Solo Maledicting As Quiet As A... Rat?

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

56th of Fall, 514.

Nothing but mountains, as far as the eye could see. He was used to it, by now though - seeing the land without an inch of level soil. Just jagged mountains that all looked so small from afar. The only way the Pycon could really get around was along the length of the small hills and mountains, slowly climbing wherever it levelled out even slightly before winding his way around. Of course, that just meant that he had to follow the mountains all the time.

Today, to get where he hoped to go, he'd been sent on a particularly long walk - although, walk didn't really suit what he'd been doing. The wooden stick was once again jammed into the small gap between two rocks in order to help the small Pycon climb higher - currently he had taken on more of a hedgehog-like body, with a rounded torso and stubby little arms - along the edge of the slant of the mercifully shallow hill. Thick rocks were dug into what little soil there was to be seen, in all directions. It was a miracle he'd managed to climb this far along the edge of the thing, considering the distance it was from Pyconia. Still, he was determined to find something - heck, find anything. In such a place as the Unforgiving, one could expect to find a skeleton hidden around the edges of the land at some point. So far, though.. nothing. Not even the hint of the existence of a land-mammal wandering about. He wasn't going to give up, though. He stabbed the blunt butt of his stick into the ground once again - only to have it grasp at nothing, and grate along the stone as he tried to put weight on it. Small pebbles rolled away underneath his feet and slid off down the incline, nearly dragging the Pycon away with them. That was close...

After a few more chimes, he faced what he'd known ever since he'd set off. He wasn't going to find anything. The place was just so inhospitable to everything, he wondered exactly why it was that Pycons had even bothered to settle in such a place - apart from the bounty of clay. There would be plenty of clay in Sahova, if a Pycon just bothered to go over there and see for themselves, he was sure. Instead he was damn stuck here, on the other side of the world, struggling to even take five steps without tripping over another rock. He wasn't looking forward to the long walk back for nothing. But then.. why did he have to go back, any way. Just ahead was a rather large, flat rock jutting out of the ground at a slant that was close to horizontal; a nice place to sit down and relax for five chimes while he gathered his breath and considered what his Malediction teacher had taught him on Reimancy. I suppose it's not like any of the other Pycons will see me while I'm here. Now's a better time than ever. Plus, it wouldn't make the experience utterly useless after all.

He scrambled the rest of the way towards the rock, and finally eased his way around it until the little hedgehog-Pycon could find a lower portion that he could climb onto with little difficulty. Atop what little height it gave him, the Pycon was given an even wider panoramic view of what he could only guess would be a huge expanse of the Unforgiving. It'd take.. seasons to cross all of it, he'd heard from the few Pycons that passed on their way through the region. Goodness knew how long it'd take to cross the rest of the way between Kalea and Sahova.. whatever region Sahova was in, at least. He hoped it was close. It's beautiful.. but why the petch does it have to be so big.

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

After his legs folded themselves beneath him, he knew what he needed to do. He needed to find a way to tap into his inner reserves - his Res, his djed. He didn't really know which of the two, but it wasn't really important as long as he picked the right one and called upon it. There was only one way to do it, however. He needed to close everything off.. close the view until there was nothing but darkness, and turn away from the feeling and the sound of the soft wind pressing against his ears. Everything needed to fade away, until there was nothing the mouse and his mind, alone. There, deep inside his mind, where there was only the blackness of creativity, he could call upon the light. It was, he'd been told, the source of his magic and all magic that came from within him. The Symnestran had called it the Light. He had to call for this light, he had to tap into it, in order for it to share some of its light with him. He could never take too much of the light, or it would fade and disappear.

It made the inside of his nexus feel warm and happy, when he visualized the light - something he'd never really understood, but once again, something that was not important for this. As he began tugging gently on it, at first the light almost seemed to resist - eventually, though, a little trickle of the light began to run off and eventually leave his nexus. He could feel it leaving that little space deep inside his mind, and eventually siphon off into his body. From there, it welled like a tiny little puddle, that threatened to overflow. It took a steady, controlled breath not to let this happen though. He needed to be disciplined, he needed to be calm and he needed to be in control of the situation. He was in control of his own mind, of his own magic.. he was in control, mostly. One day, he would be able to call upon enough Res to level a mountain. Until that day, he would focus and he would concentrate.

