A Battle for Control

by **Keene Ward** on February 10th, 2015, 11:31 pm

The fifty-third day of winter, 514 AV

"I don't think it's working." Wilhemina's skepticism was nearly palpable. Keene had been attempting to transmute fire for the better part of the day, but it was mostly to little avail. Occasionally, some of the res had fizzled into small specks of flame, but for the most part, he was unable to transmute it in a calm state of mind. Every time he attempted to conflagrate the res, there was a short period of time during which he could feel the writhe of rage in the pit of his stomach. Keene refused to allow it free reign, however, as having no control over himself or his spells was far more dangerous than just about anything else he could think of, short of fighting a band of monsters blindfolded - in fact, Keene figured the amount of chaotic destruction would be about the same in both circumstances. Either way, he wanted to find a way to produce a flame without igniting one within himself, but he was finding it to be more of a task than he had anticipated. Patience was practiced, and Keene had gotten quite a bit of it over the years. Reimancy, however, had been once of the things he'd grown to find was something natural for him. Thus, being faced with a seemingly massive obstacle was enough to wear at his peace of mind at a much quicker rate than anything else.

It was another thing he'd fallen into compliance over without the watchful eye of Mella over him. Magic was a constantly growing concept, or it should have been. He'd been relying upon his preferred element for too long, and it had cost him. Whatever had made the creature from before impervious to ice, Keene allowed himself to think he could get by without progressing through the elements as was the natural path towards mastery. It bothered him that he had been so complacent without even realizing. Yet, despite his frustrations at himself, the simple act of creating a small flame was beyond him to the point that was wallowing in mistakes of the past. Taking a break, Keene leaned back against the chair he had seated himself in, the unlit candle before him silhouetted before the flicker of the one behind it. From the pooling of the wax from the lit candle, Keene estimated he'd been attempting to create a flame for about a bell's worth of time. That lack of any sort of progress - success not even part of the equation - was enough for him to set his elbows on the table before him and rest his eyes against his hands.

His ghostly companion was not to be ignored, despite his best efforts to do so. "You did it before, so how come you can't now?" Her curiosity sounded earnest enough, but the particular question was one she had asked many, many times. Keene had tried to explain before that the particular element of fire was too closely linked with emotions that were difficult for him to control, sensations that were too feral for him to calmly handle. The child, for whatever reason, seemed to think that his explanations were simple deflections of her question. Whatever response she was seeking, Keene just let out a short, curt sigh before leveling his eyes with the little head that popped up through the table like some macabre centerpiece.

"I don't know."

She pouted, sticking her tongue out at him before dipping down to reappear to his left with arms cross and frown crosser. "You never know."

It was true Keene often replied with the same three words, but he was hardly ignorant. Regarding the particular issue of creating "calm fire", however, Keene certainly felt clueless. He didn't understand why the particular element was evading him, and his attempts to transmute his res into dirt or stone had shown zero indication that it was within his abilities. He was, in essence, "stuck" with fire. He was able to create it, but he was not able to effectively wield it. He couldn't even attract it to his res, something he'd thought might have been easier than trying to just bring it into being. It had not been, and he'd spent about half of the bell, if not longer, attempting to do so. Thus, with the frustrated ghost on his left and the frustrating flicker of the flame so blatantly out of his scope of abilities, Keene found he was in an ideal situation. Frustration, aggravation, whatever the label, was something close to rage, perhaps a distant cousin or nephew. He focused on what irked him instead, not to the point where he became angry, but more of an introspective appraisal of what his frustrations were. If he could not control the magic, it was possible an investigation into the magic's fuel would give him a better idea of what to do.

