[Sunken Conundrum] Fisher of Men [Martin]

[Hadrian]

Hadrian smiled back, a tighter version of Martin's own. He was not good with people, but Martin seemed to be an all right sort, and his good humor was infectious. He had heard similar tales as Martin, and vowed silently to take the utmost caution with this as with all other disciplines. It was a tool, and only a tool, but it could be used to dire effect and that was not why he was doing this. "Please do demonstrate," he said quietly, and stood back to watch, both with his eyes and his well-tuned Auristic sense, overlaying another spectrum on his senses. The Auristics didn't seem to help much in Alvadas in general, but within the calm of the Sunken Conundrum with limited purpose, it was all right. And how else was he to truly witness what Martin was doing? He watched him move his djed about, turning it into something that was like res, but certainly wasn't. He stared at it, trying to decipher its essence that he might recreate it, attempting an intuitive knowledge of it. Green like this until it turned blue like that. "Fascinating," he said, still all but silently holding his breath. There was no floor, per se, but the shield sank toward their feet, following some order of logic unknown to Hadrian, and the shield then petered out. "If that's intermediate, I'm not sure what I can accomplish," he said, but took a deep breath to make an attempt in any case. First he began to control his breathing, the first step in his meditative work; he found that everything worked better in a working, if shallow, trance state, especially new things. He began to Flux his energy around within himself, loosening it from its moorings as it were, getting everything moving, 'energizing' his energy, and then pushing a goodly amount down the length of his arm as if preparing to work some hydromancy. The djed that pooled in his upturned hand was not the right shade of green, which meant, to his mind, that it was not in the correct form for shielding. It grew turgid and would not respond to his will the way res did upon leaving his body. "What am I doing wrong?" he asked.

[Martin Jogle]

Martin shook his head. "The demonstration that I just showed you was just barely intermediate. The hard part of what I did was separating what the inside and the outside of the shield blocks. I'm just tired because...umm well never mind about it. Anyway, what you should be trying to do is create a simple shield. A simple shield blocks everything, as if it were metal. You won't be able to start big, just try shielding a small object, like a rock. Whatever you do, however, don't shield a single bodypart until you're better at this, or you could lose the said body part. So why don't you give it a try?"

Martin watched as Hadrian attempted to create a shield. He saw it turn an weird shade of green before sputtering out. Martin smacked his head, remembering something.

"Sorry. This is probably not the best place to make your first shield. You first shield will probably not be very strong and water is a lot denser than air. Trying to block all this water is not as easy as trying to block the air outside. I suggest we go outside before you try again. Don't be discouraged if it doesn't turn the correct color. The shield will usually become your least favorite color while you are molding the magic, although it will turn blue after it is finished unless you change its color. You can keep the color of the shield whatever you want, even invisible, but it will always work better to make the shield your least favorite color then blue."

Martin concentrated again. He put his two fingers on his head, in the traditional stance that he always stood in while performing magic. He knew that after his attempt at an advanced remote manipulation of the shield that he had created before, he would be hard pressed to do an intermediate shield application. Instead, Martin just formed a small circular shield in between the two of them. It was approximatly the same size and shape of an apple. He made sure to do the entire process in slow motion so that Hadrian could see exactly what was going on.

"So as you can see, the first step is to flow the djed out of your body. Just create a small amount of djed in the form of small lines of power. Now weave the lines into a sort of tightly woven net. Make sure that the net is very very tightly knit, until it forms the shield that you want, but in a straight line. Finally, you just curve the shield into the ball like this."

The shield flickered blue as Martin completed the shield. It stayed where it was, bouyant because of the water trapped inside in. Martin reached out and grabbed it, handing it to the other man for closer inspection.

"Unless you have any questions, lets head outside so that you can give it a try."

