Solo A Falling Sky

[Keene Ward]

The fifth day of summer, 515 AV

He woke to the rain, the cool liquid splashing harmlessly against his forehead. Taking a chime or so to groggily rise from his bed of sand, the rain had begun to fall in earnest. The plink plink of water against stone shifted into a hissing reminder that his supplies weren't quite as resistant to the weather as he was. Hurrying out of the cave, Keene shook the sleep from his head, water already dripping off of his nose and ears, wetting his clothes so that they stuck to him in the uncomfortable muggy heat of the morning. Res slipped from his lips moving in a steady cloud to gather up the rain, holding it above the stone "tent" that housed his belongings. Like a corpse in the face of an army of ants, the rain was drawn to the pale blue shimmer of Keene's spell. Guiding the water through the air, Keene pulled and tugged on it with little flicks of his fingers, until the water and res was drawn out over the stone like an umbrella. With a snap, Keene transmuted the res into ice, the chill of the magic freezing the gathered water as well.

The ice held, though it teetered in the gathering wind, and Keene used the respite in rainfall to get to work on crafting a shield to stop the rain. While he had been checking his shields every night, Keene had noticed something within the intricate filigrees of frost that comprised the weave of his shields. There were places and spaces that had little to no meaning, like a letter that had no purpose. It was reminiscent of glyphing: a focus without intent, making it little more than a mess of ink on paper. As he had investigated, he'd found that the majority of the shield was little more than just a placeholder. When whatever the shield was tasked against brushed against it, the few parts of the weave that held the djed in question would activate, causing the flash as energy was redirected towards the would be intrusion. During his conversation with the shielder, Master Relos, the nuit had spoke of multiple tasks for a single shield. Though he needed to work in a timely manner with the wobbling, curved sheet of ice above him taking the majority of the weather's downpour, Keene found there was little better time for him to test his theory than in the heat of the moment.

He could feel the storm above him, the slight jitter of excitement every time a shiver of thunder rolled through it. There was energy in the sky above him, enough that it found its way into Keene's on deliberations, inspiring him to take the risk of failure in favor of potential self-improvement. With steady breaths, Keene stilled the agitated nature of his djed, drawing it up and out through himself in its purest form. The opalescent shimmer of his djed drifted about him, little more than a small handful of workable material, but more than enough should his plan bear the fruit he sought. Nudging the djed to drift out into the rain, he focused his thoughts on the falling nature of the water, rather than the water itself. The task was not to keep water out, but to stop and prevent the entrance of the rain. It was a small distinction, one that Keene wanted to make clear in both his mind and the djed that drifted through the deluge, tinging itself a calm, murky blue.

Turning to already established shield, Keene pressed the tasked djed towards it. Rather than to create a second coat, Keene guided the little crystalline fibers within the cloud to settle within the shield's weave, solidifying as new twists and curls within the already predefined structure. The shield shuddered for a tick before it began to shift under Keene's ministrations. What he had thought to be rigid structures instead moved fluidly, the fractals advancing and retreating as was needed while he adjusted the shield's purpose through its structure. Though he worked quickly, the process of augmenting his shield was not one that could truly be done in haste. Had he been able to task the djed against both rain and spiders at the same time, he imagined it would have been a bit easier. The main problem that arose with adjusting an already crafted shield was more of coverage than anything else. The entire shield had to be addressed, it could not simply take the new djed in and fix itself, though as he worked, the shield seemed to work with him. It was possible, he mused as the final touches were made, that the shields could be tasked to... task. It would require further experimentation, but he was certain there was a way to further streamline the process. Assuming that Master Relos would still receive him, Keene resolved to seek the nuit out before too long.

With the shield complete, Keene pushed the ice off of it. The sheet hit the ground with a splash, breaking into several pieces as the shield proved to hold against the rain. First, it flashed for each droplet, but as the rain pressed on, the light faded and instead the rain simply ran down the rocks as if they were water tight. It was a small victory, but one that went uncelebrated as Keene stared up into the sky, blinking away the rain that sought sanctuary in his eyes. The clouds were heavy and in the distance he could see streaks of lighting cascading downwards with a rush of power. Even from his distance from the storm's heart, Keene could feel the weather's strength, Zulrav's might, within the rolling darkness of the sky. Though his camp was protected from the brunt of the storm, Keene wondered if there was more he should do to keep himself safe. Though there was no malevolence in the storms that had visited the island, ill-will was not needed to decimate lives with a single strike of purplish white. Keene did not want to be one of those.

