[Flashback] Late Night Arcana III (Solo)

[Eridanus]

Day 35, Spring of 505 AV
Late Night
Wright Memorial Library

Eridanus had been pretty spooked out over the encounter in his previous late night studying session in the library, and it took him a whole week to convince himself to return. One of his fellow course-mates who had a girlfriend whose uncle was a Spiritist had suggested Eri to test if there was a ghost by placing soulmist in the area. Soulmist was naturally attractive to ghosts, and if he left a lump of it in the area he believed to be haunted, a disappearance would confirm his theory. If nothing happened it was likely that it was just his overworked mind playing tricks on him.

To be honest, it was pretty tempting to do, and in the week that passed his paranoia had turned into a more mild but unhealthy form of curiosity that compelled him to resolve this. He was pretty sure that he felt something that night a week ago, yet he was not entirely sure because of the mental strain that he had subjected his mind and focus to.

He was pretty sure that he had seen the ink splattered on the table with those two words, but then again it might again have just been his imagination.

These doubts caused him to be back here again, and after standing around feeling pretty stupid he decided that he should probably replicate the circumstances again. He would continue working on his magic, but before that he would place a lump of soulmist in between the shelves where the crashing sound had originated a week ago.

[Eridanus]

As Leth continued His reign over the night, more and more students left the library to rest, leaving Eridanus as probably one of the few people left in the huge building, which made him - for all intents and purposes - alone.

He had been reading a small handbook borrowed from his course-mates' girlfriend's uncle on simple and convenient soulmist recipes, and with little difficulty he managed to procure the baffling range of ingredients required.

As he laid out the items in his school bag, he first placed the books he borrowed at the side that he would need for tonight's sessions, as well as the quill, quill-stand and ink-well. Next, he took out a small jar that held a his raw mixture of pre-soulmist, as well as a tiny vial of animal blood.

Earlier in the day he had followed one of the recipes in first kneading this pre-soulmist. Using mostly baker's dough, with a little water and flour, he had mixed it with an egg and kneaded the mixture into a mild tan-colored formless lump. Some of his dormitory mates assumed that he had suddenly developed an interest in baking, and truth be told he was 'baking' something, though the result was soulmist instead of cake.

Uncorking the vial, he dripped the animal blood over the dough that he took out from the jar, using his hands to form and reform the dough such that the blood was equally distributed such that it turned into a mild pinkish color.

Grimacing, he mentally prepared himself for the next step as he popped the eclectic mixture into his mouth, cringing as the raw taste of the ingredients assaulted his senses. His gag reflexes began kicking in, and it took all of his willpower to not spit it out. Instead, he utilized his meditative techniques of isolating and forcing thoughts to bring his attention away from the foul taste of the mixture, and on to what he wanted to achieve.

[Eridanus]

As he chewed the blood-dough-thing apprehensively while mixing it with his saliva, his tongue lavishly pushing the bits of the dough apart, his mind worked hard to force himself to ignore the disgust, instead putting a strong imagery of a ghost into his mind.

The image of what a ghost is, and what it was made out of. Soulmist, the material of dead djed, the result of dead astral energy usually associated with the soul that was tinged with the undead signature of a ghost. He had no idea what the exact processes were when he was chewing this mixture, but he just had to have strong faith in the procedure.

With this faith and constant meditation, his will-power began to bear fruit, and it was not long after when he realized that the thing is his mouth no longer tasted foul and earthly. Instead, it felt unnaturally smooth, and left a cool taste in his mouth that reminded him of pepper-mint sprigs or ice cubes that were halfway melting.

Putting a hand in front of him, he spat out the result of the procedure and in his hand lay a glob that had an extremely smooth texture like a flawlessly round pebble, with the unnatural pale-white glow that characterized it as soulmist.

Nodding to himself, he replaced this soulmist into the jar, screwing the lid back on, and walked over to shelves where the weird sound occurred. Placing it on one of the ledges where there was space from not having books, he returned to his seat and proceeded with the next phase of his studying session with two objectives in mind.

Firstly, to continue his experimental study. Secondly, to replicate the magical phenomenon that might be the factor that attracted the alleged ghost.

Either way, by the end of tonight he was going to prove or disprove his claim, though he was not sure what he was going to do if there was indeed a ghost.

[Eridanus]

He was a little ambitious tonight, and so there were three things on his agenda. Firstly, he was going to test out the use of glyphs to enhance the quality of djed extruded in the first step of making a shield. Secondly and thirdly, he would attempt the use of glyphs to both speed up and enhance the tasking process. He realized that as the sessions progressed he had gotten more ambitious, but it was a good thing, for one could never progress if one always stayed in one's comfort zone.