He said, beckoning and making ready to follow the older man out of the library.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian nodded along with Martin's explanations, then watched him make another shield without much seeming effort. One day, Hadrian vowed to himself, he would manage shields with as much aplomb. But for now he had to make baby steps toward a proper shield at all. He glanced dubiously toward the door. "There's illusion everywhere out there," he said, "but if you say it's easier out there, well, you're the expert." He put his book back on the shelf, determined to learn as much as he could from Martin before he resorted to books again. After all, he had already crammed quite a bit of information into his brain. Now it remained to apply that to true action. They swam down toward the entrance, his mind already racing ahead to how he would do it differently once they were outside the library. His distraction became a problem when he half-swam, half-walked out the door. While the building's magic would erase Martin's gills, Hadrian's were of his own fashioning, and the morphed gills caused him to gasp for water as soon as he was outside. Immediately, he dropped that part of his concentration that was keeping his neck split with functioning gills. His body, still elastic, quickly reverted. The gills knit themselves together into pale flesh again, but he vomited water until his lungs were clear, waving off Martin should he attempt to help. Hadrian just needed a moment to catch his breath. When he did, he said ruefully, "I forgot about those." Not wanting to perform magic in front of any old person who passed by, he ushered Martin over to a quiet spot beside the library, a green area with a bench, and sat down. "Let's try this again," he said, and began to concentrate. The djed began to manifest, but not quite so similarly to the res that he habitually created for hydromantic purposes. It seemed to come into being at least an inch out from his hands, and perhaps because he didn't have a particular color he didn't like, the energy roiled with many colors, a chaos that only gradually came toward a bluish order as he manipulated it with his hands, but mostly with the power of his mind. After several minutes of crude fashioning, he had a marble-sized bit of glow that flickered a less than settled shade of blue than Martin's own. There was a line of concentration between Hadrian's dark brows, one that might lead to a headache eventually. "There," he managed, with some effort. "Is that right?"

[Martin Jogle]

“Hmm” pondered Martin, nodding his head slowly. He hadn’t thought of this problem. When his own master had been teaching Martin, with this same exercise, a low-level fire attack was an easy identifier as to whether or not the shield would hold. Although Hadrian’s shield seemed correct, he didn’t know any form of magic other than Shielding and Glyphing, neither of which could help them now. Or could they?

“It looks good, but I just thought of a problem. I have no way of testing whether or not the shield can block magic. But I do have a solution. If you would just rest for a second, I’ll make a glyph. We can store you’re shield into it and then, when you’re ready, attack the stored shield with a low level magical attack.”

Martin quickly drew out, from his bag, a small bottle of paint and a scrap of paper, torn from a scroll. Dipping a quill, Martin scrawled out a small, multi-purpose glyph. It just contained a simple focus, barrier, and trigger. It was just enough to absorb a low-level spell and, once the correct word was said, release it in the opposite direction.

Martin held out his finished product to the small shield, as soon as they made contact, the shield sputtered slightly and disappeared. The scroll glowed briefly and then was back to its previous state. “Alright,” said Martin,“Ready when you are.”

[Hadrian]

Hadrian wanted to speak up and say that he could hold the shield in one hand and pour res over it with the other, but Martin knew what he was doing better than Hadrian, so he merely nodded and let the shield be absorbed by the sigil Martin had drawn. Unencumbered by the shield's maintenance, he concentrated on his general energy and found that the attempts at shielding, new techniques to him, had drained him more than he knew. So he concentrated on Fluxing energy up from his reserves, wondering how thin he would be when he finally shipped out of Alvadas, his reserves constantly plumbed for energy and not allowed enough time to rebuild. But he got things moving within himself, and began pushing djed down his arm, transmuting it as it welled up out of his pores until he had green-glowing res clinging to his hand, ready to manipulate. He nodded. "I am ready too," he said, prepared to see if his little shield would stand up to his little hydromancy. One of these days he would have to get better at something more than just his magecrafting.

[Martin Jogle]

“Alright. Let’s do it.” Martin said. He pressed his finger onto the trigger of his glyph and spoke a short word in the Ancient Tongue. The shield came out of the glyph, this time fueled by the energy stored in the glyph. Martin stuck his right index finger into the shield, and then signaled to Hadrian. Water engulfed the shield, spurting all over and around the shield.

Once the water had subsided, the shield ran out of energy from the glyph. It sputtered out, fading into oblivion. The glyph crumbled itself into dust. Inspecting his fingers, Martin nodded, smiling.

“Good. My finger seems nice and dry. Not much more I can teach you at this level, now that you’ve gotten the basic idea. Keep practicing for a while. Try making larger and larger shields. As you become more experienced, you’ll be able to defend against more things. But…maybe we ought to get something to eat before we do anymore? And maybe we could talk about Magecrafting, while we do?”

[Hadrian]

While Martin manipulated the shield Hadrian had painstakingly created, Hadrian flung the res at it. Habit continued the transmutation from res into water, but the water was still mixed in with res and so the dry finger seemed to indicate that the shield had worked, protecting him from res, which was djed, and water at the same time. "Huh." When Martin mentioned food, Hadrian's stomach began to growl, his body wanting fuel to recharge its reserves of energy. He nodded. "Lead the way," he said, and, "What do you want to know about magecrafting?"

[Martin Jogle]

Martin had hoped that the other man wouldn’t say that. He really had no idea where they could find food, having only eaten what he had on him since they had gotten there. Not knowing how to vocalize this concern, he hoped that the other man would catch on, and started to walk in the direction of a large building, the largest building he could see. It seemed like it might be in the center of town. Or so. That could possibly mean a trading center of some sort. Even more interesting to him than the food was the subject of a new form of magic.

