A Conversation in the Desert [story]

[Jackscarab]

“Three hundred million?!”

 

“Three hundred twelve million, five hundred thousand.”

 

“For the entire Goblet, is it?”

 

“Once again you fail to understand the economics of real estate, Kanna dear.”

 

Kannadi rubbed her forehead. Economics wasn’t where she expected small talk with her grandmother to end up. At least not that quickly.

 

She touched the white linkpearl again. “Meaning what, Grandmother?”

 

A day away by foot and half an hour away by aether shortcut, Karen Albedo sat on a private veranda. A windmill spun above and behind her, slicing the afternoon sun into handfuls of seconds. She sipped a cup of tea, more for punctuation than refreshment.

 

“Meaning supply and demand. Constructions of this caliber are rare, and so they demand a significant price. Think of it as proof that an organization is ready to stand as a respectable member of the intercontinental community.”

 

An ancient remnant of a wall leaned out of the sand, beaten into its angle by the hammering sun. Kannadi lay on her back in the tent of shade it provided as the air undulated to keep off the blazing ground.

 

“I wasn’t aware you were a multitude, Grandmother.”

 

“Corporations are people, dear. Quite literally, in my case. I am Albedo Holdings, a company of one.”

 

“Still, three hundred million--”

 

“--Three hundred twelve million, five hundred thousand.”

 

“That much must have made even you flinch.”

 

Karen beckoned for her Hellsguard servant, who dutifully poured more tea for her. The view overlooked the rest of the Goblet, Ul’dah’s new living space carved of a rocky island between rivers of empty space, a speck of civilization between canyons and cliffs.

 

“Not really,” said Karen. “I just traded my share of Hammerlea for it. Plus, my investments entitle me to one-half of one percent of all land sales in the Goblet. I’ll recover enough.”

 

“Still,” said Kannadi, a region away, “even at that rate...”

 

“It and the rest of my portfolio will be enough to maintain my lifestyle. I don’t intend to live forever, dear.”

 

Kannadi stared at the top of the lonely wall, the border of ancient stone and empty sky.

 

“How long then?” She asked.

 

“Long enough,” Karen’s voice said from the pearl.

 

Kannadi sat up. To a casual observer, if she had any, she wasn’t dressed for the heat -- a doublet and sarouel too dark, too sealed, and too heavy of cloth. She wore them out of self-imposed modesty, a deliberate effort to not draw undue attention. That would be common, in her perception, and it was therefore a self-evident reason to go about covered neck to wrist to ankle regardless of weather.

 

A marbled-eye stone, the core of any basic scepter, sat in her pocket. She palmed the stone, waved a hand vaguely, and a circle of sand a few yalms away froze hard.

 

Two orbs of blue light manifested out of the aether and circled her at arm’s length. The ice on the ground wouldn’t last but a moment, but the insubstantial umbral aspects orbiting her at chest height would comfortably refrigerate her shade another several minutes.

 

“Surely you have some idea,” Kannadi said while she bent black magic to the mundane purpose of air conditioning. “Some preference, if nothing else.”

 

“I do not, and that’s the truth,” Karen said. “I leave delusions of immortality to fools like Lolorito. Quality of life is preferable to quantity.”

 

Kannadi leaned her head on shade-wall. A notebook lay tucked behind her in the acute corner. Of course her grandmother was as mortal as anyone else, but... it was like living with the knowledge that mountains could vanish overnight.

 

She glanced up. The wall had been Sil’dihn. And hadn’t they disappeared too? Everything did. Everyone did. Buried in sand and dust, or reduced to it, with no future but perhaps to be melted into glass one day, some future people’s windows or bent lenses on themselves, the past distorting the perception of the present rather than the opposite for once --

 

“And how has your quality been lately?” Karen broke into her granddaughter’s reverie.

 

“Pardon?”

 

“Your life, Kanna dear. How has it been?”

 

Kannadi looked out onto the expanse of the Sagolii Desert. Steam rose from what little ice she had made between the sand grains. Its hiss-crackling was the only sound.

 

“Fine,” she said. “Slightly lonesome, perhaps.” She paused and remembered herself. “Marginally so. On occasion. Not often. Sometimes. Irregularly.”

 

“Even at work?”

 

“I’m at work right now, actually. Chief ecological surveyor, remember?”

 

“I do.” Karen sipped a full stop, or perhaps a semicolon. “I imagine cactuars are poor company.”

 

“It’s mostly sandworms and anglers. Some bombs. A few fire sprites. Zombies.”

 

“Sounds like a lovely social life.”