Both of his paws came from where they'd been holding his knees, and cupped the air before him. He could feel the puddle inside of him swelling just a little more, and it was only a matter of time until it... toppled. Little droplets of Res began to leak from his clay, bubbling into little dribbles that hovered about in place in the cusp of his paws. This is it. This was what he wanted - a rather thick, strange-looking cyan fluid that spilled in the air and wavered in place. It seemed to be locked in place, in a perpetual state of spilling from a cup, just rounded off into a little droplet. As if the rain had been stopped by the ground and left in the air to wander aimlessly. The way it wobbled gently, and sparkled with some strange kind of luminescence was oddly comforting for the little hedgehog as he sat and stared at what he had created. Few people will know the joys that can be made from this.. and fewer still will know what pain. He didn't know what really put this philosophical mind to his body when he performed this strange act.

Eventually, enough had been released and he slowly tapped the flow of djed that had streamed through his arms. There was still a faint drain working through his mind as the bubbles rose and fell under his control. It was like lifting a fairly heavy weight and then holding it at that same spot.. it wasn't as bad as when he was lifting it for now, but it'd become harder and harder, the more he held it in place. Likely until he simply wouldn't be able to hold it up any longer.. and he really didn't want that. However, he still wanted to play around with it, at least a little.

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

Pushing the Res to where he wanted it to go was a more difficult task than he'd anticipated. The material required rather intense concentration and visualization in order to move it in the direction he desired - even then, it was somewhat difficult to move it around. In some ways, it really was like water.. flowing left and right when given the slightest opening. It was all that he could do to cup it in his metaphorical paws of influence and hold it in place. This was already becoming quite draining.. he couldn't really feel the tiredness seeping through his clay but he could feel slight tremors and shaking in his paws. Perhaps it was just the exertion of influence.. or he was beginning to drain himself. Either way, he wasn't about to wait around and find out. Sitting so quietly, so still while the sparkling liquid dribbles steadily drooled out in two opposite directions would likely be boring to anyone else.. but the hedgehogs mind was running across regions in mere ticks, with his pupil-less eyes shifting back and forth constantly.

Over the course of what felt like bells upon bells, but was in fact just about thirty or forty ticks, a needle-like body appeared in the liquid. It wasn't very long, barely a few inches.. and it was much thinner too. To a human, it would be a toothpick, but to the hedgehog it was a work of art. The little spear still needed influence to hold it together, in place.. but it was a worthy sacrifice of a few ticks to take in the view before he finally began the transmutation. He didn't have as fine-tuned control over what parts he transmuted as he would have liked, but he still tried. Pressure, mild pain was beginning behind his eyes as he struggled to hold himself together through picking out which parts of the Res he wanted to transmute.. but in his struggles he slipped, and suddenly the entire thing transmuted at once. There was a mild dizzy spell in his head, but thankfully he managed to catch the tiny spear before it crumbled upon impact with the ground - it wasn't very stable, after all. He could likely snap the thing over his knee, if he so wished.

However, he found better uses for it. He'd not noticed it before.. but apparently remaining completely still and utterly focused on the spear in his grasp had allowed a relatively large rat to creep by unnoticed and unaware of the hedgehog that sat on its haunches a few steps away. It had retreated a small distance thanks to the sudden, jerking movements but had apparently calmed again in the time it'd taken for the hedgehog to slow himself and try to calm down the little judders running through his body - along with the moderate headache he was now sporting. He wasn't very used to spears.. either throwing them or stabbing with them, in combat or just for hunting. That didn't mean that he was going to let this golden opportunity disappear forever, though.

Almost on instinct, his quills tightened against his back and formed seamlessly against it, and his rather chubby body became more slender. He didn't know why now, of all times, he'd begin changing but then the idea hit him - well, if he changed, then he could sneak up on the animal without rousing suspicions until the last moment. Once a long tail had formed behind him and the hedgehog had become a rather convincing mouse, if he did say so himself, he lowered himself as close to four legs as possible with the spear still held delicately in one paw, as he crawled casually along the ground near to the rat. At first, it pulled back, but stopped a small distance away. Cyq kept gently pushing, trying to test a bit of boundary as he watched for sudden signs. There were none, thank goodness.. he didn't know if he had the energy, given the time and effort it'd taken to create the spear, to chase after the rat across most of the Unforgiving.

