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The Matubon people of Slow-Lake have a strange custom, which is that they consider teaching taboo, and refuse to mark symbols, deal in numbers, and do all but the most passive apprenticeship; for the only true knowledge is that which was wrested from the lions of one’s mind - all else is lies and the whispers of wicked men.
Kinwa was the best and brightest student the Matubon had ever seen, skilled not just in hunting and tracking, pottery, and spear-throwing, but in writing and arithmetic and diagram-forming. He even knew how to talk to the spirits that live at the back of people’s minds. Really, it seemed like he was destined for anything, and that’s what the people of the tribe said - Kinwa does everything so effortlessly, it’s obvious he’s meant for great things (for skill is not just the measure of someone’s learning; it shows the degree to which they have fallen towards their own fate).
Now Kinwa had long heard the deprecations of the elders against false knowledge, but he paid it no heed. What knowledge could there be that did not have to be wrestled against first? No, it was clearly fear of a strange and vast unknown that fueled this insensible caution. So when Kinwa had amassed all the knowledge he could from the tribe, he went to the city of Tulòn to see if he could seek admission to their great universities or esteemed engineering guilds. It so happened that Tulòn was about to embark on another grand construction project in honor of their ancient king, and was happy for all the help they could get. So Kinwa was accepted into the technical university, and began his new studies immediately.
A curious phenomenon soon happened to Kinwa, however - he fell asleep. Really, some classes were just so boring and their equations so dense that as soon as they began, he would find himself suddenly overtaken by the weariness of the day, and would fall into restless dreams of frolicking among the meadows. The first week this happened, Kinwa was filled with shame - imagine, the pride of the Matubon unable to solve a few measly problems! - so he resolved to study hard and work towards understanding the material. The following week, however, Kinwa fared no better, and the lectures once more lulled him into a deep sleep (this time, the dreams were of playing with his faithful hunting dog). Kinwa, determined not to let these equations get the better of him, went through the readings back to front, solved the practice problems repeatedly until he could do them with his eyes closed, and took apart the diagrams and charts until he understood all the different parts of them. Finally, on the third week, Kinwa had caught up to the rest of the class enough that, look! he could follow along as the instructors threw up line after line on the chalkboard! He turned to his seatmate to share the good news, but to his horror, his seatmate - and all the students in the class - had turned into a different person, all of them the same pointy-eared figure with reptilian eyes, wreathed in yellow light.
“Are you all right, Kinwa?” his seatmate asked, with a voice that was not his. “You look confused.”
“Yes,” his seatmate on the other side added, in the same voice. “Come, let’s do the work that was ordained for today. Then you’ll feel a lot better for sure.”
As one, the entire class, including Kinwa, stood up and left for the quarry, where they joined other work-gangs made up of the same pointy-eared individual, and hauled stone to the site of the new monument the entire day. Throughout all this, Kinwa had the feeling that he had not been meant to see any of it, that indeed an external force was trying to show that he was still back in the classroom looking at diagrams on the board. It was only through his mastery of mind that Kinwa was able to peer into the inner workings of his unconscious body and see reality as it truly occurred.
The next time this happened, Kinwa made use of this mental mastery, and cast deep into himself. Moving through the recesses of his mind, he came upon a malevolent pointy-eared figure with reptilian eyes, surrounded in yellow light - exactly the person Kinwa had seen his classmates become - seated at a plinth and carelessly pulling giant strings as if they were the reins on a horse.
“Who are you,” said Kinwa, “and what are you doing in my mind?”
“Who are you,” screeched the figure, “and what are you doing in my mind?”
“You are mistaken, brother,” said Kinwa, hesitantly. “This is my mind we are in, which I know because I am quite attached to it.”
“It is my mind because I am the one controlling it!” said the figure. “Now get out of my mind and leave me to do my construction in peace!” It cracked one of the strings like a whip, and Kinwa unceremoniously found himself in the dream again.
Now seriously irked, he resolved to get back at the mysterious person who had so rudely taken control of his body, and to this end, he continued attending the offending classes quietly over the next fortnight. He soon deduced that the diagrams and equations the instructors were preparing constituted a summoning ritual of some sort. As soon as he felt himself falling into the now-familiar trance, Kinwa took the mental path he had explored before, and upon finding the controller, proceeded to ‘paint’ the summoning diagram using his mind’s eye. He swapped out his name for what he assumed was the name of the controller, and immediately found himself in a crystal room, atop a ziggurat overlooking the entire city. In the center, floating cross-legged and insensate atop a velvet cushion, was the pointy-eared fellow from his trance.
Kinwa, looking around and seeing nothing aside from a table full of refreshments, grabbed the nearest pitcher to hand, tiptoed up to the controller, and splashed him with its contents.
“Guh!” yelled the figure, jerking awake and falling over, all while trying to pull its robes off.
“I,” said Kinwa, splashing a little bit more from the pitcher, “would like an explanation.”
“Ereakaiza’s eyelashes!” screamed the controller. “I will have your head for this! Guards! Guards!”
“See, I know that’s a bluff,” said Kinwa, sloshing the pitcher around. “Nobody has been in this room for a day at least. You summon the food in, you eat it, but nobody comes in or out. You have cobwebs on you, for goodness’ sake. How long do you do this for? How are you not yet dead?”
