Solo A Haze

[Keene Ward]

The seventy-sixth day of fall, 514 AV.

From his perch at the edge of the plateau, Keene stared off into the distance where the strange, yellowish fog emanated from within the citadel. The sapling had grown a marginal amount, it was something easy to inspect with his daily waterings, though the actual growth was hardly exciting. It was healthy though, and as Keene had eased himself over the ledge to let his feet dangle against the rocky face, he had noticed the strange, sickly cloud looming on the horizon. He wondered if it was a meteorological event or if it was merely the side-effect of some large scale spell or project. Strangely enough, he couldn't discount either as possibilities. Since his arrival, the weather had been much less predictable than that of Zeltiva's. The waterspouts near the beginning of his time on Sahova had been strange enough, but he had found the constant cloud cover an even stranger anomaly. Tropical climates were not those that had been covered in the majority of the books he'd read, but the clouds seemed a bit unnatural to him, much in the same way the entire citadel held an aura that seemed to push against nature rather than embrace it. In fact, the whole island felt like that.

He glanced back to the sapling, it's small frame just a reiteration of the strange, near alien feel of the land he had come to call home. Letting his gaze swing back to look out over the world below him, Keene let his chin rest in the palm of his hand, supporting it with an elbow firmly planted on his knee. With his duties fully explained, he had had more time to sit and think in a sense. While he only had a about a bell to rest at the top of the plateau, only a small amount of it was alloted to actual rest. He'd been practicing his shielding for a few bells every morning for a good while, and though steady progress had been made, Keene found the art of shielding a journey of small, slow steps. It didn't serve to deter him from his goals, but it was a magic that required close, analytical involvement from start to finish. After having had his meeting with the Wizard Relos, Keene had begun to spend most of his time dedicated to shielding picking apart what it was he was creating. If a shield ended up tasked too weakly or incorrectly, Keene dug into both structure and creation in search of a reason. If it were too weak, too uneven, or too short-lived, he spent most of the time crafting smaller shields with the hope of doing something that gave the same response.

Turning his attention down towards the triangle of earth in front of him, Keene slowed his breath, letting his mind clear and focus on that which was his djed. Reaching out, he let the scales begin to trickle from his fingers while he imagined the light from the sky firmly and carefully in his mind. He no longer tried to shape the djed that tumbled down in little scales, instead he allowed it to pool before him until it was a desirable size. Using his fingers to delicately lift and manipulate the scales with his will, Keene began to construct the shield. The straight sided nature of the scales, when not forced to bond to each other the moment they were created, fit together quite nicely, forming relatively straight lines with each pass of his hands as the shimmering shards shifted from the sheen of the pool to the ever increasing shape of the shield. As he worked, Keene moved slowly, but confidently. He'd found there was an optimal speed to working. Moving without fluidity resulted in a jarring of the scales that sacrificed flow for accuracy, compromising the overall longevity (and potentially the stability). His breathing, too, remained much more under control with the careful, meticulous construction, rather than the rushed - in comparison - tactics he had employed before.

As the slivers of light fell into place, Keene made sure to continually infuse them with tasked djed. It had taken a bit to get the hang of it without creating new particles, but it had proved to extend the life of the shards by quite a bit, as his newer method of shield construction required many more chimes than before. If the scales started disappearing before he could bind them to the shield, they were useless. Thus, the process was incredibly mentally intensive. The island, however, was well suited to his shielding studies. On the plateau, there was no life aside from himself, the tree, and whatever creatures were too small to cause him any distraction. The air, while still heavy and hot, was clearer somehow. It gave him a better place to think, to concentrate. Shielding required his full attention and them some, having to worry about his environment was far too much of a bother to do things in the cave where the flickering of the light was far too distracting to be of any use. He had completely underestimated the complexities of shielding when he had first started. The passive nature of the magic had lulled him into the idea that it was a simple sort of thing. Those thoughts had long since passed, replaced with a growing respect for the practitioners of the art.

