It starts at the beginning, in a universe full of scars. Things that would just exist across the realms, growing in one realm and spores and seeds just travelling across. Creatures wandering between realms and just coexisting. Scars that just open and close like cuts on a clumsy hand. And the realms knew peace.
Images zoom past Thalia, too fast for her to comprehend but she knows they are important and being curated for her and she reaches out, determined to form her own untainted opinion. But here her circuits flare to life and fail, finding not a lack of life, but too much life for magic to cling to.
The images slow at the magic use and she would see early foliad people and trolls and the sea people all gathering with offerings to creatures from beyond, actual gods, as each it gifted the spark of potential for them to play with and shape into their own form of use.
The images speed by and she catches a glimpse of a man in a casing of metal, head to foot though the image speeds by before she can catch the details.
She sees massive stone arches created, foliad people tracing foreign runes into their surface with strange tools.
She sees the start of Natare, stone structures between grown ones, a blending of human creativity and foliad ingenuity. She sees trolls bring a massive seed from trade up north, the sakura planted in the centre of town as massive troll sea captains come to watch the growing along with humans in a mix of those metal outfits and gaudy dyed clothing.
She sees the world flicker, and she sees a world screaming in iron and emotion, and she sees oasis of water and plant like and beauty, but she can see how it too is not native to that realm.
She sees the start of the mage conglomerate, of mages pushing into Infernus to try and bring green into this realm even as she watches hardy black bushes ripped from the ground by green hands as a 'weed'.
She hears a voice in her head <It is too easy to pick moments where humans were the plague, or demons preyed on our emotions. But in the early times each realm did what it thought best. Usually to help, but help in a way that would serve them best. Like neighboring governments.>
She sees humans try to put saddles on something her soul knows as a centaur, and watching in horror as mages regress young isolated centaur men and women into a thing without the sentient top half, setting them loose on the human world as a gift. Her own people playing gods.
She sees that stone portal, long forgotten magics powering them up to open the scars between worlds permanently.
<Intelligence breeds actions done in good faith that bring horrible consequences. None wants to hurt others, not on that first step. The next step can rot and twist, but you don't need go see that yet. And my sisters and I do not need to destroy a person just because she got curious.>
So the tableau shifts, changes, overlaying a foliad feast celebration with a solstice human celebration, noting how even with the realms separate and cut off, how customs bleed in both directions at the thinning of the veil. Masks and stories of spirits, small gifts to entreat the world to kindness. Packs of excited youngsters travelling with an extra touch of independence. She thinks the Natare celebration is for Elythera, though she might just be confusing it with all the pumpkin imagery from the human celebration.
Bindings and a small metal device float side by side in the void, both opening to holo images - one built from the circuit magic around the edge of the binding, the other projected out from the top of the metal device, more spotty and grainy, but still looking quite amazing as she takes in the imagery.
<Why show me how alike we are?> Thalia asks the endless black using Wren's voice.
<So your mind accepts the images as people and not some nightmare of warning or temptation.>
Thalia's vision explodes, to a city, with towers of metal and what looks to her like reflective membrane, only massively tall and covered in so much glowing signage that the sky is awash with light noise. She cannot even see the stars above her, though she thinks she is supposed to be able to, the moon high above a hint for one. Flying objects, what the reader would call cars, speed through the air, even as her consciousness hovers above all.
<I half considered trying to make you a witch, see how life is like on the outside that way. But this serves both purposes. Shows you parts of their world, and burns the Academy mark on your soul right off.>
Thalia is confused. <How does this burn the mark off?> she tries to take in as many details, from the variety of implants, to how most people are in ones and two, all the way to the outfits she can see through the membranes as she floats.
<Your mind is not going to allow you to go back to being drip fed, at the least you will seek the information you need to your very hands - good or ill for us all.>
The blackness bubbles back towards her and she comes out of the fluid in a gasp of air.
She crawls towards the pool edge in a mass of tugging and kicking, molasses of black sicking to her body and face. Her hair is gone, all of it, leaving her disturbingly smooth, as she pulls up and over the edge of the rock. She hears rain outside and stumbles towards it, Syn trailing after her as she uses the heavy, soaking rain to wash her skin back to the green, rubbing her sensitive hands over her face as tears well from her eyes unbidden. Arms wrap around her hips and a face presses into her lower back.
She releases all the tension she's been keeping since her last rainy night cry, even as the company sets this one apart from the last. "How am I supposed to know what to do? How could I put this back in the box if I wanted to?"
"Come now, give yourself a good cry and then we will get you dressed and down somewhere warm." Syn says, holding Thalia, supporting her and her tempestuous mind. Lightning cracks overhead and her mind sees afterglows of factories, pumping out machines built from the products of those mines. Thunder hits and she sees a family, cuddling before the holo-programs of kids shows.
Lightning hits again and she feels Wren, naked behind them. "You wanted the knowledge, one way or another. I just gave you the route." Thalia turns and with the rage that has built up after so many confrontations, Thalia lets out a ringing slap across Wren's scar mapped face.
"My mind is my own to." Memory and vision splinter across her mind and she drops to her knees, rapid information drowning out thoughts and rage and leaving her helpless.
"You should go." Syn says over Thalia's prone form, both women watching as her face twitches as visions and data and her own memory vies for place in the front of her mind - so much led inside without a thought to the vessel.
Syn watches Thalia for moments more, before moving to pack Thalia's gear and go hunt down some strong men to lift a whimpering mage down a mountain.