When he thought he was close enough, he reared and struck with the spear extended as far as he thought it could possibly go. It struck the rat on the front-right leg, and sent it into a fit that nearly broke the spear in two. The hedgehog persevered and dug the thing in deeper, leaning enough of his weight onto the spear that it struck straight through the rats chest and out of the back. After more struggling - which caused the spear to break to little pieces of stone and soil - it finally became still in its last moments, before turning cold.

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

There was little time to waste - it was nothing short of a miracle that he kept his malediction kit around at all times, afixed over one shoulder. He soon dislodged it from its place and glanced over the various tools, before looking back to the dead rat that lay before him. He needed to decide what he was going to get rid of.. what he was going to keep. Suddenly he was at a complete loss for himself.. after all, he had an entire body to himself. The only parts that would be useful, would be the skin and the bones though. The muscles and the organs, he could just cut them away and leave them to be gone with. Some animal would find them useful. That still left him with one problem.. how was he going to get it all out, and keep it intact too? He definitely wanted the skins.. the fur coats of these animals wasn't exactly the best medium since he wasn't very skilled in drawing out shapes or patterns just yet with a paint-brush. He had some, but that was beside the point.

The first thing to take out was the hunter's knife, which he inserted into the neck of the mammal. He couldn't just slam the thing in, of course.. he tried to be as gentle as possible, although it took considerable amount of force for the Pycon and once done, he felt like he'd pushed a little too far. That was beside the point.. whatever lay inside was of little concern to the rat, besides the bones of course.. and he wasn't going to be cutting them up with a hunting knife, that was for certain. Either way, he kept the incision going all the way down until it reached between the legs, and by then there was a pretty serious blood flow. He had to wipe off as much as possible with his arm - he could wash the stuff off later anyway - just to see the rather rough and jagged line he'd written down the mouse's front. Unfortunately he still had to make extra incisions - horizontally between the legs, and then again over the throat to give the flaps on either side some room to be pulled back to expose the inner organs. He knew that he'd eventually have to clean up all of this stuff.. he'd find a spring somewhere, likely.

"Blasted.. disgusting organs." He was glad that he didn't have any of them. It was pretty damn hard to find what he was looking for among all the bloods and other visceral fluids that took no time pooling out from the various pores and capillaries that the Pycon had likely torn apart in his escapade, but he finally found the first squishy organ - or at least, what felt like one. The chest was not to be trifled with yet, because he'd likely need to bring out the bone-saw in order to have a chance with that damn ribcage.. the one set of bones that he couldn't really think of much use for. He'd likely find something, sooner or later.. it wasn't like he was going to let a single piece of these bones fall to waste. The only reason he was letting go of the organs and muscles was because he had pretty much no use for them at all - they'd likely just decompose, and even if he did have them with him, they'd be more obvious to the nose than bones would. One day, he'd find a way to preserve them perfectly and permanently.. but until that moment came along, he'd just have to get rid of them...

Or use them as bait, to catch something bigger and better. Oh, yes.

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

When he tried to pull at whatever it was, he found that it just wouldn't come away. When he wiped some of the blood away, it soon became obvious just why - it wasn't an organ, it was another fleshy layer below the fur and skin. Muscle. More disgusting things.. This time, he didn't care about the preservation of the insides or really keeping it a 'clean' job because it just wasn't going to be one anyway. He dove with the blade down inside the middle of the midsection of the rat and began pulling it back and forth, using the serrated edge to keep grinding away until the stuff fell away far enough that he could reach inside the new gap with one paw and begin pulling out whatever horrid stuff was inside. Plenty of warm, wet, squishy stuff that smelled absolutely awful came out in his paw, and he quickly tightened his grip on the spongy stuff to take the knife to the base and rip across quickly. There was a splatter of blood, but the insides of the rat were looking like a pool of the stuff anyway - by now, it just didn't matter.

The organs would be emptied out - one way or another - and the bones would be cleaned off, as well as the skin. Those were the two parts that were important to the mouse, and everything else was just getting in the way. It didn't matter really, how he disposed of them or how he treated them.. he was more than happy to rip into the stuff and dig it out again with his bare paws if that meant that he could get it out of the damn body before it really started to stink. The long, thin tube of muscle just kept coming out until the mouse got fed up and dropped the hunting knife at his side, just so that he could dive with both paws into the cavity and rip out as much of the stuff as he could at once. It was still attached and hung limply out of the rat, but he didn't care.. he didn't have organs, he didn't share one thing in common with this damn rat, apart from the fact that they looked similar on occasions. It was only when he dropped the knife again that he realized getting his paws covered in blood wouldn't be so great.. because he was having a hard time keeping a solid grip on the hunting knife now.