[Keene Ward]

Pulling his hands across the shield for one last pass, he stared down at the opalescent barrier with an appraising eye. The scales, for the most part, were relativly straight. They had a sticky quality about them that made exact positioning difficult, meaning the straight lines were often achieved by jimmying certain scales into awkward positions to accomodate the rest. He had initially believed all the scales to be uniform in shape in size, but that had merely been an error in observations. There were slight variances in both size of the shards and the straightness (or lack thereof) of their sides. Keene imagined it was due to an irregular rate of production - one of the many reasons he had slowed the process to the snail crawl it was now. Thus, there were times when the flow of his construction required him to make use of pieces that simply didn't fit. He'd grown much more competient at "making it work", but that didn't mean his shields were any stronger for it. The irregularities were weaknesses, forming holes in the already questionable structure of what had to have been hundreds of shields at that point.

Having little way of correcting the scales short of removing them and replacing them with new ones, Keene had attempted to and failed at it, resolving to use the impurities for the time being until either his production became more uniform or he discovered another, better way to fix the issue. As he stared down at the light sheen of the shield where beneath there was only a murky darkness, Keene found the obvious weak spots in the shield, scooting back and pressing his face closer to the areas to inspect them. Where the blackness was weakest,were locations were multiple anomalies overlapped. Thus, there were literal "holes" in the structure. It was something Keene had decided was a mix of his lack of skill as well as his loose grasp on the actual magic itself. Patching the shield wasn't something he was truly able to do, as the patches rarely ever attached to the origional structure properly. Relos had spoken about "layers", but it had been in a conversation that involved techniques beyond Keene's capabilities. He wondered if there was knack that one developed over time, or if there was some sort of revelation that would hit him eventually that would explain the intricacies of the currently unknown techniques. Keene didn't hold his breath for the latter.

Watching as the light faded from the shield, letting the ground beneath it to be once more filled with with an appearance void of blackness, Keene frowned in thought. The shields only lasted as long as the amount of djed he put fourth. He was getting a better handle on how much of his djed he could use and how long that djed would last. As it were, the rate of djed he put fourth was a much greater arbitrarily assigned number that the length at which the shields lasted. He found the lack of efficiency similar to res production in reimancy, where when he had been beginning, it was draining to produce even a palm full of the bluish liquid. In the same way, he found his shields at max could only last fifteen chimes, and that was when he spent half of those chimes constructing it - and was out of usable djed at the end. Shielding was strange in that regard, as when he hit his limit, there was the tell tale signs of weariness, but unlike reimancy, there simply wasn't anything more to draw fourth. The parts of him that became the shields seemed to be the only parts compatible, meaning he could not overgive his djed in the same way he occasionally did with the more volatile elemental magic.

He laid back, the ground pushing against his weight in a semi-comfortable bed of loose rocks and earth. He stared up into the hazy sky, moving his hands in the air in the similar fashions he used to construct his shields. Keene pursed his lips in a tight line as he physically recounted what he had done previously. There was a slight shake in his hand has be made a specific pass, something he wondered might be the culprit of the gaps aside from the scales irregularity. He wondered if his efforts were better spent refining the initial shapes of the djed shards, or if the issue could be solved with a tighter technique. The tingling flow of some of his djed separating from the rest always seemed to be a fluid, flowing sort of sensation. As he thought back upon the scales, Keene wondered if that was the source of the problem. Perhaps, like the construction, the production was also a balance between control and finesse. Letting his hands fall to his chest, Keene took a few chimes to lay back and stare blankly up into the equally blank sky. He'd never really thought much about the nature of the blue skies, taking them for granted back on Zeltiva. As he stared up into the mass of greyish white, he wondered if he missed the port city's skies, or if he simply hadn't yet become accustomed to those of the island of Sahova. A small, whisper of a thought ran through the back of his mind that it might not ever be possible to acclimate to a place so strange.

