Solo A Single Step

[Keene Ward]

The third day of spring, 514 AV.

Keene's fist slammed into Atziri's palm, the force of the strike sending a ripple of resistance up through his arm to settle in his shoulder. "Again, harder this time." Atziri's calm, intense stare held steady as Keene pulled his hand back to punch the target of her hand once more. The slight torque of his body added to the weight of blow, and the shield that she had cast about her hands gave of a slight, crimson flash as there was contact once more. "Again." He alternated hands, striking in a steady rhythm as each time his fist met her hand she repeated the word. He could feel his arms growing more and more weary, each punch requiring more and more of his strength.

After a couple dozen more punches, Atziri lashed back at him. The movement had been unexpected, but not so fast that Keene was unable to react. Her own fist moved in a sort of short jab towards his face, the hand that had been a target only a tick ago moving at a quick pace towards his head. Rather than duck out of the way as might have been his reaction before their training had begun a season ago, Keene's eyes flicked over the woman's arms, tracing the trajectory of its motion before shifting his body to the side to move his head out of the way. The moment the hand whizzed past his face, Atziri pulled it back into its original position, expectantly awaiting the next attack. Blinking, Keene obliged, though the power behind his punch was far less than it had been before, a physical representation of his split attentions. Again, she attacked, but this time it was far too fast for him to do anything more than jerk away from before the heel of her palm landed squarely in the middle of his head. Though the shield flared and the majority of the force and pain was absorbed by the protective layer of djed, it was still a hit.

Keene dropped down to his hands, lowering and raising his body in a set of push ups, arms burning slightly at the effort after their already lengthy exercise. "Again."

They continued for a time until Atziri deemed him no longer fit to continue for lack of being able to absorb any more of the lesson. Form was of the utmost importance, and if he was unable to maintain it, the lesson was over. Since his time spent training more than simply his mind, Keene had found his body had grown considerably stronger from its previous state of impotence. For one, his arms had gained definition, a wiry strength that was less of mass and more of a slim tightness. He was able to withstand more grueling and arduous bouts of physical exertion, and the required time of recovery afterwards had been sizably reduced. He was hardly the pinnacle of fitness, but he had come a long way since his days spent solely sitting in the library of Zeltiva, reading the day away.

He didn't miss such activities in so many words, but it had been an easier time for him, a less troubled and more comfortable period in his life. In a way, he was grateful for the twists and turns his life had taken, in others, he was bitter - in all, however, he was accepting. His life had changed, and he had changed with it. While the Keene of Zeltiva had never thought honing one's body to be of any use beyond what was absolutely necessary to maintain optimal performance of reimancy, the Keene of Sahova was not quite so naive. Mind, body, and soul - the tools of the Wardens, and the three single most important components that set them apart from the rest of the island's inhabitants. The Wardens were superior battle mages, but they were not great through their magical prowess alone, and he had been too short-sighted to realize that until he had become a part of them.

Drawing a swig of water from his flask once he had padded his way over to the table where it had been resting for most of the morning, Keene ran his free hand over his eyes, pulling away the sweat that had accumulated there. Atziri joined him, taking her own refreshment beside him. They drank in comfortable silence, neither needing to say anything to other. She was a resource to him, and he a tool to her. From the time he had spent with the other initiates, Keene was fully aware of the dangers of attachment in their ranks. The island was incredibly dangerous, and the life expectancy of those who dealt with those dangers on a daily basis was hardly conducive to building lasting bonds with one another. Still, a bond did not have to be forged in the blue skies of friendship. He trusted Atziri more than any other being on the island, and if she had told him to jump off of a cliff, he would have done so knowing full well it would not lead to his death. Still, that sort of devotion did not lend itself well to idle chatter.

"Be back by sundown tonight." Atziri tied her own flask to her belt, giving Keene a steady stare. "If you can help it, don't waste your djed today. You'll need it when you get back." Keene's lips turned down in a slight frown, but he nodded all the same. It had been a while since Atziri had sought to train him in anything magic related, and he wondered if she planned to introduce him to a new magic. It seemed unlikely, but Keene found the prospect of the sun setting to be far more interesting that it had seemed when he'd first awoken that day. As he watched her leave, Keene stoically finished the pile of dried almonds that had been the last bits of their breakfast. Whatever she had planned for him, speculation would get him nowhere. It was best to focus on the tasks at hand for the time being.