Either way, after fumbling for a while with the stuff just to make sure that he could slice the rest of the intestines away from the body and toss them aside, he got to work tearing more into the muscle and pulling it off in as large a chunks as he could find. He had to carefully dig the knife into the narrow gap between the muscle and the skin in order to pry the two apart without damaging the skin and therefore the pelt - occasionally sliding the knife down along the length of the gap in order to loosen the hold between the two before pulling them a little farther apart. Soon, there was little room to move the skin at all, and he had to continue the incision he'd already made along the front of the body. It slowly wound down, between the legs and towards the tail, before winding around it slowly - and rather jaggedly, with a few little rips because he was barely used to making a straight line in this stuff, let alone curves - before winding up a little along the lower back. There was enough left now.. he just needed to be careful with how he went with the body. The last thing he wanted to do was make a mistake and have to walk away with two separate pieces of rat-coat. He'd have to sew them together, and he didn't know a thing about sewing.

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

A narrow corridor barely a few inches apart now connected the two pieces, ensuring that he'd have plenty of room to move about as he freed away the last few scraps of muscle and skin. He was tired, though, and his work became a little sloppy. Pieces of muscle were left still attached to the skin, and instead the surrounding tissues were cut away just to make sure that the coat would be in one piece at the end of it. He didn't need the muscle or the other parts either way, so there wouldn't be any harm done in keeping a few pieces as long as he could remove them when he had more time and a bit more rest. It was hard, tiring work systematically disassembling a dead mouse that was about the same size as him, after all. He still had to scrape away the rest of the tissue and whatnot from the bones so that he could begin carving into them.. and once the last pieces of back muscle were removed from the blood-stained carcass of the rat, that was exactly what he began working on.

With parts of the muscle missing, other parts hanging at odd angles and all of it now left for all to see thanks to the removal of the skin, the body looked as though it'd been killed, eaten and then vomited up later by a Zith. He couldn't even estimate how many bells he'd spent working through the stuff but by now the smell was becoming stale in the near-evening air and Cyq was just interested in getting the rest of this job done and finished with so that he could take the bones home and begin some little tests to see just what they did. The hunting knife was once again taken to the body, slicing back and forth through thick muscle around the front-right leg to tear it away from the bone. He didn't have to be as delicate as before - the bone was strong enough to handle a blade lightly scraping over it once or twice, he didn't have to worry about the bones ripping into little shreds if he got a little too rough with it.

Once the muscle was out of the way, then it was the stringy tendons that were apparently keeping the bones stuck together. The last thing he wanted was the effects being spread out over more bones, so he quickly cut them with the serrated edge of the blade as well and set the forearm bones aside for later. He'd take out the malediction kit when he had all of the bones ready for use - if he remembered correctly, he still had a second arm to begin working with as well!

He wasn't an experienced butcher. He'd done pretty well so far, getting together the bones without breaking them or significantly damaging them before they'd be maledicted. He was lucky to have one complete set of forearm bones for use. The second set wasn't as lucky - tugging away at the bones and muscle to get them apart was all well and good, but the hedgehog wasn't exactly weak. If he was weak, he wouldn't have been able to kill the mouse in the first place. One daring rip to free up a particularly strong grip of muscle to a particular arm bone went a little too fast. The bone cracked under the pressure and he was left with half a piece of upper foreleg - humerus, was it? - in each paw. It was thoroughly disheartening. "Petch.. should have been more careful.." It was his own fault, after all. He could still find some use for it, likely.. hopefully.. though he doubted it'd be as effective as if he had the whole piece. Two halves surely wouldn't have the same power as the whole in each piece?

Either way. There was still the rest of the body to do - the torso would likely be useless, considering all it held were organs, ribs and spine. Arms had been harvested, legs were next.. then there was the skull and jaw, and he'd pack up his things and leave. The two hind-legs were pretty similar to the forelegs, apart from the extra joint at the bottom and just before the feet. They weren't that much of an issue, it just meant an extra layer of ligament to rip off with the edge of his blade. There were two more fractures inflicted over the bones, minor dents and a bit of cracking along the length, but.. it looked relatively stable. He'd know how much damage there was when he finished maledicting them either way, so there was no point worrying over it now. Instead, he dug the tip of the blade even deeper between the tiny gaps and split them apart with as little effort and as much caution as possible to free it from the last few pieces of blood-dripping muscle.

