[Flashback] You mean you can store a spell in a scroll?

[Veldrys]

„I thank you“, he replied as she said that he spoke beyond his years. He considered that a compliment, especially from somebody like her. „Unless those that come to you so often, I don’t need a blessing. I just want knowledge. I consider that one of the most important goods. My name is Veldrys.“ He wondered if she had heard of him, of his work as a healer at the Purging and the somewhat frequent trips to the surface. He had disappeared to Lhavit as a boy. He had frequently visited the forest above Kalinor and looked at the stars. Did she know what kind of magic he practiced, that he could become somebody else within the blink of an eye? He was still a little worried about telling her that, even if it would probably become necessary at one point during their time together – if she was willing to teach him. „Glyphs“, he repeated. It seemed as if what he had heard was true after all. She knew the kind of magic he was looking for. There was a hint of a smile on his face now, despite the fact that he was still slightly nervous. „I would appreciate it if you could show me.“ He accepted the scroll from her and looked at it uncertainly. He could draw, a bit, not very well, but his drawings had never come alive. He had never been able to fill them with magic. They had never affected others. They had always only been just drawings, nothing extraordinary. He dipped the quill into the vial of ink. The tip of the quill hovered above the scroll for a moment, and then he put it away again and shook his head. „I can’t“, he said and sighed. „I don’t know how to draw glyphs. I can draw strange shapes, I can draw people and animals and flowers, but they are always only just that. How do you store a spell in a scroll? I tried to meditate, I said a prayer while I worked my magic and drew runes on a piece of paper at the same time, but the result was always the same. Nothing.“

[Macabre]

Her laughter was as thick as the air that surrounded them; you could breathe it in, taste it, and more importantly—feel it. Yellowed fangs flashed in the dim light, and the chiding sound turned into something of a purr. “You get ahead of yourself, young one.” She reached forward, gathering the scroll and setting it out of reach. She left the quill and inkpot. “I needed to be sure of it.” A nod, “Yes; you get ahead of yourself. “A glyph is hardly a simple, meditated drawing, and one without power will be as useless as words on a page. I applaud you in trying to teach yourself, Veldrys of the Vervain Web, but you have—” gotten ahead of yourself. The crone’s shining eyes seemed to finish the sentence for her, and she shifted beneath the tomb of blankets that held her down. “I will show you, but you must promise me that you will stay away from writing your runes on scrolls until you are sure of your control over them. Dangerous things can happen, when a novice dabbles in things their mind is not ready to understand.” Two bony hands grasped at the youth’s closest set of fingers, turning his palm towards the ceiling. He was fleshy, soft to the touch, and the lines in that waxen hand ran deep; lines the crone often read for coin to deluded maidens looking for love, men seeking wealth, and folk that simply wanted an illusion of safety and comfort in their dwindling world. An obsidian nail swept over Veldrys’ palm. The whites of her eyes flared as those lines changed beneath her touch, shifted, grew darker, before sliding back into place. “You are a morpher,” she croaked, ribbons of satisfaction winding around her chilly tongue, “This is good. You know how to stretch your djed. Yes. I can teach you. Grab the quill, focus, and draw the first thing that comes to mind on your palm. A letter, a picture, it is up to you. Do not worry about pushing your djed into it, not now.” Her irises drifted to the crooks of her eyes, flickering towards the burning altar of Viratas, “Gods save us; you did not hurt yourself with your scrolls. You will no longer use parchment, until you have learned on your own skin. Your hand will be your scroll; we do not get careless with our own limbs.” As the youth moved to draw, the crone’s hands slipped away and settled again on her lap. “This drawing, this is called a focus. There are many different parts and many complex glyphs, but this is its heart. You learn focus, and the rest will come with time.”

