Rame
A crowd of them were gathered outside as she got closer, seeming to be introducing themselves, or some crap like that. Hell, infact, among them seemed to be all the little snobs she'd been talking about not long ago.
She steered clear of them all as she moved on towards the lodgings. She didn't care who was from what rat hole, what their name was, why they were naive enough to come here when it was so damn obvious that most of them didn't realize the full implications of what it meant to be fighting in a war; none of that honky mattered to her. From her impression after getting off the plane and seeing just how reluctant some had been to even engage in a sparring match- admittedly one that had nearly turned into a homicide, but even still, had no prior indication it would when it started -a lot of them were likely to end up dead once they left these training grounds and the true fight began.
You can't fix naivety. You can't fix arrogance. You can't fix stupidity. Just as they no doubt saw a myriad of negative traits regarding Rame after the fight, just as the female instructor had, so too could Rame see all their mingled vices laid bare before her eyes. And as Braith again spoke to her, bringing up the circumstances of their own situation for being here, the irony of her certainty that most of those gathered here had virtually signed their own death warrants was not lost on her.
You know, I've still yet to conclude...
What we should do, after this...
Your father's underhanded sentence is the key to our survival...
We could desert the first chance we get, steal off into the night...with the work we must already put in, I've no doubt we could find a way...
But yet... if we flee, it worries me... how much potential expansion would we miss out on? Training is all well and good, but actual experience...
It pales in comparison to the stuff... even extensive practice can only hope to match it's value, not surpass it...
"Wasn't the whole purpose of your plan so we could escape? Isn't that what you told me in that moment, that silence was best, silence would sever the binds and let us go free?"
Yes, I did tell you that. And I was correct in my future sight...completely correct, even though we left in binds, you are still in a way freer than you ever were with your sisters around...
But this? Within my own self, I can peer many steps ahead, behold the many potential paths, but... all paths leading from here cloud and darken by the time we are likely to leave for war...
Hell... they darken even now... it is like a blank spot, almost, as if... something forbids my pyromancy... outlandish, isn't it? I am flame given thought and will and wit, and yet even despite my superiority other my wild brethren... still, there are matters that when I glimpsed upon, all I can see... is smoke. Black smoke...white smoke... grey smoke...
but smoke all the same.
"You tell me this as I'm supposed to intepret what even you can't."
...
Aye. I do... I see the folly in that now. But... you will learn, you must learn eventually...
I was... hasty in my prior ambitions. Our little foray here showed me that... I overestimated myself... and you
"Was that supposed to sting?"
No...not at all. It's simply... providing new perspective, girl. As I said, before, we were the only ones with power in your old house.
You grasped the basic ends of what I could give you easily enough. You used my basic forms fairly well to rebel against the reign of your sisters... and eventually, you overthrew that reign.
But that was just one battle Rame. The first of many, I anticipate. You won because in the end, though you were a runt, you grew stronger as they remained foolish and weak.
But you are still a runt, girl. Both literal, and figurative. I have much I can show you, much I can offer you, but as you are now...
Well... there are things we must work on. I will leave it... at that.
"Things like what?" She demanded
This mortal coil of yours is weak. You fell to just two wounds to the leg, your mind so overcome with pain you could hardly hear or notice anything that went on after.
Your reserves are like an ocean... a shallow ocean- a mile wide and barely a foot deep. They seem vast on the surface, but when it came time... what you provided me for that last flare... it was pathetic. The ink is fine, the ink is good, but your printing press girl... your press is shyte. And when your press is shyte, what you print will be shyte too. Did you see how easily that woman tore the inferno apart?
"She-"
SILENCE, GIRL! it was like the roaring of a massive inferno in her ears, driving down her objection before it could even escape
You asked. I... am telling you.
If you aren't willing to listen even to simple truths as these though... then I worry about how much we can grow in the time we have... I worry how we will survive if you fight me as I only try to help.
"I...I'm sorry..."
I could go on. But I know you see what I mean.
The basic point is...
This heart of yours... it has potential, I can feel it. But I did not judge it properly, before this.
As it is now, you are still too weak both in body and spirit to facilitate my full abilities. There are many things I have to show you girl.
All the aspects of flame and it's wrath... as I said, the things you did in the fight against your sisters was only the beginning.
Have you ever felt fire's vigor and might pulse through your every muscle fiber, your very senses?
Have you ever felt it's might restoring your crippled form, forcing your body's innate processes to accelerate?
Have you... ever seen what many feel to be impossible? Fire flowing free as if it were a liquid? Spirits and Minds being engulfed and consumed as the bodies are left untouched?
No... you haven't. Because we are not there yet... no where near it for some of them.
There is... much for us to do...and perhaps little time for us to do it in...
Something did not sit well with the entity, she could sense it as easily as her own hurt at the sting in some of his words. But he didn't continue. His simple truths were done, it seemed...
"She... said to go to our quarters."
...
Go. You're still too empty for me to try and show anything now anyway.
A shallow ocean indeed, child...and when it rains, it fucking trickles.
Go. You are practically stark bare for the world to see...
And I doubt those two provided any changes of cloths...
Figure out how to remedy this on your own... do something productive while the ocean refills, one miserable droplet at a time
With that last stinging jab, she knew he had truly finished. Such a juxtaposition to all his prior approval and encouragements...in just the span of a single tirade, he had gone completely gone from sounding like Ingram and Brandt to all too much like Father... Nevertheless, She picked up her pace again, still staying clear of all the others as she headed for the door of the nearest dorm and stepped inside...