“Daito!” Tyr shouted in fear, casting his instrument aside and shaking the mans limp body. “What the hell happened!? Are you okay!?” He donned his spellbreakers and forced as much light infused fire into the mans body, sighing tiredly after several minutes. Thankfully, Daito was alive, but he looked spent, his face ashen and hands shaking. Tyr knew why. Magic didn't come from nowhere, and it required energy. Healing a starving man could kill them if one wasn't careful. Thus, he handed Daito a meal wrapped in wax paper, finding his doting hands slapped away by the exhausted man. “What happened? What have I done?” He repeated, more softly this time.

“You manifested a domain. An advanced aura of sorts.” Daito choked. He could scarcely believe it had all happened so fast. “A domain of reflection, damn near killed me. Don't do that again.” Tyr nodded his head, promising he wouldn't. As cold as he could be, that had been a bit out of his comfort zone. “Regardless, that was... Impressive. What emotion did you focus on to feel it so strongly?”

“All of them.” Tyr replied honestly. “I couldn't focus on only one, so I just... Mashed them altogether and felt everything at once. Why would it do something like this?”

“I don't know.” Daito sighed, satiated for now after wolfing down the food and leaning back against the boulder. His body was sore and his mind was too tired to continue any instruction. “I don't know.” He repeated, before falling into a deep sleep. Tyr pulled a blanket from his dimension ring and lay it over the man, wishing him a safe rest and stomping the ground until a series of chest high walls protected him from the light of the sun and any external attack. Extricating himself from the crude tent and seating some thirty meters away to reflect on what had happened. He understood it very poorly, but calling it a reflection wasn't wrong, it was a manifestation of his self. Not so dissimilar to Hastur's projection, a controlled expansion of ego that allowed him to expand his... Not his will, Tyr didn't think he'd want to do this, but maybe it was enough to lack a true explanation.

It left him dazed and confused. Was he truly a primus? Had Jartor been telling the truth? Or... If not, what was he?

No. None of that matters. I am me, and nothing else matters. I have no family, no life or duty. I can just...

Be himself. Perhaps for the first time ever. No, if the walls he had placed around himself in the name of duty or whatever brainwashing technique had been used on him to erase all of those precious memories... It was like all of the significant points of emotion in his life were stolen away from him. Leaving him in some semi-catatonic state for long periods of time where he was forced to sit through lectures and classes. He hadn't remembered most of his childhood, and now he did, but nothing was bad, or... Necessarily traumatic. Perhaps it lay in the missing pieces he'd failed to take hold of, fragments of what had been.

Did they do this to me because I was such a rowdy child? Or... What kind of parent-- No. Just me. Breathe.

Anxiety and his various concerns fell from him like rain, back to practicing with the shamilute. Er... Lutisen... It sounded awful, but as Daito had said, it wasn't about the sound – it was about feeling. Sound came later. Like a shaping of a lump of clay into something pleasing to an eye. So intently focused on his task was he that he failed to notice the group approaching him until they spoke.

“Good gods, that sounds like two goats mating. Oi, beggar man, good thing you're out here all alone and not in the city somewhere. They'd hit you with rocks and chase you off, I reckon.”

“I don't know, I kind of like it.”

“Nobody can understand what you're saying, Kirk. Well, I can, but the others are staring again.” Tyr opened his eyes to see a bevy of familiar faces. He'd expected more paladins, two more groups having come on their jaunt into the countryside, forcing them out of their initial loop. Instead...

“Benny?”

“Uh, hello...? Tyr!? Is that you? What are you doing in the republic?” Benny's bemused scowl turned to a bright grin, the young kijin hopping up from his squatting position as Kirk and the others greeted him in turn. More besides, new faces that Tyr didn't recognize. “That's some haircut you've got there, fancied you better before. You're looking a bit rough.”

“I could ask you the same thing.” Tyr replied, stilling his hands and stretching his limbs. He wiped away the collected moisture on his face and settled the storm raging in his heart. He had to be more careful when playing, or something like that which had happened to Daito might actually kill someone he'd prefer not to. Fortunately, it was easy not to dive so deep into his psyche, it took a lot of effort to grab at all those threads. “I came looking for work, that's all.”

“Us too.” Kirk replied. He couldn't grin, but the rapidly vibrating mandibles about his mouth seemed somewhat akin to a dogs tail waving. Some expression of joy, if Tyr had to say. “Have you found any? Nobody will hire us because we are too young.”

Tyr thought that it made sense. Benny and Kirk were both under the age of ten years old – and while their appearances might fool someone, nothing fooled the rating stones that many guilds used. He hadn't touched one, but Daito had explained how rare of an occurrence this was – hiring him directly based on his established body of work and letting the details slide. Fennic and Mikhail had both been required to go through the examination process. Even Okami had to take it, though it had been rather difficult for Tyr to give some rough translation to his answers on the written component while trying to prevent him from eating the paper. Apparently most registered familiars could actually 'speak' to their masters. “Too young? Is there a law for that in the republic?”

