Best Laid Plans pt2

by **Madeira Dusk** on November 22nd, 2018, 11:24 pm

It was just before dawn, with the horizon brushed with the green of first light, and the Infinity Manor and its inhabitants were lost to dreams. Those sleepless few, the ghosts and ghouls among the number that called the Architectrix structure home, were out looking for something to fill the endless time of the quiet hours. But those that stayed, the beasts, cats and birds and chickens and kelvics, twitched and sighed and tossed in their sleep. In their dreams there were rats that needed to be chased, worms that needed to be pecked and skies that begged for soaring.

Madeira was not among the sleepers, at least not there. The house felt that she was far away, but also somehow within its walls. So it waited, and waited, and just before dawn its creator came home.

A shining doorway opened in the empty air in the master bedroom at the very top of the manor, and out stepped the Spiritist. She was wearing her thin silk nightdress but was drowning in a heavy lynx fur cloak. A wiff of black, loamy soil, fresh clean grass and something ancient seemed to come with her. She stood on her toes and stretched languidly, the cloak falling away and revealing her belly pushing tight and round against the silk. In her hand was a battered red book.

"Good morning", she greeted the house aloud, and got a hum of affectious acknowledgement in return. Scones lit themselves in her room, and a flickering fire sprung to life in the hearth.

She always woke refreshed when she slept in her secret graveyard. The ancient, unknowable place was a gift of Leth's. A small, quiet space just for her, where she could ruminate and study and rest in peace. It was incredibly soothing, to be in the presence of things so old and wise when she needed to think.

She pulled the nightdress over her head and tossed it aside, and her red book thrown on the settee in the sitting area before the hearth. She shook the moss out of her hair and picked her simple linen dress out of the wardrobe.

"I think I've finally decided on a design for that mouse brooch", she spoke aloud again, her voice low and simmering with pleasure and self satisfaction. She nodded towards the book as she laced herself into her dress and slipped soft leather slippers onto her feet. "The finished circle is inside. Let me explain it and my reasoning. You probably won't understand quite yet, but it helps the process to speak it aloud." She pulled her long blonde hair over her shoulder and braided it deftly between thin white fingers.

"Imagine a circle. Completely closed in, right? In my circle I'll have a maze. Something solvable, with multiple points of exits. But each one breaks the circle. A line running from each exit will weave together into its own circle, outside the broken main one. It's simple, right? As I carve I will put pressure on this idea of evasiveness and instinct into this little skull. This mouse was quick and clever and hard to catch. Hopefully some of that remained in the dijed of his bones. Hopefully I'll be able to fish it out."

There was no time to pretty herself up further, or to break her fast or the fast of her animals. She needed to get to the workshop and finally work on this project she had been planning all night.

Folding her black mohair cloak over her arm, she hurried downstairs.

WC: 601

by **Madeira Dusk** on November 22nd, 2018, 11:25 pm

The mug was right were she had left it several days ago. It had collected a fine layer of dust on its spot on the highest shelf of the workshop. Madeira smiled to see it. She had asked the house to make sure the clay mug would be left undisturbed by the many curious ghosts, kelvics, nuits and animals that passed through. It seemed it had taken that favor to heart.

"Thank you, house. You've done well." she poured gratitude into their connection, praising the young Architectrix for a job well done. She hoped with enough positive reinforcement it would continue to be kindly disposed to her and she would be able to rely on it more in the future.

Standing on her toes she lifted the mug off the shelf. It's cloudy surface shimmered in the first cracking of dawn. The midnight rest must be over. She imagined the stirring of the busy Zintia peak that never really slept. The shops that had closed for the rest would be open soon, and classes at the Dusk Tower would start with the rising dawn. But she would stay here, in her home well back from the bustle of the city, to work on her craft.

She emptied out the foul smelling liquid in the kitchen sink, and returned with the gleaming bones. Bleached white and made strong by the chemical bath, no greasy residue or stubborn bit of flesh remained. She had the dome of a mouse skull, its long lower jaw, and four long gnawing teeth. She arranged them all neatly on the windowsill to dry while she spread the cloak across the table.

