Closed A Scholarly Interlude

[Alses]

OOCI talked with Colombina a bit about Ethaefal and their Fall, actually, a while back, for a quest for Alses that will eventually get done . Strictly speaking, people aren't supposed to definitively know the fissure exists (they can infer its existence, within reason, but not know it as a fact, unless it's shown/explained to them by a god). Actually seeing the fall of a soul, too - even via a divine vision - is a no-no.

“Ethaefal is both pural and singular,” she replied distantly, avoiding the mainstay of the question for another few moments. “As to a physical fall...who knows?” A slight shrug. “We remember our death, by fire and the sword, long ago in a nameless land far from water, and then our next mortal memory is of the desolate foaming sea, and rocks, and sand.” She shook her head, as though to clear it of unwelcome thoughts.

“I do not think the...the fall is truly physical, otherwise we would be seen by some enterprising astronomer, falling from the sky, but that is guesswork at best. We'll find out the truth of it eventually, though – I shall see to it.” A heavy, leaden pause, before she began to speak again. “Regardless, the experience is a fall, make no mistake, from a glorious celestial state in close communion with the divine to this half-ruined existence, not even a gnosis-mark link to sustain us in the chaos and pain of this world. Enough, Lu.” Her voice was quiet and tired, betraying the strain, but firm nonetheless. “No more questions about my kind, please, not now.”

To distract herself more than to track Lu's progress, she turned her attention resolutely to his second glyph. The lines were still liquidly-gleaming, however, the djed pathways they traced unsure and in continual flux as the ink seeped into the paper, sealing in permanency – inasmuch as anything was truly permanent, anyway. True-blue light flared again, the sudden jolt of accelerated subjective time snapping the djed-nous of Lu's new focus into solidity and prominence even as her eyes tracked along the arcing, more organic curves that had evolved from his refined conception.

It could still do with further adjustment, however: there was still that niggling sense of scuttling, scurrying things with too many legs, and there were points of feathering that hadn't existed in the first glyph – probably where his pen had paused and shifted minutely, uncertain whether to follow the physical memory of his focus glyph or the new, refined idea. Easy enough to rectify, with the method of choice being repetition: the boring, hand-cramping legwork that underpinned the discipline. Boring, perhaps, but essential – only those with their feet firmly on the bedrock (ie a solid theoretical and practical base) could build castles in the air.

Time passed – at least a bell, since their relatively peaceful, quiet lesson was disrupted by the consensus crescendo on the eleventh bell of the morning – with Alses and Lu settling into a sort of easy exchange: him drawing more and more refined, practiced focus glyphs and she commenting on each one, pointing out the flaws, how to alter and improve until every line, and the conduit it represented, suckled greedily at the djed of the world and their synergy made the whole greater than the mere sum of its parts. The speed was still glacial, but speed was secondary to function, and would come as a side-effect of practice in any case.

After the latest attempt – which was quite passable, if a little unstable to her eyes – she brought an end to the cycle of practice. “That'll do, for now,” she announced. The time had been useful in other ways, not just in making Lu better at his glyphery; she'd been able to recover her equipoise from his question earlier, for one. Not that she particularly begrudged him his curiosity – had he not proved himself trustworthy and reliable in a crisis, which surely entitled him to some consideration? It was just that the reminder was always painful, no matter who brought it up.

“Work the kinks out, by all means,” she added, nodding to Lu's drawing hand, still clasping the quill, even as she drew out a scroll from beside her, unfurling it on the desk in front of Lu's work.

“This is a scroll,” Alses began “As you can see. It's a common practical use of Glyphing, storing magic for later use – and not just by the wizard who made it. There are several different types of glyphs that go into making one of these-” her finger moved over the intricate focus glyph to point at the pearl-like barrier runes which ringed the focus, and then over to the complicated trigger sigil with its twists and turns and purposefully-antithetical intersections, all held in precarious balance by the blocks enforced by the trigger word in the centre, “-which we'll go over with you later. For now, though, we'll be using this scroll so you can see what you're doing to the djed of the world, rather than just taking my word for it.” She paused for a heartbeat or two, and then continued, giving him time to digest what she'd said.

“I think we mentioned I have some small skill in auristics, no? Following the changes in the auras of your glyphs is how I know what's working and what isn't. This scroll-” she tapped it for emphasis “-will let you...borrow, for want of a better term...and use the power we stored in it. There's a fair amount in there; we should have plenty of time for what I have in mind. It might be a little...disorienting, at first,” she warned, with massive understatement “But we think it'll be an excellent lesson for you. Take it,” she urged, pressing it into his hands even as she turned the pages of his book back to the very first glyph he'd drawn. “Take it, hold it in front of yourself with the focus pointing at you, and say this word-” Alses held up a scrap of paper with the word 'Yomi-canoch' neatly inscribed. “-when you're ready and not before. Then look at your notebook.”

When Lu spoke the trigger word, there would be an instant reaction from her scroll – the blocks in the trigger glyph would erase themselves and that whole rune would totter towards catastrophic collapse, flinging antithetical djed across the paper which would resonate with secondary glyphs inside her barrier, setting off a second wave of corrupting djed that would wipe the barriers from the face of the scroll and allow the focus glyph to discharge its magic, straight into Lu Gavima's waiting brain.

The world would paint itself in a rainbowed panoply of light and sound and taste and touch for him, a richly-changing tapestry of the senses flooding in from all directions, the power and skill of an expert aurist suddenly at his beck and call, with which he could examine the fiery contrails of djed his glyphs forged in the hidden world and see just where the mistakes were.

If he could withstand the flood of impressions, of course. Alses, having developed the abilities in her scroll naturally and over time, had no real conception of how, all together and piling in from three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, they would affect someone unused to seeing more than the mundane world.