[Keene Ward]

His feet hit the ground in a rhythmic rise and fall, breath passing in a manageable pant as he ascended the rise of the hill. Sweat clung to his frame, a refreshing coolness against the the languid breeze that lazily passed over him as he continued. He wasn't fast, but jogging was something he could do to help manage the incessant flow of thoughts that never seemed to having a beginning or an end. There were things he wanted to think about, things he didn't, and things he thought about without really thinking about them. The physical exertion of running helped him focus on one or two things at a time, working through them and moving on to the next in a more orderly manner. It was when he was alone, isolated from the presence of others, that thinking became an overwhelming force. It wasn't always like that. There were plenty of days where Keene could manage perfectly fine. There were others where he could not.

The morning exercises had helped. His nightmares had become something akin to commonplace, though they still managed to hang heavy upon him if he allowed himself to dwell on them. The night before had been particularly bad, and as Keene's mind drifted back towards the flames and the frantic, burning face of the dark skinned, crimson veined man who stood so stoically among them, Keene pushed his pace, breath coming quicker as his speed increased. His arms shifted back and fourth, elbows brushing against his slick sides at a faster rate as he dipped down to a flatter, more manageable area that allowed him space to simply run. Feet pounded against the earth, his agitation expressed through his body rather than his face. The air around him responded to the change in his demeanor, picking up slightly around him, feeding off of the tension in his muscles as he ran though it. With each step, each labored breath, the images and memories faded until he was back to a slow jog, gasping for air but forcing himself to continue moving.

He purposefully moved his thoughts onto other things, eyes flicking around the relatively sparse environment. Trees both acacia and juniper littered the valleys and hills around the mountain, but it was less of a forest and more of a clutter of branch and bark with a dusting of bristly grass and scrubby underbrush. While beautiful, the landscape offered little in terms of passing interest. There were, however, plenty of dangers to provide distractions. Mt. Merlus wasn't nearly as treacherous as the Testing Grounds. There were no hidden glyph traps or a constant influx of creatures both benign and malignant, but there were things that lurked just out of sight, gentle scratchings that could be heard in the darkness once the sun began to set. They weren't necessarily more dangerous, but they were there. The latest indication of life aside from the two souls that dwelt within the obsidian cavern were a collection of markings on a tree a good distance ahead of him.

Slowing his pace, Keene let himself ease gradually to a stop, taking a moment to stretch out his legs after the lengthy warm up of his jog. By choosing to stop at the marred tree, Keene was able to both gently shift his weight to better loosen the tense muscles of his inner thighs in a partial squat and examine where the bark and some of the wood itself had been torn away. He knew little of animals, but the creature that had left the seven, tapered lesions in the flesh of the trunk was unlikely to be a naturally occurring part of the ecosystem of Sahova. As far as Keene had seen, only the smaller, more intelligent creatures populated the island's confusing mess of biomes with the largest things being the birds that seemed to always know when something was about to die. As far as anything else, however, Keene wasn't sure what to think. He knew the marks weren't fresh, but to him five days to five years looked about the same.

As he straightened up, he noticed a small chunk of blackness that was not part of the tree lodged at the end of the smallest cut. Carefully digging it out over the course of a few chimes, Keene stared down at what looked like the tip of claw of some sort. It was about the size of his own thumbnail, a testament to the potential size of the beast. Pocketing the find to examine in the relative safety of the cave, Keene started back into his steady jog, eyes more trained on his surroundings than they had been before. He searched for more markings, indications that the creature had moved in any particular direction, but he only found snippets of other things: large feathers of birds he knew he'd never seen before tucked away in the gnarled roots of a juniper, a yelowish mucus that coated a small stretch of vegetation before it disappeared, even fetid eggs that no fowl had laid. Such was the way with things. The Testing Grounds could not contain all of the failed and unworthy mutants the nuits produced, and they found their way to his domain. They were just another part of what his life had become, and he would take care of them in much the same way as all the others he had encountered: swiftly and with as little trouble as possible. He pressed his pace again, literally running from the burgeoning flickers of Wilhelmina's and Boswell's broken and battered bodies. "As little trouble as possible" did not always ensure there would be no trouble at all, it seemed.

[Keene Ward]

When Keene returned to the cave in the evening about a bell or so before sunset, he was tired, sore, and had several new scrapes and bruises than he had set out with. All in all, the day had been relatively uneventful. He had found a few more indications of the clawed beast - the most dangerous of the potentially imagined creatures' vestiges that he could find - and had collected those as well. While one could not always be prepared for what one might find around the island of Zeltiva, any kind of advantage was preferable to none at all. As he jogged up the last stretch of incline that led to the plateau that housed the now familiar face of the cavern's entrance, Keene slowed his paced to a shuffle, breathing in deeply and exhaling with the force of necessity to breath again. There was a gentle breeze passing over the mountain that found the push and pull of Keene's panting to be an enjoyable little ride, circling back around to play in the disturbances to its invisible self.