With a tiny pair of sewing scissors from the wall she removed the stitching holding the simple hook and eye clasp to the cloak. It would be easy to change the hook to a brooch, and sew the eye back in a few inches farther towards the shoulder. She tested the dryness of the bones with the tips of her fingers and judged them ready.

Even the smallest drill on the wall was too big to drill into the jaw, and even if there was she wouldn't trust herself with such a tool. Instead she took a thin, pointed stiletto knife from the wall and rolled it carefully between her fingers, digging the point of the knife into the hinge of the jaw. Careful of mistakes from her untested hands, the process was painfully slow. But finally she had carved four holes, one on the end of each side of the skull and jaw behind the teeth. She used a think, congealing adhesive to insert each of the four teeth back into their sockets.

WC: 459

by **Madeira Dusk** on November 26th, 2018, 1:37 am

Madeira cracked her knuckles and shook out her fingers. Working with something so small was testing all her fine motor control, and already she could feel the cramping in her fingers and the strain in her eyes. Which was s shame, because she was about to embark on the most critical part.

The Spiritist closed her eyes and exhaled through her nose. She focused on her steady breath, the rise and fall of her chest. Her awareness moved down her body, feeling every fingertip, the softness of the leather that covered her feet, the scratch of the linen against her back and the fussing movement of the child within her. And once she found the limit of her body she looked further inward and found the edges of her soul. She knew it intimately through the medium of her various magic pursuits. She knew how to twist dijed from it to produce a hypnotic effect. She knew how to harvest her astral body to make soulmist. This time she was calling it to draw the dijed of another soul that lingered in the bones.

Once she judged herself to be in the appropriate head space, she fetched her red book and laid it open before her. The design she had decided upon stared back at her Suddenly it looked much more complicated than it did in her little cemetery. Was this the right meaning? Could the tricky magic be misconstrued by its design? Could she carve this clearly into a space as small as a rodent skull?

She wished Ssanya was there to guide her hand. Her teacher and lover had been patient and kind. The Dhani and much older and wiser than the teenage human girl she taught.

Well, if she made a curse, what of it? She would have sharpened her skills on the whetstone of that failure. And besides, she had enough enemies in the world that even a curse could have its uses.

"House?" she called its attention with words and well as its silent communication. "Keep the workshop door closed to everyone. I want no disturbances. If it's the ghosts tell them to petch off. Politely."

The manor rumbled its assent, and she imagined it bracing itself around this workshop. She had to remember how young and earnest this place was. Hopefully it would grow to be that compliant to her wishes forever, but somehow she knew that would not be the case.

Holding the skull in the palm of her head, she turned it so she could see to the inside of the bleached bone. Sticking the stiletto inside she began to scratch. She outlined the carving first, inscribing lightly onto the hardened bone. She started at the center of the maze and worked outward, always looking back to reference her crude drawing.

Quick and silent is the mouse. Always alert, always aware. It knows the path of this maze.

The meaning was what mattered. The style may change from mage to mage but it must always contain meaning to the bones and the soul that wore it. Ssanya saw this as a way to celebrate life and death, here at the point where they interact so closely. Death was not the end, and here was proof, in this power that remained. She would go gladly into Dira's arms knowing that the simple presence of her soul had an impact to the world around her. Madeira agreed. She finds meaning in what death leaves behind. There was no guilt in her for killing the mouse, or for cutting its little corpse. Neither did she feel guilt for prepping Savis's new body to prolong her overextended life, or ripping apart her old one. She was honoring their bodies and their lives with these creations. And Dira, gods be good, was patient. Savis could not outrun her forever. The Goddess does not condone slaughter, but neither does she seek to preserve life. It was a delicate balance Savis and Madeira herself was a part of.

WC: 672

by **Madeira Dusk** on November 28th, 2018, 6:48 am

The workshop was filled with a careful, delicate rasping as the stiletto was dragged lightly across the bone over and over again. As the light crawled higher and higher across the sky the lines deepened and began to cast their own little shadows. Bent over the table, one bright, unblinking eye straining to see into the gloom inside the skull, Madeira watched with endless patience as her design began to take form. If Dira could be so patient so could she, she reminded herself, as her fingers cramped and a headache bloomed behind her overtaxed eye. This had to be perfect, and perfect required carefulness, and carefulness required time. The space was so small, her skill so fledgling, that she knew to relax her focus would make her efforts sloppy or even ruin what she was trying to build. What she lacked in experience had to be made up with prudence.

