Mateki - Blog Posts

This opinion is beautiful! And so is the painting!

Yuuri's parched lips trembled a little as he blew the little air that remained in his lungs into the mateki. His little gamble was the only thing that stood between an aggressive hoard of raging Svelerans ahead and a rampaging sand bear behind them, this is all that stood between life and death - and not just his own but that of his friends who had followed him into the human lands and the mine workers whom he had promised hope. This was the first time that he realised how much he stood to lose, how much he had to protect. He was scared that too much was being asked of his half-hearted, long forgotten musical education.

A single, terrible note emanated from the instrument as his nervous breath rattled through it. It did not offer much promise to his vassals or his recently inducted subjects. However that single tone reverberated through the blood rushing through his veins and resonated through the sandy dunes that surrounded the quickly evolving, flammable scene - magnified thousand times over. At once, a strange tranquility descended upon Yuuri and he felt more rooted to this world and all its lifeforms than he had ever experienced before. He thought to himself, 'If not me.. who?'

He took in a deep breath and blew in with all his mind and mind. Before he had realised as much, his fingers moved in practiced symphony, emanating a song that remained quietly buried under adolescent humdrum, somewhere in his childhood memories. He thanked his younger self for having practiced so hard for the little concerts back then - for close to no effort had to be made for this one, orchestrated in the middle of a desert.

He stopped playing and opened his eyes. To his great disappointment, not much had changed - his heart fought madly against the sinking feeling rising steeply from his guts. Quite suddenly then, a swift wind picked up, and in the distance, just above the Sveleran sand clouds he saw dense thunderstorm gathering ominously. He blew into the instrument harder and concentrated deeply, until he became one with the rain that fell on the white hot sands and the lightning that clamoured overhead the assailants until they finally retreated.

Yuuri had gone back to playing the demon flute many times since that first time - and now he knew that the mateki was another instrument that gave physical form to his majutsu - he could assimilate, within his being, the element of water using the mateki. Therefore, although in the beginning his practice caused cyclonic thunderstorms for days on an end, now he could make it simply drizzle happily or bring it pouring down in sheets of deep mourning.

He realised much later what maryoku meant or what majutsu did. It was not a magical stone that had to be mined or a glass of water that could be drunk. In fact, it was not a tangible physical entity at all. It was nothing and everything at the same time. He played the flute looking for that feeling where nothing but the music of the flute remained - everything around him evaporated like a stale dream. A state of peace and longing, of lost and found, of holding on and letting go at the same time. People called it meditation, concentration, practice.. and until he was 15 he called it those things too.

But now he knew better. That feeling of transcendence was majutsu.

P.S. : all of this is entirely a personal opinion, not canon.