[Lu Gavima]

Lu listened to Alses' explanation, his memory reminding him of her warning about the civility of mentioning the fall of the Ethaefal. He could see that she did not want to talk about it and the subject's mention had made a negative impression.He still had some problems with it, but this was not the time or place to voice them. He made a mental note about her specific wording of the half ruined existence that Lu called Mizahar.

"I'm sorry, Alses. I forgot that you didn't like to talk about it. You have to understand that as a mortal born, I have no conception beyond what I am told and I what I find for myself. I won't bring it up again." Today. Lu would find out more about it. There were plenty of Ethaefals to ask. His attention was easily diverted as another flash sealed the glyphic attempt. he watched as she lost herself in the instruction to clear her mind. She would be better at meditation than she or they expected. Alses' attention seemed to shift toward a scroll which was revealed and displayed to the young shinya.

His eyes devoured the intricacy and attention to detail that the paper scroll offered, his fingers idly tracing and caressing the edges of the sheet. She explained that a Glyph could store magic for various purposes and that several different glyphs worked together to make effects occur. It was a mechanism of sorts, crafted by the one who created it. Lu smiled, finding such a thing really mind blowing. The applications were endless. It was to be education in motion, something Lu appreciated.

His little mortal mind tried to embrace the essence of what Alses was telling him. using a word, the Glyph would impart her keen Auristic vision to Lu, allowing him to better understand his mistakes. His body tingled with excitement at the prospect of grasping something beyond his reach. It was a statement that resonated throughout the boy's existence. When he was ready and not before. Lu nodded and placed the scroll to one side and his journal and first glyph on the other. Taking the time to put his ink and quill away, Lu placed the piece of paper with the word in front of him on the desk, face down.

Closing his eyes, he said a small prayer to the Gods that he not allow this opportunity to be wasted and for Lu to gain the best possible benefit from his study. His eyes opening, Lu turned the paper over, seeing the word. Looking up, he grasped the scroll by its edges and faced it, examining it as he uttered the strange language.

"Yomi-canoch"

The glyphs glowed and seemed to shift prematurely before his vision blurred and a great wave of sensation covered him. His breathing quickened as the room became smaller in a way, its previous normal appearance becoming a symphony of sense. Books glowed with use, stronger in some sections than others. The paper smelled like the reeds that grew along the Amaranthine before they were gathered to be pressed into the writing stock. The traces of ink on the quill breathed images and feelings of the Misty Peaks. His head turned to study his instructor, but Lu turned his head back toward the paper, the revelation of some essence of Divinity blinding all on its own.

Turning his head down toward his first attempt, Lu lifted the journal, the feelings of family and brotherhood that Shinyama fostered seeping into his fingertips. His eyes examined the attempt, the fragments and novice attempt clear. The imagery of spiders was not exactly what Lu was trying to express. His mind had no way to conceive his work like he could now. He nodded, thinking about the lines and curves that would replace this attempt in future Glyphing work. Placing the book down and closing it, Lu smiled and looked in Alses direction without looking directly at her.

" I need to do one small thing."

Taking advantage of the slowly dwindling enhanced sense, Lu placed his elbow on the smooth, wooden surface. He looked closely at his hand, its thin veil of calluses telling him of the long hours of work that created Lu's overall palette. With practiced calm, he reached over and touched his right with his left, gripping the dominant with two fingers. With a slight shake and a projection of will, Lu aided his astral hand in freeing itself, the fleshy one falling limp at the wrist. His focus was complete on even the beginnings of limb. It was all the same stuff.

With the new clarity, he held the quill in his projected hand, extending it and what would exist around the wrist so that it could take the quill and make an attempt if needed. " I think I can learn much about this. How does the mechanism work?"

[Alses]

Alses waited patiently as Lu adjusted – rather quickly, as it happened; he must have had an excellent mental gyroscope – and, surprisingly, made use of his own magical talent, an ephemeral, shimmering hand glimmering free of the fleshy prison, every muscle and curve carefully delineated in shades of astral light, hovering for a moment as though uncertain before shooting out to cradle the quill in its phantom grasp.

An unusual solution to writing cramp, to be sure – and a practical one, always provided his djed reserves held out. Fortunately, his borrowed Sight relied on scroll-stored djed – of which there was rather a lot - rather than his own, and she was, as a matter of course, keeping a weather eye out for the first signs of the mage's bane. Just in case.

'Mechanism. That's an odd way to put it, but apt; our Glyphs are usually a system of synergies, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts when it all works towards a harmonious goal. I suppose mechanism isn't too wide of the mark, actually,' Alses thought – or at least, the small, unoccupied part of her brain did.

“The scroll, you mean?” Alses asked, more as a formality than anything else - although it did buy her a little time to consider her reply. Lu had a talent for pushing the lesson in slightly unexpected directions, it seemed. Perhaps all students did it, in which case it was surely good experience for the future. Or maybe not - either way it was keeping her on her toes.

“It works by a coordinated synergy of its component parts: the focus glyph, which we've already covered briefly, the barrier glyphs, and the trigger glyph. All held together with some more advanced glyphs that we should probably save for another time.” A slight sigh, an airy wave, trying to catch something ephemeral from the air, some aid to understanding.

