Trying it out

scribed 3/1/2007

Trebitharn wished there was someone to guide him through his body's monstrous alterations.
But there wasn't anyone to help him. He looked to Plizer
that's the guy who trained him in weapons use
yeah he looked to old man Plizer for guidance but Plizer just ran.
He saw Trebitharn's tremendous left hand, tendon's thick as snakes, spines of yellow-brown bone trailing from the knuckles up through his arms, fingers fused together into a flexible blade, metallic and gored on blood torn during its' growth, and ran to the sanctuary of his abbey. They spoke through the eye-hatch of Plizer's door. Plizer asked
"what have you become?"
stop interrupting me.
You narrate I'll do the voices.
I want to do voices too.
Alright you cut in when you want and I'll cut in when I want. Okay?
Okay...so what was I saying?
Plizer just asked Trebitharn what he'd become.
Right, so Trebitharn showed himself right womanly then and cried.
Well, a man can cry.
Right but in Dustarpeir culture men always hold it in. You've seen their 40 year olds look like 80 year olds.
That's probably why they were dying in their 30s.
Right. Ripe old age of 30.
If they made it there even.
Yes, most Dustarpeirs died in infancy, many mothers died from infection, boys and men died growing up from training for war, plagues, all kinds of stuff.
What do you think they died of most? Unsafe work conditions? Cause a guy could be tending a horse, get kicked right in the head his skull smashed open, and the horse's owner wasn't even expected to apologize to the father or pen the beast up
yeah they got to free range
it was just thought of as part of the job. But what do you think's the deadliest thing -or what do you think was the biggest factor in their short life spans?
Disease definitely. Even on Chelta they were sick all the time, they didn't wash their hands, they didn't bathe regularly (common citizenry didn't bathe at all), feces were just left in the street to rot, people would sleep in the same beds as their pets, they had lice and rats spreading sickness around. Their water wasn't purified.
Yeah but the Talsminin had it worse in a way.
Had it worst! They lived longer.
Yeah I know but in getting rid of rats they got roaches. The stuff they used to kill off diseases and disease-spreaders built up until it was a new type of disease. They'd set chemical weapons off on themselves.
Sure they hurt themselves but better to be poisoned slowly then die of a quick painful infection.
I'm not talking about slow-poison I'm talking about Bloom Day...
Oh.
Should probably get back to the story.
Yeah, so Trebintharn had come to Plizer for help and Plizer had fled. But when he saw Trebintharn break down like that he noticed his face, knew who it was, and recognized this man was not a monster. It took some strain between the time Plizer looked away from the peeping grate and when he opened the door; he had to set his will to trust he wouldn't be attacked. But merciful feelings of love for Trebintharn moved him to open the door. He jumped when he saw Trebintharn again in the low light with nothing standing between them.
Don't forget, Trebitharn's hand looked horrible. There where these ugly splotches on it and the drying layers of blood made it look like he had killed someone.
Those splotches were truly hideous, almost like marks on a wound-victim with advanced gangrene. They stood out on the calloused stumps his palm had become as dark brownish-green scabs. They looked like cuts healing but instead of blood caking over they looked mossy or moldy.
It'd be nice if they reconciled in a sweet way hugging or something. But Plizer swung the door full open and just stepped back into the abbey, out of the way. Trebitharn came in slouched forward without saying a word. He walked past. (His face was already dry again) and Plizer followed Trebitharn's round-topped shadow with his eyes.
Plizer asked Trebitharn about what had happened to him. Plizer watched Trebitharn. Plizer shut the door still facing his one-time apprentice. He was a serious man so he didn't gasp or anything. He watched and waited. Thinking to tend to typical hosting duties to alleviate some weight from their shoulders, Plizer offered Trebitharn a chair. Once Plizer saw his guest settled he asked him about his malady’s roots. Trebitharn moved left and right then said "I don't know".
I thought it was "something's happened to me but I know not what".
I think you’re right. You want to continue telling it?
We can skip this part. Plizer finds out what Trebitharn knows which is nothing and they come to the big decision.
Don't forget the additional mutation. During their time together Trebitharn asks Plizer not to panic, to brace himself. He then precedes to slice open his shirt around the right breast. On his chest are two different-sized eyes. They're milky, seeing in spectra man's God-given eyes don't. Having a shirt get caught in their blinks was bothering Trebitharn.
Maybe God gave him those eyes too.
Maybe.
So they get through the mushy parts and then Plizer gets to Trebitharn's few and potently consequential options: he can make it quickly known to everyone what happened to him so they get their panic over with and he doesn't become some secret people whisper about in fear or he could go away. They had agreed that suicide, though Trebitharn was sad and saw some release in it, was not viable. It'd be self-committal to hell. Trebitharn had asked Plizer about remedies, having some measure of hope but if there were any the abbey could provide Plizer didn't know them. The abbey's were the most medically advanced institutions among Dustarpeirs. So they agreed on a plan for Trebitharn to take one of Plizer's personal-size heavencraft as his own. When questions came up about Trebitharn's disappearance Plizer would say he had went out to be a cartographer. His mother would be sad to never see him again but his father would encourage her.
Cartographer's were the cultural apex of Dustarpeir people. An alchemist named Jobe Yillmor had died in an explosion that turned his keep into ruins. A later alchemist, Rephim Quafranapta was ordered by Gulyj, Judge of Avloaes to put research into whatever Jobe was working on; he was sure there was some practical use for something so powerful. After 17 years of research, during which he was outshined by Blez I. Snuihhwo (who developed many a use for common herbs and made remedies for maladies that had recently thrown his people into dreadful fear), Rephim finally found a very useful function of the chemical processes Jobe had experimented with.
You should mention, he had backup books in other keeps besides that of his main estate. He was rich because his family had served high nobility for generations.
It's taken for granted that all of Jobe's work wasn't lost. Otherwise we wouldn't have heaven travel.
But whoever the cub is who gets this might not know that.
You're right. Metallurgy had advanced very far since the famous Siege of Tockurn which saw a small fortress withstand an assault by hundreds of thousands of siege machines because it's walls were reinforced by a very low grade of steel. Tockurn's Ofé, what was his name?
I don't know it either eeg. I think he's always just referred to as "Tockurn's Ofé".
Alright, he went on to sack many a neighbor using metal in his weapons-arsenal. Far-away Zairts and Qaghs took note so they too bent their subjects to the refinement of metals.
All this, the metal vessels and the exploding chemicals, added up to machines that could fly into the black heaven of stars and shoot straight from place to place.
Small by today's standards, the largest of these vessels could only hold a single warlord's compound. Many of them were made for rich churches, wealthy merchants, and middle-class men with a love of travel.
So that's what Trebitharn did. He mapped more region's of heaven than any other man, or creature has to date.
Eventually he thought he was famous enough that, though all his body had a touch of weirdness, from his beak
onward. Wrap it up.
Trebitharn was announced to the people by Plizer. They loved him but thought his horrid appearance must have been from being out in heaven so long or contact with something there.
Although there were other worries like the losses (exceptional even by those days standards), alien people's contacted, monster's, illnesses Chelta-natives had no immunities to, and a concentration on sky combat after heaven-engines were refined Trebitharn is agreed by most historians and scholars, except for Northeasterners, as the main cause of The Low Time of Heaven Travel.