[Veldrys]

„I know“, Veldrys murmurred and sighed as she informed him that he was getting ahead of himself. He averted his gaze for a moment, a little embarrassed. „But at the time I felt as if I had no choice. I wanted to learn Glyphing, I needed to learn it, but I didn’t know of anybody that could teach me, so I thought I could just teach myself. That was stupid of me, wasn’t it?“ He finally dared to look at her again. He was a good healer. He had understood Morphing quickly. He had thought that Glyphing was just as easy, but of course he wasn’t. He had made a mistake, but still, did she need to remind him that he had gotten ahead of himself several times?

„I promise“, he said to her. „I will do whatever you ask of me. I could have hurt myself, couldn’t I?“ He was aware that your body could forget what it really looked like if you morphed too much, that you could end up horribly deformed, but he had no idea what the dangers of Glyphing were. What could possibly go wrong when you painted things?

As she grasped his hand, he nearly pulled it back. The gesture made him vaguely uncomfortable. „What are you doing?“ he asked sharply, but there was a hint of curiosity in his voice as well. „What do you see? How do you know that I’m a Morpher?“ He narrowed his eyes. Had she read his mind? Had she found the information there, in the lines of his hand? He looked directly at her for a moment, and then he simply took the quill as she had told him to. He decided that it didn’t matter how she had found out as long as she would teach him the things he needed to know.

„What’s the worst that could happen?“ he asked, and then he fell silent and simply started painting his palm. The drawing he made was slightly awkward – he had never tried painting something on his skin before. It was a flower, a flower he had used for one of his potions recently. The first thing that came to his mind usually had to do with healing or with this vague kind of yearning for the surface world. The flower represented both.

Once he had finished the drawing, he held his palm up for her to inspect it, maybe to find out if she approved.

[Macabre]

“Not stupid,” the woman murmured, shaking her head. “The pursuit of knowledge is never stupid. Killing yourself in doing so is, however. Of course, learning through death is how we have gained our most valuable lessons.” When Veldrys flinched, the crone laughed. She lifted a bony hand to her own face, drew white lines with sharpened nails down her cheek before they grew soft and pink. The boy produced a drawing, and her other hand snaked out to grasp it. “You showed me, in your own way,” she murmured, mulling over the glyph with a scrutinizing thumb and a tongue in cheek. “When you have been a magi for as long as I have, you are blessed with a certain … sense, of the arcane. Another magic; of course, another nail in the coffin, many would argue,” she laughed, “I can see your djed, when I look for it. Coiled and ready, like a snake, but green, untrained. You have potential.” She dropped the glyph on her lap; her face drooped, suddenly showing every chime of her age. “Please excuse me, I tend to ramble.” A moment of silent passed between them. Alyssandra could be heard beyond the door; a clatter of jars, a deft thump of graceful feet meeting a carefully placed collection of floorboards. “This is good,” she finally decided, handing the parchment back to Veldrys. “What I want you to do now, is focus on exactly what you want to seal within it. Your mind needs to clear itself of distractions, focus on one thing—one thing. Make it simple. When you have decided, you will attach that one action to a word. That word will be your trigger, it will release what you store within your glyph, when you, and only you, command it; do you understand?”

[Veldrys]

„I don’t plan on killing myself“, Veldrys assured her. „Nobody is going to learn through my death.“ As she took his drawing and inspected it, he fell silent for a moment and simply looked at her. „Will I develop such a sense of the arcane as well?“ he eventually wanted to know. „Can I learn to see somebody’s djed as well and find out things about the people around me?“ As he said this, he narrowed his eyes a little, but of course he couldn’t see her djed. He didn’t have any idea where or how to look for it.

As she stated that he had potential, he smiled a little, although he knew better than to let that compliment get to his head. „I don’t mind“, he told her as she said that she tended to ramble. „I find the things that you say interesting.“ He did, although it would still take some time before he understood the arcane the way she did.

As she handed the drawing back to him, he breathed a sigh of relief, glad that she approved of it. As she asked him if he understood her explanation however, he shook his head. „I don’t“, he admitted and averted his gaze, slightly embarrassed. „I mean, I understand the words that you are saying. I understand that I need to focus and that I need a trigger, but how do I actually put a spell into my drawing?“

„How do I make the magic move from here …“ He pointed at himself. „… to here?“ He gestured towards the drawing.

