[Flashback:Solo]The Slum: Candelabras and Consequences II

[Antar]

17th of Spring, 511 av "ooc"This is a sequel to the prior thread Candelabras and Consequences for the purpose of developing my character's training Reimancy with the element of fire. If you don't like small portions of pyromania then go read something else now (my feelings won't be hurt ) But if not, continue on.

Ten days, that was the time Noth had sworn to give himself in order to recover before he tried to work on his control. He knew the magic inside him was dangerous, something that he had to master even if he vowed never to use it in all but the direst of emergencies. Especially with the element first introduced under his control that of being fire.

Fire was dangerous, any child hanging onto their mother's apronstrings who ever burned their hands at their family's stove could have told anyone that. So why in the world did fire come to him as the first element? He thought he knew the reason: it was anger.

Noth had been angry at his circumstances, chained to a master from the time he had fled to the streets. Bound to do odd job, after odd job. Sometimes even tending to executing the odd being which ventured too close to his employer's network of contacts, informants, and agents. He had been a tool of a merchant of death, a master of intrigues, a political dabbler from the shadows in the North lands. A small, almost useless object in the master's mind save for what small gains Noth's work might grant him.

Noth had escaped though, and that was the reason why he was here; in this city of the undesirables, the murderers and thieves. It was a place to hide, and to hone his skills until he was capable of standing upon his own two feet. All he needed was time to improve, and to improve he needed the strength of will to practice even what he once considered anathema to him: magic.

How he loathed the word itself and the ideas behind the word.

Magic to him was something abnormal, an abberation of what the normal people who muddled their days away with their tasks could, or should never use. But... he could not deny magic was a source of power. A means of keeping himself safe, and preparing for the inevitable day when Antar's old employer would find his fled asset. Only the gods knew what retribution might be exacted upon Antar that day in the future, but he swore he'd be prepared. Prepared for the Master, his cronies, and that old mage as well.

It was only a matter of time.

But for right now, Antar knew he had to embark upon a regimen of training. Not just his body, and his skills with weapons, but also his spirit, his discipline, not just of his body, but also his mind...

Today he was back in the slums, once again in the same far off secluded stone courtyard amidst a set of ruined domiciles none but the rats lived in. In the center lay the well, and in his pack the candles he had brought once more. He had decided to subject himself another full day of training with his Res, and his talents. To bring forth the fires, and help them grow stronger.

[Antar]

The first thing he did, was set up the candles like he had before and repeat the exercises one by one at least one time each. Bringing forth the Res after concentrating to marshall his djed was getting easier each time he completed a little more.

He was well versed in the ability to hit stationary targets, arcing his fireballs in slight paths in order to light multiple candles within an eight to ten foot diameter dependant on, roughly three and a little more span of arm lengths with only a pitiful marshalling of teaspoon sized Res fireballs for practice.

So now was where the the difficult things started happening;

Noth had logically figured out he had come to the point where it was necessary to hone his craft. Taking the time in creating stronger and stronger transmutations of Res along with honing his accuracy, and most of all develop the ability to hit moving targets while stationary and stationary targets while he himself was moving. After that hitting something on the fly would develop on his own as he continued his practices.

This was a little easier said than done.

For the first of the new exercises it was simple, setting up a few candles on the well's lips. In the cobblestone courtyard he could fling a fireball in almost any direction and not worry about something igniting, the thirty foot wide enclosure was surrounded by the remnants of eight foot high walls and he'd carefully weeded out any vegetation which might have been growing around the area. He wasn't stupid, the last thing he wanted to do was lose control and create a fire that came back and burned him.

Breathing deeply he took a stance , and began to slowly walk in a straight line parallel to the targeted candle. If his judgement was right he'd be able to pace evenly for twenty seconds before reaching the far side of the courtyard. Taking his time with the process concentrating on every step, and distance, he brought the Res to hover slightly over his hand before winding casually toss the ball towards the target and igniting it's exterior at the tenth second, and thus the tenth step. Letting it burn he extended his hand back away from him before snapping it forward at roughly a straight shot to the candle. As the ball of transparent Res exited his area of control he ignited it and the fireball forcefully scorched its way towards the target in roughly a basketball of fire as his aim fell true.

