It was hard to tell Corrival Deuce just from the description 'he doesn't look happy'. There were a lot of people in the Chamber who didn't look happy. It was also more difficult to tell him from the number of people than Solomon thought, especially when it was 'about', because of the way souls interacted.
This wasn't as clear-cut as Solomon had been assuming it would be.
His eyes searched the general area Valkyrie implied before he saw a soul depart from another and his gaze locked onto it. In spite of the way nearly everyone else seemed to be ... not exactly gathered, but receptive, to it, this particular soul was strangely in-drawn. Whenever someone else reached for it, its outer edges snapped like ... like hornets, almost. Or maybe a school of angry eels. Or, no, like self-aware fly-trap plants. It wasn't like Craven's soul, either way; it wasn't made up of irritability and the unthinkingness of a hive.
Actually, Corrival Deuce was surprisingly understated. Solid, and slow-turning, and stable.
Except where his edges buzzed annoyance.
"Oh good, you're here." He actually sounded harassed, too. "Now that you're here, we can get on with this. If I'm actually going to be nominated Grand Mage, I'd like to be Grand Mage before people start demanding my soul."
"Your soul does quite well in protecting itself," Solomon murmured without thinking, and watched with a tilted head as some of those hornets snapped, subsided, and something like a faint glow of a hearth knelled in Deuce's centre. It looked like amusement. (After only a morning of being around the people he'd been around, he knew what amusement looked like even when it varied by people.)
"Right. Wreath. I wanted to ask: who here don't we want to see become Mage or Elder? I'm assuming the usuals, like the Ne--like Tenebrae and the Children of the Spider, but is there anyone else?"
Oh, so that was why he was there. A glorified lie-detector. Nevertheless Solomon glanced toward the gathering once more. "Actually," he admitted, "aside from the usuals, it's difficult to tell. Souls aren't as self-contained as I was assuming. Interaction causes a lot of crossover. I can't tell which intents belong to whom except the core ones. I'm sure a lot of people in here are lying about their ambitions, but I can't tell who is lying about what."
Yet, he added mentally, and was a little bit startled when there was a resonance between them. Not as if the hornets had caught something. More like sunlight on leaves.
He wasn't sure what it was until Deuce grunted and said, "Yet. From what Erskine's said, this is what you're magic's going to be channelled into now. There's time to figure it out. Speaking of time, Ravel, don't you think you should start the meeting before I start throwing fire?"
no subject
This wasn't as clear-cut as Solomon had been assuming it would be.
His eyes searched the general area Valkyrie implied before he saw a soul depart from another and his gaze locked onto it. In spite of the way nearly everyone else seemed to be ... not exactly gathered, but receptive, to it, this particular soul was strangely in-drawn. Whenever someone else reached for it, its outer edges snapped like ... like hornets, almost. Or maybe a school of angry eels. Or, no, like self-aware fly-trap plants. It wasn't like Craven's soul, either way; it wasn't made up of irritability and the unthinkingness of a hive.
Actually, Corrival Deuce was surprisingly understated. Solid, and slow-turning, and stable.
Except where his edges buzzed annoyance.
"Oh good, you're here." He actually sounded harassed, too. "Now that you're here, we can get on with this. If I'm actually going to be nominated Grand Mage, I'd like to be Grand Mage before people start demanding my soul."
"Your soul does quite well in protecting itself," Solomon murmured without thinking, and watched with a tilted head as some of those hornets snapped, subsided, and something like a faint glow of a hearth knelled in Deuce's centre. It looked like amusement. (After only a morning of being around the people he'd been around, he knew what amusement looked like even when it varied by people.)
"Right. Wreath. I wanted to ask: who here don't we want to see become Mage or Elder? I'm assuming the usuals, like the Ne--like Tenebrae and the Children of the Spider, but is there anyone else?"
Oh, so that was why he was there. A glorified lie-detector. Nevertheless Solomon glanced toward the gathering once more. "Actually," he admitted, "aside from the usuals, it's difficult to tell. Souls aren't as self-contained as I was assuming. Interaction causes a lot of crossover. I can't tell which intents belong to whom except the core ones. I'm sure a lot of people in here are lying about their ambitions, but I can't tell who is lying about what."
Yet, he added mentally, and was a little bit startled when there was a resonance between them. Not as if the hornets had caught something. More like sunlight on leaves.
He wasn't sure what it was until Deuce grunted and said, "Yet. From what Erskine's said, this is what you're magic's going to be channelled into now. There's time to figure it out. Speaking of time, Ravel, don't you think you should start the meeting before I start throwing fire?"