Completed The Aura of a Scroll

[Tsaba]

75th Summer, 513AV It had been fourteen days since Tsaba had pushed her way out of her old form, and into her new one. Fourteen days of pacing herself, of learning to do old tasks with new hands, of waiting for her strength to return. Fourteen days of self-imposed half-blindness, where she avoided looking at auras except with the greatest of care, and put strict limits on her experimentation. Fourteen days of having a complete fire scroll laid out and ready to study, and not letting herself look at it. Fourteen days was long enough. Tsaba sat down at the tiny desk in the corner of her room and laid out the scroll in front of her. She closed her eyes, and focused, beginning to quietly chant. She focused on the form, the cadence of the words, their intent already well worn into her mind. "Djaspond dalat. Irst Radjudt. Abase pechit pond. Caposirst, daeqirst... radjudt!" She opened her eyes, and focused immediately on the pink hazy aura of the scroll. She ignored the grain and temperature of the parchment, the dead thing that the living magic was bound to. She focused on the magic, the moving, rippling waves of soft pink, let them sharpen in her vision. The magic, as she'd suspected, pooled around the focus. But it spread out, diffused across the page, and even the most tranquil pool had tiny ripples. Those ripples spread outward and pushed against the barrier only to bounce back, like waves hitting a seaside fortress wall, concentrating and complicating the flow of magic inside the circular barrier. Tsaba smiled to herself. She was only just beginning her analysis, and already, it had been worth the wait.

[Tsaba]

Tsaba focused on the flow of the magic, the ripples it made, trying to get a sense for the movement. When she'd first learned Auristics, she'd been taught to use it to diagnose human illness, and to see the auras as a movement of energy, looking for the parts that were disconnected or moved counter to the whole. But the energy didn't move like anything that was in a living person. She wasn't looking at the movement of blood or heat or breath; the paper was dead, inanimate. She was looking at an energy pattern bound to the paper, permeating the symbols. It reminded her of... Of... Tsaba looked down at her own hands, holding the thought of the scroll's aura in the back of her mind like one might hold one's place in a book with a finger. Dead flesh, which she was sure she'd never get used to, held moving energy, spreading between anchor points on her palms, feet, chest, and presumably forehead and tongue. Her own energy was more.... stable than the scroll's, held securely as it was within her vital ichor, but the similarities were clear. She used to think that her energy didn't move much, and indeed there was no actual circulation of ichor in her body, but she could see a restless movement in the energy that moved between the anchor points and diffused into the rest of her body. The energy was stronger than when she'd looked at it seven days after the transfer, but it wasn't as... settled as she had been in her previous body, which made the restless ripples easier to see. Tsaba turned her full attention back to the scroll, to the aura of pink energy moving along the page. But there was... something... something else nonphysical. Something that didn't glow, or move... something that was just there. A characteristic not of the paper, or of the ink, or of the moving magic; not flowing, but not dead. Tsaba sat forward. That... was interesting.

[Tsaba]

The aura that Tsaba had noticed was difficult to see. If living auras were complex systems of waves, then the one she was trying to pull out was the sheen of steam on sand, a mirage. It danced away when she tried to focus on it... but it was there. Perhaps beyond her ability to understand. But present. The pale silver-blue sheen danced away from her focus, but it was simple enough to track; a thread of energy -- not moving, just present -- from trigger glyph to barrier, interwoven in the barrier, and threaded through the focus. If the barrier and the focus were connected, she couldn't see it, but it was difficult to see much at all in there under the haze of the fire spell. Tsaba couldn't be certain what she was looking at. But logically, it could only be the aura of the glyphs themselves. And if she could understand them... If she could properly observe the pattern, note it down, dissect it, learn how it was produced (or revealed, or called forth, or whatever glyphing did) then she could understand the art of glyphing itself. She could peel back the layers and see; she could write it, explain it... why had nobody done so before? Why, in all her searching, hadn't she found any text, or allusion to a text, or even mentioned the use of glyphing on auristics? And why.... why couldn't she see the aura properly? It was there, just out of reach, a glimmer of hints, a pattern of threads outside her vision, beyond comperhension... but she was smart. She studied. She analysed and dissected, and she had time. As much as she needed. She felt half-blind, not being able to see something so obvious. But that was a veil that she would pull back over time, until she could see properly, could understand and utilise. And her spiritual eyes would open. She just had to look harder.