He let his eyes close, but the mental image of the burning flame was hardly a struggle to maintain within the darkness of his self. It danced and bobbed, taunting him. His face frowned as he thought about what it meant to be taunted. He had personified the mindless expression of heat and energy, given it a motive and purpose to suit his own limited understanding of it. His own understanding of reimancy had been colored by this tendency: the light, wandering freedom of air, the cold, steely focus of ice, and the gentle, flowing nature of water. However, there was more than the simple emotions. Each element was different at its core, and the core differences dictated how the elements interacted with each other as well as the world. He had, ironically, never given much thought to the elements beyond whether or not he could control them. Knowledge was power, and control required both to be effective. Thus, Keene focused on the true nature of fire - not his personified, subjective understanding of what it should be, but rather what it was.

by **Keene Ward** on February 11th, 2015, 10:34 am

Fire was hot. It produced heat, and to do so required it to consume what was present before to create something new, usually ashes, smoke, and energy. There was no driving force behind fire, no insatiable hunger or desire. It burned because that was its purpose, it consumed because that was how it existed. It was transitory, like rain: it could not exist without some medium allowing it to. Thus, there was a dependency to fire, a natural requirement for a facilitator as well as vessel. Unlike the air or water, fire was not an intrinsic state of nature, it was a reaction, a display of power, but not power itself. Thus, fire existed in privilege: where it was given the tools to flourish, it would, but if those tools were taken away, it would die. There was also the matter of what fire even really was. It was heat and light, a draining expression of... What. Of power? Nature? Keene shook his head, clearing his thoughts to readdress the main point. Heat and light, two things that were, essentially, the objective expression of fire, or flame, or whatever a single unit of the element was called.

Beyond those two basic concepts, Keene had difficulty progressing. Heat was heat, he wasn't sure how it worked or what caused it, only that it existed, something produced by living and unliving alike. Light was similar, in that while it appeared a secondary construct, it simply was or was not. The mechanics of both heat and light were beyond his ability to simply sit and ponder over if he hoped to come to even a hint of accurate understanding. At a dead end of thought, Keene returned his focus to his subjective personification of fire. He had thought of it as turmoil, chaos, destruction even. In his mind, fire had occupied a place of strife and coercion, two things that seemed silly the more the thought about them. Despite the island, it seemed he was not immune to petty sentimentalities. Fire was neither good nor evil; it did not possess an intent to destroy or a desire for chaos. It fed off of what was available to it, as it could not exist if it did not do so. There was a survival to fire, a fending off of nonexistence that was something both personified and intrinsic. Hunger, then, was not a proper term for it, rather persistence. Fire burned not to destroy, but for the sake of being.

By its very nature, fire was something bright and powerful. It did not possess a continual form being the transitory element that it was. Thus, when it did present itself under the proper circumstances, it burst fourth with all its might, holding nothing back. It was not like water or air, who's ever changing forms ranged from a harmless breeze or a single raindrop to whirling dervishes and torrential floods. Fire was fire. It existed fully and completely in what time it had. There was no such flame as a "weak" flame, only a fire sparked where it could not flourish, like sunlight behind a cloud or rain falling through the trees. So then, fire was simply fire - not some amalgam of emotions roiling about in a ridiculous hubbub of angst and anger. As Keene let his eyes set once more upon the flame in front of him, it appeared much different from the one he had seen before. The flicker was not a dance, but a lack of fuel as the flames brushed against the liquid wax that obscured the wick. Its wavering tongue was not an expression of emotion, but rather its interaction with the small changes in the air around it. He could even see the haze of heat about the flame, gently twisting his perceptions of the images behind it.

With those thoughts in mind, Keene calmly exhaled a small breath of res, guiding it with a gentle motion of his fingers as it solidified into a little ball of liquid about the wick. He pressed upon the pale blue liquid: heat, energy, light. There were hints of tenacity and brilliance in his mind's eye that worked their way into his spell, twisting within the res, the extension of his will. At first, nothing happened, but Keene continued, his concentration unbroken by failure. He could feel the fire in his mind, and it was not an inferno of passion, but rather fire. He thought on the Old Tongue's word for fire: vaknui. There was no sign of emotion within it, though he was certain some may have drawn the connotative undertones into it to make it serve their purposes. To him, however, vaknui was fire, the derivatives only secondary and tertiary meanings of little to no consequence. And so, with a soft and emphatic, "Vaknuit." the res smoothly shifted from its liquid form into a pale, silvery flame that was quick to bite into the waiting wick. Keene stared at the fire for a few ticks, analyzing it with a frown while Wilhemina let out a small exclamation of surprise.