 

“I enjoy the silence, thank you. It lets my mind focus.” Which was true. In the blessed hot shifting soundlessness, she could focus on anything at all. Sometimes multiple things at once. Threads of thought weaving separate contemplations was almost as good as a conversation. It was amazing what one could hear when all one could hear was oneself, by day in the heat or by night under the bridge of stars across the infinite --

 

“Take care that you don’t become a prophet out there.”

 

Kannadi blinked and shook her head. “Very funny. Now if you’ll excuse me, I really must get back to work.”

 

“I doubt that ‘must,’ what with your excess diligence. You should take more time for yourself, Kanna dear. Consider quality.”

 

“I shall, in due time.”

 

Kannadi stowed her linkpearl and retrieved her notebook. She couldn’t have written much more about the wall segment anyway. She blasted another blameless patch of sand into short-lived tundra and strode into the desert toward a leaning ruined spire.

 

Due time. Quality of life. One worked toward quality and it came when it came. That’s how quality worked. Or at least how she intended it to work. But hadn’t it? She had comfort, independent wealth, career opportunities of value to the city-state...

 

Opportunities for what? More work? Kannadi asked herself.

 

Well, yes, she answered.

 

More work toward what, exactly?

 

Toward...

 

Past ambitions crowded to the front of her mind for attention. With typical self-control she squashed them together and stretched them into a queue.

 

To build a new school of magic based on aetheric reproduction of monster abilities. That had fallen flat.

 

To catalogue all the monsters of Eorzea. Little chance of that now, after five years of mutations and invasive species and climate shifts.

 

To discern the meaning of the lines and circles on Dalamud. Rather pointless now.

 

To create and call my own Primal. That thought had lasted all of an instant, for fear that it might work if she put her mind to it.

 

What’s wrong with you? Kannadi asked herself. All your goals were utterly daft. And now you’re working for work’s sake. Where will you go from here? What do you want to do with your life? What do you want?

 

Kannadi stopped in the sand. She listened for a reply.

 

Give me time, self, I’m thinking, she replied.

 

Kannadi regarded the hot sand. There was a lot of it. It did not regard her back. Her orbiting umbral aspects evaporated.

 

“Is working toward work really so bad?” She asked herself aloud.

 

It’s uncommon, certainly, herself answered.

 

“And is uncommon so bad?”

 

Not at all. Father’s museum relies on that fact. And Grandmother is hardly common.

 

“So it’s not bad to work for work’s sake.”

 

What is this ‘bad?’

 

“Selfishness.” A too-easy answer. She really should have made it harder for herself.

 

All right. And are you selfish?

 

“Of course not.”

 

Then for whom are you working?

 

Ah, that was more like it.

 

Kannadi sat on the bare sand. The sun was at her back.

 

“I work for myself,” she said to herself, “but with the goal of aiding others.”

 

How? Herself asked. How will poking around ruins and beasts help others?

 

She hesitated, quietly baking. “I set an example. Productive attainment of information relevant to the public good regardless of circumstance. Professionalism. Others will take note of my work, and... educate themselves to be as useful as I.”

 

Nonsense. Who shall take note?

 

“My superiors at the garrison, and at Headquarters. And my colleagues, when I speak with them. And they will talk with others still.”

 

Ah, so you mean to filter your experience through people with better things to do. To set layers of straining cloth between you and these “others,” to dilute your intent and divorce you from credit for it. I seem to recall a popular book without your name on it that came of such thinking.

 

She was starting to get on her own nerves. Sweat formed at her hairline.

 

Such an exemplar of good education and public service, herself continued, mockingly. Self-condemned to waste in obscurity for the vague possibility that someone somewhere might help themselves by sharpening their wits on facts you unearth, passed around hand by hand. But where is the byline in the fossil? Where is the maker’s mark in the ruined walls?

 

“Is it really so important to be remembered by name?”

 

What else are you, in unmet minds?

 

“I am...”

 

A drop of sweat hit the sand and spat apart.

 

“Sand,” Kannadi said. “Sand that melts itself to be a window on the world. A lens to see.”

 

But none will see, will they? No one but scholars like you ever see on their own. Sand never melts itself but through the hot focus of the mind -- and people, by and large, are too stupid for that. And so the people must be shown to the window, fitted with the lenses. Why else do teachers exist?

 

“I’m no teacher. I can’t abide a classroom. I’m still sick of classrooms.”

 

Then don’t use them. Be the education you wish to see in the world.

 

Kannadi clenched the ground. Sand bit into her palms.

 

“And how is that any different than setting an example as I do already?!”

 

Because no one pays attention to you, least of all out here. You are reliable and nothing else. Easily overlooked. Plain and covered, covered plainly. What good is a buried mirror? Make them aware of you!

 

“How?!”

 

Beat it into them.