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

The hedgehog was pretty much caked in blood, from head to toe, and he still had the goriest exercise yet to go. He still needed to scoop everything out of the skull in order to provide a suitable base for maledicting. He'd need to remove the brain, the eyes, the tongue.. a lot, really. In the end, it was just too much effort.. the hedgehog decided that it'd be much more efficient to cut off the head now, sever it at the neck and slice his way through the spinal column, and then he'd deal with it later. Of course he wouldn't actually return it to Lhavit with him, the locals would likely go mental at the sight of the hedgehog dragging a rats head behind him, no matter if it was in the name of magical curiosity and experimentation. He'd find a way to work with it before he returned.. or he'd find some secret stash to hide them all away in until he found a need for them later.. or a buyer. Whichever came first, really.

He still had a pretty decent quantity of bones to work with, by now.. he didn't really know the names for them, but he could count them and he roughly knew where each of them came from. The muscle and the organs were all pushed aside to make room for the bones, which were laid out neatly before him in little rows. Top row for the front, bottom row for the back.. and the head was off to the side, attracting flies. He didn't really know which one to pick first.. but selecting at random worked pretty well. The upper right front leg, it looked like.. roughly. The small pack that had been thrown over one shoulder containing all of his malediction equipment was tossed to the ground next to the bone, as he knelt down near to it and began studying the bloodstained bone. What do I make it into.. what do I use it for. What can it be used for? He didn't really have a clue.. there was a rough idea for the pelt, but that would come later.

He had a basic idea of what he wanted the bones to do, but.. to bring it into the bones themselves was going to be something else entirely. The bone was relatively thick.. but still, he took out the smallest of the two chisels and the smaller of the two picks from the pack for use. Of course, there was a wrist-sized screw as well. After a moment of thought, he also took out the hand-vice in order to make sure that he could hold the bone steady while he went to work on it. The vice clamped down around the top of the bone, holding it in place as the screw buried through and created a neat hole. The same procedure repeated on the bottom meant he could later thread string through and keep the bone as an attachment or talisman.

The first thing to do, was to create the circle that would be the basis of the design. He already had the idea in his mind - he wanted a pair of circles running all the way around the midpoint of the bone, forming a ring of sorts. For this, he used the chisel and began slowly chipping away with the very edge - the sharpest part, which would likely need the least amount of force to get a mark. The needle-like tip barely scraped the outer layers of enamel as the hedgehog gripped it and struggled to avoid breaking down into the marrow. He didn't want to end up destroying the integrity of the bone in the process, because.. well, then it'd just be useless for day-to-day purposes. Instead, he was slow and methodical. It didn't mean that his work was particularly neat, though. The bone wasn't a flat surface.. it was three-dimensional, and the hedgehog had little experience in actually carving out these designs. The circle was pretty sloppy and asymmetrical - abnormalities made the line wander left and right, in and out, until it wasn't really what you could call a circle.. it waved up and down continuously, making it rather crude.. but it was there.

Next came the actual inscriptions. He wanted to show speed.. he wanted to capture the speed of the rat, in its legs. What better way to show that than with three arrows winding around the bone, inside the ring, though? It wasn't exactly direct, but it showed what it needed to, in his mind. He wanted to go places fast. The lines needed were straight - he didn't need to make them particularly elaborate, and that was a good thing in itself, because he wasn't sure how he was supposed to elaborate on the idea of speed in the first place. The lines were small and a little indistinct, and he made them with the smaller pick instead of the chisel. Once the first short arrow was done though, running from the bottom of the circle up towards the first third, he could see that it just wasn't going to work that way.. the lines were too narrow to be seen at all. He ran back over it with the chisel, pressing a little firmer to ensure that he made rather bold lines.. and the other two arrows went the same way as that. Three arrows in a straight line, one head touching the next's tail, winding around and around in a never-ending track. Simple but effective, just as he wanted it to be - just how it needed to be.

Next came the words, to mark alongside the designs. For these, he didn't go back to the pick, nor the chisel - instead, he took out a small pot of black paint and one of the finest paintbrushes, dipping the tip into the well and beginning to paint between the two circles. "A rat, who used its speed to escape its hunters." Fitting, really. Unfortunately the letters came out rather bunched together, and the paint wasn't spread evenly across the scripture, but it would do.