Nearing the rocky face of the mountain's steeper incline, Keene leaned against it, stretching first his calves then thighs, taking about a chime for each which, by the time he was finished allowed him a more steady and less heavy rhythm of breath. With his warm down complete, Keene extended a finger before him, res drifting from the digit to hover before him before flickering into the pale blue light of his reimantic flame. The way before him lit, Keene made his was into the cavern, though not before giving one last heavy sight of air to the wind behind him, leaving the playful breeze a parting gift in payment for its accompaniment. Atziri had not yet returned, which left the lighting of the candles to him to allow him less costly light to wait in until her eventual arrival. With a flick of his wrist, the little ball of flame darted over across and through the wicks, leaving behind a trail of lit candles as Keene cut off the res feeding the flame before extending his other hand to draw the bluish liquid back into his skin.

Settling down into one of the chairs and pulling up to the table, Keene gathered up the quill and ink he'd bought the season before and opened up his wood-bound book, flipping over the first few pages in which he'd been practicing his glyphs. Glyphing was something he could do without expending the djed Atziri had requested he maintain, and so he busied himself with it, finding sitting to be a very comfortable rest from the day's more strenuous activities. He let his hand move freely as he focused his mind upon purpose. It was a strange way in which to write, but Keene found it the most effective way in which to explore the capabilities of his own runes. He knew when he had made a proper symbol and when it truly was little more than squiggles, making it a process of trial and error. For the time being, he focused on containment.

Master Rayage had explained that glyphs could be used to write in the Ancient Tongue, something that Keene had been steadily working on. First, it required the development or creation of specific symbols with specific meanings. While he wasn't quite consistent, Keene had found that paring a symbol with a letter only served to make things confusing to a fault. He could not read something that was just a mess of different lines in a myriad of relations, however, when he attributed certain actions or ideas to a symbol, he was able to write sentences (more or less). For the time being, he stuck with Common. Until he was able to confidently form the rune to correspond with the thought, Keene found that constantly translating his thoughts into the correct Nader and then inking it down served to make the majority of his marks meaningless ink blots.

Dipping the quill into the ink, Keene began, the scritch of the quill filling the otherwise empty silence of the cavern. His images were typically angular, lines moving through, over, and under other lines. Sometimes they were perpendicular, other times angled. A diamond to represent the mountain with a line pulling down from the bottom some to indicate the path taken. Several angled slashes for the beast that hung over two parallel lines that were the trunk of the tree and so on. It was a primitive way to record, but the more he did it, the more he began to familiarize himself with the transcription of thought into ink in a form that wasn't simply writing. Though many of his characters seemed childish, there were some that held the embodiment (or something close to it) of what he intended. As he worked, lost to the concentration, the sun had set, bathing the world once more in the shimmering darkness of the occluded light.

[Keene Ward]

By the time Atziri's steps could be heard making their way back into the cavern, the page that had sat empty at the beginning of Keene's scribbles was filled with a myriad of different symbols, diagrams, and sketches. His quill etched out the final rune, a tiled box that lacked a top with a vertical line passing through it symbolizing containment, but not as a constant, rather a suggestion that something could be contained. As the footsteps ceased, Keene set the quill down, flexing his fingers to rid them of the slight stiffness as he pushed himself up and out of the chair to meet his master with a nod of the head. She raised a brow at the open book and inkwell beside it, but didn't ask any questions. Instead, a trail of res snaked from her feet to wrap itself around the wood set in the firepit before it burst into crackling life, igniting the fuel with a cheery, warm glow of red and orange that quickly offset the cool pallor of Keene's own flame. In the few ticks it took for her to do that, she unshouldered a rope that had been tied about the feet of two small, furred creatures, evidently their dinner.

