[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.If you mean to ask whether or not I’m ready to commit to serving the Viscain Emperor, then the answer is yes.”Jav nodded, silenced by Raus’s grave reply.“Come on,” he said.“I’ll take you to the Emperor.We’re going to be very busy over the next few days.This will be your first time away from the Tower in how long?”Raus shook his head, unable to come up with an accurate figure.Jav liked Raus.They had known each other for less than a month, but in that time, Jav had come to feel a connection to Raus, recognizing a core similarity in their natures despite their apparent differences.He sympathized with what Raus had had to do over the course of his life.And he certainly couldn’t ignore their shared difficulties with soul echoes.Similarities aside, though, Jav also knew that part of his openness to Raus was due to the void left by Ren Fauer’s death.He missed Ren every day, knew that he could not be replaced so easily, but it filled Jav with hope just the same to be able to connect with someone so soon after Ren was gone.“Your brother is in good hands,” Jav said.“It’ll be good to get away.”• • •They moved along the top of the wall through thinning traffic and into the Vine proper through a wide aperture.Inside, the artificial light contrasted little to that of the waning Sarsan sun.Raus was trying to comprehend exactly what he found himself within: a plant, a palace, a spaceship, a god, the Emperor himself.The scale alone humbled him, but the thought that the whole structure was aware, could think, could create, could bestow parts of itself as boons was enough to cause him to rethink his worldview.Initially he’d had no idea of the scope of the Emperor’s person.He’d bargained because he had nothing else to lose and potentially everything to gain.When Jav started telling him of the Empire, that it was more or less the Emperor himself, Raus had been skeptical, but reserved judgement, at least outwardly.Now there was no denying that the Vine rose without end into the sky, that it formed a Palace that both dwarfed and humbled Kapler Tower.Raus had seen firsthand the power of Artifacts as well.Jav had threatened to pull his arms off, and it was clear that it had been no idle boast.He had also raised skeletons from the mass graves surrounding Kapler Tower and set them to his bidding.For all the science Raus thought he knew—which had never left room for something so ethereal as divinity—Raus felt like a child all over again, marveling at the “magic” of magnets as he had at age four.There had always been explanations for Raus’s ability to produce electricity—in truth, a trait shared by all humans amplified to a staggering degree in Raus’s case—or his brother’s ability to prophesy—which was either perception outside of linear time-space, or unconscious extrapolation of passively received stimuli, or some combination of the two.The brain and the body were capable of many things that were not, strictly speaking, normal and even more so when adjustments to each were made by skillful hands.But there were always limits.The Emperor’s existence spoke to Raus of an end to limits, of infinity, and of the divine.He was humbled, ready to serve, and happy to do so at Jav’s side.Raus followed Jav down a series of lightly travelled dim corridors and into a small personnel jump deck.Even as Jav ushered him off the deck, Raus protested, insisting they’d gone nowhere, but the corridor they found themselves in silenced him.Though it looked like all the other corridors he’d walked, it wasn’t the one from which he’d entered the jump deck.He looked about awkwardly as Jav led him further.They reached a set of pressure doors that opened to a room which was half-balcony, looking over Sarsa from a height that stopped the breath in Raus’s chest.Down through clouds he could see the small spike that was Kapler Tower, the extent of the Black Fields, and the tight rows of tall, straight, dark green trees that grew in the slowly failing soil beyond, looking almost like moss upon the low range that hemmed in the land settled by his ancestors.Beyond that, he could see the black, desolate sea, and farther still, the white glow of the ice floes that forever marked the north.“Your first viewing of your own world from such a height?”Raus whirled about in response to the voice, but Jav turned easily and said with a slight bow, “Minister of Affairs, Witchlan.”Raus turned to Jav, acknowledging the import of his words, and turned back to Witchlan to whom he bowed.“You may rise and you may speak, Mr.Kapler,” Witchlan said.He was all in russet and brown, his robes looking something like a cross between velvet and leather—they didn’t look like clothes so much as a part of him.His cap—or was it his head?—rose to a point and ended in a reed-like taper that coiled into a jaunty curl.His face was a dark patchwork that maintained a strict symmetry.His mouth was a vertical slit among many that brought to mind the under gills of mushrooms.Kapler rose.“Yes, it is,” he said.Witchlan had been standing near the doors when Jav and Raus entered [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl centka.pev.pl