"You... you did it!" She turned a wide-eyed stare at him as he met her gaze. "And you didn't go crazy this time." The way she used the word "crazy" made him a bit uncomfortable. Keene had spotty memories of just how wild he'd gone with his uncontrolled spell casting, and judging from Wilhemina's amazement at his current perceived sanity, he was relatively glad he couldn't recall most of it.

"Yes." He didn't have much else to say on the subject. While he had been able to light the candle, his flames were still bluish. Whether that was any indication of him not quite understanding fire, or some sort of magical side effect of his previous elements' influence on his third, Keene wasn't sure. It would require further trials and tests to see if the color was something he was projecting unconsciously and whether or not it was something he could change. There was also the issue of repeatability. While he had made fire and not gone absolutely berserk, he'd only done it once. Even a child could take a step on accident. There was more work ahead of him, and Keene was glad to get to it. Success was something that was relatively worthless without the potential for progress, and progress is what was to be had.

by **Keene Ward** on February 12th, 2015, 2:04 am

More res, more fire. It seemed that the element was much more responsive to his alternative approach, though the fire only lasted as long as there was res to burn. It was, again, different from the other elements, unable to sustain itself, it required a small but steady stream of res to draw from when it was not igniting a wick or a dried bit of wood. As he let a ball of res revolve around his finger tips, Keene stared intently at the pale blue flame, attempting to find at what point it would stop to burn and what the minimal amount of res siphoning was. The flame began to flicker, indicating that whatever was feeding it was becoming dangerously low. Keene let the sphere continue to hover, concentrating on the flow of the res to the flame, stilling it by increments until the fire was eventually snuffed out. It seemed that maintaining a flame was far less taxing than might have been in the natural sense. Res, then, was something of a "hyper-fuel", allowing for small amounts of it to keep a magical fire going for quite some time. Nodding to himself as he let the sphere splash into his hand, Keene cupped it there for a moment, staring down at the translucent liquid.

He had yet to comprehend why his fire was blue. It was something that bothered him, though not because he was necessarily displeased with the aesthetic. Blue had been a recurring sort of trope over the course of his life, but Keene was concerned that the color was due to the fire being incomplete in some way. It was nearly the same color as his res, though the flickering, ever moving nature of the element made it difficult to pull perfect parallels, as it ranged from a pale blue to a bright white. Either way, as Keene drew a steady breath to prepare himself for the transmutation, the two different colored flames still steadily burned to his right. Whatever kept the fire blue and res-ish, Keene aimed to see if he had any sway over the appearance. Pressing his intent into the pooled res in his hand, Keene focused his attention on the flame's appearance. He had no idea why fire seemed to burn in hues of red and orange, but he imagined it had something to do with either the fire itself or what it was burning. The spark of heat that blossomed into life, warming the skin of his fingers he kept well out of reach of it, Keene frowned at the blueness of it.

His intent had had little effect on the flame as it burned away in his palm. Cutting of the small trickle of res feeding it, Keene rubbed his hands together, producing more res between them as he drew them apart. The resulting ball of slightly shimmering liquid floated benignly in the air before him. Keeping both hands on either side of it, without touching the surface, he slowly moved them across in a steady motion, leaving trails of flame behind them. Gaining an understanding for how much of the sphere's surface he should ignite, Keene withdrew his hands and blinked, using the gesture to set the orb aflame. The resulting wave of heat was surprising, and it sparked within him a bubble of emotion deep in his stomach. It seemed, even with his controlled approach, the element was still something that naturally riled up his sensitivities. Taking a few breathes, Keene calmed himself while the fire burned on, keeping it afloat by will until he was able to deal with it. While it continued to burn, Keene moved his hands directly in front of him and pulled them apart, effectively separating the sphere into two smaller portions, each with their own coating of fire as he allowed the res to feed into the flame.

