Archimedes/IC Cutscenes/2025.10.11: Reflections In Still Water

Reflections In Still Water
Archimedes' mentor in the Akashic Brotherhood intercedes with a spirit on his behalf.
IC Date	Oct 1st, 2025
IC Time	Afternoon
Players	Archimedes
Location	Grandfather Willow's Monestary
Spheres	Mage

Reflections In Still Water

The monastery of Grandfather Willow was no temple that the sun beat down on. It was carved into the rock of the mountain itself, a maze of passages dimly lit by ever-burning fire that cuts the chill in the halls. The air hangs heavy with the smell of incense, and the sound of dripping water echoes off each wall.

Few ever descend this deep, as the Abbot's meditation chamber lays farther below the surface than most are prepared to go. It is a hollow cavern, like the others, but deeper and darker and possessed of a natural spring that forms a perfect circular pool, and a drip more regular than a quartz crystal. The wall glitters faintly as the ever-burning firelight bounces off the veins of exposed mica in cave walls.

Grandfather Willow sat at the edge of that pool, his breath slow, one hand wrapped in his voluminous kasaya, the other hand open at the center of his chest. His head is bowed, his mind is still, his mouth moving in a rapid chant of words echoing off the walls, but beyond understanding.

A shape gathered in the water's reflection: long, serpentine, and predominantly silver with streaks of black, with eyes as like blue topaz. The head of a Chinese dragon fully forms, but does not breach the water into the cave. Its eyes study the monk with assessing intelligence -- sharp, unblinking, but incredibly young for its kind!

When the dragon speaks, its voice is a middling tenor, each syllable bouncing off the cave walls.

"You inhabit deep places, old monk."

Grandfather Willow inclined his head, his voice as stately and wizened as the young dragon's was energetic and high, "Deep roots make the strongest trees, young dragon."

"It's where things are buried." The dragon's tone was not cruel, but edged, as if already bored with a lecture that has not even occurred. Its youthful stock of patience already wearing thin. "Why call me here, in the dark where the roots reach? My kind belong in vast waters, powerful rivers, and wide open skies."

"All young streams begin here beneath the earth, and some join with other young streams to create powerful rivers, carving deep grooves in the earth," the monk replied calmly, "and the sky is not where growth begins, but where it ends."

After a pause, the dragon's reflection coiled and uncoiled, uncertain.

"You summoned me on behalf of another," it said with indictment in its resonant voice, "the mortal who carries your teachings. The professor you asked me to follow and report my findings to you. The contradiction."

Grandfather Willow nodded once, "Yes. The one that walks both paths -- the scholar's and the monk's. He seeks balance where others seek mastery. Rewritten Sutra."

The dragon’s gaze sharpened. "He studies the unseen as if it were a specimen. Mortals always do. He traps mystery in pages of symbols and calls it truth."

"The truth he professes is not the trap," the monk said softly, wearily, "It is the bait."

The dragon tilted its head, considering the words. Its scales shimmered faintly, the young dragon trying its best to appear ancient and inscrutable.

"You wish to bind me to him. To make me his familiar."

"Not bind," Grandfather Willow corrected. "I wish to set you both on a path to grow together. To transmute you both from young streams to powerful rivers, so that you may both one day be vast oceans."

A high-pitched almost-petulant roar echoed in the cavern. "You think me a child?"

The monk suppressed a smile. "I think you young, which is not the same thing. You are fierce, but still untested. You cast judgment before reaching understanding, and confuse the two. He can help you with that."

The dragon’s eyes narrowed, the cave briefly darkening with its agitation. The lantern flame wavered.

"I do not need to be instructed by mortals."

"Perhaps not," Willow murmured. "But you may still yet be refined by them."

That struck something. Not anger, perhaps, but uncertainty. The dragon’s reflection blurred, its form flickering between majesty and something smaller, rawer.

"He is not ready," it said at last. "He doubts, though he pretends at certainty. You have sent him to teach wisdom and knowledge before he fully knows it himself."

The monk nodded. "And that doubt in himself and everything around him is the driving force of his journey to perfection. Through it, he may yet achieve what certainty cannot provide him."

"You would have me teach him trust?"

"I would have you learn it together."

The dragon regarded him for a long moment. Beneath the water, its body traced slow circles in the pool’s depths. When it spoke again, its voice was softer, but no less piercing.

"If I accept, I will not coddle him. I will speak to him with the full weight of truth, whether he is ready or not."

"That is all I ask," said Grandfather Willow.

Another silence stretched. Somewhere deep in the stone, water continued to drip like the heartbeat of the monastery itself.

Finally, the dragon lowered its head, the reflection dimming.

"Then tell your Professor this," it said. "When he meditates next, he will find me at the edge of his breath, where silence begins to break into thought. If he meets my gaze without pretense, I will walk beside him."

"And if he cannot?" the monk asked.

The dragon’s voice faded like mist. "Then he is not yet worth my reflection."

The pool went still again. The lantern light steadied.

Grandfather Willow remained unmoving for a long while, listening to the water drip into the now still pool. Then he smiled a small, tired, knowing smile.

"Two students," he murmured, "each mistaking the other for a teacher."

The room answered only with silence.