Darkness started to collect in the carved lines like rain water in the cracks of the cobbles. The simple maze started to take shape, ringed with its interlocking lines, and Madeira put all the force of her soul behind the ever important meaning. It was up to her to twist and channel the dijed in the bones according to her intentions and the materials it came from. Sweat beaded on her neck and the word headache took new, terrible meaning inside her own skull as she mentally juggled everything she was meant to be conscious and focusing on. I can do this, she snarled inwardly, deepening lines and straitening edges, Ssanya would be proud, to see me practising everything she taught me.

When she was finally done, it was without ceremony. She carefully withdrew the stiletto and blew the bone out of the skull with her breath. It was not neatly done, but it was clear and concise and had every ounce of effort she had to give. It would do.

As she sat back and stretched, arms above her head and her spine realigning with a tremendous cracking sound, the house broke its silence with a tentative breech into her consciousness. Feelings of worry and gentleness bled through the walls around her as the Infinity Manor checked that its creator, who had been locked up and radiating tension for bells, was okay. Madeira slid to her feet and abandoned her project for a short respite and a drink of water. Her returning feeling towards the house was one of reassurance and guilt. She hadn't meant for it to worry.

She took a moment to feed herself and her animals. Her own meagre fast was broken with water and a few slices of bread and honey, as she was loath to meander too long when she was so close to completing this project. When she returned her body hurt less and the pulsing pain behind her eyes had simmered down to a kind of low annoying hum.

WC: 492

by **Madeira Dusk** on November 28th, 2018, 10:42 pm

She returned to the skull, now maledicted but unactivated. She would wait until she had finished the practical sides of the project before finishing the last step to awaken the power in the item. It was best to handle it as little as possible when it was active until she knew exactly what it would do.

She cut a small measure of wire from a spool hanging from the wall. With it she threaded the metal through the holes at the base of the skull and jaw and tied the two together as securely as she could with a complicated little knot achieved with tiny pliers. The little hook and eye clasp she had put aside were retrieved, and she tried to fit the hook through one of the skull holes from the inside. But her first snag reared its ugly head then and laughed. The wire was thicker than she expected. The hook wouldn't fit through the holes she had made.

"Dammit", she hissed through her teeth. Now what? Risk damaging the circle by widening the hole, or make a new hook? No, she couldn't make a new hook. She wasn't a metalworker. She ran her hands over her tired eyes and sighed.

"House, do we have anything that could be repurposed as a a cloak clasp?" She asked half jokingly of the silent house. The house remained typically quiet on the answer. She mentally batted its confusion away, too frustrated to gentle the poor Architectrix she was raising the way it needed.

Well, there was nothing else for it, she would have to widen the opening.

She pushed aside the stiletto awl, which was too small for the task, and regarded the wall opposite the window, on which hung almost every tool she owned. They wen't originally hers. They had come with the workshop when she had bought the house. They were all second hand, heavily worn but obviously loved, with nicked handles and leather grips gone dark with the passing of many hands. Truthfully she didn't know what half of them were used for, and couldn't name about two thirds of them, but she could see the metal heads and sharp blades and come to educated guesses when it came to her novice works.

She choose a tool that hung low on the wall, at the far end of a ranking of trimming knives arranged from largest to smallest. The one she chose was almost comically small, with a three centimetre blade on a wooden handle no longer than her smallest finger. Only one side was sharp, but that was exactly what she needed. She was going to turn the knife around in the existing hole, widening it as gently as she could by scraping away the bone into dust.

Sitting back on her stool, her headache gave a threatening twinge even to think about the kind of laser focus she would have to employ again to make sure she didn't crack the bone or worse, destroy the circle.

Untying the wire, she removed the jaw and placed the tip of the tiny life into the hole she had carved. Spinning the blade in her fingers she attempted to carve a wider opening. Her pressure had to be consistent. Too much and she could damage it, too little and it would never get done. Once the bone was attached like she planned, she would worry about it less. But handling sharp objects around something as delicate and volatile as a malediction circle was risky. If the circle broke it would lose its magic, if the new scratches were added inside the circle it could pervert the whole thing. Unless she wanted to go over the entire process again with another mouse she would go slow and gentle or not at all.