As she set them on the ground a good distance from the flame, she knelt down. With a sharp snap, the woman broke of one of the animals' feet, a ripping noise following as she removed it from the outer layer of flesh with a sharp jerk. Once the foot was in her hand, she turned, tossing the bloody bit to Keene who took a step forward in attempt to catch it. The thing was more difficult to grab onto that he had imagined, and it bounced out of his outstretched palm to land unceremoniously onto the ground below. In a swift motion, Keene had dropped to the ground, snatched it up, and straightened himself back into his naturally proper posture, eying Atziri with a hint of anticipation. He imagined there was some lesson to be gained from the gesture, and surely enough, she spoke her explanation - though not without first commenting on Keene's profound lack of hand-eye coordination. "Perhaps we should work on catching next, Initiate?" Keene remained unamused, waiting for the words that were next to be spoken. "You've been practicing your shielding?"

Keene nodded, hand that gently gripped the detached limb still partially outstretched.

"Good." Atizri rose up, brushing her hands off on her pants before gesturing towards the mouth of the cave. With a nod, Keene took the lead, a mist of res drifting from his mouth as he moved, gathering off and ahead to the side of him before he let the pale substance spark into the pale blue flame of his fire to light the way. As they moved through the tunnel, Atziri spoke from behind him. "When you spoke with Relos, did he explain how to task against an organism?"

For a tick, Keene was surprised Atziri had been aware of his meeting with the nuit, but it only lasted until his mind reminded him that she was, after all, his master. He was as much her responsibility as her student. "He explained it was possible, but not how." He saw no reason to further elucidate that Master Relos had found Keene's skill too lacking to teach him much more than the general basics and potential for advancement.

Atziri nodded, the gesture lost on Keene who's eyes were focused on where they were heading rather than the face of his teacher. "Can you guess how you might do it?"

They had neared the mouth of the cavern's entrace, and as Keene stepped out to wait for Atziri to join him, his brow knit slightly in thought. As far as he knew, tasking was relatively depending on an impart of will. To stop something that was not a basic sense, he imagined there needed to be something to augment the nature of the djed. Letting his eyes drop to the paw in his hand, Keene spoke, his soft voice carrying well enough into the darkness of the night that was only broken by the steady flicker of his flame. "By enhancing the task of your djed with..." He held the paw up to display it under to cold light of his spell. "The djed you want to affect?" He wasn't entirely sure how it would be done, but it seemed the most logical conclusion with the clues he'd been given.

With a nod, Atziri's fingers carefully withdrew the foot from Keene's hands, her skin never once touching his own. "In a sense, yes. This foot," She moved the thing so that it was the focus point between the two of them, balanced between thumb and forefinger. "Contains its own djed, both as a foot and as the greater whole." Atziri had long since stopped asking Keene if he understood what she was saying. The answer was always the same, whether his understanding was complete or not. "By weaving the djed of this piece of a greater whole into your own shields with the proper intent," She moved her hand back over his, dropping the foot into his palm and back into his possession once more. "You can create shields to stop any beast or man."

Nodding, Keene let his hand fall to his side, parcel safe in the containment of his loose fist, a "however" evident in the air between them.

"Keep in mind a shield is only as strong as the one who crafts it." Again, he nodded. He knew that shields could be easily broken, something that he imagined became more and more difficult as one grew in proficiency. Still, it seemed that the addition of djed did not strengthen the shield as he had thought. From what Atziri had explained, it only changed the nature of the tasking, allowing it to encompass a greater number of potential functions.

[Keene Ward]

"Now," Atziri ran a hand over her shoulder, removing a few stray hairs that had fallen to her collar, collecting them between her fingers before offering them to Keene. "Create a shield to keep me out." Raising a brow, her lips curled slightly as Keene received the vessels of Atziri's djed with a steady hand, both careful not to touch the other. "If you can, that is, Initiate."

Not offering a reply to his expectant teacher, Keene looked down at the wisps of red in his hand, flame still burning steady to cast light so he could see what he was doing. Unsure how to proceed, Keene began to tap into the djed that had become so second nature a gesture. Rather than pulling it through his skin to filter it into the transient nature of djed, Keene let the slight tingle drift and sway, passing from the boundaries that defined Keene and into the world beyond. Slowly at first, the djed sloughed off of his hands - or more correctly, his hands sloughed off into djed - gathering in a shimmering cloud about the fibers in his hand. The foot had been deposited on the ground beside him, momentarily forgotten in the midst of Keene's concentration. He removed what reservations he had regarding the tasking, pushing them out of his mind as he focused what it was he wanted the shield to do. The cloud shivered, the myriad of particles that composed it darting in and out of the strands in his hand, tugging at them, pulling at the nature of its essence to glean what information they could.

