Solo A Play of Sand Part II

[Crylon Stonecraft]

15 Summer 522 Once more Crylon awoke in Syka. At times he still forgot where he was, thinking for the first few moments the light streaming into his eyes was some other place... Zeltiva, Sunberth, Ravok, various places he had lived among humans. But after a few more moments and having a chance to hear the sounds and smell the smells he recalled where he was again. However once he was all the way awake his mind was churning away steadily as was the norm, thinking and sorting and considering. A structure in his head as most of his thinking was. Crylon liked to think that this was due to some of his experiences and nature as an Isur, but also his nature as a planner. A thinker and worker out of things. And so rising for another day the first thing to hit his mind was what to do on this day. Not having anything specific and seeing the sand once more Crylon's mind hit upon Reimancy. He had spent some time a bit earlier in the season working on it, and with nothing to do he figured today was a good day to work on it some more. He still had so much to learn and improve upon. And what had he been thinking of last time? Something about bringing his Res to the sand instead of vice versa. Moving a bit away from his tent and wearing just a pair of bottoms Crylon sat upon the sand and closed his eyes. Once more he focused his mind, clearing it as best he could, thinking on magic. His res. The power within him. Slowly willing it to surface. This time though he tried to just focus on the task without going through the entire thing, struggling mentally and holding one hand out palm up. Focusing on res coming out... He kept at this for a bit, until finally... Nothing. With a sigh he returned to his normal method, picturing a room. A dark room slowly lighting up... A forge, of course. The flames in the smithy flickering to life. The smell of smoke... The sound of hammers striking metal... And a door at the back of the room. Inside that was a dark cave, smooth stone dug out from a mountain... And in the middle he pictured a familiar scene he usually saw with his magic. A mineshaft with cut sides, and full of grains of black sand. Reaching in he pulled, willing it to be his res, for his djed to work and turn and form into res emitting from his body. He dug in with his fingers and pulled, willing it to rise, to come forth, to exude... And then feeling something, a change, magic, he opened his eyes to see... A tiny puff of res. Letting out another sigh he shook his head, seeing it was once more only a tiny bit. More. For any proper practice he would need more. And so silently he dug back in, closing his eyes and thrusting his mental hand back into the black grains. WC: 513

[Crylon Stonecraft]

Digging back into his mind, back into his djed and the mine shaft in his mind that represented his djed, he continued his work. He had managed to get a bit of res out, and thought he was improving. But still his last attempt had been pretty weak, which made him uncertain he was getting much better. Regardless he was not one to quite, and instead silently plodded along at his task. Focusing on the intent in his mind, on picturing the action and the outcome and linking his mental actions to those real ones, he repeated while doing his best to focus. Last time a few days prior it had taken him quite some time to get something done, but he felt that was down to him getting distracted. Something he hoped to avoid. Forming as clear a picture as he could, he motioned with his left hand, while imagining his mental hand doing the same. Digging down below him, reaching into the thick grains of black sand, and pulling some out. Pulling out his djed, and willing it to exude. Bit by bit, with effort, doing his best to focus, he pulled... Picturing a grain. Two, More, cupping in his hand. More than the last time for sure. And now he just had to... Pull it. Just as he was willing his djed within himself to pull out as Res. That Reimantic material attuned to the elements, though at the moment only earth. He opened his eyes, hoping to see some coming out, but found nothing just yet. And so he closed his eyes, and repeated the motion again. Reaching up. Then digging down into the sand in his mind without actually moving his physical hand that far. Just motioning and gesturing to add credence to his imagined space. His djed at his core, winding upward, picturing it slowly curling and moving up and out of his body, to finally come out as a gas, exuded as res, becoming a physical thing at once a part of him but also distinct. And now... Release. As he thought this he focused mentally one last time, giving it a good mental tug, and turned his hand upward to open his palm. Opening his eyes he focused, and saw the res finally forming. Coming out as a slow but steady stream. A moment. Two, a few more, it kept coming out, a smile forming on Crylon's lips. The first thing he noticed, something that brought a smile to his lips, was that there was a bit more than the other day. Not a ton more, but a decent enough bit more. Now it was much closer to fist size, whereas the other day it was clearly smaller than the size of his fist. However in his excitement he was once more distracted, and he lost his focus on exuding res. As he did the substance cut off, the bits already exuded still there but no more seeming to be willing to come out. Still with a smile he looked down at what he had achieved, willing the bit of himself manifested as res to move, and watching as it followed his will. WC: 531

[Crylon Stonecraft]

