17th of Spring, 513AV
The ashes coated Gad's sinuses, lining his throat with a horrid bitter grime that he could taste every time he swallowed. The cool wind blew through the open hole in his apartment that passed for a window, despite the tattered cloth tacked onto it. Just a few weeks ago Sunberth was eating itself. And now, the residents had decided commission to the flames was a quicker way out. Truly, this was life in marvelous times here in Sunberth. Gad considered the circumstances as the errant wind blew more of the tastes and smells of the raging city his way, but when the breeze halted and the air was still, the young Wizard's attention focused on the task at hand.
He was sitting on the floor of his bare room in the Sunset Quarters, his legs crisscrossed and his arms limp in his lap. In his unmoving hands rested a piece of charcoal, gathered from a long smouldering rubble not to far from his room, product of yesterday's citywide shenanigans. From Gad's holey window a shaft of mid morning light shown down, and the column of goldenrod highlighted part of an elaborate maze drawn in black charcoal on the hard floor. Gad surveyed with critical eyes his creation, and finding it satisfactory began his exercise.
The djed unhinged itself from his physical body and each arm went numb as it flowed into a new container. This form was kept intact purely through Gad's will, as the djed's tendency was to disperse and slowly seep back into it's point of origin. This unseen form the force took was, fuzzily, the shape of Gad's physical arms. Beads of salty sweat accumulated on Gad's brow as he focused, breathing deeply from the base of his torso the whole time. The default form was of course the same as his arms, but even that took will and concentration. Applying even more focus, Gad took from his now unfeeling hands the charcoal that he'd used to draw the maze. The sensations he received from his ghostly hands was altogether different from what he felt when he touched things physically. The shock of touching any object with one's true force washed over the ephemeral body part each time one did so. Gad's magic trembled as coldness and faint stinging washed over his spiritual fingers and reverberated up and down his intangible arms until it finally leveled out. Even once it did, the sensation was still uncanny. Rather than only feeling the texture where he touched it, the surface of his projection felt all over the dusty rough softness of the charcoal. He bounced the clump of burned wood in his hand and measured the effects of the weight shifting around.
That was it. All the properties of the charcoal that Gad had noticed seemed amplified, but there were somethings about it he couldn't sense at all. Weight for instance. Normally tossing or jostling it around he could feel a weight shift, a change in the intensity of how heavy the object felt. But now he only felt a tactile change. When the weight shifted Gad couldn't feel it, instead he felt a shift in the intensity of it's texture. It was something he'd noticed using the magic before. Whenever he felt he couldn't move a force with his real arms the sensation was putting force against an immovable object. His projections, however, felt much more like there was a painful sensory overload, as if they were receiving too much feedback or they were touching the essence of an object too closely. Like he was feeling more of something's essence than he could handle. In any event, the charcoal was well with in his power range.
He took the piece wobbling through the air. He set it down at the start of his maze. His projected hands quivered a bit, just like he's real ones did when under scrutiny. Gad took the charcoal and slide it along the ground, carefully staying with in the lines, though wandering awfully close to them often. The maze wasn't a challenge of the mind of course, as Gad had drawn it himself and already knew the way out. It's winding corridors were designed to work the dexterity of his projections. He could feel the strain increase as to complete the maze his projected hands grew further and further away from where he was sitting, until they were nearly the whole length of the room apart, and he had to pace himself carefully not to risk over giving. As he worked the winding, twirling and zig-zaging pathways the strain lessened; he'd drawn the maze so that he'd have to come back towards himself to finish it. Bringing the charcoal into the finish point he released it and relaxed for a bell.
Then flexing the magic hand's grip, he picked the charcoal up and went back the other way with it. The maze's windy path led all over the room, small as it was, and forced Gad to extend his range on manipulation to it's limits. He finished the maze, and then went back again. He didn't trace his lines, but each time strove to draw the smoothest path he could. About half way through each go around he felt the strain, as the path took his reach to the far end. He worked the maze for as long as he could, until the floor was smeared with oily black dust and his charcoal was depleted. Gad reabsorbed the orbiting hands and took a walk out into the courtyard of the Quarters.
He drew a good bucket from the well and brought it back up to his room. He considered for a moment, cleaning with projections but decided that would be too much of a strain and too slow, so he hastily scrubbed the black off with his tattered cloth that passed for drapes and lit a fire so that it dried quickly. Over a spit he slid some questionable looking red meat he'd bought earlier that morning seaside. After it was cooked, he put out the fire and grabbed the meat still hot and greasy and spent midday gnawing on the muscular tissue. He wiped his greasy hands on the same makeshift drapes and then got back to work.
This time when he projected, he focused more on the sensation of the initial process. When the projections worked their way out from his arms, he'd always pictured it a certain way before. Before he thought that the projections were something separate from his arms, a motive force stored within to be released at will. In a sense this wasn't wrong, but as he released the projections from his body, he discovered it wasn't the most accurate either. The force, these projections, seemed not to be some separate item, but a quality of his arms. The idea of his arms, the part of them that manipulated the world, that quality they had to apply force to objects and interact with the environment. It seemed to Gad that what he did when projecting was actually detaching the essence of agency from his hands, and then used that to interact with the world. His philosophical musings made sense to him, but they didn't exactly make it much easier to project.
His hands, or the force of them, or whatever, were now floating projected in front of Gad. The meaty appendages flopping by his side served no purpose. He grinned to himself, pleased as he often was with his 'brilliant idea'. He began to bounce on his toes and took a measured breath. His floating hands arrayed themselves to be in the position that a boxer about Gad's height would be in. He struck out with them. Gad felt a hard pounding sensation right in the right side of his face, smashing his nose and eye. To his surprise, the ghostly punch had landed. The wizard's intention was to test the range but his perception of just where in space his hands were was off. Understanding now that he perhaps might hit himself unintentionally, Gad began to take his devised exercise more seriously.
He bobbed and weaved around his room, avoiding the sound of quick fists cutting through air. Simultaneously, he did his best to track his own movements, which was harder than you think when they're mirrored and disembodied. The hand's he boxed shadowed him and struck out from the nether. He landed a few good shots to the body and face on himself, to the young Wizard's ambivalence. More of his energy was devoted to keeping up with himself however. To a corporeal fighter the room was small and Gad didn't move too fast, and the duration of the exercise was only a few minutes at a time in short bursts. However, his projections moved slower through space than his evading feet and body, and even slower as he danced out of his own range. The exercise forced his projections to the end of their range and to constantly work to have to stay with in it.
When all was said and done, Gad was out of breath from the dance of avoidance and the projection. He drank the unused water and sat crisscrossed as feeling returned to his arms. They trembled as tingling pins and needles shot up and down them and circulation increased. The wizard sat there massaging them. The breeze brought in another whiff of smoke. In the distance the fire burned. |
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by Gad on April 1st, 2013, 7:48 am 