Wilhemina watched with wide eyes, seemingly transfixed by Keene's processes enough that no questions had yet come to mind. He was glad for her silence, as his concentrations were better suited towards practical research and contemplations more so than answering inane inquiries. With the two balls of flame affixed to the motion of each respective hand, Keene gently pushed one forward, letting it drift off in a lazy line straight in front of him. Controlling the res and, by association, the fire wasn't a difficult task. It required as much attention as it did to use any other sort of spell. There was just the minor repercussions of a "hot head" if he wasn't careful and the strange blue color of the flames themselves. Those things aside, it seemed that fire was simply another tool, albeit a slightly more dangerous one. As the fireball slowly passed by Wilhemina, she let out a surprised squeak. "That's hot." Keene returned her exclamation with a raise of the brown, flicking his wrist and pulling the fire back towards him. The ghost did't seem particularly upset with him, be she did slide backwards some to increase her distance from him.

Turning his focus back to the flaming spheres that had shrunk a considerable amount due to decay as well as serving as fuel for the exterior, Keene pressed his hands together, merging the res back into one. Afterwards, he flicked his wrist outwards, sending a smaller bullet of flaming res at the wall where it smashed into it to continue burning. Finding the maneuver potentially useful, Keene repeated it several more times, little spots of blue fire glowing in various locations until the res was used up. Turning his attention back to the now fist sized flaming ball, Keene cut the flow of res off from the flames, eyes flicking over the details as the fire flickered into a small sputter before dissipating. He had great control over the flames as long as they remained attached to his res. Once they ignited and became dependent upon a different source of fuel, they were then separate entities. His investigations into the element had made him restless, uncharacteristically so, and he rose as the now pebble's worth of res was pulled back through the skin of his right hand's palm. It seemed the element instilled in him not only a heightening of emotion, but a need for activity as well.

by **Keene Ward** on February 12th, 2015, 6:50 am

Making his way over to the sand pit, Keene swung his arms back and fourth, crossing and uncrossing over his chest. Wilhemina trailed behind, a curious bob to her voice as she drifted behind him. "What're you doing now?" Keene knelt down to remove his boots at the edge where the sand begin, spending little time on the laces before they were slipped off and carefully set off to the side.

"Practicing."

She settled down in a seated position, hovering slightly above the ground as she regarded him with a fair amount of skepticism. "Weren't you just practicing?" Her tone was suspicious, as if his answers were deflections rather than earnest replies. In her favor, little of what Keene does was ever really classified as "heartfelt", but he wasn't quite sure why she seemed to adamant that he was hiding something.

"I was." Again, Wilhemina wasn't pleased with the answer, but she feel into silence as Keene let his knees bend and hands rise up towards his face, testing the ground beneath him with a gentle bob of motion. He struck out at the air, moving his hands in the fashion that Atziri had shown him, quick to leave and quick to return. Practicing his movements alone was a bit of a different experience than he was used to, however it proved to be just as cathartic to his state of restlessness as it did when he worked with his master. Jabs to shuffling retreats, bobbing and weaving visualized attacks, even the odd tumble out of the way. Atziri had instructed him to practice being defensive, as his strength was no where near enough for him to be much of a force. He also lacked the speed to make up for his lack of strength, meaning that if a combat situation ever arose in which he had to fight with his fists for whatever reason, the most sensible tactic was simply to outlast the opponent. Thus, much of his solo maneuvers were centered around his imagined attacker being on the offensive.