“In some ways, it all comes down to simplicity. Make each glyph as simple as it can possibly be, that way there's less chance of making a mistake. Sigils – groups of glyphs put together to achieve a bigger, more complicated purpose – should be used sparingly.” A sigh. “Theoretically – and for all I know the greatest masters of the discipline, who understand every nuance of their conceptual mirrors so completely even a single line can be a complex glyph, can actually pull it off – it is possible to pack focus, barrier and trigger all into one, so you don't need the mechanism – as you put it – of a scroll. In practice though, all sorts of poorly-understood rules and interactions come into play which make it much more trouble than it's worth. Take, for example, the six-sixteen rule. No-one knows quite why the number of points or sides has any relevance, but it does. A six-pointed rune will react badly with a sixteen-pointed one in any close proximity: the djed will become toxic and corrupted and the whole thing will collapse very quickly, without any external influence at all. Stick with simplicity, at least at first; it's reliable. One glyph, one purpose.” Alses raised a cautionary finger.

“You should remember, though, that not all bad interactions are useless – we'll show you a glyph that positively depends upon it a little later.”

Alses shifted to a more comfortable position and carefully moved Lu's inkwell a few inches, giving herself some space to work on the flat desk. “Now, observe closely,” she instructed, dipping her own quill and carefully tracing the three-quarter circles which made up the shell of her standard barrier on some paper, the lines shimmering faintly to her perceptions with pale imitations of her own aura. Her barrier glyphs were all reflection and deflection, containment by impenetrability, shining mirrors in the auristic impression of the world. She took her time with this one, knowing Lu was watching like a hawk. Sacrificing speed, in this instance, for surety was surely a worthy tradeoff.

No jaggedy, disjuncting djed this time around, the arcane result of mundane sloppiness, just a smooth, silvery-gray curving wall that breathed quicksilver reflection. Not bright and powerful – she'd not buttressed the single glyph, or reinforced it in any way, and besides there was only one of them, but it was all alone and glowing – to an aurist's vision, anyway - on the page, easily visible.

“This is a basic barrier glyph,” she murmured quietly, starting to ink another one as she spoke, her voice slower and velvety as the majority of her concentration was on her drawing hand as it curved in a graceful arc. “A focus can draw in and trap djed, but only for an instant. A barrier glyph is all about containment and confinement, reflection and maintaining the daeq-daraq, the...” she cast about for the right words in Common “...current state of affairs. A repeating array of these around a focus glyph keeps the trapped djed in the focus glyph, until the barrier is broken.”

A pause, and she straightened up in a crackle of bone, voice returning to a more normal speed and tone as she did so. “We think of them as mirrors, the djed trying to surge out of our focus-” she spread her hand in the middle of a circle of the glyphs to demonstrate “-and always bouncing back from the curving mirror walls and being trapped again. An old friend was much more gentle with his – he thought of them as a dome of lullabies, keeping the djed quiescent and asleep, so to speak.” Alses shrugged. “It never worked for us. Possibly because sleep isn't all that restful, but then again...every wizard is different, after all.”

Blue light, fresh sheet of paper, the old one laid carefully to one side – they'd be coming back to it time and again as these lessons went on, after all. “This glyph is rather different,” Alses observed, making sure she had Lu's full attention. “But it does serve to show how inconvenience can be turned to your advantage, if you're resourceful. It also lets me do what would ordinarily be some really obvious mistakes, and you'll be able to see what's happening to the djed very easily.”

Pen to paper, tongue sticking slightly out of the corner of her mouth as she concentrated, and vicious lines and jagged angles were the order of the moment. Her strokes produced a ring of thorns with many crisscrossing lines, interactions and sharp kinking angles that set the djed which followed their self-destructive pathways against one another, sparkling antithetical reactions that poisoned the whole glyph. Hard, almost angry slashes made up the majority of the sixteen-pointed dissolution rune; no gentle curves and organic flourishes here, just hard and fast imposition on the djed of the world, forcing rather than cajoling, resulting in purposeful rebellion and antithetical interaction that would, by virtue of the glyph's very instability and innate strength, expand across the paper when the trigger was spoken. As it was a trigger, though, there had to be some temporary stabilising mechanism, a support network linked to a word that could collapse at a moment's notice.

Fortunately, scholars and glyphers had worked out the principles millennia ago, and these conditionals remained unchanged, carefully-inserted and above all temporary blocks, dampeners and barriers that held the dissolution glyph in check, all of them tied, conceptually speaking, back to the trigger word itself, which she wrote out with infinite care. 'Yomi-canoch' again, for consistency.

“And this is the main part of a trigger. Most of it is what we call a dissolution rune – it's a sixteen-pointed shape that's purposefully sloppy, with lots of mistakes in it. When it releases, the corrupted djed overwhelms barriers, releasing the focus effect. Follow my finger,” she instructed, pointing to where two lines crossed. In mundane terms, nothing special, but observed through an aurist's lens the truth could be seen quite, quite easily.

Those two crossing, opposing lines were veritable arteries for the reckless djed of the glyph – even checked by the trigger support structure it squirrelcaged around its temporary confines – with many smaller conduits funnelling into them, so that when they met it was two juggernauts colliding, a messy flare that threw out toxic djed, a poisoned purple-bile aura that felt filthy and somehow unclean on the skin. “See here?” she asked quietly. “Feel that?” That was the great benefit of a scroll, of course – Lu had not only the power behind her Sight but also her own impressions as a filter; he would see the same auras in the same way, crucially, as she did, at least until the scroll's power was exhausted. “That sticky slickness on your skin? Two opposing streams of djed have crossed, and they're reacting badly together, throwing out corrupted djed as they fight – for want of a better word.”

Her finger moved again. “This here?” It was a less-chaotic portion of the glyph, a series of parallel lines that suddenly kinked almost back on themselves, uncurling suddenly into a boiling charivari of nonsensical strokes. In the aurist's world, bright lances of djed followed the lines and then suddenly splintered into a thousand tangling loops without direction or purpose. “Glyphs impose a sort of order on the ambient djed, making it conform to the concept of whatever you're glyphing. Mirrors, walls, drains, that sort of thing. This is what happens when you change idea midway through your drawing, from fish to...to...the smell of the forest, say. The concepts don't fit, they don't mesh, everything breaks down into nonsense.”