The one part left was to actually activate it.

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

With the malediction circle completed, the hedgehog took the bone in his paws and sighed inwardly. This was likely the hardest part of all - removing a part of himself, in order to activate the circle and therefore complete the Legacy. One paw lifted from the bone and hovered just above it, with the palm outstretched and pointing down as a wound slowly opened by itself, carving back in a neat line. Well, there was little point using a knife really, he had complete control over his own clay as it was. The liquid clay that lay just below the surface began to leak out in tiny droplets, pooling around his palm and refusing to remove itself from the main mass. He kept focusing regardless, closing off his sight by disconnecting his eyes from his nexus, while lowering the bone back down to the ground and reaching with his free paw for the hunting knife.

A tiny chunk of clay was ripped off with a slash of the knife, falling down to the ring that had been carved around the length of the bone and spreading out slowly, staining it with the faint orange hue of liquid clay hardening in place. Once it was done, it was done - the object was set aside for later experimentation as he looked to the one other upper leg bone on the opposite half. He believed it was called the humerus.. though he wasn't entirely sure on that. Either way.. he needed a different design to work on it.

He still had all of the equipment out of his maledictor's kit from the first item, so it was little problem in picking up the hand-vice and using it to hold the bone still while his paws were busy taking hold of the wrist-sized drill to slowly bury a hole through the upper end of the femur bone that had been on the same side as the humerus he'd just been working on. He needed to work to make sure that it buried a clean hole all the way through, so that he could later thread pieces of string through them and tie the bones to something else. It'd be useless just carrying them around like they were clubs, after all. That was, unless he was actually interested in making them clubs. These weren't.. they were more small experiments, or talismans, than anything else. Once the hole at the top was done, the same was done at the bottom. Then, it was actually time to work on the circle.

He didn't want to make the same ring as before. He wanted to experiment.. that was the reason that he'd captured this mouse in the first place, after all. He was going to see just how much he could get done on a rats body.. the different effects that would reveal themselves, the different ways that he could make them appear. It'd all become useful when he found more bodies to work with, more animals to kill and maledict the bodies of. For the second bone, he was going to create an actual circle.. not just a ring, but a circle that ran around the middle of the bone and with two ends that touched at one end. It'd give him a large, if slightly wonky canvas for the depictions. For this, he took out the small chisel again and began gently chipping the very edge of it into the bone to work through the top layers of enamel and avoid the marrow under the surface. It was no longer a straight line around the middle of the bone, though.. this was a much more wonky experience that came out looking even worse than the previous one. He was under constant reminder that the surface he was carving into wasn't two-dimensional.. the curves that suddenly appeared could skewer his chisel almost completely off the bone, and he was worried that putting too much pressure on them could cause fracture to the bone. It did.

He was about half-way through the circle, leaving more of a malicious crescent curving from one end to the other in a joker-grin, when he pushed a little too far and there was a gentle crack as he dug a little too deep into the bone, cracking the marrow inside. Small cracks broke out from the point of impact and spiderwebbed out from the center. This one probably won't be as secure as the others... Not with the shattering of the insides that just went through. He wasn't about to throw it away, anyway. He kept on gently nailing the chisel into the bone, readjusting it and changing the positions of the hand-vice to ensure that he could actually see where he was chiseling, until he eventually reached the starting point. In all fairness, the circle looked rather like an infinity sign if it only had one loop instead of two. An odd comparison the moment it entered his head, but the more he stared at the design, the truer his own words seemed.

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

Next came the pick. He knew he'd definitely need it now, because this wasn't going to be straight lines - this was going to be a real picture. He was going to engrave a picture of a rat onto the bone; the very mouse that he was carving into the bones of, to be specific. He hoped, eventually, that it would allow the hedgehog to detect other mice easier.. although he knew that this would be much more vague than the arrows running in circles. It was more of a hope that it would eventually have that effect, though he knew just as well as any other maledictor that the effects were pretty unpredictable. Nevertheless, it was going to be done. He needed to make an outline first, though. Circles were easy to carve into bones, but rats.. rats were much harder. He wasn't even sure where to start, so he began around the back legs - fitting for what he was carving on at that very moment.

