A Preventative Measure

by **Keene Ward** on May 12th, 2015, 6:13 pm

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The thirty-third day of spring, 515 AV

He sat with candles burning a steady blue, casting their chilly light upon the pages that had slowly begun to be filled with little black scribbles of varying design and size. His quill scratched against the paper, a trail of black left behind to seep into the material as he finished the final line of his theoretical focus. He had been researching the possibilities of putting glyphs into the weave of his shields, for no purpose more than the potential that it was something he could do. So far, however, his investigations had yielded little promise. It didn't help that his comprehension of glyphs was limited to his relatively minimal artistic ability and skill in the actual magic itself. He still imagined it to be possible, however, until he was better acquainted with both magics, it seemed something out of his reach. Setting the quill aside, Keene ran his ink stained fingers through his hair, eyes slowly closing as he drew a steady breath to end the surprisingly frustrating bell of practice that had given way to little progress.

In the darkness of his own mind, he saw him. He always saw him. Boswell would drift in and out of focus, but Noven was always crystal clear. Perfect. His heart skipped a beat as the man smiled, then he frowned, then, he disappeared, just as he always did.

Shifting forward, Keene leaned an elbows onto the wooden table's surface, wearily pressing his fingers into his eyes before he opened them once more to stare down at the silent pages of half a season's worth of work. He missed him, whether he wanted to admit it or not. The letters had not made the divide any easier. If anything, they had made him ache even more, but it was not something he couldn't put aside for the sake of what he had to do. Sighing, he rose, a far different looking man than when he had arrived at the cave's mouth seasons ago. He was often tired and battered, two things that he had come to find comfortable. If a day left him restless, it was his own fault. There was more to do in a day than bells to do them, and Keene spent each to the best of his abilities. He had learned much, though still not enough, and while the days had stretched into seasons and his restless night grown all the more so, there was still so much left to learn.

Having come to the conclusion that his shields would remain glyphless until he had a better grasp of the magic itself, Keene turned to exit the cave, res drifting from his lips to gather up the flames and pull them along behind him to light the way. As he stepped out into the expanse of the valley's morning, the fire was snuffed out, the pale blue liquid seeping into fingers that passed through it. Drawing a deep, centering breath, Keene stepped through the intricate web of sheilds he had constructed, the tasked djed doing nothing to stop his advance as if the shimmering multi-hued construct was nothing more than a minor hallucination. The cliff was windless, an empty plain of muggy heat even as early as it was in the day. The stillness and quiet of the Sahovan wilderness set in around him, a familiar mix of scene and sensation. He had grown content, whether he realized it or not, and he found his mountainous domain well suited to his proclivities: isolated and quiet, it served a far better training ground than his house in Zeltiva ever had.

Turning to face his shields, Keene set about checking them just as he had every morning since Atziri's command that he begin to weave the protections he'd been practicing for so long. Djed drifted from his fingers, a fog of unlimited potential that slid along each layer as he examined them, taking into account the thickness, the weave, and the stability of each. Sometimes, the cloud would shift, buffering a section with a diluted task in a patch or feeding the djed into the slight flicker of strength of another. As he worked, Keene focused all his thoughts onto what was before him, Noven's smile and voice and smell... They all were folded up like a good book and tucked away. He could not afford sentimentalities in his daily life. Things had become too painful, and in that pain lived a heavy, sluggish dampening of his abilities, something sizeable enough to turn the tides of an impromptu battle from favorable to his final, and that was something he refused to allow, even for Noven. Especially for Noven.

When he had finished with the maintenance, Keene stepped back, giving the shields one last check before turning to head up towards the tree he had been dutifully watering for the past season. It was a good warm up for the day, and as he jumped up to latch onto the side of the cliff's face and hoist himself over with no small amount of effort, his heart already began to beat a few ticks faster. Brushing himself off as he rose to stand, Keene felt a familiar rush of air greet him with a playful tousle of his hair, displacing the muggy heat with a more tepid breath of relief. He greeted it as had become customary, letting the wind drift through his fingers for a few ticks before starting up the hike. As he went, Keene stretched his arms, pulling first one up and over behind his head then the other, swinging them back and fourth once that was done. He was not the greatest climber, but the hundreds of times he'd gone up and down the particular mountain path had not only worn a trail of use, but had conditioned his body to be much better prepared for the journey.

by **Keene Ward** on May 12th, 2015, 10:23 pm

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By the time he reached the final rise of earth and stone, Keene had broken into sweat. His legs were not sore, but they held the journey's memory well. He'd grown stronger in more than magic since his time as an Initiate of the Wardens. Steady hands gripped the stones, pulling his body upwards, straining his arms and forcing his weight to be carefully distributed throughout his limbs. The cliff was minor, but climbing was still difficult for him even with all the practice he had had. There was simply something about pushing off with one leg to reach with another hand that required far more effort in practice than theory, and it often hampered his progress. As he finally threw an arm over the ledge, Keene swung his leg up after it. He found that his semi-regular sparring matches and subsequent stretches made it a bit easier for him to roll up onto the plateau, only a minor stretch in his groin as opposed to the splitting pain that had taken him by surprise the first time he'd attempted such a maneuver.