The candle was brought alight by the thrown sphere, though a good half inch of the artifice was melted clear by the flames passage before it impacted harmlessly into the stone edifice on the far side of the courtyard. Without stopping Noth continued his walking until he came to the end of the courtyard before turning around. Here there was roughly the maximum distance of where he might control the Res so he wanted to try something he had heard about.

They said Res possessed the ability to attract elements, so Antar wanted to try to use it to snuff out the candle by attracting the fire far enough away from the wick for it to be deprived of oxygen, it was a small act. But one he'd been wanting to try for awhile...

[Antar]

Concentrating his will Noth summoned his djed and let the res flow, gathering a small measure above his palm, before pressing it forwards towards the candle. The process was quite slow, with the seconds of time seeming to take hours or even years, but eventually he nudged the pure ball of Res to within half a foot of the candle. His eyes watched candle's flame carefully as it the top of it began to tilt and flicker in the the Res' direction. He slowly moved the ball of Res another inch closer, watching closely as the flame's tip began to streak across the horizontal plane, The tip just barely far enough away from the ball of Res that it failed to ignite it.

With a final push Noth sent the transparent ball of Res skirting past the candle's edge, marveling as the red-hued flame streaked violently away from the candle's wick. The Ressphere itself ignited in a wild display of heat and light bright enough to force Antar's eyes close as the reaction consumed the oxygen of the air about it's diameter . Snuffing the fire at it's source .

Blinking his eyes in order to attempt to clear the purple splotches in his vision Noth stumbled closer to the well side. Taking a bit of a breather from the mental exertion his eyes focused upon the candle wick he'd just snuffed out.

A small part of him was amazed he got the trick down on his first try, but another part of him was thankful. There was far to much for him to accomplish today, and trying this trick was dangerous. For the rest of the exercises he limited himself to mere teaspoon sized elements of res, but this had taken a significant amount more. Antar knew he wanted to improve, but was adamantly secure in thinking that magic as it was was only a tool to be used as a last resource. A weapon to strengthen but not rely upon.

Noth remembered the pain, and the scars on his hands and back as the mage 'awakened' him against his will. He'd on more then one occasion burned himself in the fires of his own making. To him, his use of magic was simple in the amount of times he would use it; which would be few, and far between.

Still a small part of himself was pleased at his success. It was just a drop in the bucket to what he had heard other magic users do, but at least he wasn't going to give up. But he knew not to push himself too hard; too fast. Walking over to his bag Noth took out a small wedge of cheese and sliced off a hunk with his dagger and began to chew as he considered the next step.

Antar had hit a stationary target while he was moving, had practiced it until it was almost second nature. So logically, his next step would be to traverse to moving targets of varying trajectories from a stationary position. He had an idea of how to accomplish that, but it would have to take a few bits of inspired thinking to get to work properly... a rusty old spring he had found about a mile away in the wreckage of an old smithery, an even rustier mousetrap, and the most important things- a rather long stick and a spoon.

[Antar]

Noth looked at his contraption upon the mousetrap he had tied a small spoon with a spring underneath it when it was in a locked position. In the spoon he could place a small stone, and use a stick to trigger the trap. At the trap's activation the small pebble would go flying, supported by the rusty spring to handle slightly larger weights of stone so he could adjust the distance. He had anchored the spoon to the trap’s bar with a bit of cut rope he de-spliced down to strands to tie it on. In theory and practice it worked, if not well. He would have to constantly adjust the thing to fire small pellets like a miniature catapult.

A mouse trap was the basic, and most easily understood contraption and useful in hunting. Not just from the traps point of view, with its pressure plate as a trigger. But also in how it helped his mind logically discern a few things.