It was a much different process from tasking against light or sound. Keene focused on the same function of blocking, though instead of visualizing the sense it was mean to obscure, he let the djed swirl about Atziri's djed. Flecks of red began to drift in the shimmer of the cloud, visual representations of Keene's focus on what it was he wanted the shield to be to stop. Frowning, Keene drew the cloud up and around him, several chimes having passed since he'd began. His flame had died down to just a sliver of light over the course of the tasking, but light remained thanks to Aziri's own ball of fire she had produced at some point during his silent work. The djed, his djed, wrapped around him, the haze of light covering his body as his hands moved through it, shaping and guiding it over the contours of his body. He stood at the cloud's nexus, condensing it over his form with an invisible pressure of will until it fit around him snugly. The uncountable specks of djed that had composed what had once been an airy mass had come together, solidifying over him like a layer of frost, twisting and flowering over his body in the gentle filigrees of a winter's morning.

There were imperfections. He could feel them between his fingers, around his armpits, and under his jawline, but the chest, which had been the main focus, was solid. The opalescent gleam of the construct glinted under its own light, unaffected by the hearty glow of Atziri's spell and unreflected in her eyes as she stared with an appraising eye at Keene's work. She stepped forward, saying nothing for the time being, to test the shield. With a stead movement of her arm, she placed her hand on his chest with a firm gesture. The shield flared, a slight shimmer of pearl, before returning to its natural state, keeping the hand from touching him as it had been meant to do. Raising a brow, Atziri moved her hand from his chest to his face, using her finger to poke at his lips. Confident after the successful display, Keene remained resolute. Another small flash passed, but this time Atziri was already investigating another section. This time, it was his eye, which she gently placed a finger over. Too Keene's dismay, he could feel the warmth of the finger over him, indicating yet another uneven part of his icy shell of a shield.

Withdrawing her hand, Atziri nodded. "Now, try patching the areas where the shield was weak." Keene blinked, the very back of his mind twitching with a hint of sheepishness. He'd never thought he could expand further upon any of his shields, imagining the first application to be the last as well. Nodding, Keene looked back down towards his hands to produce another cloud of res when he realized the hairs were still there, in his palm, but unable to pass through the shield he'd created. He raised a brow at that, cataloging in his mind that it might be best not to be holding whatever it was he was tasking against if he didn't want it to remain afterwards.

[Keene Ward]

Drawing his djed out from him once more, Keene found the sensation of tasking far more easy the second time around. With the base already functional, Keene had only to ease the cloud of djed over the original shield, his intent to block Atziri already firmly planted in the forefront of his mind. Letting his eyes close, Keene drew a deep, slow breath inwards, feeling the nature of the magic that encased him, searching for the spell was weakest. The cloud of shimmering opal following his thoughts, drifting over him, wrapping itself around the areas he could feel were thin or strained, reinforcing them with the wispy djed that pressed itself into the fractal layers of the barrier. While the tasking had only taken a few chimes, the process of "patching" continued on for many more, Keene's fingers twitching some as the djed made its way around him, methodical and comprehensive. When finally Keene felt himself far more incased than before, he let his eyes drift open first, drawing in the sticky night air through his nose to release it from between his lips as he nodded at Atziri.

Once more she stepped forward, only this time her hand moved quickly, testing the shield with a far more swift set of motions. First his chest, then his face, his eyes, even an attempt to move behind his ears, then a nudge of the knee to his groin, and so on until the majority of the spaces that could have been weak were tested and found suitable. With a nod, Atziri stepped back, arms crossing as she regarded him. "That's all, Keene. You can reabsorb it now." Another blank stare. It seemed his lessons in shielding had not been quite so comprehensive as he would have liked to believe they had been. His path of self-discovery after his enlightening meeting with the shielding master Relos seemed to have strayed farther from the path he'd been set upon than he would have liked. Again, he nodded, and again he wasn't sure what to do exactly, though the request itself was simple enough to test through several means.

At first, Keene moved to break the shield. His hand pressed against his chest, but to his own body it was as if the barrier had never existed in the first place. Immediately after, Keene applied the force of his will to the pressure exerted, and several cracks appeared in the shield's frosty exterior. It broke along the delicate feathers of ice the djed had formed upon its solidification, similar to a deconstruction of any other structure. Focusing on that concept of decomposition, Keene felt the shield flicker for a moment before it began to smoothly and silently crack and split apart until it once more was a haze of djed. With the shield disassembled, it was only a matter of raising his hands, letting the fog drift from a state of being outside of himself back into the desired place within him. He took a few ticks for himself, simply staring at where the djed mist had disappeared, reabsorbed - or reconstituted - back into the nature of his skin, bone, and muscle. Shielding was so strange a magic.