Pushing himself back up to his feet, he dusted himself off before taking the handful of steps to stand before the tree. It was little more than a waste high, meager looking bush, but in comparison to the twig it had started as, the tree had made as much progress as he had, though where he had been tumbled through trials and tribulations, the tree had flourished beneath the dutiful ministrations of its caretaker. The rain came easy to him, his companion swirling on the currents of the clouds that Keene gathered and swept through the controlled and concentrated deluge like a flitting creature of intrigue, tasting the drops of rain with an excitement that seemed nearly ever present in the little sylph. As the ground drank in the water to nourish the roots within, Keene watched the precipitation bounce off of the healthy green leaves, splattering into a hundred little specks before tumbling to the ground below. As he watched, he found that not all the leaves were the same. Some were only shadows of what they should have been, skeletons void of the healthy greens.

When the watering had been sufficient, Keene released his control over the elements, res seeped back into his skin as fingers ran through the breeze that rose to meet him in contemplation. It seemed that the tree had it own troubles, and as its protector, those troubles were his by proxy. Kneeling down, Keene let his knee press into the watered earth as he scanned the plant for any further hint of what it was that was causing it such apparent distress. Better than a clue, he found the culprit, or at least one of them. It was a bug, relatively minimal of stature about half the size of his smallest finger's nail with a dark body and a bright, ruddy shell. Having only read of bugs in books before, Keene had no name for the thing, but the aggressor was caught in the act. Mandibles bit and tore at a fresh leaf, leaving behind a trail of destruction identical to those around it.

Res once more slipped from between his lips, though this time it moved in a tiny tendril, snaking in a stealthy, serpentine slither until it was positioned just above the insect's unsuspecting body. With a twitch of his fingers, the thread shifted into that of a thin needle of stone, piercing the creature through and through. The shell lifted to reveal wings, but it was a futile attempt as Keene drew the stone needle, white as bleached bone, back towards his face to better examine the squirming, dying thing that had so brazenly fed upon the tree he'd been tasked to protect. When the creature finally ceased its powerless twitches, Keene let it fall into his outstretched hand, pulling the needle from the carapace and reabsorbing the flecks of res that remained. He very gingerly poked the insect several times to make sure that it was dead before carefully setting it on the ground. With the insect secured, Keene set about searching for capturing any more creatures that seemed to be of harm to the plant. There were several that he did not slay, as they sat or crawled peacefully with benign intent, even after several chimes of observation.

When he had finished, all creatures who seemed to wish the plant ill had been collected and laid out in a line before him, a total of five separate creatures. Three were bugs similar to the one he'd found before, shelled and winged, six legs, various patterns and colors. Another was a wormlike creature, one he assumed to be a larvae of some sort. The last creature was small, green, and had been mostly squished in spite of his efforts to maintain it's integrity. Picking up the first bug, Keene centered his focus, breath moving in a steady rise and fall of his chest. Djed sloughed off of him in a soft, rolling wave, the opalescent mist drifting towards his point of focus, djed investigating djed, learning from it, becoming it. The mist took on a reddish shimmer when he felt it had enough information to properly repel any further advances from creatures of the same ilk. He spread it over the tree, a practiced gesture of his fingers as the cloud wrapped and molded about each part of the plant, the minuscule crystals bonding to create a sleek shell of frosty fractals that twisted and spiraled their way over the object it was tasked to protect. His finger traced their lines, checking the width, stability, and strength of the construct, making sure that the
barrier was connected to and fully covered the tree.

by **Keene Ward** on May 12th, 2015, 11:34 pm

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The breeze tousled his hair as he worked, and when the shield was finished and tested with a flick of the insect so that it hit and dropped from the shield in a dull flare, Keene rose to address his ethereal companion. Res slipped from his fingertips, gathering the air around him into a lose vortex as he sent it outwards. He could feel the wind's excitement as it was swept up in the flurry, moving far faster than it ever did on its own as it was cast out off of the cliff's face to whirl into a miniature twister, the speed of which was carefully controlled by Keene's steady fingers. He felt the telltale lightness that came with manipulating the air, but it was muted behind practice and a knowledge of how far he could push himself. He let the wind dance round and round for a chime, varying the speeds as he had found the little sylph preferred - or perhaps that preference was of his own invention -, before letting the res drift back to him. The winds had picked up some, interested by the alteration to the natural flow of their paths, and the breeze flitted between the greater, sweeping sighs that passed overhead.