[Tsaba]

It didn't matter how she poked at the hints of aura of the glyphs, she couldn't comprehend. She could barely identify them. She might half-suspect that she was imagining them, tricking herself into seeing what wasn't there; except of course that there was no reason to think that, beyond her own thick-headed, narrow-minded inability to hold onto the aura. There was no reason for them not to be there. The aura existed, as surely as the layers telling her that the parchment was rough and made of dead plant matter and room temperature existed, as much as the pink haze of magic existed. The magic had seemed so exciting when she'd started her investigation, but now it was just in the way. Well, she could do without it. She could make more glyphs without that layer, sterile glyphs, unused glyphs. She put the scroll to the back of her mind once more, and reached for fresh parchment and her brush. She was careful to move further along her desk, so that she wasn't drawing anything on top of the active scroll; one ink spillage could destroy the barrier and quite possibly kill her. Something clattered to the floor, a heavy thud and rustle, but that was unimportant; paper was important, the aura was important. She dunked her brush and laid out a focus glyph in quick, sure strokes; the fastest she'd ever drawn. Her eyes were on the paper in front of her, but her mind was still on the scroll, still following the waves of power within, still chasing the pure pattern of the glyphs. She put the last few strokes of the focus into place, and then shifted her attention to its aura instead. She saw the fuzzy hint of ink on paper. Nothing more. But why? Her glyphs were functional, she knew that. They may not be great but they should work. Maybe they weren't good enough for the aura to be defined enough for her to detect, yet. After all, even Dr Marin's left an aura she could barely find. Maybe she needed to find a true masterwork example of the art. Or maybe, maybe she'd made a mistake. Tsaba examined her focus glyph, but she couldn't see the problem, the disconnect. No, that wasn't right.... she couldn't see the lines. She knew the paper in front of her was inked, but she couldn't trace the ink on the paper, beyond the vague spots of damp hinted at in the paper's aura. She couldn't... She couldn't see the ink. She was just looking at the aura. Gaining information from the aura. She couldn't physically see the parchment. Tsaba was blind.

[Tsaba]

Tsaba shut off her Auristic sight immediately, and willed herself not to panic. Blind. That was... well, that was a problem, for a scribe. A very serious problem. But she could deal with it. She could. She had to. Changing bodies might help? Maybe. Yeah. She could just change bodies. Except that the eyes weren't the problem. Her eyes were already dead. That they functioned was an aspect of the Animation magic that made her what she was and bound dead flesh to her will. The problem was within her magic, her life force, her... her soul. Body switching might 'reset' her natural abilities, including her sight, but she couldn't count on it. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened. She'd lost track of time. She hadn't set a candle with her normal rule of pulling out when it was extinguished. But she wouldn't have heeded it anyway; she hadn't even noticed her blindness. Would she have noticed a candle going out? Of course not. She'd been too busy chasing an auristic mirage, trying to see everything. And now she could see nothing. Perhaps... perhaps she could refine her ability to see auras enough to compensate. Over time, she might be able to read and write text through auras alone. She might become as good... better... than she had been before beginning her scroll analysis. But until then, she would be useless. A blind scribe, a scribe who couldn't read or write. Pathetic. Tsaba had started out as a 'blind' scribe, one who copied texts without being able to read them. Over time, she'd taught herself. But there could be no such learning curve for one who actually couldn't see. She'd have trouble navigating halls, let alone reading. Or writing. Or glyphing. Or learning about the world. Or interviewing strangers. Or writing to, or receiving letters from, her foster father, her only true lifelong friend. Her life was over. In one single investigation, she'd lost control of herself, and somehow managed to mess up immortality. Again. But none of that was what worried her the most. What truly worried her was that in spite of everything, in spite of the risks and the very real consequences, she wanted nothing more than to turn her Auristic sight back on, and observe what the damage was doing to her own aura.