[Keene Ward]

The winds had begun to pick up some, their excitement joining in with the storms thundering joy at being born, twisting the clouds in a powerful display of exuberance. Even when he had been young and Mella had taken him out the bay to watch the summer storms, Keene had never felt them quite in the same way as he had upon receiving Zulrav's mark. He could sense the power, the thrill, the wonder that it was to be a storm, and while he didn't quite understand it, he found that he respected it. The winds were unlike humanity. They existed as they were, but they had the ability to become more, to revel in the wonder of their own conjoined might. It was something that humans were incapable of, and the emotions that the storms carried with them seemed fitting, far more so than the shadows that humans sought to imitate.

In spite of these things, it did not change the fact that storms were still dangerous, something Keene was perfectly well aware of even as he stared off into the gathering darkness of the sky with something almost close to admiration. With the next resounding crack of thunder that sent a tingle of glee through the winds that swept up into the sky, seeking to join the ever growing mass of rain and cloud, Keene drew his attention back to the pounding rain that wet the stone around him. His clothes were thoroughly drenched, however the air was still warm, sparking with the electric pull of the storms thunderous fingers, leaving him comfortable enough in spite of the slight increase in weight that pulled at the hems of his shirt and pants. Not knowing how long the rainfall might last, Keene set to work augmenting the second stone tent. Already, sand had begun to trickle from within, pooling in a divot in the landscape that he carefully avoided as he moved about the stone, fingers deftly shifting the weave and adding in the newly tasked djed. He attempted not only to add in the rain-tasked djed, but to adjust the already present spider-tasked djed to incorporate rain as well.

For each segment of rain-tasked djed, Keene altered the flow of the spider-tasked, flickers of blues and greens shimmering as he worked. When he had finished, it was difficult to tell if his alterations had had any effect, as the shield began to flash until it repeated what the other had done, becoming little more than a faint shimmer as the rain ran down its length. He made a note to attempt something similar when he had more time to focus. Another thunderous crack of lighting filled the air, and Keene frowned up at the sky, squinting to keep the rain from blinding him. He wasn't sure if he could task a shield to stop lightning. It was one thing to keep the rain from saturating his supplies, but it was another entirely to deny one of the greatest forces of nature purchase through a thin layer of magical frost. He wasn't even sure how to go about it, as the djed of lightning from within the heart of the storm was certainly different from what he could create of his own res.

Before he could even attempt at creating a shield to stop the lighting, he felt the air around him burst with excitement. Wasting no time, Keene shot forward towards the tunnel-pocked walls of the ravine, feet slipping some over the rain covered rocks as he darted for cover. There was a fizzling snap of energy as the lightning hit the ground behind him. Heat shot through the air, slamming into Keene's back as he stumbled over the stone, skidding across the rocks to come to a dazed halt, shins and elbows bruised but otherwise unharmed. The air danced around him, howling through the ravine as the storm drifted over head. Rain flew in every direction, battering him from all sides, but what captured and kept his attention was not the titillated torrent nor the whimsy of the winds but a thin, twisted line of glass that had grown out of the pit of sand that had gathered just a few paces from where he had been standing.

Parts of the structure still glowed a dull red, steam drifting up and off of the flawed, murky solid that quivered in the wind's wake. It was not the first time he had been nearly struck by lightning, but the strange sculpture that stood as a monument to the storm's strength occupied his thoughts far more than the whisper of concern over the perceived frequency of his run in with the elemental whip of destruction. While fascinated, Keene had not lost all modicums of reason, and he waited for the next roll of thunder to pass before picking his way across the canyon's puddle riddled floor to investigate the still smoldering pit of sand. It was not quite glass in the conventional sense. Sand had adhered to its surface, giving it a rough layer of dirt and grim. What wasn't covered by the bits of stone was milky grey, imperfect but interesting in its own way. Keene had never stopped to consider glass as a potential product of elemental power, yet there it was, nestled in the pale white sand he'd created with his own res.

