Solo A Rocky Road

[Keene Ward]

The twenty-third day of spring, 515 AV

Atziri's speed had increased since the day she'd forced a hasty snap-shield out of him earlier in the season. With speed came several things, the greatest of which were bruises. His own skill had grown enough that, even with the far more powerfully exchanged blows, Keene was able to keep up. A fortunate combination of a desire to train and a relatively high pain tolerance with all things that did not involve touch made the whole process much easier. Atziri had taken to shielding her fists, though those barriers only covered skin. The rest of her body was a daunting and constant weapon, one which Keene strained to combat to the best of his abilities.

Weaving out of the way of a sharp hook, Keene shuffled forward, taking the offensive to deliver a swift strike with his knee. He was too slow for it to land on the target he intended, finding her hands had already moved to deflect. Bouncing backwards, Keene took a few ticks to find his balance once more, toes digging into the sand as he centered his weight in anticipation for her recoil. Rather than shifting her weight into the jab that he was prepared for, the bone it her right was switched to her left and proceeded to charge forward. His djed shifted, spilling from the tight weave of his fingertips as it grew into a thick mist before him. As the bone passed through it, Keene tightened his jaw, pulling his hands back into a block, wrapping the djed around his hands, focusing the main bulk of the width where the strike was aimed at.

With a flash, the bone's force was absorbed, but there was little time for Keene to do much more than stagger back and duck as her leg swooped over him. His "duck" had been more of a drop to his hands and knees, which he quickly rolled out of before staggering back to his feet. He was too slow, however, and was greeted with a firm trust to his chest that both knocked the wind out of his chest and his feet from the ground. Landing with a thud on the sand beneath him, Keene gasped for air, arms grabbing at the loose earth to find purchase so that he might regain his footing. A foot slammed into the ground just a breath away from his crotch sending a spray of grit over him as Atziri stared down at him with a raised brow. "Done already, Initiate?" Sweat dotted his brow and damped his back as he shook his head, pushing himself back to his feet as he dusted himself off. His breath moved in a steady pant of weariness, but it was not such that he could not continue. As he started to sink back down into his stance, Atziri was then the one to shake her head. "An important part of fighting, Keene, is to know when to step down."

He paused, a flicker of confusion in his gaze. "Will the creatures be so willing to let me leave?"

There was a flash of grin as the woman shrugged, "Why don't you try it and find out?" The blank stare she got in reply elicited a small chuckle as she turned towards the table to gather up her things. "On second thought, never mind. I have things to do today, but I expect you to be ready every morning, whether we train or not. Understood?" She checked over her shoulder, the question less given for fear that Keene had not comprehended her words, rather to serve as a hook on which to hang his promise that he would indeed adhere to her request. With a terse nod, Keene gave his reply, fingers skimming over the areas he'd managed to shield, breaking them apart and drawing back what he could of them. The faster a shield was made, the more difficult it was break down back into usable material, which meant that the mornings they trained were often preludes to days in which magic was to be used more sparingly than usual.

[Keene Ward]

Keene settled back down into the sand, pressing his bare back against it as he let his eyes close. He had been progressively nicely in his reimantic capabilities up until Atizir suggested he try throwing around some dirt. That had been several days ago, and Keene had yet to move dirt, sand, rock, or even dust. Atziri had suggested he get better acquainted with the element, which had led to Keene meditating with his body pressed into the sand. It wasn't an unpleasant experience. At times it was itchy or uncomfortable, but for the most part, there was something relaxing about lying in the malleable pseudo-solid that was sand. It wrapped around his form, tickling his skin with its plethora of minuscule particles, each separate yet part of a greater whole. In a way, it reminded him of a particular set of strong, warm arms and the earthy, spicy scent of whispered words.

His fingers dug into the sand on either side of him as he pushed the thought out of his head. Noven was gone. They were still in contact through the written word, but Keene allowed himself that pleasure of thought only when he wrote or read. Any other time, it was far too distracting, and there were things he needed to do. Drawing in a deep breath, Keene felt the sand shift beneath him before he let the air ease its way from his lungs, sending his mind once more into a grey pallor that flickered with thoughts. They were, for the most part, related to the sensory information his body gathered: what was sand, what temperature was it, was he in the optimal position to truly feel it, how did one feel, et cetera. Each breath drawn helped filter out the more frivolous thoughts starting with those of the grinning, dark eyed man who made his heart jump and filtering down to exclude thoughts about what he would do that evening until every question revolved around the sand about him.

What was sand?

Keene drew another breath, but this one was used to gather the scents around him. There was the natural musk of his own body, a smoky bite mixed with herbs and sweat. There was the humid heat of the cave that had its own subtle aroma; then, there was the sand. It was a softer perfume, something that grew when he shifted it to release small amounts of the air contained within it up and into his nose. There wasn't much information to go off of. The sand itself was relatively dry, and where the sticky sheen of his body made contact with it, it stuck to him, coating him in a spotty skin of earth. The more he thought about it, the more conglomerate the substance seemed to become in his mind. Sand was, in an of itself, a singular mass, yet it was composed of countless other bits and pieces. He shifted, the grain grinding against him as he settled back in, the bits tangling in his hair as his lips curled slightly down in a contemplative frown.

