kinds of elf | Glowfic Constellation

subtly_artistic

This door was supposed to lead to the hall closet with the cleaning supplies, but Bella doesn't see any good way to mop up spilled soup from the kitchen floor. "Extraplanar studies students," she mutters, stomping into the bar in her nice useful boots. If she takes notes on this place she can probably get extra credit somewhere for it. She goes up to the bar, and notes the lack of bartender, and notes the presence of a new drink in that... person's... hand over there. "Where'd the bartender go?" she asks said person. "Is there one?"

sun_guided

Tinuben tenses when she hears the human's voice, but forces herself to relax rather than going for her sword. Attacking enemy races has a singularly bad track record in this place. The human seems neutral enough for now, anyway.

"I was told that the bar itself is the bartender. I requested a drink while sitting here, and the drink appeared." Pause. "I was also told that the first drink is free, which was very good to hear. You, however, seem unsurprised by this place."

subtly_artistic

"I wasn't expecting the place," says Bella. "It's just the sort of thing that one might imagine will happen occasionally around wizarding students, interplanar transit. At least it's not on fire in here." She glances out the window. "Indoors, at any rate." She peers back at the bar, at the drink, and then touches her fingers to her temple, and receives a cherry milkshake with a straw. She sips it.

sun_guided

Egh. A wizard. A human wizard.

Tinuben has had a long time to practice not being jealous of magic-users; she practices some more.

She takes a drink from her stout. "While I cannot reasonably describe the wizards from my homeland as "restrained", much of what I see here is beyond the abilities of an archmage. You must be from a land far from mine."

subtly_artistic

"I - what? I'm not a wizard. I'm a subtle artist. But far, yeah, I should say so, I'm not even sure what race you are."

sun_guided

"I'm a blood elf," Tinuben says shortly. She's willing to give the gory history lesson - nothing better to do - but not unprompted.

"I've never heard of a subtle artist before. Is your mental speech elemental magic? Holy?"

The human could be some kind of specialized priest - they do have a few psychic abilities - but Tinuben's starting to guess that "subtle artistry" is a class unto itself, and she wants to learn more from the reference points she has. (After all, the schools of magic are universal, right? ...Right?)

subtly_artistic

"I haven't heard of that kind of elf," says Bella, giving her another look. "I guess you do look sort of elvish. Technically subtle artistry isn't magic at all; certainly it isn't elemental or divine - or arcane, if you were about to ask."

sun_guided

"I would be exceedingly surprised to meet an arcanist who balked at being called a wizard."

Tinuben smiles a little.

"Although here, perhaps it would be best to expect surprises. Either you are wrong about it not being magic, or your subtle artistry defies everything I have learned about the universe in one hundred years."

She's shocked, but not too shocked to consider the possibility seriously. When she stepped through that damn door, her fighting abilities fell from her like water. It was impossible - it should have been impossible.

'Everything I know is wrong' is, for the first time in her life, pulling even with 'Humans are wrong about everything' as a theory.

subtly_artistic

"Well, magic detection spells don't register it. I don't know all the thaumobabble about the details, but subtle artistry is classified as its own thing."

sun_guided

Tinuben shrugs. "I'll take your word for that."

"Blood elves are descended from the high elves, who were exiled from Kalimdor to the Eastern Kingdoms and founded Quel'Thalas there. The first great arcanists. We taught arcane magic to the humans." She deliberately mentions the major continents, to see if the human recognizes them.

Sort of elvish. Either this human comes from some alternate timeline with strange-looking elves, or she thinks of night elves as default elves. Annoying.

subtly_artistic

"Yeah, you must be from another plane altogether," Bella concludes.

sun_guided

None of the alternate planes Tinuben knows of are hospitable to mortals, but she suspects that she and the human might not mean the same thing when they say 'plane'.

"You can speak with your mind. Perhaps if you asked the bar, it would tell you."

Tinuben finishes her beer and sets the empty bottle back on the bar, where it promptly vanishes. She opens a pouch on her belt, pulling out a silver coin, and lays that on the bar too. "May I have one of what she is drinking, and a buttered slice of bread?"

The coin disappears; the named items appear, and a few copper pieces clatter onto the bar after them. "Thank you."

subtly_artistic

"The bar is a she," says Bella absently, touching her temple again. After a moment she drops her hand. "Apparently it's even more distance than planes. I don't have another word handy for it, but the difference between where I came from and where you came from is another step up, like going from my school into Enwich versus going from my school to some energy plane."

sun_guided

"Enwich is a country?"

Tinuben tilts her head. She has little reason to trust that this person isn't lying about what the bar says, but it's easiest for now to act as though it's true.

"What is your name?"

subtly_artistic

"Enwich is a city. I'm Bella. You?"

sun_guided

"Tinuben Dawnsinger. Will you please ask the bar how I can get back home, and how to find this place again? I came in through one of the doors, but it vanished behind me."

subtly_artistic

"Yeah, sure..."

Bella thinks at the bar for a bit.

And then she says, "The bar doesn't control the door or have a direct line of communication to whatever does. She doesn't know if or when it'll let you out again."

sun_guided

"Thank you."

This time she doesn't know if she believes the Bar or not, but again, it would not be helpful to complain of this.

She eats her bread, looking pensive, and then sips the milkshake.

"...This is perhaps the sweetest thing I have ever tasted, and I am from a culture famed for its excessive decadence. What is it?"

subtly_artistic

"Cherry milkshake. Fruit and milk and cream and sugar, pretty much."

sun_guided

"My goodness."

She sips again, cautiously, and takes a moment afterwards to compose herself.

"I am curious about your - world. What else can the subtle arts do, besides speak to inanimate minds? Why are you near students of wizardry, if you are not a wizard? What is your country like?"

Tinuben is not a No Questions Elf.

subtly_artistic

This continuity of this Bella has never met a No Questions Elf!

"We have a variety of powers with the mind - I'm learning to use mine for therapy. Some of us can set things on fire - I can't do that - and some of us have telekinesis - I can do that a little bit. My school teaches all kinds of subjects; arcana and subtle arts probably make up less than a quarter of the class offerings. My country is a large well-developed mostly-human Imperium and it's unwise to express a significant fraction of possible opinions about it."

sun_guided

"Can some subtle artists throw fireballs, or encourage fire to burn hotter?"

Tinuben has worked hard to not be curious about magic - thinking about magic makes it much harder to not use it. But this isn't magic, it's subtle arts. And if it isn't addictive or fel-powered, it sounds like the most interesting thing she's heard of this century.

"And is it unsafe to express such opinions even here? I know of no power in my world that takes such extensive interest in what mortals say."

subtly_artistic

"Fireballs maybe, but I haven't met anybody who can, it'd require really advanced pyrokinesis... heating it up, probably. I don't know if it's unsafe to express opinions here, but I managed to get here, so so could anyone who cared what I had to say, potentially. Mortals are the principal product in the Imperium, so insofar as it cares who's saying what about politics, it has to care about the mortal set."

sun_guided

"It seems like your government puts fewer resources into the study of the subtle arts than it does into spying on its citizens. That's... a surprising set of priorities."

Silvermoon City is the most totalitarian government Azeroth has seen, and it limits itself to ostentatiously arresting vocal dissenters. A society rich enough to silence citizens who are currently in a separate plane... should, Tinuben thinks, be able to teach its students more about subtle artistry than "some subtle artists can probably heat up fire." Maybe there's some obscure economic effect in play.

subtly_artistic