His body was much more responsive than it had been when he'd first started, even the tumbling was something he was gaining a bit more proficiency in, able to stand after most of his rolls with only a few ticks of wobbling. It was a bit more difficult to do things without a body to defend against, but Keene did his best. In a short time, he'd worked up a sweat, his breath steady but heavy as he knocked aside phantom limbs before sidestepping out the way, hopping backwards to add some distance. His body felt much better with his heart beating a steady rumble in his chest and the air rushing into and out of his lungs. The irritation he'd felt in the pit of his stomach had subsided some, and as Keene shuffled around to circle his invisible adversary, he focused on one of the many trains of thoughts that had been running through his head. Physical exertion seemed to quell the side effects of creating fire. If he used magic in tandem with with his forms, Keene postulated that it would either dull the side effect or... Make it worse, he supposed. Either way, within the cavern there was very little for him to burn if he did lose control, and he wanted to find a way to create more than a few fireballs before having to stop and punch nothing for several chimes. It was inefficient.

Curling his fingers into a fist, Keene readied the respective djed. With a swift uppercut, Keene let the res rise with the momentum of the strike, drawing his hand back and turning the drift of translucent mist into a burst of flame. The miniature explosion wasn't quite as miniature as Keene had expected, and his arms shot upwards to block the fire from licking his face. He felt the bite of the fire against this left arm, the numbness of the other giving no indication it had been hit at all. When the fire flashed out of existence, Keene winced as he lowered his arms, turning them over to inspect the damage. Blisters had formed on both of the backs of his forearms, but for the most part he was unharmed. Turning to stare at where the fire had been, Keene took a few ticks to investigate his psyche, finding that there was little different within him aside from the remnants of fear driven adrenaline that had allowed him to guard his face from the blast. Flexing his fingers, Keene winced at the tightness of his skin. It wasn't incredibly painful, but the dull sting of the blisters was something he had only just received and wasn't quite used to them.

There was also the fact the spell had backfired on him because he had been too preoccupied with his investigations to really plan out how he was going to manipulate the res. His inattention to important details had netted him a new set of injuries. Wilhemina, however, snickered from where she watched, finding Keene's magical mishap to be one of the more interesting things she'd seen in awhile. Keene chose to ignore her, something he had slowly been gaining proficiency in, and instead bent his knees and readied his body for another go. Exhaling a quick breath, Keene shuffled forward, jabbing his hand forward and releasing a small cloud of res. As he drew his fist back, gritting his teeth as his blistered skin protested at the violent movement, he continued to press the res forward, transmuting the gas that was closest to him and letting it travel down the cloud to create a burst of bluish flame that expanded outward before him. The blast, directed away from him rather than omni-directional, was far more successful. His state of being, however, was not.

Keene continued to throw punches and block strikes, working out the tension that had seeped into his muscles after the second spell. It seemed that while physical action was something that could quell the agitated state his body worked itself into after transmuting flames, it didn't mitigate the effect. It was good information to have, and the side effect wasn't so crippling that he wouldn't be able to maintain control over himself. At least, Keene figured he would be able to do so. Half of the battle was awareness, and as he had been taken off-guard the first time, there was little chance of him being surprised by a similar swell of emotion again. He wondered if there were similar ways to counteract the other side effects of his other elements. Frowning as he slowly shuffled in a circle about the pit, occasionally throwing a punch or ducking under a swing, Keene wondered if the elements themselves could counteract each other.

by **Keene Ward** on February 12th, 2015, 9:28 am

Beginning with fire once more, Keene jabbed forward, extruding a mist of res along with a liquid coating on his fist. Pulling the fist backwards, Keene pushed the mist and liquid forward, letting lose a rush of flame before shoving his opposite hand forward to propel the liquid res, transmuting it to ice with a snap of the fingers. The resulting change, however, wasn't quite what he had been expecting. Switching mindsets from ice to air or water wasn't difficult, as they were two parts of the greater whole. Fire, however, was quite different, too hot and transient for the solidity and delicacy of ice. Thus, the ball of ice he'd intended was a splash of water that landed harmlessly against the wall opposite him. Keene frowned, striking at the air with a few more jabs before ducking back. The blisters on his skin had stopped bothering him so much, but the fact that he couldn't just automatically switch from fire to ice took their place. Ducking with a sharp exhale, Keene charged forward to deliver a shoulder to the stomach of his phantom opponent, shuffling backwards before standing straight to deliver a roundhouse. The movement, however, was a bit much for blisters on his arm, and he stopped the attack mid air to recoil and wince at the twist of pain.