[Keene Ward]

Pushing himself back into a seated position, Keene once more let his djed shiver and shift, the scales starting to drip from his fingers. This time, however, he pressed on the feeling. The tingling became a sensation similar to blood dripping from a wound he couldn't feel. The scales slid, rather than dripped, from his fingers as the added pressure of will seemed to allow them a smoother passage from his djed into their external forms. As they pooled beneath his fingers, the rate at which they were produced was much faster than before, though he could feel the drain on his djed clearer as well. It was a fast process, which allowed him all the more time to construct. The process had given him much more uniform shard to work with, though there were still irregularities in the thickness and size that Keene decided to attribute to his body's lack of familiarity with the creation of the structures. Once he'd done it long enough, he was sure his djed would remember the proper forms and create them as such.

Pulling his hands across the dirt, littering it with shimmering shards, Keene shifted and molded the scales. He hadn't bothered to task them against anything, so, for all intents and purposes, the shield was just a test to see how the change in production would affect the longevity. Passing over each layer, Keene spent a good while putting the thing together. This time, he discarded the shards that were not properly formed, taking care to construct the shield as close to perfect as he could manage. Operator error, however, made it difficult to not only align them, sort through the variances, and make sure he was moving at a steady pace but construct something uniform in its entirety. The end result was something much more impressive than anything he'd done previously, but it still had its fair share of small holes and irregular destinies. It was, however, by far the most long lasting thing he had created. Staring down at it with careful contemplation, Keene felt rather confident the strength of the structure and lack of impurities were both directly correlated with the longevity of the spell.

As it faded, he straighted up, staring off into the yellowish distance as he curled and uncurled his fingers to give them a bit of rest. He pulled himself back from the ledge, wobbling to his feet to shake out his legs and walk around a bit to get the blood flowing in them once again. Taking a few, slow laps around the flat area, Keene swung his arms back and fourth, stretching out his back as well. It was easy for his muscles to tense up when he got excited, but calming them down was tantamount to a personal war. He let his eyes wander as he moved. They passed over the rocky slope that led ever higher up towards the mountain's peak. The higher reaches of the mountain had yet to be explored, but Keene had the impression Atziri didn't quite find him ready for such an excursion. He had, from the moment the vambrace had been shoved onto his arm, decided that when it came to things pertaining to the Wardens, he would take his lead from his master. On magic, however, he had free reign. His development was completely driven by his own desire to improve. Fortunately, he had the will to learn in spades. It was the learning itself that often seemed to set him back.

Pausing in the the middle of the plateau, Keene stared down back towards the city. He could see a few figures, though they were so far they looked like little, black ants scurrying back to whence they had come. He wondered where he would have been had Atziri not claimed him as her initiate. Certainly atop a mountain, glaring down at what life moved below was not the immediate scenario that presented itself as possibility. Turning from the vista, Keene let the thought slip from his mind. There was little point in wondering what could have been. His life was now, and it was happening. It was better for him to focus on the tasks at hand rather than the deeds already done. The shields, as it was said, would not construct themselves. Though Keene wondered if, once he was more masterful, if he could not get them to do just that. With everything he'd learned so far, however, he found the idea of it a bit silly. Then again, there was plenty about magic that seemed silly until it was discovered that was actually how it worked.

[Keene Ward]

Keene knelt down in front of the tree, staring a the small buds that had yet to do anything but gradually increase in size. He had been experimenting with shields on objects other than the dirt. The "sticky" quality of the shield's scales were much more versatile than he had initially given them credit for. The ability to shield things beyond flat surfaces (or anchoring to cover portals as Atziri had mentioned was possible) was a bit of a work in progress. His fluidity of application was greatly deterred, as the shape of anything that wasn't flat had... shape. The three dimensional nature called for a slightly different form of gesture, similar to reimancy, where the scales weren't applied by touch but force of will. It was different, but Keene figured it was a bit more practical. If he could shield his body against something like water or heat, he could last a bit longer out in the wilderness if the need arose. For the time being, he had stuck to create shields on the ground or around inanimate objects. Taking some time to size up the small, twiggy sapling, Keene drew in a few breaths before starting.