.If you mean to ask whether or not I’m ready to commit to serving the Viscain Emperor, then the answer is yes.”Jav nodded, silenced by Raus’s grave reply.“Come on,” he said.“I’ll take you to the Emperor.We’re going to be very busy over the next few days.This will be your first time away from the Tower in how long?”Raus shook his head, unable to come up with an accurate figure.Jav liked Raus.They had known each other for less than a month, but in that time, Jav had come to feel a connection to Raus, recognizing a core similarity in their natures despite their apparent differences.He sympathized with what Raus had had to do over the course of his life.And he certainly couldn’t ignore their shared difficulties with soul echoes.Similarities aside, though, Jav also knew that part of his openness to Raus was due to the void left by Ren Fauer’s death.He missed Ren every day, knew that he could not be replaced so easily, but it filled Jav with hope just the same to be able to connect with someone so soon after Ren was gone.“Your brother is in good hands,” Jav said.“It’ll be good to get away.”• • •They moved along the top of the wall through thinning traffic and into the Vine proper through a wide aperture.Inside, the artificial light contrasted little to that of the waning Sarsan sun.Raus was trying to comprehend exactly what he found himself within: a plant, a palace, a spaceship, a god, the Emperor himself.The scale alone humbled him, but the thought that the whole structure was aware, could think, could create, could bestow parts of itself as boons was enough to cause him to rethink his worldview.Initially he’d had no idea of the scope of the Emperor’s person.He’d bargained because he had nothing else to lose and potentially everything to gain.When Jav started telling him of the Empire, that it was more or less the Emperor himself, Raus had been skeptical, but reserved judgement, at least outwardly.Now there was no denying that the Vine rose without end into the sky, that it formed a Palace that both dwarfed and humbled Kapler Tower.Raus had seen firsthand the power of Artifacts as well.Jav had threatened to pull his arms off, and it was clear that it had been no idle boast.He had also raised skeletons from the mass graves surrounding Kapler Tower and set them to his bidding.For all the science Raus thought he knew—which had never left room for something so ethereal as divinity—Raus felt like a child all over again, marveling at the “magic” of magnets as he had at age four.There had always been explanations for Raus’s ability to produce electricity—in truth, a trait shared by all humans amplified to a staggering degree in Raus’s case—or his brother’s ability to prophesy—which was either perception outside of linear time-space, or unconscious extrapolation of passively received stimuli, or some combination of the two.The brain and the body were capable of many things that were not, strictly speaking, normal and even more so when adjustments to each were made by skillful hands.But there were always limits.The Emperor’s existence spoke to Raus of an end to limits, of infinity, and of the divine.He was humbled, ready to serve, and happy to do so at Jav’s side.Raus followed Jav down a series of lightly travelled dim corridors and into a small personnel jump deck.Even as Jav ushered him off the deck, Raus protested, insisting they’d gone nowhere, but the corridor they found themselves in silenced him.Though it looked like all the other corridors he’d walked, it wasn’t the one from which he’d entered the jump deck.He looked about awkwardly as Jav led him further.They reached a set of pressure doors that opened to a room which was half-balcony, looking over Sarsa from a height that stopped the breath in Raus’s chest.Down through clouds he could see the small spike that was Kapler Tower, the extent of the Black Fields, and the tight rows of tall, straight, dark green trees that grew in the slowly failing soil beyond, looking almost like moss upon the low range that hemmed in the land settled by his ancestors.Beyond that, he could see the black, desolate sea, and farther still, the white glow of the ice floes that forever marked the north.“Your first viewing of your own world from such a height?”Raus whirled about in response to the voice, but Jav turned easily and said with a slight bow, “Minister of Affairs, Witchlan.”Raus turned to Jav, acknowledging the import of his words, and turned back to Witchlan to whom he bowed.“You may rise and you may speak, Mr.Kapler,” Witchlan said.He was all in russet and brown, his robes looking something like a cross between velvet and leather—they didn’t look like clothes so much as a part of him.His cap—or was it his head?—rose to a point and ended in a reed-like taper that coiled into a jaunty curl.His face was a dark patchwork that maintained a strict symmetry.His mouth was a vertical slit among many that brought to mind the under gills of mushrooms.Kapler rose.“Yes, it is,” he said.Witchlan had been standing near the doors when Jav and Raus entered [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]