He considered dirt and stone and sand and rubble, each a part of the other, each singular in nature yet composed of the other and vice versa. Before, when he had tried to exercise even simple dominion over the earth around him, he had considered its stability a primary quality, the primary quality. However, as he continued to rest himself against the sand's support, his thoughts began to sway. Sand, especially, was not sturdy, but it possessed the capabilities to be so. It was fragmented rocks, pieces, bits. Yet, they were one, a cohesive unit.

Keene felt his djed shift within him, the contemplations scrawling a new, potential understanding into the ever shifting nature of his essence. Eyes still closed, Keene slowly exhaled. Res drifted from his skin in a steady, pale blue haze, pooling into a small cloud above him. He concentrated on stone not as a the epitome of solidity, rather a piece of a greater whole. There was strength in the element, certainly, but there was also a weakness in isolation. It was strongest when hand in hand with itself, similar to the strength of a wave or the rage of a forest fire. His fingers twitched in sand, eyes still seeing little but the visualizations of his thoughts. The res shivered before his will, gentle shimmers slinking through it as it gathered into a more substantial mass. There was a tick of hesitation as Keene considered what stone truly meant. It was not transient like fire, nor was it untethered like or fluid as water. It was rigid, but not fragile like ice. It lacked the spontaneity and flash point nature of lightning. It was eternal, changing but unchanging, both sturdy and weak. It was time, variable but always the same.

He felt his res pulse for a moment, and in that moment he wrapped the concept of stone around the res core, willing it into shape, drawing it out of its natural continuum to present itself for him then and there. When he opened his eyes, there floated above him a whitish grey sphere. It held veins of lighter influence that crawled its way through the surface, and as it hovered before him, Keene stared down at it with his analytical gaze. He had seen stone like it before in the mountains of Zeltiva, though its name was something he could not place for lack of any vocabulary in geology or the like. Extending a hand, he let the core join the stone around it, finding it by far the easiest of transmutations by the nature of the stone - the res wanted to join the conglomerate.

[Keene Ward]

The stone was surprisingly heavy for its size, and Keene weighed it in his hands with a pensive knit of his brows. He wondered, as the stone passed carefully from hand to hand, if sand then was merely a divide of the unification that stone held, the nature of its solidarity. Setting it beside him, Keene sat up, legs folding beneath him as he felt the sand flake from his skin. His body felt a bit heavy, as if he had joke woken up, and he took care to note the sensation. More res slipped from his lips, though this time his eyes remained open as the luminescent liquid floated before him. His fingers twitched as the liquid shifted into a haze. The concept of stone was broken down and scattered, a mix of freedom yet still a child of stone: eternity cast to the winds. To Keene, he imagined the manifestation of sand as the future of stone, if stone were past and dirt present, then sand would be the inevitable end before the cycle of time began once again.

He focused on that, on the wear and tear of time. His res flickered, then it fell, a cascade of silvery white tumbling into his lap. Keene ran his fingers through it, finding that thought it wasn't quite the same color or consistency of the sand around him, it was still sand. Turning to compare the rock and the sand, there were few similarities aside from the cosmetic whiteness of both. He repeated the act of stone and sand several more times in small quantities, little white pebbles and mounds of bone white sand dotting the darker, browner arena as he experimented. Similar to his fire which burned that pale blue, the stones only slightly fluctuated from a more ivory white to a faint grey whereas the sand was almost constantly white. When he felt as though he'd experimented enough with the transmutations, Keene left a trail of res as he ran his fingers through the sand in front of him.

Using the liquid's magnetic properties, he drew the sand along behind the liquid's motion. He expanded the influence, lifting the ball of res and the sands with it. Both dark and light mixed together as they were drawn up into the realm of his magic's influence, though the stones remained. He guided the sands for a few chimes before easing them back down into their proper place, spreading the res out so that it settled evenly. Releasing his hold over the grains, Keene focused instead on the stones. They floated up towards the slowly shrinking orb, drifting in a steady orbit as he swayed them side to side.

He could feel the heaviness drawing at him, and while his motions remained fluid and, for the most part, unimpeded, the amount of energy it took to move them seemed more than it should have been. Carefully setting the rocks onto the stone of the floor a short distance from him, Keene pulled the res back into his body, taking a few chimes carefully draw in and release his breathe. The more still he kept himself, the less heavy he felt his body become. With a small nod, Keene rose, stretching out his legs as he did to to remove some of the stiffness that he imagined was from more than just the minor magical experimentations. He gathered up the rocks, bare feet quietly tapping against the obsidian floor that so starkly contrasted the marble as he adjusted the weight of his little collection before turning to head outside. While Atziri had wanted him to gain a better control of the elements available to him, he had found she didn't enjoy clutter that she didn't put there. He had no qualms with cleaning up after himself, and there were plenty more examples of stone and earth outside than in the cavern. It seemed the day held in store for him another bought of magical practice, though perhaps not quite as extensive as he would have liked as he was still shorted from the morning's exercises.

[Orin Fenix]

Keene Ward

Skills

Endurance 1
Unarmed Combat 1
Acrobatics 1
Shielding 1
Observation 1
Meditation 1
Philosophy 1
Reimancy 1
Bodybuilding 1

Lores

Para-Element: Sand
Philosophy: Nature of Sand

Rewards/Consequences

Stony: For the next seven days, any time Keene starts relaxing for an extended period of time, he will feel a heavy lassitude steal over him and it will become increasingly harder to break out of.

Notes :

Lovely little thread, and it's nice to see Keene branching out from his regular uses of Reimancy.