[Macabre]

“Easy,” her eyes crinkled when she smiled, “you stop thinking so much.”

That bony hand snaked out again, wrapping around Veldrys’ wrist. “Take your hand,” she guided the boy as she spoke, splaying his hand across the scroll, and the drawing on it, “clear your mind. Your glyph will store exactly what you want it to store, but you must have a head for magic, when you do so. Now, morph your hand. Make it anything. A different color, a different shape, but be sure to be touching the glyph when you change.”

There was a pause, a purse of dry lips, and then a quiet laugh. “We will not worry about trigger words, today. I got ahead of myself. I am no proper teacher, but I suppose I am what you were given. When you learn to store your magic, the rest will come in time.”

A belated answer came to that mouth, as Veldrys grew quiet, “Auristics is another branch of magic in itself, Vervain. You focus on this one, and if it does not kill you, one day, I will show you how to see the world through my eyes.”

[Veldrys]

Did he really think so much? Veldrys furrowed his brow as he considered the old woman’s statement, and then he realized that he was just doing it again, so he sighed, sat up a little straighter and allowed her to touch his hand which was something that still made him a little uncomfortable. Doing magic in front of her and transforming his hand into something that had the potential to look quite awkward when compared to the rest of him didn’t bother him at all though (it probably should have). He simply nodded as he heard her explanation and put his hand on the parchment.

There was just a tiny amount of hesitation as he looked at his hand that looked just like a Symenestra’s hand was supposed to look, slender, pale and with black nails. He met her gaze for a moment, and then he concentrated. Having only recently begun his studies and being relatively inexperienced, everything that he did was hard work and took time. Normally he would touch the part of the body that he wanted to change because physical contact made it easier. Buut he was worried that it might interfere with the magic if his second hand accidentially touched the glyph as well, so he let it be and simply focused on the color of his skin. He wanted his hand to change, to become darker, rosier, more like a human’s hand.

Had the circumstances been different, he might have tried to do more, out of some weird, childish desire to impress, but as it was he decided that a vaguely human looking hand was enough for the purpose of this lesson, and he tried his best to accomplish just that. Besides, her words had had a lasting effect on him. He had absolutely no desire to accidentially kill himself even though the fact that he was using magic in the first place was like tempting fate.

„You are a good enough teacher“, he assured her. „And I will focus on this one magic as you said. It’s better this way.“

[Macabre]

The boy’s hand swarmed with sarcoline hues, reminiscent of the sun-kissed skin of humans on the surface. For a few long heartbeats, the hand hovered above an ink blossom that simply lay on parchment, inanimate and far from anything miraculous. The crone’s lips were pursed, her tongue poised against the back of her teeth. Focus, she thought to say, but any whisper intending to help could be a distraction, and she remained quiet.

Her prudence paid off; when flesh met parchment, Veldrys’ flower mimicked the flesh tone of his fingertips between its lines. Like new ink bleeding into paper, it was there, and then not, and when the novice hand drew away, the flower looked as it had always looked, to all eyes but the mage, who knew a part of him was now on that flat, unassuming rune.

“Fine work, Vervain,” the crone reached to gather the scroll, to run her thumb across the flower’s petals, to watch her flesh soften into blush pink, and her brittle nails shrink into themselves. She laughed, “Fine work, indeed.”

Congratulations! XP Award

Interrogation 5
Glyphing 4
Observation 3
Drawing 3
Investigation 2
Meditation 2
Morphing 2
Subterfuge 1

The Orphine Witch
Aurists Can See Magic
Unconventional Healing Methods
How to Draw a Rune
Anatomy of Glyphs
Storing A Glyph [Morphing]

Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this thread! If you want to interact with the Orphine Matriarch in the future, shoot me a PM. I’m sure she has a lot of interesting things to say. I’m sorry that it took nearly 11 months for Veldrys to gain a new discipline of magic, but I hope to see him put it to good use! If you have any questions or concerns with what you were awarded, please don’t hesitate to PM me.