Her finger moved yet again. “Finally, here? This is feathering – one line that looks solid, but is made of many many smaller strokes, no two of them exactly aligned, because your focus wavers or you're unsure of what to do next. Djed tries to follow them all, fractures and breaks down. Bad news for most glyphs – but not this one. Always the contrarian, a trigger.”

A final finger-movement – actually, of several fingers, pointing out the more ordered constraining chains and walls that kept the whole glyph on a precariously-stable knife-edge. “These are the chains and buttresses that make the structure just about strong enough to hold out – at least until you speak the trigger word. Notice how they're all tied into that word right in the centre – remove that and the whole affair falls apart in a fairly dramatic fashion. Which is what you want.”

She clapped her hands softly after an appropriate interval, bringing her pupil's attention up from the trigger and back towards her – though she noticed he didn't look directly at her. Small wonder: an Ethaefal's divine origins were painfully evident in the aurist's world, and worse still were the fading fragments of old lives which still hung around, complicating the aura. The older the soul, the more lives before its uplift into the Goldenlands, the more complex things became – and Alses was a very old soul indeed.

“All these we'll look at again, have no fear,” she murmured. “Along with how to put them together. Reliable scrolls are just too complex for a novice to make. They are a good teaching tool, though, aren't they? Especially as you can now see as I do, so there's less room for ambiguity to creep in. Now, remember all the deliberate errors in the trigger glyph?” she asked, rhetorically. “Look at your own works, pinpoint those flaws, and try to correct them.”

Alses smiled, suddenly, the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “Get it right and we'll see about a simple – but practical – use for you to try.”

[Lu Gavima]

Lu found himself scanning the room as he held his quill in an astral grip. His senses were reeling in the power of the scroll, being so vaulted in a realm of perception had its drawbacks after all. It was like drinking in the world, with every detail of everything in it soaking into him. "Yes, the scroll." He responded as best as he could, the Projected hand being his focus in order to remain as grounded as possible.

Once Alses began to speak, Lu pointed his attention to the quill, notations resuming and some kind of order restored.

Parts of a Scroll

Focus Glyph
Barrier Glyphs
Trigger Glyph

Sigils - Groups of glyphs put together to create a larger purpose.

It was clear that he had vastly underestimated the Wizards of Lhavit. The effects of the Spring Storm had put a bad taste in Lu's mouth, a coppery thing like blood and memory. Nevertheless, if this kind of knowledge was a basic thing to them, as a stance might be to the fighting Shinya, he would have to train even harder. That meant some changes in his routine, but change was a necessary part of growth. Lu could hear the words as he wrote them, the trailing Djed of his Projection combined with the sensory power of the scroll made even such a simple task as taking notes exquisite.

The six-sixteen rule

A six pointed rune will react badly with a sixteen pointed one in proximity.

In a way, the Djed made the study so much easier. Once he could clear his perception of distractions, the lesson took on so many more dimensions. His teacher spoke of toxic djed, a concept that was not lost on the survivor of the storm one year ago. She spoke of simplicity, a thing very close to the Shinya's heart. He had known of other Projectors that expanded upon so many levels of the art, but he simply worked at the basics over and over again. Lu just felt as if a solid foundation guaranteed success overall.

Now she was back to it, her own skills. Her direction to observe closely came to eager ears, as if he could do much more. Placing the quill to the side with his astral hand, Lu allowed it to begin settling back into his flesh, his full observation on the task at hand. She set about creating something very different from before. Drawing was the mundane representation, though with clearer eyes, he could see a shimmering mirror-like force appearing. This was the barrier glyph, and as Alses explained her or their way of perceiving the barrier and then another example, it only gave Lu more enthusiasm as magic was truly an art, perceived by the user.

Her explanation continued and he could see where she was going, especially now that he was clearly seeing what she spoke of. A repeating series of barriers, however they were crafted or conceived, would keep the djed of a focus glyph trapped inside, much as it had kept Alses' vision inside the scroll for Lu to borrow. the lesson continued, the enhanced perception of auristic bliss being used as an educational tool. He watched as the blue light flashed from her fingers once more. His sensory power caught something odd about it. It was so very pure and untarnished. Her djed being used in the glyph was one thing, but the energy which flashed and aged the ink had something else in it entirely.

Unfortunately his fixation with the cerulean essence robbed him of the attention he needed for the lesson. Trying to regain his focus, Lu watched as she masterfully crafted the antithesis of the previous attempts. hard and jagged lines worked against each other as Alses created the very six sixteen event that she had warned of prior. It's simple efficiency in destroying the barriers is what released the power of the focus. using something that was known to destroy to create. Lu felt odd. Nausea wasn't the term, but something else was in the wind.

Now she was showing him a deeper level to the runes and glyphs. The sound of her voice dominated any sound in the room, the glyph became the total of Lu's vision as desk and paper seemed to be trite props. he watched as the purposeful accident came to a head, the collision throwing a purple slime on his hand. He nodded, a clammy sweat rising as he could feel the wrongness of the toxic djed. It filled him with revulsion and he had to hook his ankles around the chair to avoid jumping back. He was relieved to have his attention was moved to another part. It was still an example of a mistake, but nothing like the djed, which made his skin twitch as he wanted to shake it away.

