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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tuerny" data-source="post: 1080129" data-attributes="member: 674">Mesios and the MatyanistsThe giant Jaypreesh still towered in the doorway to the meeting hall, his enormous hammer still at the ready, but for the moment at least he seemed willing to wait as the situation developed. Suddenly left without the squadron of temple guards he had summoned, the giant seemed much less of a threat.Let him try to take Naja again, Mesios thought silently. Resolutely he stood, feet planted firmly among the ruined bits of the table Jaypreesh had shattered in the earlier struggle, his staff gripped firmly. He gazed up to the giant's face, nearly as high above Mesios' as the mage himself was tall, and calmly watched those eyes for any sign that the giant might attempt to begin the combat anew before the brahmin Visantra could arrive. He considered as he waited the most effective manifestation of eldritch power to unleash upon the Matyanist should he make any further actions towards Naja. The curse be damned.Sanjay stood to his right at the ready, clutching a morningstar he had conjured from somewhere and focusing on a psionic tattoo which gradually erased the bruises he had suffered from the giant's hammer. Beyond Sanjay stood Anvar—Anvar who, surprisingly, had been willing to join in Naja's defense despite his apparent friendship with Jaypreesh; a consequence of his loyalty to her caste, or a sign that he understood the true nature of justice better than most in this moral wasteland?—the authority with which he had dismissed the guards still in his eyes as he faced Jaypressh. And Amesh, his light weapons at the ready. The moral strength Amesh had evinced in his defense of Naja was perhaps the most surprising of all; Mesios found himself reevaluating his opinion of the man.Naja herself stood behind the line they formed, watching stoically the tableau before her. Though Mesios could not take his eyes from Jaypreesh to look at her directly, he felt her presence psionically. For her, it seemed there was no justice to be found anywhere—not from Fateh, the brutal general of Shansana; not from the indolent governor of Taith nor the single-minded Akarupe; certainly not from the asura-born of the Black Sky who had kidnapped her and used her; not even, it seemed, in the very temple of justice in the capital of this empire. And—in defiance of any rational moral premise—she seemed to believe the lies of the mad philosophy of Samsara that would condemn her for choosing not to endanger her life, her precious, wondrous life, in order to undergo some mystical “cleansing” of body and soul—or, for that matter, the life of the child which, for all any of them knew, might be every bit as precious. That acceptance, perhaps, was the greatest injustice of all.The argument and later combat with Jaypreesh had been an outlet for the frustration which had been building in Mesios since Taith. More and more, events seemed to be spiraling beyond his control; too much of life spent waiting for the sanction of men of power. Mesios' life was his own, as Naja's was hers, as were all of theirs; they were not pawns in the politics of Usharad, nor in Dasani's mysterious private crusade against the Black Sky, nor in the mystical conflict of Day and Night which the Matyanas held as the ultimate purpose of life, nor of the giant Yennek's infathomable purposes. And the curse that now required Mesios to act well before he judged prudent. Could it be the same that some of the old myths hinted had been lain by Torvallis of the All when the mobs had stormed Ishandar? Did even that ancient conflict reach out of the dim past to deny Mesios the right to live his life? But already it had. The mages in the guild at Taitosa had immolated their minds for a thousand years in fear that the fall of Ishantum would be repeated. The seeming reality of the curse was but one more way for the envy of Torvallis and the mobs to ensure that a shattered civilization remain buried.Mesios' steel gaze remained on Jaypreesh. The giant was a concrete foe at last; his Matyanist dogma a familiar evil. The words were the same that had confronted Mesios at every step of life—his father saying that the name and honor of House Idyasan were more important than the dreams of any one boy—the priests of Torvallis who preached service to the community over personal ambition—the decree of the self-styled Archmage and all his predecessors that history and tradition superceded progress—why rock the boat; why risk the uncertanties of change?—why strive for something better, when all men knew that life was a fixed game, possible only by the mercy of fate and the gods and the Wheel—when the only hope was to pray for a place in the distant, phantasmal, hypothetical next world?—to which only we can guide you, if you but abandon the crutch of your mind and give us your faith and your heart. Always the same words, all across Naranjan, back across the sea in the ruins of a culture that had once rejected them, and surely repeated even on continents yet beyond the reach of spell and ship. Old lies, old evils, older than Sudarsha or Ishantum, as old as the first men at the dawn of time who found it easier to grant supremacy to the gods than to study the world with their minds, who preferred to attribute the success of their neighbors to fate and the unfairness of the world than to the power of the mind they had rejected.In their own ways, Mesios had come to realize, each of his companions sought to secure their sacred, inviolable right to live, free from politics or irrational prejudice, or whatever demons of the mind haunted Amesh, or the more corporeal demons that now haunted Naja, to pursue by their own choices all the wonder and beauty that was possible in life, for that is the font of all that is good, and whatever would deny that to them, be it the mob or the brahmins or the Matyanas or the gods themselves, evil. He would not give his sanction to that evil by standing idle while the giant would deny that right to Naja. Her life would be hers. That, he thought, is justice.She would find life amid the dead faces and minds, as would he, as had Senveras, as could any man who refused to sanction the evil that would lay claim to his soul. Hear me! he cast his challenge to the giant, to the demons of the Black Sky, to the sky itself, to the world. My life and my mind are sacrosanct and inviolate! You will have neither mine, nor that of my friends, save from my blood on the ground! This I vow, for I am Mesios the Living!The sound of footsteps came from the corridor, and Jaypreesh bowed his head and stepped aside. The mage lowered his eyes and, secure in the power of his chosen name, prepared to confront the brahmin Visantra and the world.</blockquote>

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