Having given his companion something better to do with its time - if wind could even be measured in such a mortal commodity -, Keene returned to his task, making sure to move the bugs away from the gathering excitement he'd aroused in what had been a relatively languid lull in the weather prior. Picking up the next bug, he rolled his shoulders, settling back into the proper mindset to release his djed as djed rather than res. It had been difficult when he had started, but the more shields he created and examined, the easier he was able to slip back. Once more his djed wrapped around the bug, and once more he set about layering the shield over the once before, this time working a bit more carefully to ensure everything was covered, starting at the bottom and working his way to the top.

The first time he had layered, he had found that the previous weave was something to take into account. He shaped the second shield in a different nature than the one "below" it, the curls and floral designs twisting and snaking their way in complement. It took a bit longer than the first one, but as Keene worked and the winds kicked up, he found the work engaging and, in a sense, relaxing. Shielding, when he was allowed the time to do so properly, was a meditative experience. A large part of his focus was centered on the construction, a smaller part on the weave's appearance, and the remaining centered on his djed. It was introspective without the actual act of introspection, and while his fingers twitched in subtle gesture to guide the icy crystals of his manifested essence, it allowed his body to calm and steady.

When the shield was finished and tested, Keene took the next bug and repeated the process. The flurries of wind behind him had faded back down, but the breeze had yet to return, no down having be gleefully carried away into the greater sweep of the gusts that ran down into the valley below. As he worked, Keene fell into the rhythm of the magic, the cloud slowly shrinking until the shield was complete. As he worked, several of the same sorts of bugs he had tasked against found that their advances were halted, a confusing development that resulted in the things bouncing off the shields in a steady metronome to match Keene's methodical manipulations.

by **Keene Ward** on May 13th, 2015, 12:36 am

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As he moved on to the worm-like creature, djed drifting in, around, and through it, Keene felt the breeze return content and lazy, drifting about the flatness of the plateau with little direction other than to relish its own languid pace. The djed was once more added to the layers, an intricate twist and pull of icy frost that he worked with carefully to both protect and sustain itself. While he had not found a way for the shields to draw djed out of the air itself, something he wasn't sure he could do with a single task, it was much more simple to simply allow the shield's to feed off of the energies expended to break past them. He altered the task of defense as he worked, each crystal put into place being reminded that the djed within it and part of it could be kept if it was present.

With the fourth shield finished, Keene dropped the worm onto one of the leafs, watching the flare before it slid to bounce several more times until it hit the ground below. He took a moment to stretch, turning to extend his legs and reach forward, pushing against the strain. His body had become accustomed to motion, action, and while he had been spending quite a bit of time stationary in practice of his more erudite pursuits, it did not change his body's desire for activity. Reaching first for one foot for a time then the next, Keene gazed off into the distance, scanning the horizon where just the tip of the citadel's ramparts could be seen. As he shifted through stretches to ease his muscles away from their stiffness, Keene allowed a specific memory to resurface.

When he had arrived on the island, he remembered how strange everything was, how barren. Looking out over the twisted, deceptively beautiful landscape, he found that his opinions had changed. The island of the dead was filled with life, but the life was twisted, gnarled like the branches of the junipers and slight like the tips of the acacia. Even the tree he'd spent the past bell protecting as the sun's light had grown in intensity through the ever present cloud cover held with in it the island's nature. He had thought to fight against the wilderness, Atizir's words still clear in his mind, but she had been right. Their enemies were not among the mindless beasts and creeping flora of the island, but those who walked its surface with authority and power. He curbed his thoughts as he turned back to face the tree, Scipio and Boswell drifting back into the darkness. There would come a time when he could need to fight again, but it was not then.

He once more set about inspecting the shields he'd created thus far, checking for chinks or shifts that had occurred due to negligence in their creation. Having taken care and time to ensure the shields would hold properly, he found no parts that were cause for concern. As me moved to pick up the last creature, the small greenish speck, he found that it had disappeared. Searching around first his feet, then out and around him, he saw no sign of it. He spent several chimes carefully moving over the plateau, searching for either the original bug or another like it. In the winds' flurries, however, if there had been creatures, they had long since fled to safer regions. With a frown, he met the return of the breeze with an absentminded hand. It seemed, for the time being, that the tree would have to remain unprotected from the creature until he could locate another one.

Slipping down over the ledge, Keene lowered himself to the familiar footholds, making his way back down to the path to head down into the valley for the day that still remained a sizable portion if the light's intensity was anything for him to go by. As he made his way down, boots crunching against the earth and the familiar sensation of sweat sticking the front of his shirt to his chest, Keene listened the the quiet whistle of the wind and it ran through the trees below.