuned as though to reach other mortals of almost any conceivable, relatable difficulty in life. Their words were, physically and metaphysically, unchallenged within this space.

Lanval had no choice but to listen. By nature, even if he were among the more benevolent of his kind in the modern day to mortals, there had to be some detachment by necessity simply because some aspects of being one he could never know. Witness, several times over, but never truly know. This man did not know of his existence on a personal level, and yet, it felt as though much of the anguish may had been directed at him over one impassioned set of words from their heart.

'To the people of Filgaia - hear my words, and measure them against the truths you have seen for yourselves. You have hoped for the so-called rulers of the world to save you and, but for one, they have hidden in their shells. You have prayed to gods and guardians alike for salvation, and your words have been a whisper on the wind.'

If every time Lanval had heard the doubts, the fears, the disbelief back when he watched over that rotting establishment were an arrow, this mortal had reached far and wide to bring them within their quiver. No, as he moved to a declaration, it was as though he were doing the improbable and impossible task of holding them all in one hand, primed and ready to be loosed. It was as though he fired as he spoke a specific passage a few sentences later.

'There are no gods. There are no masters.'

The questions that would have come on the tips of mortal tongues were myriad. Couldn't you stop this? Why wouldn't you fix this? Why have you looked away from our plight? Do you even exist?

Lanval knew these questions because many of them had been asked in his presence, and there was not much he could show. The work he did for them dealt with a force virtually none of them could comprehend. He did not ask them of the water of Filgaia, nor did he ever consider, for he knew that they already had been. They had been asked in tears, in anger, over a length of time that far exceeded his own existence.

This man - this Vinsfeld Rhadamanthus - had already shown why, Lanval was to know. The water of Filgaia had already been doing its all as part of the power that sustained the world, as the man's entreaties to those who lived came to its end. The power to shape it was the domain of--

Light interrupted. Not the light of Filgaia. Light outside. The light did not speak, and yet, it seemed to speak over the words of the water of Filgaia. Light. Deafening, blinding light.

Water, again. Surrounding Lanval's vessel was water.

It was not the water of Filgaia, but it was water. Water, with unfamiliar neighbors made of lights.

Water and lights, neither of Filgaia.

The lights, tiny spheres that trailed prismatic hues of color, emitted noises not unlike a mournful wail as it flit about the water. Lanval could not hear the water of Filgaia. A memory surfaced of Azado, as he felt the essence of his being under a pressure identical to when...

...Obsession appeared. That was what Filgaia's embodiments referred to it as. He remembered the fear as it dragged him across the undertow, across sunken ruin. He remembered the frantic escape alongside his closest of friends, and the question posed as to whether he was ready or willing to leave behind a world whose highest authority - the Goddess Althena - had thus condemned him for daring to question Her, and then to stand against one of Her holiest and greatest of advocates and servants, the Red Priestess.

...His closest of friends, Lanval reflected, as he backtracked across that train of thought. Another erupted, no less worrying.

How long had it been since? Time carried such different importance to his own kind. Some days, he could close his eyes and then have found out that it had been three of their limited days. He knew if all went as well as he wished during that birth of said wish, an eternity was already spoken for. An eternity that, by necessity and inevitability, could not include them. He was displaced from any ability to comprehend the passage of time and movement of space around him, for... how long?

Anxiety welled up as he floated within a water teeming with these lights that seemed to promise a return to the calamity that engulfed Azado. A calamity in which he proved powerless. He counted mortal seconds as if to reassure him that not all was lost, that Filgaia did not pass as he meditated upon the water of a world he now called home.

He started at twenty-eight seconds, as a guess.

Forty seconds. Nothing changed.

Fifty seconds. The lights did not grow in number.

Sixty seconds. The lights were not moving any faster.

Seventy seconds. He imagined that one light lingered for longer than it actually did, only a trick of perception as the bottle turned about in the water.

Eighty seconds. The bottle's drifting became more turbulent.

Eighty-four seconds--

Something had taken the bottle by the neck.

That something, it took a second to remember, was a mortal human hand.

It took a bit longer to remember they had a name. Longer than he was comfortable, but happy that he did.

Sephilia Lampbright.

Time had yet to grace her facial features with the mark of its passage, as the young woman lifted the bottle up out of the water. Her swimming lessons had paid off. He saw the relief and the joy on her face, as his perception of the world around him lifted up from the water full of lights into a bright sun-kissed sky.

There was much to say, much to know. In that instant, the Oracle of Schturdark decided it was time for them to know that their friend was still there. Their friend, who seemed to have left them for a while.

To have gone between the breadth of an entire world's water, into something as humble and minute in scale as a single mortal and then their immediate associates. A difficult adjustment to make. To have listened to her voice and to see her smile, though familiar, seemed a skill he had to take a few minutes to reacquaint himself with, to reclaim the length of that metaphysical distance which formed in the interim.

He knew he was eager to see them all again.

The fearless Layna, the hardy Tethelle, the devout Rosaline, the heroic Talise...

The sacrificing Riesenlied, the multi-faceted Fei, the potionmaker Jay, the cheery Lydia, the redeemed Ida...

His own kin that accepted his company even after all that happened, like the elusive Solanine, the light-hearted Ceimglace, the ambitious Amaranth, and... that one of light whose name he didn't have...

...Even the Seraph Boudicca, who also took that same vow to become an Oracle of Moor Gault...

He kept running down the list of individual names as if to reclaim them from a murky, indistinct, wholesale cloth they all could have been swept up into, to have disappeared as something far too small to see.

He was to know the water of Filgaia. The depths of its plights, its pains... a lesson that required an attention beyond just 'utmost' to grasp, to expand a scope of comprehension as was necessary.

He held on tight that these people were his friends, these infinitesimal motes of existence, and they would know that he was still yet with them. They would know that he was their friend, who walked, laughed, and drank alongside them.

He projected his person from his vessel for the first time in an unknown number of days. What little they knew of their environs, he decided, they would all come to know together. Together, upon the unfamiliar land whose first words to him were of a distant echo of ill premonition.

To have held onto both scopes, both scales, both levels of magnification... perhaps it was his role to sit somewhere in between.

He was to know the water of Filgaia in time, when he could hear them speak.

He carried the will of the water of Filgaia with him forward into Spira, even in its silence, as he walked again alongside his friends.