[Tsaba]

Why not, though? Without her sight, she had no further opportunities. Why not just burn herself out in one last investigation? Because it could come back. that was why. Overgiving could result in temporary sensory loss. In fact, it most likely was temporary. She should wait. But wait for how long? Temporary could mean one Bell. It could mean one year. What was she supposed to do? Sit still and hope? Besides, either something was dangerous or it wasn't; either she'd done permanent damage, or she hadn't. A peek at her own aura might make things worse, true, but if she was careful, the damage would probably be proportionally slight, especially compared to what she could learn. In fact, if her sight was to return, that was all the more reason to look; the effects of overgiving on one's own aura could be very useful, or at least very interesting, information. And she was depriving herself of that information -- the world of that information. What was the point of being able to see auras, if she didn't use it? Without her sight, shouldn't she be working even harder at truly seeing? After all, if she focused on an aura, maybe sight wouldn't seem so important. Maybe she could stop panicking. Panicking... Tsaba had faced panic before. There were ways to deal with that. She forced herself to stop breathing (nervous habit, even after so many years... childish, really) and tried to remember what the last book on personal magic she'd read had said about overgiving. Once can use too much of their own magic, an action known as overgiving. As one is essentially manipulating their own vital force to utilise magic, a severe or sudden weakening in this manner can cause unbalance, and a variety of symptoms, including sensory or mobility loss, loss of magical control, delusions, hallucinations, obsession, insanity, and death. Often, the body will struggle to regain balance, and the symptoms may fade; the timescale for such events is highly variable. However, some symptoms are permanent. It is believed that the effects of overgiving, even when the subject has apparently recovered, may be cumulative, which may account for the slow descent into madness observed in many wizards. Whether or not this is correct, personal magic is an extremely dangerous activity, and should be undertaken with great care and caution. Was that right? It sounded right. She couldn't check, of course. She tried to remember the overgiving section of the previous personal magic book. And then the one before that. Tsaba had always had a keen memory, and undeath had, if anything, sharpened it. Of course, since she had nothing to check her memories against, she couldn't know how accurate they were. But trying to piece together various book passages was diverting, even if it wasn't useful. And diversion was what she needed. She was about five overgiving passages in when her room started to look sort of grey, and joy gripped at her spine. She was seven passages in when she was able to recognise the outline of her own desk. She was twelve passages in when she saw what a mess her room was. And only then did she let herself stop, and did the full impact of what had happened hit her. If Tsaba was still capable of crying, she would have. Instead, she just muttered garbled, incoherent thanks to whatever gods might be around. That had been close. Too close. And dangerous. And her room was a mess. Parchment and books had fallen to the floor when she'd reached for a sheet to glyph; without even thinking about it, she was crouched on the floor, inspecting the books for damage. They seemed fine. She'd splashed ink on one corner of her desk, and all over her left hand. And the focus glyph she'd painted... even knowing what she had been trying to do, it was unintelligible, a collection of random, wonky lines. Apparently it was difficult to draw intricate shapes without being able to see them. Dr Marin's scroll was miraculously undamaged, and Tsaba packed it carefully away. Not just to protect it, but to protect herself from temptation. She would learn. She would understand. And someday, she would see the aura of the glyphs as clearly as she could see the heartbeat of a living human. But she wouldn't be tricked by her own hubris and impatience. She wouldn't fall into that trap. She couldn't learn to see more by losing sight of what she already had -- time. Senses. Information. Magic. She had to be smart. She had to be careful. She had the assets; she just needed to use them wisely. And that way, someday, she could properly see exactly what the power was that she held.

[Abstract]

Tsaba

Skills

+ Auristics - 2
+ Observation - 2

Lores

+ Finally able to use Auristics again
+ The Aura of Anna's fire scroll
+ Blind from Overgiving

Other:


Notes

Not too much to give here, but that was... interesting. I decided not to give any overgiving effects from this, since you showed them well, but I might add something a little more permanent next time

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about this grade, please PM me and we can work it out!