He actually had gotten this idea in a roundabout way. Hearing a tale from an old man who was no longer spry enough to be a second story thief, the old timer had talked a bit on how he once come across a safe filled with impediments to his, one of them being a spring loaded dart trap. Then the old fart had gone on to note several other interesting things involving spring loaded hidden blades, and crossbows on bracers. But such were irrelevant to his needs, and didn’t bear to think on at the moment the important part being that springs were useful. At the moment, with his small contraption built- there was only one thing that he had to do.

Start letting the pebbles fly.

Noth had set the contraption up about five feet away from him, that was as far as the switch he had cut would go. Using random weights and sizes of rocks he could randomize the trajectory of the thrown pebbles and use them as target practice. ‘What else was a miniature catapult for?’

Holding the switch in his left hand, Antar began to concentrate, bringing a small bit of flame into being above his right hand and waited, allowing the small amount of Res to burn a second or two before he struck downwards with the switch. The switch triggered the mousetrap, whipping around the spoon which sent the stone flying in an arc. Noth cast the fireball, hoping to hit the falling rock but failed miserably by a few good feet. Like all things he was going to learn, working with moving targets took time, especially while conserving his Res use.

The only problem was that it took time to reload the mouse-trap catapult, and reset the spring, but he did so with as much attention to detail as possible. The common mousetrapped worked on the principal that the whipping force of the main bar was capable of breaking the back, neck or spine of a trapped rat. While normally not a problem where human hands were concerned, Noth was wont to take as little to no chances as possible.

Added to the fact he had to size up another pebble to place in the spoon, and take out the switch and it usually meant at least thirty seconds before had it reloaded. Altogether, it was a pain, it would have been much easier to have someone else toss the rocks for him but that would have compromised the idea of being anonymous with the accursed arts. With the contraption reloaded, Noth buckled down on any errant thoughts of the moment like the intrepid soul he was. He was ready for the next shot.

Focusing his mind to summon the djed, he formed another ball of res, this one twice as large as the prior one before triggering the device again.

The stone arced upwards.

This time at the edge of his control, he triggered the internal core only on one side whipping the fireball faster in the direction he wanted it to go. His eye judging the distance and trying to 'lead' the target like he did with his bow. The experiment was dangerous, adding more fuel always meant more risk, but it was just barely successful as the baseball sized ball of fire clipped the stone midair. The impact sent the projectile off course to hit hard into the far wall as the fireball fizzled out in a haze of sparks.

Heartened by the slight success, Noth continued practicing. Each time carefully resetting the trap, sometimes with the flat of his blade used as a pry bar. Sometimes simply levering it open with the switch. He didn't have much luck after the first hit for a while, but eventually his misses became nearer misses, and finally he put two on target in a row. Thanking whatever gods smiled upon him for this small improvement, Noth decided to take a break as he got up to get a bit of cheese from his pack.

Throwing fireballs was a physically tiring experience, and he wanted to keep his strength up for now. He wasn't quite at the point where he felt capable of hitting moving targets while he himself was in motion. But he knew such times would come. For now, he'd try to think of something creative to use his curse for. A means of blinding the enemy in case he ever needed to preserve the element of surprise.

[Antar]

As he chewed on a piece of cheese, Noth knew two things about the many forms of life which might try to kill him later. Almost all, were prone to having their vision blurred, and their hearing ache by two things. A combination of heat and light, and loud sounds. For this reason, and this reason alone Noth had done a little digging.

In the ... lesser known ventures of town, shops sold something called- flare paste for those in need of blinding their enemies. Now he theoretically considered using fire reimancy to hit a bundle of flare paste remotely while being behind cover to achieve the desired effect. It would work, and Noth would try in the future to use it if possible, but he like always, was a pragmatist, who wanted to conserve the small amounts of mizas as it was.

Why was he a pragmatist in this venture?

It was simple- he might not have time to reach into a utility belt, withdraw a suitable sized container of the junk and toss it at his enemies to ignite it.

Granted, the rogue didn't like the use of reimancy on principle. He still felt it was an abhorrent thing which had been forced upon him. His personal credo was simple- if he could normally do it without magic, he would. But he figured in emergencies he might cut out the middle step he might survive faster than if he had not used any ‘magic’ at all. The only item of concern was the basic principle: that once Res was transmuted into an element: it was out of the person’s control.