Gently shaking out his hands, Keene wiped some sweat from his forehead with the heel of his palm before turning back to stare at the still wet sheen from where the water had hit the wall. He'd not only failed to make ice, he'd made water instead. Working on controlling his breathing better, Keene took about a chime or so to still it to the point where he wasn't panting. As he did so, he approached the table, easing into the chair as Wilhemina followed him, settling down into the chair opposite and staring at him with curious, though strangely guarded eyes. Letting her be for the moment, Keene set his focus in front of him. His spells had been small and hardly taxing, which left him plenty of workable djed to further explore the nature of his own elements. Turning his fingers slightly outwards, Keene extruded a palm sized ball of res, working it with twitches of his digits into something that resembled a cylinder before snapping his fingers and transmuting it solidly into ice, the mental images of the element running through his mind and solidifying in the extension of his will before him.

As the crystalline object wobbled as it joined the physical world, Keene stared intently at it. Ice was cold and relatively solid. It could shatter under the right circumstances, and it melted if the temperature was anything higher than the temperature of the ice itself. He supposed, in a basic sense, that fire was the opposite of ice. Where ice was frigid and rigid, fire was warm and nearly intangible. Keene reached out his left hand, tapping the icy cylinder, noting the thin flim of water that had already formed upon it, the way that it slid slightly under the force. Within, there were delicate filigrees within, slightly lighter in color than the soft, bluish hue of the rest of the structure. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he'd always considered ice to be a stable state of being, similar to a stone only colder. But as he continued to stare at the block of ice, his pensive frown set upon his features. Ice was not the frozen equivalent of a rock, it was much more delicate that than. There was an elegance to the substance that was hardly subjective. Even the manner in which ice melted seemed a delicate matter, the soft shine of perspiration, the gentle drip to the plain wooden table.

So ice was cold. It was delicate, but it was sturdy. He blinked at the stuff, pushing it back and fourth across the table to watch it glide over the smooth surface. Ice was a strange state of being. It was water, but it was frozen water; it was a solid, but it was only as solid for so long. When it came to offensive spells, it was a solid for long enough to do some damage, unless it shattered like it had before. Keene's frown held steady. There were differences between ice and fire, certainly, but there were similarities as well. Though melting ice was simply transitioning from one state of being to another, that still made ice a - typically - transient state of being. If he focused on the temporary nature of both elements, he wondered if that would make it possible to cast them in succession. Pooling res from both his hands as he turned his palms towards the ceiling, Keene waited until he had about a miza's worth of res before directing the spheres a short way away from him.

With a snap, Keene transmuted the left into a steady ball of flame, the mental construct of his ideation regarding the element coming to the forefront without much issue. Focusing on the temporary nature of fire but trading out the heat for the cold, Keene focused on the other sphere, snapping his other fingers and frowning as the res shifted into water, splashing onto the table. He repeated the exercise several times, and by the third time the second ball of res held steady as ice, though it was already melting upon transmutation. Letting both spells peter out, Keene frowned at the still melting chunk of his original quarry. It seemed it was possible to create a ball of fire and immediately follow through with a sphere of ice, only his own control over both his mind and his res wasn't complete enough to accomplish it. His frown faded some as he realized that neither were his fingers chilled nor did he feel the need to go jogging. It seemed the opposing elements did have a cancellation factor in side effects, though by that point he had used enough res to feel a bit of fatigue and a light headache that pressed behind his eyes.