Over the week he had thought about how to improve the quality of djed extruded. He had proven through experimentation that the quality of djed extruded did not suffer if he sped up the extraction process with specific path sigils, and so if he was about to enhance the quality, combining these two glyphs would result in a potent combination of speed and quality.

I'm getting too far ahead of myself.

Dipping the quill into the inkwell, the ethaefal hovered the quill over his left wrist, lips pursed as he considered how he should begin. Using his experience regarding switches from his previous experiment, Eridanus came to the idea that if he used the many-to-one conversion scheme of switches, or a 'djed multiplexer' he would be able to combine a few djed streams into a single one. After all, he had already done the opposite through a one-to-many switch, or 'djed demultiplexer' in the previous experiment.

Thus he began to draw a single triangle on his wrist. The tip of the triangle faced the middle of his palm, while the contrasting edge of the triangle was perpendicular across the bottom of his forearm. Making sure to draw the triangle large enough that it covered his entire bottom-forearm and wrist, he dipped the quill into the ink again to start the glyphing against the outline.

[Eridanus]

He began to draw a many-to-one switch sigil using the triangle as an outline, being able to place the various component glyphs that formed the complex sigil accurately by using the rough triangle as a guideline. Soon, the basic components of the sigil was drawn, and he needed to specify the purpose. It was a tasking of sorts for the glyph.

Drawing a tiny path sigil at the middle of the triangle, he made it clear that it was similar to the way he was going to manipulate the flow of djed within his body before it was extruded, and in order to clarify the arcane instructions on his hand he also added the Nader-canoch words of 'inner djed' for this purpose.

Next, he drew five lines from the opposite edge of the triangle, and these formed the basis of the path sigils he was going to use. Rolling up his left sleeve as he did so, he felt the cool ink drying on his skin as he continued the lines, drawing them such that they were equally spaced around the circumference of his forearm.

After that, he began to replace these lines with path sigils, starting with narrow breadths when close to the switch and ending in open-ended large mouths. When completed these five path sigils' mouth would fully cover the entire circumference of his forearm, and these paths acted as a funnel to channel the traveling djed into his djed multiplexer draw on his wrist.

[Eridanus]

When this was done, he then drew a single path sigil emerging from the vertex of his many-to-one switch that led into his open palm. This path was the result of the processing of djed through a 5:1 Djed Multiplexer, and would contain five times the density of djed, thus ensuring that when compared to the same volume of djed procured normally it would be drastically more intense. He was not sure if that meant a stronger shield, but it was certainly worth a try.

He connected the path sigil leading from the output of the switch to his palm, and at the end of the path sigil he drew a large circle around his left palm. Filling in the circle with glyphs that would eventually form a nice circular barrier sigil, he added the finishing touches that connected the output path and barrier to complete the 'magical circuit', so to speak, and stretched out his left hand while admiring the variety of lines and shapes silently.

Now he had to figure out a way to enhance and speed up the tasking process, and it was more difficult as compared to the shaping process. He had the idea of glyphing the shield to task it, but he realized that it was essentially the same as actually tasking it, and so he had to figure out a method that made more pragmatic sense.

[Eridanus]

He thought about the method he used to improve the shaping process of creating a shield, and it was through this that he came to a possible solution. Eyes brimming with optimistic possibility, the ethaefal dipped the quill again, starting his work. In order to not over-complicate things, and also because his palm was already filled with glyphs, he decided to focus his shielding efforts only on the top of his left palm, for it was only part in his left arm that was bare from ink.

Remembering the method he used to block light, Eridanus mentally projected an image of the final pattern of the djed threads within an almost-ready shield onto the top of his left palm.

Suddenly, a spot of inspiration struck him. If he could use glyphs to work out the tasking beforehand, he could use it to separate tasking of the shields! His heart beating with anticipation, he quickly found the other book he brought along with him, flipping through it to find a series of common guidelines to blocking sound and smell. As he eyes skimmed through the steps, imagery and whatnot, he found them actually quite similar to blocking light, for they were merely blocking another physical sense.

Roughly dividing the top of his palm into three quadrants, he designated a tiny symbol to each of the quadrant to remind him each part was for what. Going from clockwise, he drew a little eye that signified blocking light, then a little nose that signified blocking smell, then a little ear that signified blocking sound. Next, he added barrier sigils alongside the lines he used to divide his top palm into three quadrants to serve as partitions for the djed to make his life easier later on.