Having managed to exude his res in decent quantities, Crylon's next step in the process was using it. Thinking back to the other day he knew one thing he wanted to try, moving the res through something to catch it. Focusing his attention on his res before him, Crylon made a downward gesture with his hand at an angle. Willing it to move faster he urged it downward at the sand, watching as it slowly crept along. Not quite fast enough, he urged it again, managing to will it to be a bit faster but not much faster. Angling it down at the sand Crylon silently watched the res move, experiencing the odd feeling of feeling that bit of himself as his res moving distinct from himself while he himself watched. Once it hit the sand the gaseous res spread out a bit, before vanishing. Still moving slowly along with his gesture Crylon moved it just below the surface, taking it back out and sending it arcing slowly upward after traveling a foot or so underground. See nothing specific had happened Crylon turned his hand and gestured over, sending it back to himself in preparation of making another dive of the res. Experiencing the substance moving about was oddly calming, and Crylon was in no particular rush to see it move. Perhaps, Crylon reasoned, that was aiding in it being slow. If magic was worked by will, intent and wishes and willing things, as Crylon understood it to be, then perhaps his heart was not truly in his intent and willing if he did not really want it. Refocusing his mind once more and truly willing it to move he made another downward angled gesture to will the res back towards the sand. He felt that with this new willing of intent the res was moving a hair faster, but it was hard to say for the Isur. This time he focused as it neared its goal, and as it was about to collide with the sand he begun some simple attraction, pulling the sand in to the res. Seeing as the res was moving towards the sand this did not seem to have an immediate effect, a few grains yanked up and moving into the air, but not much else. However as he kept the pull of attraction while still moving the res he did see something in a moment. Seeing as he was on a beach, the sand could not move through the sand. This left him with an odd crashing wave. A bit of sand was picked up as he moved the res while still continuing the attraction. But then as the res moved it attracted the new sand close to where it was going, while also pulling the other sand behind it. But since the new sand was in the way, the two collided and a tiny and sized wall of sand formed before the earlier sand was too far to be attracted, and now the new bit of sand was being pulled and attracted. With that and the movement continuing this continued, another tiny wall forming before contact was lost and new sand was captured by the attraction. WC: 533

[Crylon Stonecraft]

For a few more moments Crylon watched this odd show repeat itself, tiny walls of sand forming before breaking off and moving, before he let it rest. Not wanting to move his res too far away he was forced to turn his direction to angle it closer to himself, and in so doing also pulled it up a bit by his gesture. Though this was intentional, as he wanted to see what would happen now. This time rather than attracting in sand from all over his pull kept the last bit of sand he had traveled through with it, leaving a small clump of sand moving upward from the beach away from its brother grains of sand. Angling it again by a turn of his hand gesture Crylon sent the clump of sand back towards himself, willing both the motion and the attraction at once. This, he was finding, was trickier than only one or the other. Attraction was harder than moving, but moving while holding attraction was much harder since he was focusing on two distinct uses of the res at once. Not beyond his ability to concentrate, but as he did both at once he noticed each was a bit slower. Wanting to get a feel for these actions and make them habit so he could easily scoop up materials later, Crylon held the sand in place and then released the attraction, let it fall back to the beach below. Giving it a few moments to settle he then focused on his res again and started moving it once more. With a point and twist of his hand he sent it back towards the beach, angling it just so. This time as he neared the surface of the sand he slowly evened out the turn while focusing on activating the attraction again. As the res moved by and the attraction was activated again sand started moving again, but this time as he was a bit higher and not moving into the sand around it he was able to pull it along.Focusing on the pull he slowly moved it along the top and scraped off a top layer of sand, adding it to his attracted clump of sand as it moved. Once he felt this was at a decent size he turned his gesture back up and began banking it upward, the odd dive and scoop making him think of a bird flying over the ocean and swooping down to grab a fish before leveling off and flying back up. Oddly this story seemed to fit in Crylons mind and meshed with his actions. Bringing the sand back up and turning its direction with a angling of his hand gesture he sent it back towards him, imagining that the tiny mass of sand was actually a giant pile being moved across the beach. Would he some day be able to do such a thing just as easily as he did now when practicing on such small scales? He hoped and expected so. WC: 503

[Crylon Stonecraft]

Having tried a fair number of things, Crylon felt his training was nearing its end for the day. Focusing for a few moments more he willed the attraction to end, letting it fall once more back to meet the other sand and leaving the small cloud of res floating before him. Looking at it more closely he felt that it was smaller than when he began, perhaps indicating that even in the short time he had been working some of it had expired and been consumed. Still though there was a decent bit of it, and he wanted to try at least one more thing. Realizing he had been focusing only on attraction, he decided to go next with transmutation. Changing the substance into a specific thing... He vaguely recalled making stone before, but was certain he had not made sand at any time. So perhaps that would be good? Focusing in on the res he tried to concentrate a bit of it, pressing it in together into a tiny lump at the core of the cloud with the remaining gaseous cloud around it... Then he pictured it in his mind. Sand. Tiny individual grains, little bits just like all around him. Touching his legs. Across his feet... Then he made that step he could not come back from, focusing his intent and willing the transmutation to occur with the image of sand in his mind. A moment later a tiny pebble, a rock formed among the res, dropping out to land among the sand as he was not using attraction. This reminded him of something, that once he transmuted something he would need to use attraction to hold it in place... But was also confused as to why it had not worked. He had made a stone, a small grey bland one, instead of sand. Focusing again he twisted and compressed the res again at the core, focusing his mind. Sand. Tiny flecks. Grains... Sand.. Like a beach... Many individual grains... Sand... And then a willing, a transmutation, a conversion of res to a material... And another rock fell, a tiny pebble, this one brown instead of grey like the one before. However as it hit the sand and he went to touch it, he realized it was not actually a rock. As it broke apart he realized he had made... A dirt clod. Somehow that seemed in the right direction from a rock, but still not right. Realizing his problem might be compressing the res too much, Crylon focused on a more spread out bit. Sand was less dense, less solid, so perhaps... With res like that... Spreading the gas out a bit, focusing on a subsection of the res... He willed, focused on sand, and transmuted. Finally a sprinkle of sand was created, falling to mix with the more mundane variety below him. By now though almost all of the res he had made earlier was gone, and so his session was truly at an end. Still, he felt like he had learned much today, and had progressed in his magic a good bit. WC: 517