With a curt nod, Atziri moved to stand beside the mouth of the tunnel leading back into the cavern, turning with an expectant raise of her brow that Keene follow her. Taking a step, Keene realized he'd begun to leave without the foot that had sparked the entire situation in the first place, and he stopped to stoop down and retrieve it before joining his master with a small glimmer of curiosity in his gaze. "I want you to begin shielding against any creatures you come across." Keene blinked, turning to stare at the empty mouth of the cave's entrance with little comprehension. It seemed to be the natural state of things whenever Atziri told him anything; so rare it was for him to ever be fully aware of what was expected of him and how he might achieve it. "Use the walls and ceiling as your points of contact and draw the shield over them, like a cloth over a jar to keep the contents inside." The analogy was useful, and Keene nodded, eyes flicking over the area he was meant to cover. "As for the rest," Atziri made a vague wave at the face of the mountain. "I will leave it up to you how far you extend the protection."

The creature's foot then made sense, though only to an extent. Keene decided his concern was valid enough to warrant a question, and his soft, cool tone rose to meet Atziri with little inflection. "Will this not stop you from bringing back game?" While Keene wasn't directly opposed to lowering the number of animals he consumed within a season, he had grown used to have meat as a part of his diet - albeit, "meat" was a loose term for the bite-sized morsels Atziri returned with on a relatively irregular basis.

The woman gave him a sly grin, raising both brows. "Will it? You tell me, Keene."

"It will." Atziri nodded. "Would it not be more prudent to protect only against the more... dangerous beasts?"

Atziri nodded. "Of course." There was an impish light that glowed alongside the reflection of her fire's spark in her eyes as she regarded the young man with a fair amount of unabashed amusement.

Keene, however, took no notice of it as he frowned, looking down at the paw in his hand. His entire argument was based upon the assumption that the creatures she'd brought back were dinner. If that fact were fiction- "I see." Atziri let a small rush of air leave her nose in a poorly concealed chuckle. At no point had Atziri misled him, and Keene found his presumptuous failure to deduce to true nature of the furred animals something he would need to work on in the future.

[Keene Ward]

Once his mistake had been realized, Keene wasted little time wallowing in the epiphany of his foolishness. Instead, he approach the cave's face, his own set in a firm line of neutral determination. Glancing down at the foot in his hand, Keene decided it was best to map out how he was going to craft the shield before releasing his djed and beginning the process of tasking. So, letting his hand fall back to his side with the matted fur object securely in his grip, Keene's eyes scanned the rocky opening before him with a pensive perusal, searching for a point of origin to anchor the shield first. The mid point of the tunnel's arch was the first spot he checked, but Keene found it a bit too much of a gap from the top to the bottom to begin there. Instead, he chose to apply the djed in a horizontal manner, similar to how one might wrap a bandage around an arm.

With a solid course of action, Keene filed the tactic away in the back of his mind to focus on the actual tasking of his djed. While there were certainly a plethora of other ways to go about shielding the cave's entrance, Keene required the practical data of application before he felt capable of formulating any alternate plans. Settling both hands in front of him with palms up and paw in place, Keene let the djed shift from his body into the world around him, forcibly pulling it over the paw as he focused on the desire to keep that specific djed out. It was a bit different from tasking against a person, someone he knew beyond the hairs he had held. He didn't know anything about the animal, the only reference the piece of blood and bone in his hand, and so the gathering cloud of djed made several passes, each time its nature shifting slightly. He could feel the changes in it, similar to an itch or a shiver; the djed, his djed, slow began to take on the nature of that which he wanted to repel, the opalescent sheen muddying some with a dull grey, Keene's mental representation of the foreign djed.

Once he felt the nature of his djed had shifted enough to properly function as he intended, Keene turned his attention to the cave. All the while, Atziri watched quietly, her usual brief and corrective commentary absent - mostly due to the nature of the magic Keene was working in. He wasn't trying to match his first to hers, nor was he desperately trying to dodge her strikes. The magic was far more taxing upon the mind than the body, and interruptions of his focus were far more detrimental than useful, even if it were in redress. Thus, he worked in silence, the cloud shifting back and fourth like some strange, confounded cumulus that had somehow managed to get lost in the lower atmosphere. While attaching the shield to the entrance's upper left "corner" wasn't difficult, Keene found it a challenge to extend the shield across the chasm. It seemed that it was far more inclined to warp around the cave's lip, requiring him to shatter the shield several times as he troubleshooted.