He pushed his attention toward the trigger but his whole self felt like it was trying to shake free of his skin now. A nagging itch he couldn't scratch, his breath becoming rapid, the room closing in on him. She was speaking further but Lu was losing the ability to focus. The room was cloudy and swimming in his vision, his eyes began to itch and tire as if he had been awake for a long time. Her voice was soothing but it also pulled him around in his own mind like a rag doll, the sensory flare of the audio finally making Lu stand and kick the chair back.

Groaning, he stood and walked half blind to the wall. It was solid and cool beneath his hands, though the tactile sensations began to weave tales of the lonely nights that had passed..."No!"..Lu shook his head violently, dropping to his knees against the wall and trying desperately to regain control. "It's too much. It's too much..." Unable to hold the reins of control any longer, tears flowed freely on the boy's cheeks, a sickly sob blurting forth.

"I'm sorry,. I don't know why. I can't take it all, it's too much. I'm so weak." The admonition and self abuse only made him cry harder. In front of his teacher. It was so humiliating. He waited, praying for silence.

[Alses]

OOCInteresting turn of events . Any problems, be sure to tell me.

Alses watched, in mounting puzzlement, as Lu rose shakily and suddenly from the chair, stumbling in the manner of one drunk towards the door, mumbling incoherently as he pressed himself against the wall and sank, trembling like a leaf in a gale, down to his knees.

The smile on Alses' face crumbled away as though it had never been as Lu went, in a matter of a few ticks, from attentive student to weeping wreck. Many, many thoughts scrambled for the emergency exit in her brain, a roaring tide that swiped away any ordered considerations of the lesson in hand.

Tears were not, it had to be said, in Alses' experience very much. 'What in Syna's name do I do?' she wailed, but only for internal consumption. 'What's happened to him? He was fine just a few ticks ago!' On autopilot, almost, she rose from her comfortable curled-up position on the bed, moving towards her curled-up student on instincts older than coherent thought.

She didn't bother with idiotic questions like 'Are you all right?' It was perfectly plain for anyone to see Lu Gavima was very much not all right. The trouble was, why wasn't he fine? He couldn't overgive, after all – the magic was her own, stored, and when it ran out, that was it. Lu couldn't push himself harder to make it last longer, the nature of scroll-stored magic precluded that – so what was going on?

Clues, vital clues, came on the tear-choked burbling – 'too much'. 'Too much of what?' Alses thought wildly, then answered herself: 'Everything, probably. Our skill has proved too much for someone else to bear – we should have seen that! Now what do we do? How do I calm him down? What do we say?'

“Uh...” the words died in her throat.

'Useless!' her mind raged, as precious seconds ticked by. 'Stupid, stupid, stupid! We were watching his djed reserves – and the extra djed our scroll poured into him – so much I forgot to monitor his state! We should have thought, we should have planned, we should have known this would happen! What will happen to us now?'

Almost instantly, another part of her racing brain snapped at her to stop thinking of herself for just a moment and focus on her student.

Student. Her responsibility, no-one else's, ever since he stepped through the door and she began to tell him things. And a member of the Shinya guard to boot.

'Think, Alses, think!' Abject terror seemed to focus the mind wonderfully, her thoughts racing at tremendous speed, leaping from option to option like lightning, evaluating, assessing, concluding and then moving on. 'What was done for us when we started to lose ourself?'

The answer came with a wash of stinging embarrassment, quick as memory. Madam instructor had simply hit her, the physical shock disrupting mental processes. It wouldn't help Lu as much as it had her, given the source of his distress was external – scroll-stored magic – than his own power, but it would at least buy him some precious clarity.

Perhaps.

Only one way to find out – and that was better than sitting doing nothing.

“Lu? Look at me.” It was more of a formality than anything – she crouched beside him, twisted to more-or-less face him and brought her hand around in an open-handed slap.

“You're not weak, understand? I should have foreseen this. The fault is mine, not yours. Look up, focus on the ceiling,” she commanded, her voice more than slightly panicky despite her best efforts to remain calm. This was an unforeseen drawback – you couldn't just turn scroll-stored magic off, and it was pulling Lu's mind in so many different directions he was threatening to come apart under the strain of trying to interpret it all.

“It's skyglass, divine skyglass, yes? Untouchable and unchanging. It's self-contained, it's self-centred, it holds almost nothing, impressions find it difficult to sink in. Focus on it, think about it, let everything else fade away. You and the skyglass, that's all.” That was about all she could do – mitigation, trying to make him take control of the borrowed power and direct it against something simple, something inoffensive. It would narrow down three-hundred-and-sixty degrees of impressions pouring like tsunamis over his unprepared mind – always presupposing he could manage to focus properly. Which was doubtful – or rather, it was doubtful he could maintain it against the flood for the half-bell or so it would probably take to exhaust the remaining djed reserves. Although maybe he could surprise her.

Then again, pinning one's hopes on a 'maybe' wasn't a good strategy, most of the time. The last resort of the desperate. 'The only way to stop it would be to turn him off – maybe – but how could we do that?' Alses wondered, panicked. 'Think logically, Alse, it's served us well in the past...'

It was the matter of a moment to plunge across the room and scrabble in her old bedside table, knocking aside empty glass bottles in her haste. She always, always had an emergency supply, so where was it? Fumbling fingers didn't help, tangling around old glassware. 'Why in Syna's name did I decide to keep the empties?' flashed the silver fin of thought, and then-

“Oh, thank Syna for that!” she breathed, clasping a quarter-full bottle of rich purple liquid in her hands, hauling it out heedless of the empty vials falling to the floor. It was the work of a moment to open the phial and tilt it to Lu's slack lips. “Drink, Lu. It'll put you so far under you won't even dream.”