 

Kannadi blinked, and became aware of her sweat. Damn. Heat leads to hallucinations. She knew better than to listen to them. She palmed her scepter-worthy stone. The rustling of hand and pocket filled the world.

 

“Violence is the last resort of the incompetent,” she said.

 

Why is that?

 

“It is inefficient.”

 

Kannadi waved her hand.

 

Lances of ice burst out in a circle, and she was its center. Of course they were not real ice, as that particular spot of desert hadn’t seen much water in centuries, but that’s how magic worked -- real enough for long enough to trick physics into catching up.

 

The ice broke away immediately, leaving even less actual frost than the minuscule amounts on the splats of chilled ground she froze before. Blue spheres of aether began a placid orbit around her shoulders.

 

“Inefficient,” she repeated aloud, her magic already chilling her sweat and cooling her head. She stood. “Waste of effort. Only the incompetent rely upon violence, for it is too easy, too endearing to the stupid. It is therefore wholly unworthy of emulation.”

 

Then make it difficult. Violence is the last resort of the incompetent because they get it wrong. Fight so well that none can match you.

 

“That way lies madness,” she said to herself. “There will always be stronger.”

 

When did I say you should be strong? I said fight well.

 

Comfort returned to her through the circling spheres. No, this wasn’t a hallucination. There was a cold clarity in her thoughts now. They were hers, entirely hers, and always were, but now they were free and pouring out like sand. She pinched her focus like an hourglass and studied them as they spilled.

 

Fight efficiently. Victory in one move. Target the task, not the foe. Seek power through tactics, power through movement, power through control. Economy of force, applied with skill. Surgery, not butchery. The edge of glass, not of iron. Not violence, but domination with all the appearance of effortlessness. Do not toil in quiet hope, for you will only attract others who already have wisdom enough. Useless! Inefficient! Do not let the wise come to you in curiosity, let the ignorant come to you in wonder and envy!

 

Kannadi shivered. She dared not think such things in first person. But there was no competition for them in the desert, no sound but her breathing above her heartbeat.

 

For when the bookless fools see your skill, her thoughts continued, they will ask, “Whence comes her power?” And they shall look upon you, and see themselves reflected in your example -- and find themselves wanting! And oh how they will see you then. What an exemplar you shall be! How they will emulate your bearing, your intelligence! What gravity you will exert on them!

 

“By crushing them into submission?” She said aloud. “No. That way lies madness. And pursuit by authorities.”

 

What if it were legal?

 

An image flashed before Kannadi’s eyes. White rocks. A ship. A landing. A circle she had seen under construction. And her hot insistent thoughts turned cool and beguiling.

 

Ah, you remember the Wolves’ Den? It is to be a place of training. And domination. And spectators. Ignorant lots, come to see battle, not expecting a lesson in how to better themselves beyond mundane force of arms. But a lesson they shall have...

 

Kannadi began to smile.

 

Not force of arms, but force of mind. Victory in one move, seen only by the most patiently observant and seized only by the most exactingly precise. True power on display, bent to lessons unforgettable: skill trumps strength. Might comes from knowledge. Show them your... no.

 

“Show them my power. Yes. Hone it before their eyes and cut away their ignorance. Leave them in awe and respect, or shame and envy, either way it drives them to better themselves!”

 

Her twin aetheric blue moons shifted red. She gripped her stone, and wished she had brought a proper staff. The declaration she felt lining up on her tongue would fly out better if she had something dramatic to raise. She made do with her fist around the stone.

 

“Heat them to melt into shape with -- with my radiance! Yes!”

 

Aetheric fire pulsed around her fist. She raised it.

 

“And let them see the world as it ought to be!”

 

Fire exploded in a perfect sphere, burning the heat away. Air fled the wavefront and sand melted to run away. The Flare spell was real enough for long enough, to all but her.

 

It vanished as quickly as it came. Molten glass surrounded her, each former sand grain somewhat embarrassed that it had fallen for the magic trick.

 

Up ahead stood the spire. Dark shapes moved in its shade. The gathering of zombies quickly shuffled away, wanting nothing to do with a fire-spewing madwoman.

 

Kannadi looked from them to the bright yellowing splotch that enclosed her. She waved her hand, a circle of ice blasted in and out of being, and her satellites shifted back to blue. She walked crunchily over the hard-cooled shards of glass.

 

She cleared her throat.

 

Radiance? Really?

 

“Well I’ll have to project confidence with all those people watching me, will I not? I’m getting into practice.”

 

Then perhaps a change of wardrobe is in order.

 

“One step at a time.”

 

She looked out after the fleeing undead.

 

She blinked.

 

“Was that zombie wearing a coatee?”