It would have helped if he had the rat in front of him so that he could etch it. At the moment he was running off little but memory and the scraps of muscle and bones not used to work out most of the body once he got past the leg that looked like the lower portions and the toes were far too large given the proportion to the rest of its body. The rat in general wasn't centered within the circle, and actually veered a little to the right of the circle, meaning that there was plenty of room to fill around the rest of it. He couldn't stretch it too far, because he didn't want the legs to look strange.. but at the same time, he didn't want to leave lots of room in place because then the design would just look sloppy - he was pretty happy with how the circle came out, he didn't want to ruin it all when it came to the most important parts of the entire Legacy!

Eventually, he settled into a comfortable space and pushed all thoughts of the awkward asymmetry aside so that he could work on the mouse picture. The gentle slant of the back, the winding tail stretching out behind it and the front legs soon came into view - he didn't work in a simple line that wound around the body and created the outline, but instead slowly began carving the parts that he knew he could create at least to some level of expertise. Then he filled in the gaps between with the parts he wasn't quite sure about. It all came together, eventually.. but the muzzle was a little too short, the head - the hardest part, arguably, of the entire design - was misshapen at the best of times. It didn't matter though, it was done. Now he just needed to fill the insides. That was the easiest part of it all.

He took out the chisel and used the very corner of it to begin chipping away at the empty spaces inside the engraved picture. When the smaller areas were too narrow for the chisel to break without damaging the shape, he switched back to the smaller pick and just scraped gently at the area until all of the enamel had been grated from the surface. The job wasn't very even, with the narrower areas showing much thicker layers of enamel than those touched by the larger, heavier chisel, but it didn't matter. The basics were there, and when he stood back to admire the rather crude shape stuck close enough to the middle of the circle, it looked like a rat. Next came the words, that ran along the inner end of the circle and curved inwards, towards the middle where the carving of the rat now lay. "All rats share kinship, and are drawn to their family." Now all that was left was to set all the tools back inside the bag, except for the hunting knife. This, he took to his paw and gently pierced the insides to draw out a tiny chunk of clay to release onto the circle, activating it.

It stung, but he grit his teeth and stuck through with it, rubbing his paw as the hunting knife was placed back inside the bag. The two objects already maledicted and activated were picked up carefully in paw, along with the remaining sets of bones that were yet to have a mark imprinted on them - the head, still intact with flesh and internal organs, was taken up as well. He'd finish off cleaning it another day.

For now, the sky was darkening and the day was drawing to a close. He'd spent the entire day outside, maledicting away, and it was time to return home. Another day he'd continue his work.. He'd use his Auristics, when his djed had regenerated itself, to check the effect of the two maledicted items and judge their usefulness in further pursuits. Then, he'd craft the remaining bones. He picked up everything he'd collected from his day outside - the two maledicted bones, produced from the right femur and the right humerus. The other, unmaledicted bones, included the right fibula and tibia, the left fibula and tibia, the left femur, the left humerus (split into two separate pieces), the right radius and ulna, and the left radius and ulna. There were the smaller parts, like the claws extracted from the four paws. Finally came the largest pieces of all - the rat head, complete with all of its teeth, and the rat fur. They'd all be maledicted, sooner or later.

[Brandon Blackwing]

CYQ

XP Award

• Observation +2
• Climbing +1
• Meditation +1
• Reimancy +2
• Weapon: (tiny) spear
• Butchery +3
• Carving +2
• Malediction +3
• Painting +2

Lore Award

• The Hazardous Unforgiving
• How to form Res from 'the Light'
• Controlling Res
• Reimancy: Creating a small earth spear.
• Reimancy: light overgiving effects
• Killing a rat with a transmuted spear of rock
• How to skin, bone and gut a rat
• Malediction: Depicting Speed
• Malediction: Activating the circles
• Malediction: making legacies out of a rat's corpse

Other
+Maledicted Rat Humerus: Enables the wearer to run slightly faster, though in short bursts. Their movements however become rather rat-like.

+Maledicted Rat Femur: When worn, this bone makes the wearer sympathize with rats as if they were his/her own kin, though the effects are only minor.

+right fibula and tibia, the left fibula and tibia, the left femur, the left humerus (split into two separate pieces), the right radius and ulna, and the left radius and ulna. Rat claws, rat head, rat fur (all un-maledicted)

Notes
A nice thread Cyq, I rather enjoyed his thoughts and reactions. A good read, keep it up!

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credit goes to Adelaide Sitai