Alses listened carefully to Veldrys; the Symenestra had proven himself intelligent and with a considered, reasoning mindset that appealed on an intellectual level. “It might be possible,” she mused, watching the statue for a reaction, mindful of previous events. “Although a little distasteful,” she added, suddenly wondering if this was a tomb or a memorial. Such things were not common in Lhavit, but not non-existent. “We’d need a mason, unless someone here has the skill to cut and lift her?” Her eyes flicked hopefully from one person to the next in their little group, just in case some more unexpected skills made themselves known.
“She’ll be all right,” Alses said brusquely to Veldrys, hurrying over to the girl’s side through the freshly-falling rain, a show of concern as much as it was anything of real substance, most of her mind still taken up with the fascinating conundrum of the fountain and its many-on-one auras. “She looked at us too deeply, that’s all.” Alses discreetly left off the fact that she’d deliberately drawn the girl’s attention in the first place; mentioning it would only lead to difficulty.
“It’s a mistake many an aurist makes. Perhaps it will serve as a reminder not to go nosing around wherever her fancy takes her,” she added, more quietly, frowning at Khara in an absent-minded sort of way. “Although I suppose I have to make allowances for uncontrolled magic. See? She’s coming back just fine.” Sure enough, Khara was responding to ministrations and indeed the world at large once more.
“Look at me,” Alses instructed the girl quickly. “No, not with the magic-” she added, pre-empting any surge in djed, and any repeat of the incident “-with your eyes. That’s it. Ground yourself with your physical senses, don’t go losing yourself in the colours, otherwise we’ll hurt you again.” She would, too, and with as little compunction as she would have in swatting a fly; her secrets were her own, thank you very much, and it was less draining to flare momentarily than it was to compress and hide the radiation of her own soul.
“Which would not be a good thing, yes?” she added, a wry smile thrown in for good measure, softening the blow and reinforcing the implication that it would be accidental and involuntary.
“May I take a look at that?” she asked, holding up a hand for the locket as it dangled from Khara’s fingers, eyes already going distant and slightly unfocused as she hurled herself deeper into the colour-drenched world, feeling the solar blaze of her soul and her magic twist and shiver, a bright tide of djed pouring away in a torrent, driving her deep into the obscured depths that only her skilled auristics could penetrate.
Even as she did so, eyes wide open but looking at things others couldn’t sense, the air filled with the eye-watering sound of cracking bone and popping joints, her reaching fingers elongating rapidly, unnaturally, tangling spindly, bone-spired digits into its fine links. The flesh on her hand looked as though it was boiling and leaping as it tried to keep up with the ivory needles that had grown – wicked-sharp – across the intervening distance, a painless but gruesome transformation, and decidedly not one Alses had intended or anticipated.
Which wasn’t to say it was the worst of outcomes; there had been times where the capricious magic had taken all the bones from a limb for a while. A nuisance, at the very best, and a disaster at worst, leaving her to lounge and languish collapsed in a heap like a jellied eel. There was something supremely disconcerting, too, about the sight of a limb flopping bonelessly, bending and twisting in all the wrong ways.
No time to dwell on it now, or to force her vicious new hand back to its original shape; there was magic and mystery afoot!
A tight whorl of her power danced and played around Thomas, drinking deep of the wisps of divine magic that curled shyly, secretively off him; what hidden depths! A memory tickled her, and she inwardly cursed herself – Avalis, of course, and the bright lily-mark of Her favour on Thomas’ arm. Which explained, in turn, why he had managed to see something that Alses, with all of her power and skill, could not.
“Artisans,” she mumbled in response to Khara’s question, even as she sank deeper into the comforting ocean that the artist unseen had painted, beautifully, just for her. “Aska at the Touch of Fire is one; she’ll know the others in the city.” Alses was looking for resonances, trails and indicators, sifting through the arcane strata of time, the locket in one hand as a reference echo and the rest of her senses directed outwards. There had been no obvious defences or traps; the less-skilled would have set them off by now, surely: Alses felt able to do some brute-force work, therefore, to expend more magic and to go deeper.
Had the locket been entombed beneath the fountain at some point? What was its link to the statue? Was there a link, beyond appearance? And was the statue – stone on the outside, at least – more than it had appeared on her first inspection? Was the stone imbued with some quality or capability beyond the mundane, had it been impressed with some arcane charge or divine geas, or was there a nastier origin; had stone been flesh, at one point?
