Fortuna Verto

52-Introductory Lessons

Disappointingly enough, making use of Xwyhr's information presented far more delays than acquiring it had. Jhez was quite unapproachable for most of the dusk, and the approach of his exam wasn't leaving the regular party crew very open to any meetings.

Axln was actually surprised at just how much testing was synchronized. Every major course was actually scheduled to have an exam at the same time, the next one actually being the next dawn. Such was why the whole place actually felt rather deserted, possibly. In that light, her sister was crazy.. skipping out on scheduled last-minute studies for her class. She did have other classes to attend though, so she was already gone. Apparently, Jhez's class had become a study class to provide him with enough opportunity to make sure such a test would be ready. Between that and his otherwise unavoidable course load, it was late dusk before Jhez would finally be free to step away from his work. The young professor still had things rather rough, making Axln feel slightly guilty for having eaten so much of the guy's time. However, as opportunity brought merit to relief, it was actually Jhez who came to Axln in search of respite from a hard day's work. Apparently, it was her presence that made bearing such tension all the more easier. Given such an opportunity, Axln brought Jhez up to speed with the plans she had fostered since they last met. Jhez had inclined an offer to help out if he was so capable, and Axln had seen a lot of positive results in accepting offers of help from others.

"This is a really bad idea." "Wait, what?" "Oh, oh, oh, not the whole inspiration into music thing, exploring passions is great, any teacher would love to see that come to pass. Yes, I really don't mind helping Lyun with exploring her potential there. What is concerning is how this same idea has echoed throughout history. There are a great number of times where someone held an ambitious opportunity to bring great change to society.. and had at least once held a concert for that purpose in some way. Every.. single.. time.. it had yielded misfortune. The terran mythos expresses it as the concert curse." "Okay, yeah, I've studied plenty of the logical spectrum here.. so I know rightfully that even here would consider curses like that just some supernatural paranoia." "Technically, everything about the veil's influence is considered illogical, not explainable by matters of elements, instrumentation, the gift.. nothing. Your ability to world hop, that's not explainable either." "That's.. technically true.. and on both sides. Still, you make it sound like we're just fated to fail because we're making music." "Uh, I'm not sure I understand you. What do you mean by.. fated?" "You know, destiny and all of that stuff." "Actually.. no. I mean, it sounds like it could very well be a real word, you didn't even use a proper terran accent either. But, no, I know of no such word." Jhez looked outright baffled, a consideration that in turn confounded Axln. Of all the times to suddenly have a linguistic barrier, this was outright random. However, even after numerous attempts to even explain what the word might actually mean, Jhez's confusion was not dismissed. Instead, it seemed like the very concept of fate and destiny were unfamiliar foreign ideas. Bad luck was just a matter of probability shifting poorly, but no outcome could simply occur because it was supposed to, things only happened because the requirements for a given outcome had randomly come together to settle upon any one given result.

Axln didn't even know what to think of this. Sure, from a logical perspective, not even considering aspects like fate in an outcome was totally correct. However, this was almost the extreme opposite of the beliefs behind fate, as if there was nothing that could control outcomes beyond the absolution of random chance. It stemmed upon the idea that people weren't even in control over their own lives. In that respect, this absolute inversion was still.. not actually logical either. Fate wasn't something so omnipotent as to be the only thing that ever made things happen, but taking control over one's own fate was the greatest influence in altering what might happen to oneself. Jhez meanwhile showed this concept being proven and founded in actual reality, that probability was the greatest influence over any event, and that an outcome could hardly be predictable. To Axln, this hurt her head more than anything. Repeating a controlled experiment enough times would have it both succeed and fail at least once, even if nothing actually changed. This world didn't apply matters of science.. but still had a strong foundation in a sense of logic. This one thing however seemed absolutely insane.