So, he thought the idea through, and noted, fire came in three natural colors, blue-white, yellow and red all depending upon the heat of the flame. If you looked at a candle, The very bottom would be blue where it was hottest. Thus in order to generate a large amount of light quickly you would have to have the most fuel concentrated in a very tiny space. But there were dangers when he ignited the artifice of his idea. Too powerful- he’d get hurt. Probably in a bad way if he wasn’t beyond cover at the time. Too weak, and he would still get feathered, beaten or skewered by an enemy that only needed to blink away the spots before their eyes.

To make it clear: he wasn’t after blinding another person, just using the idea of a distraction more than anything. He did not want to throw them into a room in the hope of blinding anyone so he would have have free reign for 5 seconds or so however long others might want to blind them for. Instead, he wanted something smaller- to work on a technique he could throw to distract the enemy and cause him to flinch so he’d regain the initiative upon entering a building or room with an arrow shot. Or a split second’s grace to turn to jump around a corner to flee.

He personally thought it a foolish idea to think anyone in their right mind would think a bit of magic would be able to blind another for more than a few fractions of a second. There was only two questions, how could he make it work? And could he shoot it from an arrow?

He didn’t know all the answers, but he knew where he might start to formulate an idea of how to make a lot of light with a bit of showmanship. Furrowing his brow in concentration he focused his djed and summoned his Res, this time letting it bleed off his fingers in small droplets he sparked into existence before they hit the ground. It was an interesting process to watch, almost captivating and Antar wondered, would a ball of res be able to be broken apart like this after thrown, sending a shower of sparks down upon an enemy position like a sea-flare would?

More would he even be able to control such a thing?


In the distant sky he could see the sun beginning to set as night fell. Noth pondered a few more questions a moment more before his musings were cut short as a strange feeling of fur brushing against the top of his boot made him jump back a foot and a half and thrust his hand downwards in instinct as he brought forth a larger teaspoon of res down upon the offending thing which had touched him. It was only afterwards, when he saw the tiny fireball cook off and splash against the pavement did he realize what had crossed his path before it had been fried.

It was a rat… and one large enough to be seen as the size of a cat. It’s fur now singed and crisped like a critter stuck in the coals of a fire for too long. Hearing a hiss behind him in the courtyard Noth turned, instinctively calling up the res again to fire another ball of flame towards the new source. A rat bigger than the last one he’d seen. His throw missed, and he saw a pair of beady little eyes glaring at him and a tail whipping around. He backed away towards the well, putting his back against the stone was a means of giving him time to identify the threat. Finally, his eyes saw it in the shadow’s which lined the corner. Clenching his fist, and controlling himself, Noth warily backed away.

His eyes met the creature’s for a moment before it vanished. The dark haired rat vanishing into a nearby burrow he hadn’t seen the prior time he was here. A darkened tunnel which he now saw had been hidden behind a fallen stone that made part of the courtyard’s stone fence.

Filing his thoughts for his experiment away for later, Noth slowly reached to his pack, and gathered up the candles from the day’s exercise and sauntered his way back towards his camp. That right had been huge… and seemingly quite viscous in temperament. He hoped they weren’t hunting and follow him back to his tent. He’d take precautions anyway and move to a new location before sunrise. The last thing he wanted was a rat or two to try and take a bite out of his horse’s withers…

With a bit of trepidation, Noth moved off into the dawning shadows of the night.

~Fin

Thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoyed the read.

XPRequests :

Reimancy (primary)
Maybe a tiny point of gadgeteering for a mousetrap catapult :3 :>)(far secondary concern)

[Cantrip]

Did you want something? Antar: XP Award: Reimancy +3; Gadgeteering +1; Observation +1; Weapon: Toy Catapult +1 Lores: Wasting Candles; Making a Strange Contraption; The Hues of Fire; Frying Rats; Facing off with a Rat. Additional Notes: A fairly simple thread. Also, careful with that itty bitty catapult. You could put an eye out.