“Just get out and leave me be,” cried the controller, its ears waggling above its head. “What is it you even want?”
“I want an apology, and I want to know who it is from,” said Kinwa. “And no more shoving around in people’s heads! You are giving everyone in my dormitory terrible nights’ sleep, and we all have classes to attend in the mornings.”
“But that’s the whole point of the ritual,” whined the controller. “I take over your bodies and make sure that construction is proceeding as it should. My elders always said to never delegate a job if you could do it yourself. This way, I can do all the jobs myself and never have to delegate!”
“That doesn’t make it appropriate,” said Kinwa, “and I still don’t hear an apology. We can keep at this the whole day if you want; I’m not leaving.”
“Fine, fine,” grumbled the figure. “I apologize -” this it said in an obsequious, faux-polite tone “- for taking over your and your cohort’s bodies without your knowledge or agreement.”
“And your name, too, if you please.” Kinwa gestured threateningly with the pitcher.
“All right! All right. I am…” Here the figure pulled itself upright in an almost regal position, if it weren’t for the soaked-through undergarments and pile of wet robes. “I am Akbal, First King of Tulòn; now, Spirit of the City. I built this metropole from the ground up, and by the gods am I going to ensure that it stays up.”
“A likely story,” said Kinwa. “Why then, Akbal First-King-of-Tulòn, do you possess your engineers and treat them like manual labor instead of the fine minds that they are?”
Akbal wrung his hands. “My viziers would botch all the finely laid-out plans I had by ordering the wrong cut of stone, passing on the wrong measurements - little things, you know. In the end, I had to spend so much more money tearing down these monuments that I decided: why even have supervisors if the supervisors couldn’t understand the plans. So upon my passing I put this procedure into motion, and it has served the city marvelously ever since!”
Kinwa shook his head. “Akbal, you are the dumbest smart person I have ever met, and that includes myself. Have you considered that not all engineers are as bone-headed as your viziers? I figured out a way into your private chamber all by myself - surely I could understand the blueprints to your triumphal pyramid or whatever new thing you have brewing. Trust your underlings a little.”
“Trust ruined my kingdom, and now you’ve ruined it too!” screamed Akbal. He ran at Kinwa, and as they collided, Kinwa became aware of the entire city as if it were a giant, limp beast on the ground over which ants made their home. They were the buildings and the quarters where the citizens made their residence and their businesses . At the ‘head’ of the city, Kinwa could see the palace and grand temple rising above all else; towards the flank, he saw the academies and universities and makers’ quarters, bustling with activity; and further down, where the tail would have begun, he beheld a giant pit with dust rising out of it - dozens of feet of scaffolding had collapsed, as well as some pulleys hoisting great carven boulders. All over the site, men and women were on the ground, holding their heads and moaning in confused pain - but they were themselves, not copies of the First King.
“See what you did!” boomed Akbal’s voice in Kinwa’s head, before returning himself and Kinwa to material form. “By interrupting my concentration, you’ve set construction back by weeks, and you almost killed how many workers down there!”
“Oh hush,” replied Kinwa. “Do you even care about your workers at all? One gets the impression that they only matter to you as vessels for your royalness to fill.”
Akbal scoffed. “Why do they need to be any more than that? We have already established that they cannot carry out plans to save their own skins; we have seen that they can barely navigate a construction site without making some new disaster. Next, you will have me believe that they will design their own buildings themselves!”
“And whyever not?” retorted Kinwa. “I have made my own huts without the benefit of someone guiding my hand - merely by observing others at work was I able to derive the principles of good construction. I cannot imagine that someone smarter with codices and numbers than me could not do the same for grander edifices.”
Akbal sneered. “I waste my time - and everyone else’s! - talking with you. If you will not get out of my way, I will have to remove you myself.” And with that, he flung himself at the young student. Unfortunately, the old king did not consider that the body he was inhabiting had become frail and decrepit over many, many centuries, and was no match for the robust chokehold that Kinwa put him in. Thus, the First King of Tulòn was dispatched for the last time, and Kinwa spent the next few hours figuring out how to un-summon both himself and the elfin corpse from the top of the ziggurat (not that much harder than summoning, it turned out).
The next time the usual classes rolled around, there was a bit of a commotion as the students and instructors quickly realized that suddenly they had nothing to do. But they came together and talked things out, and pretty soon were making new projects of their own, like an aqueduct to supply more fresh water, or a larger sewer system for the newer parts of the city.
As for Kinwa, he had returned to his people, having had his fill of the city, and spent the rest of his days hunting, exploring, and occasionally agreeing to have a handful of youngsters apprentice to him. But he never went in front of a chalkboard again, nor did he deal with symbols and numbers; for there was a small part at the back of his mind that saw reason in Akbal’s doing, and it terrified Kinwa to know that, given the chance, he might put his own people to the same fate as the infernal king did. And to this day, the Matubon refuse to deal with the same, and declare that sort of teaching taboo.
Runao’s Commentary:
If one is to commit regicide, it is best that they not have feelings afterward [for him]. The Wheel is the hour of cooperation and inevitability - be always good to all walks of life, that they may have good feelings towards you in this life as well as the next.