As the stone, for that was what it more closely resembled, was still hot, Keene was unable to examine it further. With the thunderous booms over head and streaks of pale purple light flashing down to kiss the earth with their terrible power, Keene found it best to wait out the storm within the relative safety of the tunnels. Since the advent of the rain, he had not seen a single spider. Even as he ducked under the mouth of one of the larger caverns, there were no skittering figures to be seen. Most of the tunnels were high enough above the ravine's floor to avoid too much water running into them, though the one Keene had chosen had collected a small rivulet that ran deeper into the darkness. Making a mental note, Keene figured that the spiders were not fond of rain, adding another potential weakness to his relatively short list of facts about them. His spider-shield was still intact from the parley he had attended before, and as none of the creatures had made a move to harm him in the days following, Keene let himself relax, leaning against the cavern wall as he stared out into the pouring rain.

[Keene Ward]

He waited within the cave for about a bell before the storm had passed. While it still raged on in gleeful abandon in the distance, it had left behind a shimmering world of lakes and rivers behind, giving the ravine a false appearance of bounty that Keene knew far better than to trust. Stepping out from his impromptu sanctuary, Keene picked his way around the various puddles that littered the ground, making his way back to the two stone tents that had weathered the weather well enough. Taking a few ticks to ensure that the rain had not managed to find a way though his defenses, Keene turned his attention to the lighting's offspring left cradled in what sand remained.

It was light and hollow, more stone than glass as he'd first imagined it to be, but still possessing a curious brittle nature with specks of translucent pockets about the inner ring that gave him pause in his deliberations over what exactly the lightning had left behind. It had been a long time since he had experimented with his reimancy, the magic having reached a point where he had thought it less of discovery and more of a practiced honing of skill. With the strange substance in hand, however, Keene wondered if there was not more to it. He set it to the side, easing himself down to sit on the damp ground, his own body drenched to the point where it made little difference if he sat in a puddle or on dry stone, and contemplated the possibility that there was more to his magic than he had allowed himself to believe. It was a humbling thought, and one that he embraced. Progress was achieved not through success but failure, and it had been a long time since he had last sought the latter over the prior.

With the danger of the storm passed and water left to keep whatever curiosity that might have driven the spiders at bay, Keene had time to work with his overdue revelation. While there was still his investigation into shielding to explore, Keene still had yet to meet again with Relos, and there were more things he wanted to ask the nuit than simply the more intricate details of multi-tasking. Turning his focus inward, Keene breathed deep, air rushing into his lungs to the rhythm of the storm's rolling thunder. Res flowed from within him, drifting from his nose and lips to hover in a small cloud before him. He let his eyes close, focus remaining inward in spite of the iridescent haze of pale blue that drifted slowly away from him, and contemplated the elements as he understood them. If glass, the object of his investigations, was to be an element, he wanted to find the most basic part of its nature.

Water was ever changing, yet permanent. It was a cycle, a story. Fire was fleeting, a glimpse into what could be that fed of off what was to exist within the now. It was a moment, a thought. Earth was solid, sturdy. It held the permanence of the past, a history. Wind was transient but eternal, an entity that both was and wasn't. It was both nothing and everything, a dream. Then, there was ice. It possessed stone's solidarity, but water's vivacity. Cold and unyielding, it was like fire in that it could not exist forever. It was water's sword, a farce. After ice, there was lightning. It was even more fleeting than a flame, but it burned brighter than even the most joyous of winds. It was life in an instant, a singular event. Sand, stone, dirt, steam, mist... Keene pondered over these things, the res twisting and coiling before him, moved not by conscious thought but the meticulous deliberations of its master projected within it on a subconscious level. It was his thoughts given form, and it shifted as often as they did, a reflection of his contemplation.