Using the slight amount of pressure he'd employed before, the shimmering material he used to craft the structures slid from his fingertips, pooling onto the mound of moist earth as he focused on the vision of flesh, skin, living tissue. There was a small prick on his fingertips as the djed eventually stopped its departure from the rest of his body. Drawing up the shards with slow, methodical movements, Keene applied them to the tree, one by one. They wrapped around the plant well enough, stacking in a sloped line to compensate for the small trunk's circumference. He pulled the shield up most of the main structure of the sapling, avoiding the branches for the time being. His left hand moved in a small circle, adjusted the push and pull of the shards while his right shifted up and down, guiding the rise and fall. The pieces came together, the multiple passes resulting in a fairly stable construct that glowed with the healthy luminance of a finished shield. Gently pressing his fingers against it, the shield gave off a faint flash before settling down into its opalescence.

He poked and prodded it, testing the weaker spots, breaking larger holes in the shield until it eventually faded. It had been weakest where he had left it open to compensate for the protrusions of the branches and where the light shone dimmest. The consistency of the scales, however, was gradually improving. His new form of production proved not only faster but better prone towards uniformity, something he was quickly finding was an important aspect of the defensive magic. There was little reactionary about it, and the lack of such held true to the magic's nature. A true defense was not something called up upon a whim. Reimancy was fast, intuitive. If something needed to be blocked, it could be done with a small expenditure of res. If something needed to be protected, however, the volatile magic was much more poorly suited towards such. It was possible, of course, but it was not the magic's primary purpose. Shielding, however, existed to protect, to deny, to allow. It was a law, a carefully considered equation with a set amount of answers. That was not to say there was no creativity in it, merely a different sort that Keene had yet to fully grasp.

He frowned, his gaze passing through the meager bit of plant before him. He had only barely begun to scratch the magic's surface, and his own understanding of reimancy was rudimentary at best compared to those he'd met already. The island had been a firm reminder that he was no where near the top, the brightest, or the most promising wizard. In fact, it had alerted him to the fact that a mastery - a true mastery - of magic would require more time that he had at his disposal. That did not mean, however, that he could not come close to it. Taste it. He understood his limitations, even more so when he allowed his thoughts to dwell upon mortality. There was power to avoid it, but the cost was too high for him to consider it a viable option. He had a set amount of time, a set number of days in existence. Each day was an opportunity to drag himself closer to truth, in whatever form it took. Magic was his purpose, his life. To neglect it as he had done in the darker half of the season prior, was to voluntarily step away from the sole reason he had been born.

Straightening up, Keene brushed off his knees. He refused to consciously waste the limited amount of time he had. There would be an endless number of them to rest once his life ended. For the time being, he had a task to fulfill. It was not something given to him by his master nor an ultimatum delivered unto him by Mella. No, the task was a discovered one, a reason that had presented itself in the wake of nothingness. Strength. Power. Wisdom. Knowledge. They were concepts that had long existed as separate entities in his mind, but from the moment he had decided to come to Sahova, they had melted into the greater understanding that magic transcended each of them, claiming its place above, the hierarchal supreme. The four were still important, of course. Magic, in and of itself, was not entirely the mightiest, loftiest goal to conquer. However, the pillars were only that: pillars. They supported the greater structure of the arcane, and Keene aimed to sit within and partake of the whispers and shadows that dwelled within.

[Ink]

Fate has dictated the conclusion to your journey...

...And now, only Fortune awaits you.

I am Ink, Mistress of Sahova; and it is my pleasure to award you with this bounty of XP and Lore. If you have any questions regarding this Grade, please do not hesitate to send me a PM. Fret not, I tend not to smite...often.

 

Keene

XP

• Observation 2
• Meteorology 1
• Intelligence 1
• Shielding 5
• Organization 1
• Research 2
• Philosophy 1

LORES

• Shielding: Inconsistent Scales
• Sahova: Nature and Magic in Weather
• Shielding: Gestures
• Time is Limited

With Regards,
Ink