A Shield and a Candlestick

by **L'orlei** on July 27th, 2012, 9:31 pm

Timestamp: Summer 25, 512 AV
Location: L'orlei's House

L'orlei sat in her home, her eyes closed, remaining completely motionless save for the rise and fall of her chest with each breath. She was trying to meditate, though it was not something she was good at. Before her mother left on her call, L'orlei had just started learning about magic. Her mother had a friend who taught L'orlei the basics of Shielding, a magic used to protect. L'orlei's mother knew that one day her daughter would need to be able to protect herself, but being a healer, she was averse to violence, and her mother decided that shielding would be a good route for the young konti. L'orlei didn't know why she needed it, Mura was perfectly safe, but if her mother insisted then she would learn.

Of course she hadn't really practiced it since her mother had left, she was simply scraping to get by, but now that her business had finally kicked off L'orlei had time to focus on other things. And that meant her studies, be they medical or magical, which brought things back to their original point. L'orlei sat in the dark, save for a single candle burning in front of her. She wasn't watching the candle, she'd found it to be a distraction, but she didn't bother putting it out. The light dancing against the back of her eyelids was peaceful, and seemed to be helping her reach what she assumed was a meditative state.

L'orlei inhaled and exhaled slowly, absently watching the flikering candle through her closed eyes. The light danced strangely across her eyelids, and L'orlei felt herself beginning to relax. She knew she wasn't going to find some mystical inner peace or anything, but there was something relaxing about the meditation attempt. The young healer took in a deep breath and opened her eyes, watching the candle directly. The flame danced about, and as she stared at it she felt her mind go blank. ..well.. sort of blank. She couldn't help but think a little bit, but the Konti decided she had sat there long enough and it was time to being practicing her long neglected craft.

by **L'orlei** on March 7th, 2013, 6:36 pm

L'orlei called down deep within, to her very core, where she imagined was the home of her djed. She knew not where the magical stuff actually came from, but she liked to imagine it at her core. She could feel it there, fueling her body and waiting to fuel her magic. L'orlei recalled the first time she had accessed her djed. It was a truly liberating, and frightening, experience. It was raw power, her very own raw power. She had heard of a few destructive magics, though L'orlei herself had never before encountered one, but her own magic was far from that. It was designed to protect, and was a magic that could do no harm. It was safe to practice, as overgiving was virtually unheard of in Shielding.

L'orlei drew on her djed, summoning it up from deep within. It moved like molasses. Her teacher had been able to summon it almost instantaneously, but for L'orlei it was slow and taxing. She could not produce much, not in comparison to her teacher anyway. Or maybe it was that she could produce just as much, but was inefficient in its use. L'orlei had no idea, really, but she knew one thing for sure was that she had a long way to go before she was protecting entire structures or even towns like she was told was possible with her magic. For the time, L'orlei only planned on protecting the candle.

Finally the djed began to pool in her hands, secreting from her flesh and forming a transparent globule in her hands. A normal person would probably not see it, only shielders could see shields, but to L'orlei it was beautiful. It took all of her concentration to keep the substance from losing form and sucking back into her skin. Using magic required the giving of ones own energy, their very life force, for djed was just that to a living thing. It was the building block of everything, and to expel it from ones body was to expel a bit of themselves. L'orlei would not allow the djed to return, however, and instead focused it to the task at hand.

by **L'orlei** on March 8th, 2013, 11:45 pm

Like a child playing with clay, L'orlei began to mold the djed around the candle. It was a slow process, and the clay needed to be loosened up. Her djed did not want to work with her, it was stubborn. It was the essence of an inexperienced caster, and every move she made required the utmost effort and concentration.

L'orlei focused entirely on the task before her. If somebody had bothered to visit her, something that never really happened to begin with, they probably would have caught her completely by surprised. L'orlei only had eyes for her shield, and the candle she was slowly surrounding. So far she had only covered the base of the candle, and just by looking at it she could tell the shield was far from perfect. It was uneven, but she just couldn't get her djed to work right. No amount of smoothing seemed to do the trick.

L'orlei slowly pushed and stretched her djed up the base of the candle, taking care not to actually touch the candle itself and accidentally tip it over. Eventually she would have to pick it up to spread the shield across the bottom, but she wanted to cover the rest of it first. Focusing on the wellspring of power inside her, L'orlei managed to force out a bit more djed, smearing it onto the candle stick. The tricky part was about to come.

Now she had to stretch her djed over the flame itself. She couldn't touch it, unless she wanted to burn herself, but she still needed to make sure to cover it. The shield needed to be high and wide enough to completely surround the fire, that way none of it would poke out of the shield. Grabbing hold of a glob of djed, L'orlei stretched it up and over the fire, taking slow measured breaths as she did so. It would be easy to mess up the shield now, to tear a whole in the djed mold she was creating.

Biting her lip as she did so she stretched the shield around the flame, sealing it off and smoothing it down at the top. Once that was taken care of she was able to pick up the candle and seal off the bottom end of the shield as well. At that moment, all it would be able to do was block djed.. and unless somebody planned on casting a spell at her candle, that wouldn't be of much use. She would have to change that, and task it to something else. L'orlei wanted to block in the light.

by **L'orlei** on March 18th, 2013, 9:16 pm

Tasking the shield from its base function to blocking out light was a process that involved both mental concentration, as well as altering the shield itself. L'orlei kept her breathing slow and careful, focusing on nothing but the task itself. She knew what she wanted the shield to do, and she had to make it do it. Her hands moved up and down the outside of the shield, spreading the djed to make it as even as she could on all sides. She did not want any holes in the shield.

With the tips of her fingers she drew patterns onto the surface of the shield, patterns that to her meant they would block out the light. Magic was a very personal thing. No two shields were exactly alike. Some were woven together like a tapestry, some painted like a work of art. L'orlei sculpted her shield like clay, and the etchings in it were her way of telling to block out light. They were her own unique signature, and no other shielders work would look exactly the same. Anyone familiar with her work, and L'orlei would be very surprised indeed to meet someone who was, would be able to tell it was her shield because of this.

The entire process was both physically and mentally taxing. One's djed was one's energy, and to use it all up was to use up all their energy. L'orlei would need some rest and a good meal after she was done.

She could see her work beginning to come to completion. The work she was doing on her shield was starting to block out the light. It started from the top, but as she worked her way down, eventually the entire thing was just one black vaguely candle-shaped cylinder. Her shield was not perfect, though in the daylight she could not tell for sure. If it were dark, she would see bits of light still poking out around it, but for her purposes it had worked. She had successfully blocked the light from penetrating the shield, and while she could still feel the heat from the candle if she placed her hand over where the flame should have been, she could not see it. In fact, she almost burned herself doing this, but pulled her hand away just in time.

"I wonder how long it will last," she muttered to herself.

Her shields did not usually last very long. They were imperfect, and this was her first try in a long time. She knew there were some shields capable of absorbing djed and maintaining themselves, but this one would not. If she wanted to keep it up, she would have to regularly perform maintenance on it, and considering it had just been a practice shield, it wasn't really worth the effort for her to do so. Plus.. until the shield collapsed, she basically had just made her candle completely useless.

"Oh well, I guess I'll just have to make do with one less candle for a while."

L'orlei blew out the flame she could not see, watching curiously as the wisps of smoke rose out of the blackness of the shield. It was really something to see, she thought, and she was impressed with herself yet again. But she had work to do.. and food to eat. She could play with her shield some more another day.

~End