First, Keene considered what glass even was. It was not a gem, therefore not necessarily tied to stone, yet there was earth within it. He could feel it, the elemental pull of the ground upon the nebulous concept of glass that drifted through his mind. Fire too, seemed to place a claim in would be element. Lightning had suggested that it could be pulled from the stone within the sand, but Keene needed more than a natural occurrence. He thought back to his life in Zeltiva: the panes of the windows; the small, circular lenses of spectacles; the vials of ink; even the shattered remains of bottles in the streets. Glass was both fragile and resilient, an echo of ice, or perhaps that which cast the shadow of the more chilly element. It was translucent, but it did not always have to be so. It could be clouded, clear, colored... In that way, it was similar to water's ever changing form, only glass was rigid like stone.

The res before him swirled, fluctuating between haze and liquid.

Glass was more than just the elements combined. It was its own entity, just as he had discovered the elements before it to be. It was like ice, but it was not ice. It was like stone, but it was not stone. It could be drawn from fire, but it was not fire. It held the shimmer of water, but it was not water. Keene frowned, the concepts of each element clashing with one another in his mind, breath becoming uneven due to his own frustrations. Taking a moment, Keene paused, letting his thoughts settle for a chime before slowly letting his captive breath free to draw another one with a steady rise of his shoulders. Perhaps glass was just that: the elements in harmony. It was a dance; a kiss of water's touch, a snarl of fire's heat, a whisper of wind's eternity, and the warm embrace of earth's strength.

His fingers twitched, the res responding to the subtle movements. It shifted first from the pale blue haze to a ball of liquid, then to a cube of pale blue. He concentrated on harmony, on the collective singularity of the elements over their own individual natures, forming a new nature with him. He felt the res respond, the magic shivering its way through his projected self, the portion of his soul that he had cast off in favor of discovery. He felt it well up within him, a swell of energy that was translated to the res before him in a wave of concentrated power. The res shivered beneath the force of Keene's will, and the concept of glass as he had crafted it was held firm and strong in his mind. With a slow exhale of breath, Keene willed his res to take on the nature of harmony, of glass. There was a brief moment during which Keene could feel his res shift, his djed shivering for a tick, before he opened his eyes to inspect his handiwork.

[Keene Ward]

To his dismay, but not his surprise, the only thing that met his cursory gaze was a pale blue cube of res that floated a few feet from his face. Due to decay, it had shrunk from what it had been in his head, but beyond that there had been no change. There was no glass before him, but a single failure was hardly impetus enough to stop his experiment. Once more, Keene let his eyes close, res drifting from his lips to join the cube, drifting about it without much purpose as his thoughts drifted inwards once more. Harmony, then, was perhaps not quite the nature of glass. He was certain that it was a balance, however, and drew more upon the concept of such rather than that of harmony. Harmony implied cooperation where balance dealt less with a living construct and more with a concept of parts leading to a whole. Glass held a complexity within it that gave rise to a natural mysticism. Just like a gem of the earth or lightning from the sky, glass was more than what it came from. It was more than lightning and sand, but it was not a harmonious conjoining of the two elements.

Keene mulled over the concept of balance, images of glass drifting in the background of his mental deliberations. The heat had returned, settling in over the quiet stillness of the pools around him. Sweat had begun to bead over his forehead, the damp state of his clothes doing little to impede the rising temperature of his own naturally cooler body. He could feel the world around him, hear the steady beat of his heart as it sounded against the carefully drawn breathes and even more carefully released. Glass was balance, a tenuous equilibrium. It was transient, like water, in that should too much or too little be given, it would not come to pass. Just like that sand scarred stone that the lightning had left behind; balance was key.

He considered what the balance was between. Glass was not the embodiment of balance alone. It was delicate in that regard: dependent upon the other elements to bring it into being, even more so than fire and its need for fuel. Earth, wind, water, and fire... They were not equal partners in glass' nature, but they each played a role. Keene's res swirled once more, the mist condensing into a liquid as he gathered his thoughts. He held the concept of focus as the primary nature of the element, whispers of the pieces that comprised it drifting as the secondaries. Again, power surged through the force of his will, and again he failed.