Dipping his quill into the inkwell again, he proceeded to draw a series of paths in the shape of the mental picture he had of the pattern that was needed to block light in the first quadrant. The sigils he used were slightly different, for instead of purposing them to manipulate djed, he instead purposed them more specifically to target the particular djed threads within the foam of djed. After more chimes of painstaking drawing, he proceeded on to the next quadrant.

[Eridanus]

From his study of the difference in pattern of the different blocking taskings, Eridanus could see an overall pattern in the tapestry, and that allowed him to realize that the pattern was mostly similar in that it was blocking a sense, only needing to modify the end-bit of the pattern to specify which sense.

With that thought in mind, he proceeded to carefully replicate the foundational paths that would direct the djed threads to the general idea of blocking sense, and then when he was done he applied the little specialized differences to the one blocking smell and sound.

He replaced the quill on the ink-stand and grinned at his 'masterpiece'. The first series of glyphs would hopefully multiply the density of extracted djed, forming a shield more powerful than it should be for its size and thickness due to the highly dense djed. The partitioning barriers that should hopefully help to divide the resulting shaped shield into three separate ones but yet fitted together on the top of his palm.

The various path sigils that should help him to automatically direct the djed threads to the required tasking patterns, and finally the extra glyphs he added for clarifications to strengthen the tasking so that it was precisely clear what he wanted the shield to block.

It was now the time of judgement, and he closed his eyes, forcing his excited heart to stop pounding so furiously at the anticipation of finding out the results. Due to his previous two sessions that resulted in headaches, he had decided not to use auristics during the shield creation process, instead only using it to take a brief look at the final product. That would also help him to form shields without the use of auristics and to learn to not be so spoiled and to form them the way they were supposed to be formed - with a shielder's vision.

[Eridanus]

Mentally concentrating inwards, he began to pull on the various djed streams throughout his body, tugging on them as he directed the flow of djed towards his upper torso, then his left arm. It was a slow process, but his strong willpower forced the slowly flowing djed towards his arm, funneling the djed into the waiting mouths of the open path sigils around his forearm.

As he pushed the djed through the glyph-funnels, he felt his strength weaken noticeable as the djed from all five streams entered his wrist where the djed multiplexer was drawn, and after a while he cut the flow of djed prematurely as compared to the normal time he took when extracting djed without the use of glyphs.

His left arm shook slightly with the new-found strain, but he gritted his teeth and continued pushing the djed from his wrist up to his palm, mentally focusing the result of his exertions into the circular barrier in the middle of his palm.

He exhaled as he pushed this djed out from his physical hand, and though he felt a large amount of spiritual energy leaving his body as he did so, he found himself looking at a small lump of blue djed that was the same amount as the amount he extracted in the first two sessions.

However, the difference was that where the djed was blurred and cloudy in the first two sessions, now it was no longer a cloud but a floating lump of solid, glowing blue djed. It was like looking at it with auristics vision, except now he did not have to use auristics to enhance his view for he had a very strong view of it.

So this is what highly refined or dense djed look like.

He had expected to work on hard-to-see djed, but this result served as a great convenience, and he began to use his other hand to scoop this lump of solid blue djed and dumped it over the top of his left palm.

[Eridanus]

Like spreading butter on toast, he patted and molded the glowing blue form of his astral energy over his skin, able to more consistently spread out the pre-shield as he no longer needed to form a sphere like in previous sessions. Instead it was more like trying to evenly spread butter on toast, and though his inexperienced hands prevented him from making perfectly consistent shields he was able to at least achieve a more smooth texture than if he had to mold a sphere.

After that, he stopped tinkering with the shape of the shield and began to focus on the djed strands within the djed of the pre-shield. He felt a slightly warm sensation from the glyphs written on his skin as the glyphs burned slightly as they whirred into action, and he could somehow feel the djed first being divided into three portions due to the barrier sigils.

Like pressing soft iron into a cast mold, he pushed the shaped djed downwards into the glyphs, and while the actual shape of the shield did not change due to the specific wording of the glyphs, the djed threads that governed the tasking of the shields did. He continued pushing, stopping only when he was sure that the last of the djed threads had been imprinted by the glyphs, and he then began to pay more close attention to the specialized glyphs at the end sections of each tasking glyphs, making sure to imprint the djed threads correctly for a solid, precise tasking.

When he shifted the last threads of the first third of his shield, a third of his top palm faded into blackness, though when he completed for the other two thirds there was no visible change. It was expected, for smell and sound were not detectable by sight.