WC: 635

by **Madeira Dusk** on November 29th, 2018, 1:53 am

Slowly, ever so slowly, the holes began to widen. Careful ministrations kept her project from falling apart, and singing under her breath kept her focused safe from that killer of concentration everywhere: boredom.

"Safe and sound at home again
Let the waters roar, Jack
Safe and sound at home again
Let the waters roar, Jack..."

The golden light was crawling down the tall windows, glinting off the steel blades and sparkling off the coil of wire. The scones battled the light, pushing back the gold to illuminate Madeira and her work in the clean white light of tinted glass and candle. She blew on her little project, sending a tiny plum of bone dust in the air. Even more bone dust was caught under her fingernails and in the folds of her hands, making strange white skeletons out of the creases.

"Long we've tossed on the rolling main
Now we're safe ashore, Jack
Don't forget your old shipmate
Fal-dee-ral dee-ral-dee rye-eye-doe"

Suddenly, from the main room of the house came a wavering whistle. It gusted through the common room, pushing through the flu in the fireplace to make a undulating piercing sound that rose and fell in a pattern she recognized. It was a normal noise for a house to make, especially a house as old and poorly maintained as this one. But something about it made her smile, though her eyes did not lift from her work. Was this the house trying to sing along?

"Since we sailed from the Western Sea
Four years gone, or nigh, Jack
Was there ever chummies, now
Such as you and I, Jack?"

No mistaking it, the noise was wavering drunkenly as it tried to match Madeira's own unpractised voice. She sang the next verse and the next, always pausing in between for the house to respond. And like this they continued the strangest duet the word had ever known, between a bone witch and her haunted house.

With the lower part of her brain occupied and even enjoying itself, singing an old song she'd learned off the Bellipotent and listening for the house's strange music in return, the higher parts of her mind were free to focus on the carving. Twenty chimes later, having exhausted her gripping hand and her repertoire of sea shanties, the bone was finally wide enough. She tied the jaw and skull together with a fresh piece of wire, and praying under her breath to every god who cared to listen, she hooked the hook around the hole from the inside of the skull, pulled it halfway out and pushed it through the other side.

It fit.

It fit with not a quarter of a millimetre to spare, but by the gods it fit. Madeira breathed a sigh of relief and hung her head for a moment, just to savour this small victory. The circle was not broken, the bone not fissured, and she had not yet lost her sanity. At least not all of it.

Two knots of more wire kept the skull from rattling around on the hook and possibly damaging itself as it hung from a roughly worn cloak. From there it was a simple matter to find a needle and some black thread and stitch the clasping mechanism back onto the cloak. The plunging of the needle and the mindless task of finding the edges of the cloak was even cathartic. It was all coming together one piece at a time.

WC: 681

by **Madeira Dusk** on November 29th, 2018, 2:51 am

She picked up the cloak and shook it out, to make sure everything was properly secure. To her surpass and delight it didn't even rattle, though looking more closely she knew the stitches could have been more evenly spaced and much neater. With the circle hiding inside the skull it didn't even look like a maleicated item. It was sort of creepy, sure. A long black cloak with a deep hood would anyway, under the right circumstances. It was just that the mouse skull attached to the throatseemed to extend that circumstance to include broad daylight and brightly lit rooms.

But this new fetish needed something more. And Madeira was humming and powering, turning the article of clothing this way and that, before she realized what it needed. She dashed to the kitchen and looked in a basket in the pantry. It was an odd place to keep the excess jewels that Jomi's chicken laid periodically, but they just kind of ended up there when she was making soulmist and cracked an egg to reveal a diamond as opposed to the more common yolk.

Snatching a smooth red Alexanderite she headed back to the workshop. As the gem moved from the shaded side of the house to the sun pouring in through the workshop windows, its colour to shifted to a muddy green.

With a hammer and a flat headed bladed tool Madeira couldn't name, she managed to chip off two flakes of the brittle gem. With pliers and as much care as she could manage, she dropped adhesive into the ridge inside socket of the eyes and attached the two tiny flakes of gemstone. Waiting for them to set was agony, but after much blowing and patience she risked piking the garment up again by the shoulders. Inside the skull the eyes flashed mysteriously, turning from red to green as it was exposed to the natural light.