[Lu Gavima]

Silence came to Lu's ears, though it was of little use with the auras flaring beyond the reach of his eyes. Closing them did nothing. Besides, a wave of humiliation and embarrassment was fully engulfing the young Shinya and threatening to drown him completely. Nothing made sense, the enhanced sensation of all of it making things worse by the moment. he could hear and feel the awkwardness of Alses and it made the pain rising in his chest to a crescendo.

Lu knew she was coming close. He did all he could to still his mind, attempting to bring things into some kind of focus. Any kind of control. First, breathing. It was rapid and shallow. He brought it slowly back in, drawing in breath and hoping to wrangle the cacophony of auras that plagued him at the moment. She was sitting closer to him as it was apparent with her flaring aura that he had done his best to avoid prior. And then in a moment, a sharp strike of shock and pain caught him in the cheek. His eyes steeled up out of reflex and his focus came full circle to Alses. He wasn't sure what he was looking at, his eyes responding by widening in a sort of panic, tears still streaming.

Her words comforted him, though he wasn't sure if he would allow her to accept full responsibility. he was supposed to be in control of his world at all times. It was something his father had ingrained into his very being. His father's rhythmic dances with his long spear, his mother's long and slow strokes with her calligraphy set.

Skyglass. Up. Look at it.

His head turned away from the strange sight he had seen when he looked at his tutor. Her focus object was perfect, as Lu stared into the divine substance. Looking into it and focusing all of his observational potency into it, his mind found something that made some kind of sense, though he didn't know why. It was working, however, as all of the chaos was slowly drawing in toward a few thoughts rather than a thousand. He heard her step away and scramble about her living space. " There is something about the skyglass that reminds me of the thing you do with your hand. When it flashes. I thought that was something you were doing with Glyphing." He didn't bother trying to look down; any more stimulus would just set him off again.

Before he knew it, he was in the presence of her once more, cool glass brushing against his lips. A cool and dark substance poured over his tongue and down his throat. It tasted of despair. Swallowing, he could feel a kind of lazy numbing coming on. His neck muscles relaxed and he looked at her once more. "You have beautiful green eyes. I've never seen anything so beautiful."

Then nothing.

[Alses]

OOCSorry this took a bit, Lu - issues with med school funding have been sapping my will to write. Apologies again!

“Skyglass and the Blessing? They have the same ultimate origin,” Alses murmured absently, happy to answer a mundane, easy question even as she tilted the dusty bottle further to Lu's lips, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Skyglass is a divine present from Zintila, or so we're told, and my trick with the runes is a little gift from Tanroa. Nothing to do with Glyphery, we're afraid, more a useful parlour trick than anything else.” Talking inanely meant she didn't have to think, didn't have time to be afraid.

At last, at the insistent press of glass on lips, his mouth opened, glacially slow, as though most of his mind was elsewhere – which it probably was, in truth - and the rich purple liquid poured in. 'Not too much!' she scolded herself, quickly tilting it back and stemming the flow – he needed to sleep for a few bells, at most, not be out for days at a stretch.

Sweet Oblivion was strong stuff, after all. Even as it took effect, numbing and drowning the higher functions of a working mind in ropy tentacles of purple sleep, the scrollworked magic refused to let up its grip, especially as his focus shifted, instinctively, to her, so close by and doing her amateurish best to drug him into total insensibility.

His speech was drifting and already becoming drowsy and unconcerned, unconnected, but the Sight was still sharp, and would be right up until absolute oblivion claimed Lu Gavima's conscious mind. Even knowing he could potentially See unusual, odd things in her aura, the fading memories and impressions from many, many past lives, Alses was surprised at what he'd perhaps plucked from the swirling maelstrom, blinking stupidly at him for several long moments.

She'd expected a momentary impression of a memory for him, or perhaps a burst of a single, strong feeling, but the admixture of the forced Sight and Sweet Oblivion had instead perhaps turned inwards and projected outwards at the same time, resulting in an...unusual statement, to say the least.

“You have beautiful green eyes. I've never seen anything so beautiful.”

And then, blessedly, whilst she was still scrabbling for something to say, thoughts cascading out of her head and emergency supplies of blood pouring into her cheeks to turn them burnished red, his eyes slid fully closed, he relaxed into a boneless, somnolent state and his breathing slowed and deepened.

'Green eyes?' she thought, slightly confused and perturbed, even as she contemplated the new problem Lu's drug-induced sleep had presented – he was sprawled against her wall and her bed was on the other side of the room.

'And he called them beautiful,' she mused, still sizing up possible methods of moving him. 'Rambling, obviously,' she thought – her eyes were bright gold as a celestial Ethaefal. They were green, greener than emeralds, when she was chained to the mortal form she was forced to assume when Leth glowed palely in the sky, but how would he have seen that?

Alses considered this for several minutes as she considered the best way to hoist a sprawled Shinya who was in all probability rather heavier than she into bed – she was damned if she'd leave him on the floor. Besides, the bed and desk were nicely set up that she could keep a close eye on him whilst he slept.

'No idea,' her brain returned, just as she was uncertainly sliding one arm under his to get some purchase on his torso. 'He couldn't have pulled our mortal form from our aura, surely?' Her idea was to use her hand and his body as a leverage point and hoist him onto her back for the brief transit, but it was proving more difficult in execution than it had in theory – she winced as his head made involuntary contact with the floor as she struggled somewhat with his sleeping mass.

'He was probably hallucinating someone else at that point,' she reassured herself as she grappled. 'A – what do they call it again? - a partner? A girlfriend? Or a boyfriend, of course. Something, anyway.'

At last, she managed to get a decent grip on Lu's torso, secure enough that she could lift him without too much of a worry. There were the horns to watch out for, of course – they might have been dull, not meant as weapons, but they were still very hard, and getting an arm caught in her crown-of-horns was not on the agenda.

