(no subject)

[cog_nomen]

"Do you enjoy living?" Conlan had asked him one morning, when he'd woken up and found the very first gray hair he'd ever gotten, shining there in his hand mirror as he'd shaved. "I suppose for it to truly mean anything, you must die someday."

"You ask because you yourself are uncertain." Metal and bone rasped together, at first frogging out syllables that were barely understandable. As the metal warmed from friction, the chimera's voice became clearer. It was a steely sound, full of quavering variation in pitch as the metal quaked like a bent saw struck with a mallet or played with a bow.

"You speak true, but now I'm going to ask because your evasion has made me curious." Conlan chuckled at his companion, who had curled doglike on the hearth. In truth he extended past the hearth, long hind legs extending into the middle of the floor. Conlan knew the chimera could not feel heat, nor cold, nor any sensation. He suspected that instinct, rendered impractical by current circumstances, fueled Thenotay's pretend at keeping warm.

The creature's brain was, after all, constructed after a real model, which Conlan had known how to reconstruct inorganically but not rewire. Now that Thenotay was aware, Conlan found himself unable to experiment on him. His original bout of madness had been to discover how to modify and control an inorganic brain. Thenotay could speak and reason and express self-awareness.

"I'm not evading, Master Conlan." The chimera drew one foot in closer, shifting position as if to ease muscles that did not exist. "Observing, but not evading."

The alchemist waited silently for his answer.

"You did not create a creature with intent for enjoyment." Thenotay's stubby tail flickered, catching and reflecting firelight onto the shoddy thatch and log walls. "But I do not wish to cease being. I suspect that is reasonably close to enjoyment, for the sake of argument."

Returning from his thoughts, Conlan suspected that the words were the true start of his friendship with the inorganic being. It was a simple logic, but sound, echoing his own. He could not truly enjoy life with the weight of his past on his shoulders, but somehow, he could not wish it to end, either. His fingers ran over the metal plate affectionately,and he hoped the reassembly would not alter his friend. Magic could be directed, but without very specific instruction it always threw in it's own unique quirks. Conlan suspected that half of Thenotay's wit stemmed from a forgotten mark in his alchemic circle.

Tracing over the repair circle in his mind, the alchemist slid into almost a trance, his mind mapping out directive patterns to mend Thenotay's bindings. The broken bones would be a harder matter. He believed he'd gotten all the fragments from the cottage, but that didn't account for any that the Thusswolv might have consumed. Any missing pieces would leave a weakness in structure.

When dawn came, Conlan was still tired, but awake. He rose to his feet for another day of travel, his thoughts occasionally given voice. He found his hair wet from dew, and was surprised to notice the day had come bright and clear.

Influence from the leyline was clearly visible in the surrounding plants. They were leaning distinctly away from him, in the direction that hew as walking. The canopy overhead tangled together as if the wind had braided it long ago. So far, he'd seen no animals, but didn't expect to continue to the Leyline without encounter. If not from an animal under magical influence, then the Thusswolv surely would be tracking him.

Ahead, he saw the tangled wall of plants and trees that directly underscored the leyline. He would either have to cut his way through or not pass - it was lucky he did not need to pass. Drawing closer, he could practically feel the hum and hiss of magic through the air. It set his teeth moving in his jaw like a struck tuning fork, playing along his nerves like fingers on guitar strings. Some could not sense magic, but Conlan's father had been a Wildcard Mage, and had taught him from when he was young to be sensitive. Conlan had never displayed any natural talent for magic, aside from his ability to sense it.

Alchemic science had taught him to use his body as a conduit, circuiting himself into the Leylines to channel their magic through a circle that would direct the powers in the intended ways. Alchemists need not be magicians, instead they worked magic by directing a power that did not belong to them. Many considered this unnatural.


Conlan could not argue that it did not seem easy or intuitive, but the body of a human made a perfect circuit for magic. Something in their makeup was resistant to it's outlashing effects, insulating the rest of the world from the backlash that could leak from inorganic conduits.

He dropped his bag to the floor, it's soft thunk muffled on the leaves. Rolling his shoulders, Conlan considered his surroundings. Once the alchemic process was begun, it wouldn't do for him to be interrupted. Personal, tragic experience told him that the death of an Alchemist during the transmutation process resulted in an open faucet. Magic leaked. It crawled out and began to warp and twist anything that it could touch or call or change. Sometimes these changes were minor, or beneficial. Often, they were completely random and resulted in serious harm.

Drawing a stout knife from his back, he began to hack at the long, reaching vines that tangled their way up the leyline boundary.


---

The alchemist had been holding still too much. Roan wondered however the man expected to evade him traveling heavily and slowly as he was. He'd spent the night in a camp, the morning walking at a leisurely pace toward the leyline.

Deep inside, the creature felt panic as it continued toward the mass of snarled plants, his progress hindered by each tangle of leaves and thorns that crept with all it's rooted might toward the place where the veil of reality was thin enough to let the magic through. The race his had descended from, The Thuss, had been the first to take advantage of the warpings that magic could cause. At birth, they had bound their children to animals,creating a team that was inseparable and unparalleled in cooperation.

