[Flashback] Magic in the woods (Kaeson)

[Mordechai Zoltar]

"Good, now that you're focussing on the movement I can better focus on the directives of the animation." Mordechai said to him. He worked quickly after he placed a drop of blood down on the grooves in the dirt.

"And as for doing this in dirt I assure you it works much the same as it does with drawn lines. I used a dying raven to make the bird you saw earlier not 20 paces from where we are now" He said, motioning towards a spot a little further from the tent.

Now he had to focus. He imagined vividly the small wooden horse walking. In his mind he said stop, and then the horse did so. Then he said 'play' in his head, and the horse began walking again in his mind. He repeated this process for a short while as it was a simple 2 part command system. After allowing the boy to provide the soulcore which he could almost see enter the horse, the process was near completion.

Finally Mordechai stopped and looked up. First at the toy, then at the boy. The boy seemed bored and unimpressed. This saddened Mordechai as he had hoped for more enthusiasm. Ofcourse! The boy is just eager, he wants his turn now! Well then let's watch and see what the boy can do once we test out this one here.

"Finished" Mordechai announced. "Sorry if you got bored, I know it was a simple process. Now let us see if it worked, eh?" Mordechai said grabbing the horse from the far circle and standing it up. "Play" he said.

The horse, very slowly at first, started to walk forward. Mordechai went to reach forward for it but found it suddenly out of his range. Getting up from his spot on the ground the Mage uttered "Stop" and the toy froze.

"Well, that was fun. What do you say you give it a go?" Mordechai said smiling and handing the Akalak warrior doll to the boy. He was curious to see the child in action, as he had only ever seen one other person do animation before, he had limited knowledge on different styles of doing things.

[Kaeson Dakano]

Kaeson patiently sat in the animation circles, expectingly waiting for something to happen. Not wanting to interrupt Mordechai's concentration, the young boy determinedly kept as still as any thirteen year old could manage. That being said, besides him fiddling with a patch of grass and occasionally yawning, Kaeson managed to stay relatively still throughout the whole process.

He frowned upon hearing the older boy announce the animation's completion, "What do you mean you're already finished? I didn't feel anything?!" Kaeson paused, his eyes flickered towards the slowing moving toy.

Watching the small toy, Kaeson realized it was much darker then when they had originally started -- his grandmother would worry if he wasn't home soon. "She might even call the knights," Kaeson thought to himself, wondering if he would be able to finish an animation by the time the knights found him.

"It's late," Kaeson announced, motioning his chin towards the setting sun. "Can we meet tomorrow? Same place?" The young boy asked the mage hopefully -- it was too late for him to be able to complete the animation, but if the older boy agreed to meet the next morning, Kaeson was sure he'd be able to finish a good animation.

[Mordechai Zoltar]

"Can we meet tomorrow? Same place?" The boy said.

Looking towards the dwindling sunset it became obvious that darkness was well on it's way. Mordechai put the horse doll back in his bag and looked at the boy.

"Well, yes I suppose. I don't have any plans for the morning. Stop on by, I'll be here." Mordechai said. Brushing off the dirt from his cloak he continued "I guess I'll have a small fire and get to bed. I am pretty fatigued from all this. We'll start again once we've had a good night's sleep."

With that he turned towards the half burnt logs in his fire pit on the far side of his tent and let a small ball of thick res build up in his mouth. He spit it out and ignited it mid-flight before it his the logs, beginning a small smoldering fire in the pit.

As the boy wandered off the sun finally fell out of sight and darkness was upon Mordechai. He decided it would be nice to sleep outside by the fire which had now grown to a respectable size. He grunted as he fumbled with his bedroll and set it down alongside the stone ring.

Mordechai layed down, covered up, and fell asleep looking at the stars whilst the fire crackled beside him.

[Kaeson Dakano]

Kaeson grabbed a lone branch off the ground and carefully began to etch the animation circles into the earth. The boy was small for thirteen, and the branch quite large; Kaeson dragged the stick to make the neccessary marks. Ever the perfectionist, Kaeson dragged the stick through the earthen pattern twice more to ensure it's whole connection. Animation was a tricky magic, the designs needing to be completely intact. Any break in the circle would lead to a faulty animation and a faulty animation was a dangerous animation. Kaeson wasn't expecting a wooden doll to do anything drastic, but still, better safe then sorry.