“Though I’ve never actually tried it, I do know the general theory from books on the subject. From what I can understand, you hit the base equipment with a special hammer of some kind. You mold its natural djed pathways so that it develops the powers that you’re looking for. These range from structural changes to intelligence and even to learning other magics. But how do you know where to hit with your hammer if you can’t see the djed pathways of the object? Where would you get the hammer and what makes it special. And for that matter, where do you get all the other materials needed in magecrafting. It seems like I would have to go to a city like Zeltiva, or maybe Sahova, to get any of these materials. And what is it that makes Magecrafting the most dangerous discipline of all?”

Martin had many more questions, but he decided to stop and let the older man answer a few before he asked any others.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian kept a strong image of food in his mind, hoping that the illusory magic, if it was at all sentient, would respond to his desire by leading him to a place that served food to hungry people with money to spend. With that hope in his hot little hand, he walked with Martin. Magecrafting was one of his favorite subjects, but just at the moment he was eager to practice his shields that he might use them in future magecrafting experiments. But such was life. "Yeah," he said slowly, rubbing his forehead thoughtfully. "You can learn a lot from books, but it's mostly... tidbits. You learn more from assisting a more skilled magecrafter, or... well, I consider myself more of an enchanter. I place the enchantments on things, but I don't do much of the actual crafting. I would like to change that, but it will take time to master the crafting aspects, too. Of course, most people don't really care about my distinction." He laughed a little at his own expense. "The hammering... It sort of follows logic when you're doing it. It's not so much the placement as getting the tone. The vibration, the tone, that's what encourages the djed to follow new pathways. You're raising the vibration of things... It's difficult to explain the theory and the practice, and I don't know of anywhere here to show you things." His tone was a bit frustrated and apologetic, though, of course, only the apology was directed at Martin. "You can change structure, add intelligence and behavior... not quite so well as an Animator, but reactions and more basic things. What makes it so dangerous is that the potential of these creations is so great. Luckily they are cost-prohibitive and difficult to produce... I mean, there's that natural limit on their creation. You can even imbue them with the favor of the gods if you have it to share. Can you imagine the possibilities of that? Some magecrafter in Ravos might be minting golden coins with the corruption of Rhysol worked into them, sending them out into the world to corrupt people..." He shook his head. "I'm glad I took so many ethics classes at University. But yes, you can learn it there, in Zeltiva. There's a resident magecrafter in Syliras, though he is... well, he's difficult to work with sometimes. The Isur are supposed to be masters at it, but you can't get into Sultros so it's mostly rumor." He blinked, a promising looking building sending out wafts of delicious smells. "I think we found a place to eat."

[Martin Jogle]

Martin opened the door, gesturing to Hadrian so that he could go inside first. Then he stepped into the restaurant. The food smelled intoxicating, especially after all the magic that he had been using. There was a line of meat that hung behind a musty old bar. An even dirtier man sat behind the bar, looking bored. There was one other person in the room, but his face was down, staring into the depths of his empty mug.

Under normal conditions, Martin would have passed this shop by, no matter how good the food smelled. But there was no way he was passing it up now. They weren't likely to find more food for a long time and he was hungry enough to eat a horse or three. "Hello good sir. Two meals?" he asked the dirty man, sliding him a golden miza to pay for their meals. He turned to Hadrian to reply, as the man went to get their food.

"Its just that unlimited power that makes it so alluring. I'll admit that dangerous things can come of it but...great good could come of it too. What about a mage crafted item, able to wield the magic of Rak'keli? Or Priskil? It could be used to heal terminal illnesses or radiate bravery. What about a shielding amulet that protects others from harm? Or a staff that has mastered voiding and can transport goods from Syliras to Riverfall in a heartbeat? As long as one exercises proper self control, and never lets anything to dangerous fall into the wrong hands, magecrafting, or enchantment, is a blessing to humanity."

Martin didn't know why he had suddenly become so passionated, but it was a fascinating subject. In his mind, magic was the cure-all solution to all the world's problems, and magecrafting was magic at its finest. He never even gave a thought to what magic could do to hurt the world, only what it could do to help it. "Perhaps its just the foolishness of youth", he thought, "but well...who cares?"

He knew that he should let Hadrian time to respond, but he was very impatient to know more, so before Hadrian would have time to formulate a response, he blundered on with another question. "How do you feel the vibrations? Do magecrafters just naturally feel them with some experience, or is it something that anybody would be able to do?" Martin really wished he could at least see a completed product of magecraft, so that it could possibly shed some light on the nature of these mysterious objects.