Mind you, reducing her student to a wreck hadn't been, either.

No more mistakes, no more mishaps, not this time. Thus it was, with infinite care and taking her sweet, sweet time about it – Lu would never know, after all – she progressed across the room and managed to get him into bed, mechanically tucking him in and watching his sleep-slackened face, serene and blank, without the torturous wrack that over-exposure had brought.

Settled, calmed, she could begin to breathe more deeply, assess the situation. The light pouring through the window, even though most of it was drenching Lu's form rather than her own, as had originally been the plan, gave her some measure of confidence in its eternal heat, and confidence was what she needed, desperately, right now.

Alses noticed, with no small shock, that she was shaking – though not cold, far from it - and oddly giddy, the initial surge of adrenaline and absolute bowel-knotting terror having propelled her thus far beginning to drain away. In its wake, a seeping weariness and all the creditors of the body lining up to present their bills.

Nothing to do now but rest and think and think and think until she had a thousand useless scenarios of how to avoid what had already happened buzzing uselessly around in her brain.

'Unless,' came the sweet, sudden thought, rising through the recriminating murk to sparkle on the swell of her mind 'We can be productive for him. As an apology.'

Prideful to the core, when the chips were down and everyone had to nail their true colours to the mast, Alses found it difficult to actually articulate the words 'sorry' to another – at least, when it concerned something important. The standard, usual uses were fine – 'Sorry we bumped into you,' 'Awfully sorry to bother you, but...' and so on, but an actual admission of sorrow, wrongdoing or guilt?

Pride could be an awful curse – she mostly showed regret by her actions, patching up relations, and hoped they would speak louder than the words she could almost never bring herself to say.

If Alses had one vote for the most difficult word, it would undoubtedly go to 'sorry'.

Besides, being 'sorry' didn't make anything any better. That was her prideful mind at work again, of course, rationalising and justifying it, just like everyone else with their foibles and fears.

Pausing occasionally to glance at Lu's sleeping form, and sometimes out into empty space, Alses set pen to paper and began to Glyph in earnest, a selection of exercises, tasks and suggestions she'd give to Lu when he woke up, for him to use (or not) at his leisure whilst he found another tutor. It wouldn't be difficult, surely, not in Lhavit of all places.

There were artfully-drawn focus glyphs, with a mixture of obvious and subtle mistakes woven into their matrix, there were barrier glyphs that weren't barriers at all, when one detached the mind from the physical construct and examined the numinous mental concept, and finally, a series of more mundane Glyphed paragraphs and questions he could attempt at his leisure.

Time, the eternal thief, had stolen most of a day from the mortals of the world, and Syna's orb had become stained with the rich crimson of fresh blood – a thought Alses shied from nervously – by the time Sweet Oblivion began to relinquish its grip on Lu and his sleep grew shallower and shallower.

She swallowed, convulsively, as he appeared to move closer and closer to full wakefulness. Confrontation, it seemed, wasn't her strong point – and a confrontation was surely in the offing.

The scrollworked djed she'd thrust into him had long since dissipated, relatively harmlessly, and the Lu that awoke would – should, rather – be in full possession of his faculties once more. By her estimation, at least.

It was what would happen after the first few chimes that concerned her, dealing with the fallout of a spectacularly botched teaching too. Especially as he was one of the Shinya.

No time to think further, though – there were definite signs of wakefulness now, getting stronger by the tick.

'Brace yourself, Alse,' she thought quietly.

[Lu Gavima]

Warmth. It washed over Lu as hebegan to regain consciousness. The bedding beneath him was luxurious and comfortable, much more than the mats he was accustomed to at the Pavilion. Lu had a bed, after all, it just generally remained made up. Sleeping on the floor kept him from becoming soft. It was the mindset of many Shinya who had grown up beneath Hayani's reign.

His mouth was dry and sticky, still tasting of the rich liquid that had been poured down his gullet. His lips smacked slightly as Syna's caress brought light to his eyelids. Slowly, his eyes started to open, though the process seemed uncharacteristically slow for him. He was groggy, as if he had slept for a year. Licking his lips, awareness began to settle in. The room looked like the one he had been in for his Glyphing lesson, though now it seemed he was where his tutor had been. A dull pain emanated from his head, his hand reflexively moving to the spot.

Opening his eyes as the light entered, the room began to take shape more fully. Looking at his hand, he saw no blood, though he was unsure of how he would have pain there. Perhaps it was a side effect of his overloaded senses.

Oh. yes. Now he remembered why he had gone to sleep. The room was no longer whispering secrets through tactile sensations. Rubbing his eyes, he turned his head and saw her sitting at the desk before him, a look of anticipation and worry on his face. "If this is how lessons will end, I am ready to sign up." He chuckled to himself and sat up, shaking his head as if the cobwebs of sleep might just fly right out of his ears. Swinging his legs over and sitting upright, the dull throb in his head heightened slightly, but it was nothing in comparison to being struck in combat. Somehow that was supposed to make it hurt less, but it didn't.

Smiling at her, Lu stretched his arms above his head and yawned. "What on Mizahar was that stuff you gave me? I don't remember much. I'm sorry that I behaved so poorly." his hand raised if she would defy him with another bout of self correction. "Really, it's okay. I just wasn't ready for that. At least I have some notes to study for our next lesson." Looking down at the floor and his feet, he worried a little himself. Would she take such a pupil who could lose control over himself so easily? Looking back up, now mirroring her look of worried anticipation, he added, "Will there be more lessons?"