‘One thing at a time, Alse,’ her thoughts whispered, taking the reins and directing the surging rush of her magic. List and regimen, order and compartmentalisation – there was a place for genius, for the flight of ideas and the intuitive leap, but for much of an investigation it was the meticulous assembling of information that was key, evidence building up in snippets and chunks from a thousand different sources until something coherent could be assembled out of a disparate collage of pieces.
“She’ll be all right,” Alses said brusquely to Veldrys, hurrying over to the girl’s side through the freshly-falling rain, a show of concern as much as it was anything of real substance, most of her mind still taken up with the fascinating conundrum of the fountain and its many-on-one auras. “She looked at us too deeply, that’s all.” Alses discreetly left off the fact that she’d deliberately drawn the girl’s attention in the first place; mentioning it would only lead to difficulty.
“It’s a mistake many an aurist makes. Perhaps it will serve as a reminder not to go nosing around wherever her fancy takes her,” she added, more quietly, frowning at Khara in an absent-minded sort of way. “Although I suppose I have to make allowances for uncontrolled magic. See? She’s coming back just fine.” Sure enough, Khara was responding to ministrations and indeed the world at large once more.
“Look at me,” Alses instructed the girl quickly. “No, not with the magic-” she added, pre-empting any surge in djed, and any repeat of the incident “-with your eyes. That’s it. Ground yourself with your physical senses, don’t go losing yourself in the colours, otherwise we’ll hurt you again.” She would, too, and with as little compunction as she would have in swatting a fly; her secrets were her own, thank you very much, and it was less draining to flare momentarily than it was to compress and hide the radiation of her own soul.
“Which would not be a good thing, yes?” she added, a wry smile thrown in for good measure, softening the blow and reinforcing the implication that it would be accidental and involuntary.
“May I take a look at that?” she asked, holding up a hand for the locket as it dangled from Khara’s fingers, eyes already going distant and slightly unfocused as she hurled herself deeper into the colour-drenched world, feeling the solar blaze of her soul and her magic twist and shiver, a bright tide of djed pouring away in a torrent, driving her deep into the obscured depths that only her skilled auristics could penetrate.
Even as she did so, eyes wide open but looking at things others couldn’t sense, the air filled with the eye-watering sound of cracking bone and popping joints, her reaching fingers elongating rapidly, unnaturally, tangling spindly, bone-spired digits into its fine links. The flesh on her hand looked as though it was boiling and leaping as it tried to keep up with the ivory needles that had grown – wicked-sharp – across the intervening distance, a painless but gruesome transformation, and decidedly not one Alses had intended or anticipated.
Which wasn’t to say it was the worst of outcomes; there had been times where the capricious magic had taken all the bones from a limb for a while. A nuisance, at the very best, and a disaster at worst, leaving her to lounge and languish collapsed in a heap like a jellied eel. There was something supremely disconcerting, too, about the sight of a limb flopping bonelessly, bending and twisting in all the wrong ways.
No time to dwell on it now, or to force her vicious new hand back to its original shape; there was magic and mystery afoot!
A tight whorl of her power danced and played around Thomas, drinking deep of the wisps of divine magic that curled shyly, secretively off him; what hidden depths! A memory tickled her, and she inwardly cursed herself – Avalis, of course, and the bright lily-mark of Her favour on Thomas’ arm. Which explained, in turn, why he had managed to see something that Alses, with all of her power and skill, could not.
“Artisans,” she mumbled in response to Khara’s question, even as she sank deeper into the comforting ocean that the artist unseen had painted, beautifully, just for her. “Aska at the Touch of Fire is one; she’ll know the others in the city.” Alses was looking for resonances, trails and indicators, sifting through the arcane strata of time, the locket in one hand as a reference echo and the rest of her senses directed outwards. There had been no obvious defences or traps; the less-skilled would have set them off by now, surely: Alses felt able to do some brute-force work, therefore, to expend more magic and to go deeper.
Had the locket been entombed beneath the fountain at some point? What was its link to the statue? Was there a link, beyond appearance? And was the statue – stone on the outside, at least – more than it had appeared on her first inspection? Was the stone imbued with some quality or capability beyond the mundane, had it been impressed with some arcane charge or divine geas, or was there a nastier origin; had stone been flesh, at one point?
‘One thing at a time, Alse,’ her thoughts whispered, taking the reins and directing the surging rush of her magic. List and regimen, order and compartmentalisation – there was a place for genius, for the flight of ideas and the intuitive leap, but for much of an investigation it was the meticulous assembling of information that was key, evidence building up in snippets and chunks from a thousand different sources until something coherent could be assembled out of a disparate collage of pieces.