It was perfect, exactly how she wanted it to look. But it was still incomplete.

Laying the cloak down flat against the table once more, she picked an awl off the wall. Holding the point to the fleshy part of her thumb, she breathed deep and ruminated on all the purpose she set within the circle hidden in the small skull. Finding that space within herself she knew from her lessons with Ssanya, her soul called to the power laid dormant in the dijed still trapped in the bones.

"Dira, beloved goddess, warden of death, I pray for good fortune as I wake the power in these bones. Death is not the end and these are proof that something lives after the passing of the soul. Please, bless these remains." Don't let me wake a curse, she inwardly begged. Though any curse she might manage to make would be weak, she knew the magic to be temperamental and fickle. It could be that this weak curse chooses not to let go, and if she was not careful she could be wearing this cloak and skull forever.

After years of spiritism's soulmist and malediction activation she hardly felt the pain in self harm anymore. The sharp, pointed awl slid easily through her skin and found the blood beneath. She held the wound over the bones and let a single drop fall onto the white dome of the tricky little mouse skull. The waxy texture of the treated bone caused the blood to roll off like a drop of rainwater, it ran into the left most eye, leaving a sticky trail of red behind it. There was no sudden flash of light or whisper of wind or mysterious noise. Malediction was not a showy magic.

The fetish was done, but now the question of what it was remained. Could it be successful? Did it not work at all? Was it a blessing, a curse, or somewhere in between? She would never know unless she tested it.

Thoughts of her cursed ring flashed in her mind as she picked the garment up by the shoulders. That ring was meant to strengthen loyalty in the wearer, but through a mishandling of the materials and an astounding lack of foresight the ring almost turned the intention on its head. The wearer was instead gripped by a powerful drive of lust that could make them easily abandon their partners as they sought to satisfy it. That was the risk, she reasoned. This was not animation with its clearly defined rules and predictable outcomes. Malediction was risking incredible benefits against horrible detriment, knowledge and skill made a successful Maledicator, but even then threw as always that risk of unforeseen consequences.

She threw the cloak over herself, fastening the hook into the clasp's eye so that the skull of the mouse and its gleaming jewelled eyes sat against her throat. And at first nothing happened, and Madeira's anxiety started to dissipate into disappointment. Maybe it hadn't worked after all. But even as the thought crossed her mind, so did another. She was aware of the door to her left, and that information sat low in her mind, but very present. There were windows behind her too. It would't take much to break them, that same thought slid along the first.

Curious, she stepped out into the main room. Immediately the simple, inescapable awareness of the front door pressed into the back of her mind, along with a general not of the stairs leading up and down, and the windows that could break if provided enough force. Following the hunch that grew in her curiosity, she stepped outside. The biting Fall air dragged at the cloak, and she pulled it's warmth tight around herself. The front gate was a hundred tick run from here, the skull told her. The open space had nowhere to hide, but everywhere to run.

She just stood there, letting the sunshine warm her cheeks and her heart fill with victory. It had worked! Perhaps not as powerfully as she wanted, nor as specifically, but it had worked. The mouse's prey mind was working to turn her attention to all escape routes, wherever she was. It was a low awareness that sat undisturbed in the back of her mind, ready to leap into relevance at the first sign of danger. It was the kind of on edge thinking that would make her paranoid if she wore it too long, but it had worked. It might even be useful, she remembered being cornered in the private courtyard earlier in the season and shivered. If she had had this, she might not have even gotten caught.

Spinning in her new cloak, the young Spiritist laughed in triumph.

WC: 1111

by **Madeira Dusk** on November 29th, 2018, 6:48 pm

Grades Awarded!

Don't forget to edit/delete your grade request!

Madeira Craven

Skills

Lores

Awards & Retribution
+Mouse Fetish: a charm attached to Madeira's chameleon cloak. The maledicted mouse skull makes one intrinsically aware of escape routs in a given space. It can not be deactivated and prolonged use can lead to paranoia.

Notes
Notes here.

Solo Best Laid Plans pt2