Their major sin had been how curious they were to alchemists, how very fascinating. At first, the experiments had been inquisitive in nature, exploring the way the bond worked and was formed. Later, the alchemists had ripped their race apart. Roan found a growl forming in his chest, his thoughts churning in his mind as he approached the leyline. They tried to slip away from him as his paws tracked silently over the tangled roots beneath them. Dropping his nose to the ground, he quickly picked up the alchemist's scent - human musky. Sweat. Powdered bone and the sharp of metal under the mellowing of oil.

He also smelled of magic. Green, and growing, a lurching smell that caught Roan's nose and drew him forward. The smell grew stronger, and he found the alchemist within feet of the wall, a circle stretching out around a mound of packed clay. Roan hesitated - worried. He knew Alchemists were dangerous to an extent - but they weren't naturally magical. At the leyline, the Alchemist had the advantage. He could channel magic, directing it with circles such as the one laid out on the forest floor. It cut clearn lines through the leaves and roots and rubble, dormant now. The alchemist appeared to be finishing up, on the far side of the circle from Roan.

His prey looked up at the leyline, tracking the wall up and up. Fascinated, Roan froze, waiting to see what he would do. He could strike the Alchemist while he was weak, concentrating on the transmutation. Oblivious to his presence, the alchemist walked around the edge of the circle, stopping where it came closest to the wall. He rolled up the sleeves on his spun shirt, and Roan's sharp eyes picked out old scars in crescent shapes. They were on the tops of his forearms, just below his elbows.

He hadn't noticed the knife the Alchemist had been holding - perhaps because the man had been using it more like a shovel or stick, cutting lines in the ground rather than respecting the weapon as an instrument that could deal death. The Thusswolv's lip curled up in contempt - this man probably did not even know how to fight, and he'd allowed himself to be chased off with a stick. He was crouching to pounce when the knife flashed.

Roan paused, certain he had been detected. Instead, the scent of blood began to hang in the air. Salty, and desperate. It was a small trickle, and Roan's sharp eyes pinpointed the cut that had traced one of the scars on the Alchemist's arm, opening it to course blood out. Weakly. The veins there had grown tough or gone deep, after previous abuse. His prey dipped his fingers in the cut, and reached upward toward the sky with bloodied fingers. When the blood had coursed down his arm to drip off his other hand, he touched the circle, and spoke a command.

His body jerked rigid, then went still, arched. At first, Roan noticed no change, and bent his limbs again to spring. A light began to pool through the circle, shifting randomly through the spectrum as it went, tracing interconnected lines outwards in circle after circle, loop after loop. It surrounded the mound of mud, then came back around again, tracing out interconnected letters and patterns. Roan's mind tracked it without any conscious thought. He was dazzled, captive.

Moments later, he realized that the alchemist was equally distracted. Anger welled up in him and he shook distraction from his mind with a great heave of his muscles, plunging forward in the brush. His breath screamed from his lungs, carrying with it a roar that was almost equally howl. Just inches short of the circle, the world spiraled away from under his feet.

Strong hands seemed to wrap around the Thusswolv, banding like iron around his middle, his legs, his arms, his snout. It wasn't until he began to swing, struggling viciously against the bindings, that he realized there was no magic at work here. A net. Made of vines. A scream escaped him, wildcat anger, and he thrashed. His limbs were unable to reorganize themselves without further entanglement in the net, sharp teeth caught up against tough and foul-tasting vines. He thrashed, helplessly, his prey just feet away, equally helpless in the throes of magic.

Roan redoubled his efforts, paws paddling the air for purchase, finally grasping hold of one of the vines. He felt it give way, and lost his purchase, his limbs splaying in odd directions as the balance of the net shifted.

The alchemist collapsed. The creature stilled his struggling momentarily in surprise. Had something gone wrong? When he focused, he could see the man's chest moving. He was breathing, but unconscious. He could still strike. A feral noise tore from his throat, and Roan began to gather himself for a concentrated effort.

In an explosion of mud, the chimera was on him, roaring steel. The noise was so intense that sparks flew from it's inorganic voicebox and singed the wolv's fur. Pain seared through him as he struggled, confined, to escape the claws of the enraged protector, now hanging from his pelt by it's considerable claws. It was trying to angle it's ungainly skull in for a nasty bite when another thread of net gave way, spilling the Thusswolv into an uncomfortable split. Unbalanced, the chimera dropped to the floor of the woods, looking up.

It's features, lacking flesh, did not express anger, but the tense way it's body was positioned, the switching of it's tail and the low shrieking rumble from it revealed it's displeasure. Roan tried to move, and felt his hip dislocate. A whine slipped from his muzzle, though he tried to stop it. The chimera tensed to spring.

As it moved, another net jerked up around it, catching it round the middle and unsquarely. It's limbs slipped through holes designed for a living creature's, and became hopelessly entangled, one forelimb and it's head free of the net. Momentum carried it closer, and it sank it's surprisingly sharp teeth into the only available hold with crushing force, crunching down on Roan's tail so hard that he was surprised to see it still attached as the pain faded. The growling noise from the creature did not promise a swift release.

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