From what he could tell, the gap had to be closed immediately. Spacing the cloud out before him, Keene slowly began to settle it around the entirety of the space. He needed a base to work off of, as his newly discovered ability to alter the shield gave him plenty of margin for error with the initial cast. Tufts of fluff drifted around him, shattered pieces of the shields he'd set down only to pull apart before continuing again, though they were hardly noticed by the young initiate as he continued, hands guiding the bulk of the djed into the desire position. Once it was in place, Keene gently placed a finger in about the middle of the open space, willing the djed before him to bind together into the swirling, crystallized patterns of the frost that his shields had began to take on as their natural appearance. Immediately, Keene was aware that the shield was hardly perfect. Even without exploring the inner structure of the shield, Keene could see several holes were the djed had not been thick enough. For the most part, however, he had created a barrier that wrapped itself about the cavern's mouth - however imperfect.

Taking several steps further, Keene inspected the shield, keeping the foot out of range for the time being, not wanted to compromise the apparently frailty of the barrier unnecessarily. The wisps of cloud had begun to gather back into a larger mass as Keene's eyes slowly moved over the mess of the icy shards, noting where it was most blatantly weak. With the initial inspection done, Keene drew the remaining djed that drifted around him at his disposal into a more managable position and set about patching the holes. The cloud moved in a fluid, though languid, motion, leaving behind it a new trail of shimmering fractals. Once he had finished with his second passover, Keene frowned back at his handiwork. While the thickness had been adjusted to become relatively uniform, the patches were quite obvious. Though opalescent in its appearance with a slightly grey undertone denoting the task it had been infused with, Keene could easily pick out where the layers of the smaller, ice-like particles that had bound together to create the structural integrity of the barrier met at odds, the patterns different as clearly as night and day.

While it was not elegant, Keene supposed he had sacrificed both efficiency and elegance for practicality, something that was the natural mark of one not fully learned in the ways of a craft. Taking up the paw in hand, Keene pressed it against the shield which responded with a muted flash of pearly light. So far, so good. Adding a bit more pressure, Keene's eyes moved over the shield itself, looking for any points of weakness. As far as he could tell, the shield was sound, and he stepped back, offering the paw back to his master so that she could test it herself. She received it with a nod, before hurling it at the cave's mouth. It was an action he had not expected, eliciting a slightly widened stare as he watched the paw rocket towards the shield with a speed he found to be mildly concerning.

To his surprise or, perhaps, relief, the paw bounced off of the shield with a bright flash of light before shield settled back down to its natural hue. Keene let his eyes squint some, though the gesture itself was relatively unnecessary, to examine a new pattern that played within the frosty filigrees of his shield. Atziri took a few steps over to where the foot had fallen, stooping down to retrieve it before she rose to speak, voice even and warm as the light cast from her fire, though just as distant as the darkness around them. "When a shield is tasked, any attempt to break it that fails will only strengthen it, adjusting its properties to encompass each failed tactic." As if to illustrate her point, she threw the foot at the shield again, but this time there was only the faintest of changes in the shield's glimmer as the foot seemed to hover for just a moment at its point of impact before dropping to the ground rather than bouncing off. "Once a shield has adapted, it can begin to absorb the djed it repels, allowing it to sustain itself." She turned to give Keen a raise of her brow. "If that djed is available. When you become more skilled, a shield can draw from the very environment around it to maintain and repair itself." Keene nodded, taking her words and recording them into his memory.

[Keene Ward]

With Keene's apparent understanding of her lessons, Atziri drew a strange, translucent talon out of her pocket. Offering it to Keene who received it wordlessly, she held her gaze steady as he inspected it, turning it over in his hands only to realize he had begun to bleed where the razor-like edge of the thing had scraped against the numb palm of his right hand. "That," She frowned at Keene's carelessness but continued on anyway. "Is a talon from a creature known as a glassbeak, Initiate." Shaking her head, Atziri let out a small huff of air from some unspoken memory. "They're nasty things, and one of the more dangerous things that go into the labs. What comes out..." She shrugged, apparently not needing words to impart to Keene an outcome he knew perfectly well. What went into the laboratories and what came out were rarely ever the same thing, and more often than not they were doubly if not more dangerous than their predecessors. "I want you to create another shield over the one you just made."

Glancing up from his more delicate examinations of the talon, Keene offered a question of clarification. "Layering?"