“Not exactly, it's sort of a professional thing.” Benny shrugged. “I guess... Are you a part of a guild? This is our third city and we're hoping someone will accept us.” Tyr agreed to refer them before politely asking them to fuck off and leave him about his business. They laughed, not quite taking him seriously, but they listened. He had no idea when another group of paladins showed up, and it could be very bad if non-humans were involved in the murders of a paladin. Daito had authority, and Tyr was Tyr – he'd find a way out. Even in the republic, he wasn't willing to count on their lofted 'inclusivity'. It was a nation governed almost entirely by humans, and bias would always exist in some shape or form.

What came next was more practice, slower this time, taking the opportunity to think about what 'emotion' actually meant. Pondering the way he'd felt, tiny fragments of glass all piecing themselves together to take on a form, a shape barely out of vision. It took Daito nearly ten hours to come to, almost half a day passing and leaving him frazzled. He washed his mouth out with wine and sat in a slumped posture next to Tyr, opting to remain silent and simply listen to the awkward fingering of the shamisen.

“Thanks.” Tyr sounded a lot calmer. Less bitter, less teenage angst lacing every word. Like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. His absorption of spira wasn't so unsteady now, another marked and frankly irritating improvement considering a full day hadn't passed. He was already getting better... In more ways than one, whether it would be enough was up to him.

“For...?” Daito made to pull one of his frostflower sticks from his dimensional ring before pausing. Tyr noticed this and gave him to go ahead. For some reason, he no longer felt the craving for dreamleaf. Though, and again, he could really go for a nice pint right about now. But just one. “I've not done much.” He added, tagging a drag off the stick of chalk with a sigh of relief. “Nothing you wouldn't have figured out eventually if you weren't such an idiot.”

“No.” Tyr exhaled from the nose. He still felt the nails, but they were more manageable for now. Right behind the eye, not throbbing anymore – just barely present. “I feel like I've learned something very important.”

“What's that?”

“To just... Be myself. To have a 'self'. I don't think I did before, but I will from now on.” Tyr said. “In the past everything my life, actions, essence, was all defined by petty goals. Little things that never really mattered, and never satisfied me. I acted how I thought I was supposed to act, I didn't think much about whether I actually wanted to do it or not. Lead by my reins with blinders on. Maybe it's ridiculous, but that's how I feel.”

Daito snorted. “You're welcome, kid.” There were many outlets to circulate ones 'spira', as the easterners who were aware of it called it. The ki or chi of the living world. World energy, chakra, the 'divine mana'. Daito sincerely doubted the last one had any basis in reality, but humans called things what they wanted and his kind wasn't so different.

Tyr had this outlet in him. His dao was related to emotion, that much was clear. A foul one, possibly, but there were no 'bad' components of the world – perception was reality and it was up to those who used to dao to decide what adjective it'd be given. A true song of reflection could not be taught. It was incredible bizarre that Tyr was not able to harness a single emotion, but all of them at once – though that wasn't technically what had happened.

“I think from now on, you should stick to simple chords and singing. Until you know more, you are a danger to yourself as well as others – but I will try to teach you some control. Understood?” Easier said than done, that. Like teaching a giant with no understanding of how much harm he could do without an ounce of context. A loaded crossbow, ready to loose at any moment, and there was danger in it.

Tyr nodded.

“Ah.” Daito mused. “As for the emotion you grasped. Truly grasped, above all things... All of them were present, but there are layers to this. That is always one dominant element to every song, even if they hold many component emotions. In a way, it's really not unlike the elemental affinities most humans are born with. Do you understand what yours was?”

Tyr shook his head.

“I believe. And don't get me wrong – I could be incorrect. But I believe the ruling emotion in that reflection was love.”

“Love?” Tyr asked, finding that a bit ridiculous. “I've never loved... Well, I think I loved my mother. Maybe I feel something like fondness for my companions. Okami, perhaps, is deserving of more than simply fondness. He loves me, giving me some context, but I don't feel like that towards anything.”

“Love is more complex than the simple word. It is so many things.” Daito pursed his lips, using his foot to bring his own instrument up and into his hands. “And not always necessarily good. It can be possessive, violent, controlling, obsessive, love and the pedestals of importance we place on material things – people included – can lead to great evils. Understanding will come with time, when you figure out what motivates this feeling in you. But I've got to say, I've never felt anything quite like that.”

The dao of love... Isn't that something... Daito mused to himself. There had never been a 'primus' of love before. But then again, there had never been primus' of hope or fear, either. Inner understanding was hard, even when one lived for centuries. They might call themselves something, but only in the newest generation, such as with that monster Cortus, did the masters see more literal aspects of the emotional spectrum. It made them a threat, and some of the clan elders insisted it'd bring more harm than good. In any case, times were changing, and the world was bound to change with them.