[Alses]

Lu was still groggy from the Sweet Oblivion, that much was evident, his tongue tasting the air drowsily as his face creased from slack somnolence to something more approximating wakefulness. His hand went unerringly to his head – Alses winced, evidently his insensate head had met the floor harder than she'd thought – but he seemed to recover fairly quickly from the triple insult; the scrollworked magic, the Sweet Oblivion and the ignominious bump she'd given him whilst manhandling his limp body into the bed.

“It was Sweet Oblivion,” she murmured, dealing with that part of his question before the more...difficult things. “A philtre. You're aware of kariino tea?” she asked, a clarifying question before confusion could take hold. “It's a mild sedative. Sweet Oblivion is a much more powerful, distilled form, much more effective. Quicker, too. We've become quite adept at making it, over the years, although we're no great shakes at philtering generally. I'm trying to improve, but...it's slow going, as with most things.” A dreamy, disconnected sigh, and then an abrupt snap back to the here-and-now, the less-than-pleasant (under the circumstances) present.

“'Tis a useful elixir when the world presses too strongly and we just need a night of dreamless and deep sleep. And, we've now found, for protecting unprepared minds, too.” Her gaze turned speculative and pensive in almost equal measure. “Wouldn't advise having any more of it for a while, though – it's a little addictive in quantity. When it's this strong, at any rate.”

'Rambling, Alse,' she admonished herself, and tried to get back on track, especially as Lu had just spouted nonsense – it had to be nonsense – as though it were the most reasonable thing in the world.

“Sign up?” she echoed incredulously. “You wish for more teaching? From me? The magic must have truly addled you,” she said, shaking her head, the crown-of-horns catching the light and blazing bloodred for just an instant. “We did almost send you mad, you realise?”

A slightly rueful grin, then, a tilt of the head and a careful consideration from glittering golden eyes, weighing and measuring and evaluating. “Mind, that's the mark of a wizard through and through – always just avoiding the madness. Learning and learning, pushing onwards through the jungle of ignorance towards the sunny uplands of knowledge, and behind us a trail for others to follow, traps avoided and information gained.” Alses gave him a sudden, bright smile.

“We always felt that was a more appropriate metaphor for knowledge than the one about pools and rivers. Or perhaps that was just specific to Zeltiva. It made more sense there, I suppose. Port city, abundance of water, shortage of foliage...” that last was more to herself than anything, an idle musing on a topic that had caught in her tiring brain.

To get back on track, she tapped the sheaf of papers she'd been writing on together and proffered them, still slightly nervously, to Lu. “Some exercises for you to attempt,” she announced, waving away his apology with an absent hand. The fault had been hers – she was the teacher, the more experienced one here. Or at least, she should have been.

“We were able to work them up whilst you were...” she cast around, vainly, for a suitable word “...recovering. There is a selection of more specialised glyphs you should practice with – write out what you think they are for and how you might slot them together to achieve different effects. There are also several Glyphed passages you should read, and write replies to each in kind. It will expand your glyphic concept repertoire, which is always useful. Good practice for the runes, too. You won't run into any trouble, magically speaking, with these.” A brief nod. “They'll tide you over until you can find a better teacher. Or, if you're game enough to continue with me, we'll look them over next time.”

'And speaking of time, Alse...' murmured the still, quiet voice in her mind, mentally pointing her to her connection with the sun, a gentle and insistent reminder from the most primal parts of her that sunset was fast approaching, the last crimson rays moving across the landscape in a silent, bloody swansong.

“Take it slowly for the next day or two, whatever you do,” she admonished, not quite looking at Lu, eyes drawn like magnets to the window. “Just in case. If you start to feel unusual, for Syna's sake go to the Catholicon and have yourself examined. Bills to come to me, since we got you into trouble in the first place.”

[Lu Gavima]

Sweet Oblivion.

It had a nice ring to it and it was an apt description. Lu thought about it and did recall the kariino, though he had never had the tea. He sort of wanted to ask her why she was so good at making sedatives, but his sleepy mind really didn't care very much. he just rolled his neck in a circle as she continued to speak. Her reasoning seemed sound, however. It was clear enough that his was an unprepared mind. Strangely enough, he felt little concern for this. He found himself licking his gums for the essence of the elixir.

He giggled a little when she seemed so surprised that he wished to continue on. "Was I mad? Hmm." It was as if someone was having a conversation with him about an interesting conversation he had had the night before. It wasn't as if Lu ever did anything so frivolous, but perhaps it would help him to do so. " I can tell you this much ,Alses. Madness or not, I truly enjoyed the lesson. Not as much as I enjoyed your elixir, but yes, it was very informative." He was quite happy with the idea that he was a Wizard. Just (days?hours?) before, it had seemed so important. His eyes scanned the shelves for more bottles, though he would never steal. Maybe she would sell him some down the road.

His attention turned to the work that his tutor had prepared in his absence from consciousness. Standing, he felt a slight wave of euphoria and woozy, but he kept with it. It didn't take a mind reader to understand that it had been trying for her and Lu did not want to extend the discomfort. His hands began to gather all of the work, along with his own supplies, though he kept dreamily looking at the beautiful creature before him. He took her warnings to heart, though he felt like he would be fine. He hadn't felt so carefree in a long time and it was a pleasant change of circumstance.

As he approached the door with his supplies, opening it and looking back at her, he nodded with her suggestions. With a slight slur, he simply said, "Thank you, Alses. You are an excellent teacher. Thank you for taking care of me. I promise to seek help if needed. You are an excellent teacher." He smiled and nodded, stepping out into the dying day. As he walked back, well more glided, he thought about the knowledge he had gained, the woman he had engaged with and mostly the sweet, sweet oblivion.

OOC :

I'm all done here, Alses. Feel free to either post a finish for yourself or submit as you wish. Looking forward to Summer!