the vampire sat and looked at the diagram before him. four triangles could be viewed upon it, two up, two down, and one of each with a line dissecting the tip from the rest of the base. fire, water, air and earth. he knew this to be the case. his sire had sent him to spend time with abbot castillo of the tremere clan, as some form of repaymetn of a boon long ago, that the abbot was all to happy to be done with, even if it meant having to instruct a dullard like himself in the alchemical ways. he knew he was a dullard because the abbot told him he was, repeatedly. something about not being able to pay attention. He wasn't sure, really. his focus returned to the paper before him and he looked around the room for his current instructor, the one who had been his sires mentor way back when. This guy was old, he knew. you could tell, most of the time. the air moved differently around them, like it tries to not make contact, as not even it can stand the stench of death that lies upon it. he had met a few ugly vampires in his time, but that was phsyicallity, not the all pervasive soul(if you had one) staining black mark that this fella exuded. his focus returned to the paper before him and he thought of the years that had passed since he had seen the one who had created him, dragging him from the war field, screaming at the gunfire. mouth full of mud and blood and then swallowing it down into his lungs before it would go into his stomach, and then knowing the release of the body from the life it once knew, as he felt himself grow to be too big to fit it. he recalled the way he had been trained by a gypsy to make people believe that the coin he passed them was worth more than it appeared. he found it difficult as he could only do it with one coin, and no others, which made it difficult to receive it back as change, allthough he had done so and preffered that to mugging the people who got the coin back in their change. "let me talk to you little one...." came a voice from behind the doorway. "enter," he offered, freely, though a little scared at findng that he was in his presence again. "what have your meditations taught you?"oozed the elder. he swallowed nothing, out of instinct. "just that the opposites can align up, creating a new whole," he offered. "like the star of david from the air and the earth, lapping over," he drew it quickly, "where the dissection lines...." "and what of the new triangles that this makes?" ".... the.. new?..." "from two triangles you now have six. one up and one down and the new four at the angles... what are they?" he looked at his paper and looked at the triangles. he furrowed his head in confusion as the simple statement he made became a more puzzleing section than before. "what is a triangle but a section of a triangle?" asked the standing vampire. the neonate of 7 years looked up and back, unable to comprehend the data that was offered and crossed with what lay before him. "you are helplessly overcomplicating things," scowled the elder, "they are all the same triangle." he looked in confusion. "every triangle you ever see is the same triangle. that's the point of alchemy and the occult. to hide the truth in plain sight. the reason we even have triangles in that shape is because at 3000 years ago, soe weissenheimer decided that there was such a thing as a celestial form, and that one of those forms was the triangle. every triangle since that point has been an attempt at a perfect cicle which has failed..... because the moment you try and screate the concept, you've blighted it with your intentions and the mode of use that you want it for. you kill the triangle when you make it. every triangle is the same as every other triangle.... " "but.. but the water... the fire?" "same thing, just depending on how you look at it. surely you heard the old tales of vampires being harmed by water? burned by it?" the dullard nodded, mutely, raising itself in the eyes of the speaker. "the purity of it was all that came into question nowerdays. that and beliefs change, become lost, coded and un deciphered. the simple fact remains but in this modern age, who would believe a simple word when they can believe a multitude of facts that have no real bearing. like a dice that is rolled. you roll it and the odds tell you the chances of it rolling the same number again are less and less. they forget to point out that the chances are reset to 1 chance out of six every roll. every dice is the same, in that they are not dice, just what we call dice, so we can believe they match our concept of what dice should be. do you understand?" the malkavian looked at his clan elder and moved his mouth a bit before starting. "the triangles don't exist, because they are all the one triangle, even the sections of the triangle, that make a triangle, are, in fact, just the one triangle?" "yes!" "like a fractal?" ".... you fail to understand. it's not 'like' anything." "then what is it?" "it is what it is." "and what is it?" "it is." the vampire looked at the paper, scrunched it up and threw it to the ground. "this is pointless....." "no. it's three pointless." the young fool looked at the old fool, with a look of abject horror at the insanity that it saw residing with in it. the sense of complete lack of ability to grasp such a simple question... the cruelty with wich he took every term and phrase and twisted it around back at him, like some kind of verbal tesseract. with a look of great sadness, the elder undid the shackles and opened the door to the room. "i have done all i can for you. leave now. return to your sire. he will know." the malkavian looked at the open door and made his way out. as he passed, he loooked downat the crumpled note paper on the floor, and saw the creases, crushed fibres and a single triangle, badly drwan, crudely made, and yet made out of four different triangles for the four different elements, making one, single triangle. something inside went. he looked at the mentor that he had been with for the last two years and said, as he walked out the door, never to return, "as do i." the fiend