Kaeson made his way over to the makeshift camp, and grabbed the wooden Akalack doll. The young animator carefully made his way back to the deeply etched circles, careful not to knock anything into the groves that made his design. Reaching the smaller of the two circles, Kaeson smiled as he placed the wooden doll in it's place. Soon, soon it would be alive -- all thanks to Kaeson.

Making his way to the larger of the two circles, Kaeson was careful not to disturb the circles.

Now in the larger of the two circles, Kaeson sat down, slowing his breathing for a meditation. He knew from the various literature that meditation helped focus the mind and a focused mind lead to a better. Drawing in deep breaths, Kaeson slowly let them out. Kaeson quickly pricked his finger, and watched the blood drop on the circle.

"First, the soul core," Kaeson whispered to himself, and began to focus on the very thing that made him, him -- his soul. His own soul was to be the source from which the copy, the soulcore was made. The young animator quietly searched himself for his very core, silently willing itself to break -- sending a small part of himself to the wooden doll.

"Then, the directives." Kaeson had already decided the night prior to give the doll move directives: play and stop. Play would be the command for the wooden doll to swing its arm in a small circular manner; at Kaeson's level he couldn't do much else. Stop, of course, would be the command word for the animation to stop. Kaeson imagined the toy reacting appropriately to both command words, sending the necessary information through the animation circles.

His own skill with animation was lacking, and since the toy wouldn't be needing much of a personality, Kaeson had already decided to skip the persona part.

"Last thing is to set the body," Kaeson smiled. Slowly, the world around him began to dim to the young animators eyes, as his eyes began to adjust to the astral plane. Looking towards the toy, a small amorphous red blob surrounded it -- this would be formed to be the toy's body. Kaeson carefully molded the red aura around the toy, careful to match all the extremities -- he wanted the toy to function perfectly.

"Awake," Kaeson whispered, snapping the toy to sentience.

[Mordechai Zoltar]

"Very nice work!" Mordechai said as he walked towards the boy. He had just woken up and noticed the animation going on, choosing not to disturb the boy until he was finished. "Very thorough of you. You seem to have covered every angle completely. Good job, now lets see if it works!"

Leaning down, Mordechai gathered up the toy and held it loosely in his hand. "Play" He said, giving the keyword and the arm of the Akalak began to swing around and around. "Stop" he said sternly as it halted its rotation and fell limp again in his hand. "A fine job lad." He had no doubt in the child's craftsmanship.

"Now let me take care of this last one, real quick. You'll come to find you can sort of... abbreviate some steps with a simple toy, trust me, I've been doing this for years."

Setting the Zith doll in the far, smaller circle and sitting in the larger circle himself, he gingerly pricked his finger and let the blood drip out onto the grooves. The process was started. Now it had been awhile since he used himself as the model for the soulcore but he still remembered the basics. He relaxed his body and let his soul pull towards the toy. Enough pull and a small portion of it was torn off and drifted towards it. This all of course was the image he had in his head anyways. He mentally watched the soul piece drift towards the toy and fill it completely. As it did so he began to think of the toy flapping it's wings with the word play, and stopping with the word stop. He thought hard on this for a good while before he felt it finally sink into the soulcore that now filled the doll. Once this was completed he opened his eyes and looked back to the boy.

"Finished" Mordechai said, grinning at the boy. He walked over to the small Zith doll and uttered "Play", and slowly but surely it's wings began to flap. He let it go on doing so until the motion became more fluid. He then continued with "stop" and the flapping ceased completely.

"Well young master, I'd say three toys done is certainly a good haul for two days. "What do ya say we head into town and see if we can't sell one or two of them?" He said smilling again as the two started to wander back to town.

[Emblem]

Congratulations! You Get Glorious Experience! Mordechai Skills Animation- 4 XP Rhetoric- 3 XP Reimancy- 1 XP Lores Kaeson Dakano (partial) A Child's Enthusiasm A Brief Education Other Shenanigans: Nothing over here. Kaeson Skills Animation- 4 XP Rhetoric- 3 XP Skill 2 Lores Mordechai (Partial) A Brief Education Being a Soulcore Other Shenanigans: Nope. Comments : Nice job with this magic thread guys. Naturally animation was the main skill being used here, but hopefully the other skills make sense as well. Just an FY this thread didn't have a date on it, so if you could just add a date to it that would be appreciated. As always, PM me with questions and concerns.