Not to be bested, Keene continued with his meditative deliberations for several bells, taking time to allow himself respite in drink or food before diving back into study that he had neglected for so long. Sometimes he did so without res at all, other times he attempted several transmutations one after the other, res drifting in and out of him like the air he breathed. Progress was slow, but progress was made. It started with peculiar looking stones, little messes of jagged black, hardly refined and brittle as wafers. These structures, however, slowly shifted more and more towards the idealized element in Keene's mind's eye. Balance was key, certainly, and the more trials and tests he paced himself through, the more he came to understand that the balance of glass was not constant. It was variable, changing, as attainable as capturing the light of the moon or stealing away the joy of a breeze. There was no set formula in the balance of glass, rather it was the balance itself that became the glass. It was a by product, a form of magic in and of itself.

The more he tried, the closer he felt to it. His res shivered in anticipation with each successive spell, his focus like a vice upon his goal. When it happened, Keene simply stared down at the little ball of transparent solid that plopped down into his lap with a blank gaze. It was small, and there were imperfections within it, but the marble was, for all intents and purposes, a huge step in the desired direction. Picking up the little ball, Keene examined it, find it lacking in perfection, but solid and firm as glass should be. Setting it beside him, he settled in for the coming bells, prepared to find not only the balance of glass, but to familiarize himself with its nature beyond his theory. Once more res drifted from him, and once more he settled into his steady rounds of trial and error on the road towards the unattainable perfection he knew he could never achieve. It was the journey that he benefited from, and understanding that there was no end that kept him going.

[Keene Ward]

By the time night fell, Keene was exhausted. Glass pebbles littered the ground around him, and while he had taken well spaced breaks in between his trials, his back was stiff and shoulders sore from his constant inspections and introspections. Having only experimented with a small portion of his workable djed, Keene's weariness stemmed more from mental exhaustion than anything else. As the heat of the day had progressed and time passed, the puddles had slowly dissipated, some sinking into the pockets within the stone while others had simply returned to the air they had come from. His clothes were still damp, but a brief rub down of magnetic res allowed him the comfort of dry clothes once more. The sand beneath his stone tent was given the same treatment, drying the makeshift bed to make it marginally more inviting.

As the light had begun to fade, Keene began checking his shields, eyeing the various curls of frost and finding that his alterations had remained intact, even the augments of the original weaves about his sleeping quarters. When that was done, he paused, eyes staring at the straw doll that lay atop one of the sacks of food. Wilhelmina had remained silent since their last discussion, and her parting words had hardly been indicative of progress. There was a brief moment during which Keene's lips moved as if he were going to say something, but instead he simply shook his head, a slight sigh escaping him before he turned to stoop into the adjacent tent that had become his home that past string of days.

Laying his head to rest against the tickling bite of the sand, Keene stared upwards into the gathering darkness of the cloudy sky. He could not remember when the storm had ceased its rumblings, but in the slow moving calm the occasional breeze that passed through the foreboding crags of the ravine, he felt the wind's content. It passed over him like a blanket, a soothing balm for ailments he did not even know he had. The world, his world, had expanded in so short a time into a realm that he had not even thought to dream of even during his most adventurous of dreams. There was more to life than simple study, of that he had become certain. The past few seasons had found his heart wrenched by despair, seared by hatred, gripped by fear, wrought with impotence, set alight by desire, and gently cradled by love. It was so much and so overwhelming. The lives of the common man, wrought with emotion, was not his world. It was not the life he had been led to live, nor, as he considered in drowsy silence, the life he wanted to lead.

He had experienced more than unwanted emotion. He had found strength and weakness alike. His magic had grown and withered, mind expanded and diminished. The island had taken him, as he had offered himself, and made true upon the promises that others had made for it. He was changed, for better or worse, and the island had given him something that he could not name nor truly place. He had been given that which the slave, Vox, had sought so desperately, and yet he had never known it, perhaps he never would. His choices had led him to become what he was, and through the island's graces - or perhaps it was a curse - his choices would lead him to become what he might be. As his eyes grew too heavy to keep them open, he heard the familiar whispered voices, memories flitting in the back of his mind. His past haunted him, but only when he grew too weary to walk forward. Always forward. For it was in the journey that he could forget both beginning and end, a state of being far less painful. As he drifted back into the past, jaw clenched and shoulders hunched, a pale white face watched on, silent and steady, a model of eternity.

[Languish]

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