"Ah, so Relos explained it then?" Keene nodded. The theory of stacking shields over one another in order to add barriers of different protective qualities had been something the nuit had introduced to him, but had not expanded upon as Keene had been too inexperienced to do much else with the knowledge but store it away until he could apply it and investigate it to the extent of his own curiosity. "Good. I'll be checking your shields nightly, as should you, Keene. These barriers are not indestructible; time wears away all things. Keep that in mind." He nodded again, fingers carefully holding the talon to keep it from doing any further harm to his body. "Eventually, you'll be able to do all of this in a single shield, but until then I want you to keep layering. It'll be good practice."

As he had done with the paw before it, Keene let his djed separate from him, projected outward in the familiar fluff of the clouds filled with the minuscule jewels of ice. He could feel the magic taxing him, pushing him towards the upper limits of his capabilities. As he had already discovered, shielding only allowed one so much expenditure of djed until it simply was not longer a possibility until food and rest had recovered what was lost. While Keene wasn't quite to that point, he was well aware that the next shield was going to be his last for the night. A couple bells had already passed, and they were getting along well into the night. The lateness of the bell made the prospect of finishing all the more acceptable in spite of the itch of desire at the back of Keene's find to continue until he could do so no longer. Following through on that line of foolishness would only leave him more weary and with little more to show for it, something he was well aware of.

As the djed swirled about the talon, passing over, around, and through it, Keene set his mind onto the task of rejection, deflection, and absorption. Having already done it several times over within the past few bells, it was far easier than it had been when they'd began. He watched and waited, repeatedly guiding the djed over the object, collecting the slight taints and alterations to his own djed until it had taken on a strange, crimson hue that differed quite noticeable from the pale grey of the paw before. He wondered if the colors had anything to do with the strength of the creature he was tasking against, a subconscious understanding of the danger the djed contained within its potential. Turning back to the shield he'd laid previous, Keene pressed the crimson billow of his tasked djed onto the already present opalescent barrier.

It was far easier to shield over the shield, though Keene found that the new shield still had to abide by the typical rules of the magic. He had to attach it to the sides of the cave's entrance once more, and while his second attempt resulted in fewer holes and a much more uniform distribution of thickness, there were still patched to made. All in all the whole process lasted about a half bell before he was done, fingers slightly more shaky than they had been before. Before turning to indication he had finished, Keene took the talon in hand and scraped it down the face of the barrier with a ferocity indicative that he had learned from Atziri's example. Though the shield itself had been of an azure hue, the flash was still the same pearly white. Similar to how the shield beneath the newly constructed one had reacted so violently to the projectile, Keene watched as the flare of light faded to reveal a new pattern of fractals among the rest of the frosty shell.

Letting out a small exhale of a sigh, Keene finally let his mind relax some. With the respite came the rest of his body's needs, the greatest of which was a desire for sleep. It had been a long day, and he was sore in both body and soul. Turning to his master, Keene set the talon gingerly into her outstretched hand which stored the artifact back into her pockets with fluid ease. "That should be enough for tonight, Keene. Go get some rest." She gave him a playful grin as he nodded his understanding that he was being released to his own nighttime devices. "You'll need it for our spar tomorrow." Keene blinked once, little showing on his face other than what was, perhaps, a small hint of reluctant weariness before Keene passed through the layered shields of cave, res drifting from his lips to flicker into a pale light to guide his way to his room where he intended to surrender himself to what rest he could find before the dawn of the next day.

[Orin Fenix]

Keene Ward

Skills

Boxing 1
Unarmed Combat 1
Endurance 2
Tactics 4
Acrobatics 3
Body-Building 1
Running 1
Land Navigation 1
Intelligence 4
Observation 4
Tracking 2
Glyphing 2
Writing 2
Philosophy 1
Shielding 4
Interrogation 1

Lores

Tactics: Tracking a Blow's Trajectory
Running: Stress Reliever
Tracking: Noticing Claw Marks
Glyphing: Differentiating Runes
Shielding: Biological Tasking
Shielding: Patching Holes
Shielding: Reabsorbing Shields
Shielding: Shields Adapt To Failed Attacks

Rewards/Consequences

Reward: Several claws from an unidentified animal
Consequence: For the next two days Keene's Djed will be slightly depleted making it harder to use magic

Notes :

This was a really fascinating Shielding thread. I'd never really read any shielding before so this was a brilliant introduction for me. As always, a pleasure to read your work.

Don't forget to edit your request and if you have any questions feel free to PM me.