Timestamp: 1st of Autumn, 512 AV. Alses' feet dragged on the polished skyglass of the Dusk Tower's corridors as she headed up to the laboratory once more, to pit her wits and magic against the dagger. It wasn't quite like that – she and skyglass had reached an understanding, of sorts, and so it was less of a pitched battle and more like delicate, fiddly work – par for the course, in magecrafting. Nevertheless, today was just one of those days when work was the last thing she wanted to be doing. There was a new flavour to her celestial form, brought with the dawn and the flaring of the Watchtowers, and it was still a shock to see a golden crown-of-horns and brilliant crimson hair having completely replaced the colours of summer. The change had been creeping up for a while, her hair flushing crimson at the tips, a gilt cast coming over her horns, but even so she jumped every time she caught sight of herself in a mirror or reflecting pool, not quite used to her own body just yet. In a few days, her new self would be familiar after looking at it in the mirror over the washbasin every morning, but for now, she was skittish, always thinking someone else was creeping up on her whenever, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of reflection. It was distracting, and not at all conducive to work. 'Next time,' she resolved grimly, stumping up yet another flight of stairs 'I'm taking a few days off. I will read books, drink tea and muck around in the garden by myself until I get used to my reflection again.' Tea. Now there was a thought. Or, or maybe a debate in the Basilika – yes, that was a better idea. She could work out some of the vitriol productively like that, and have a grand old time doing it, too. Alses' mouth curved up in a catlike grin. The Basilika really was an excellent institution, a formal soapbox encouraged, rather than suppressed, by the city, where graybeard scholars and indigent young rascals (to use each group's term for the other) crossed verbal swords about everything from the latest decision of the Council of Towers – the advisory body to Aysel and Talora, the rulers of the city - to the most esoteric aspects of academia. She cast a longing glance out of the window, towards the elegant spire of the Dawn Tower, once more serene and undamaged, with the Basilika sheltering in its lee. Then, too, there was the artwork everywhere there – from cyclopean statues, larger than life and yet still, somehow, holding the eye and defying belief, to intricate murals that drowned her wondering mind in their elegant, carefree patterns and brilliant daubs of colours, to canvases that captured the world and magnified it in paint. What Alses really coveted, however, were the – usually – smaller bronze sculptures, lovingly cast – or carved, or whatever it was one did with bronze – down to the smallest detail and then buffed to a darkly burnished shine, somehow shimmering with the sense of liquid movement although they would always be static, a moment captured in eternity. Her particular favourite at the moment was one which stood on a rather out-of-the-way pedestal near the edge of the Basilika, a small and unassuming statuette of a winged man gazing out and yet somehow inwards, his face impossibly serene and contemplative, the body too perfectly-muscled and lithe to be real – unless it was a representation of an Ethaefal, of course, the wings being some sort of allegory, but there was no crown-of-horns adorning the bronzed head. Whenever she found herself at the mortal maelstrom it pleased Lhavit to call the Basilika, she found her eyes continually alighting on the statuette, never quite sure why. Her hand slid along air, having met the end of the banisters and the flight of stairs that led onto her floor, disrupting her wayward thoughts. Halfway down the corridor lay her laboratory door, time-darkened oak and thick bands of iron beckoning, and beyond that... Work, work, work. The laboratory smelt familiar when she stepped over the threshold, a potpourri of smells from the various reagents, coupled with fading attar of roses and the general smell of the Dusk Tower itself, a not-unpleasant mix of the detergents the cleaning staff used and old books. Nothing had changed – to the mundane eye, anyway – since yesterday; there were still the heaped piles of paper and books on the desk, the creaky chair tilted away at an angle, the various pieces of glassware still sparkling in the sunlight. As ever, though, the centrepiece of Alses' attention was the engine of magic pulsing and thrumming around the dagger, djed continually cycling around the sinuous loops and whorls of her exacting glyphery. 'Perfect.' The inspecting lens slipped easily into her hand, the metal cool against her skin, the wood pleasingly rough. One had to take pleasure in the little things – especially since Alses didn't really care to work today. The old excitement grew, however, as she examined the project in hand. The night had done her creation good – the ephemeral lacework of djed channels, new and pale and unsure, had strengthened and firmed under the steady, beating pressure of the purified work area. More assured, more present, interleaving strands that could be relied upon not to discohere into oblivion at the lightest touch of the craft. “You're beautiful,” she murmured, only half-aware of it, examining the gently-shining complexity of it all through the lens, not looking for anything in particular and just enjoying the elegance her hard work had forged. Still not finished, not quite strong enough, and still a blank slate, but there was progress and it was beautiful anyway. Her lips quirked as a thought occurred – the intelligence she could feel every time she struck the dagger with a blooded hammer, growing stronger with every erg of djed she fed into the hungry artifact, it was sleeping – dreaming, almost, half-there with its function and purpose, becoming more complete with every scrap of knowledge and extra connection she forged into its core. “Time to work,” she carolled – and this time, it wasn't with heavy voice and leaden reluctance. Somersaulting traces of djed shimmered and flickered as the hammers danced in the air, filling it with liquid chimes, sonorous notes that blended together into something entirely new, characteristics rising and falling like the waves in a sea, depending on her will. The pure connections of sentience, still locked in dreaming, were stronger for a night of steady reinforcement, easier to work with given their more robust nature. She'd given some thought about the stubborn areas of resistance – where a single conduit of djed might not break through, many smaller ones might; the death of a thousand papercuts, in a way, eroding away at the opposition piece by piece until the bulwark crumbled into nothingness. Copper sang, a purposefully-disjointed array of notes as the hammer met and skittered along the shining skyglass, leaving curling disruption in its wake – under the pressure of the purified, high-djed environment of the circles, the frayed ends firmed and began the long process of transformation into conduits in their own right, each one teasing slightly deeper into the recalcitrant skyglass, making it yield inch by stubborn inch. The twelfth bell had just pealed out from the gongs and bells of the city by the time Alses was finished with the first phase of her work – the artifact's djed had been altered and glutted once more, shimmering in the centre of her glyphic setup, and all that there really was to do for the rest of the day was the occasional strike to keep everything ticking along nicely, correcting instabilities before they could damage anything – or make extra work for her the next day. 'It'd be nice to have an apprentice, or a colleague,' she thought absently, someone to watch over the artifact in the night or help with the fiddly bits, or just someone to talk to when there wasn't a great deal that could be done – but just enough to warrant keeping an eye on things. What she really meant was a friend. This part of the craft was really quite restful – she just had to keep a weather eye on the circles, nipping aberrant behaviour in the bud with a corrective bash of the hammer. Time, then, to take a proper look at the final components at last. Chair dragged close to her circles and with book in hand, she considered the blood vials, placed strategically on the periphery for ease of access. 'Stop admiring the shine,' she snapped at herself, when her eyes followed a glimmering trail of sparkles the light struck from one of the phials. It was habit – no, deeper than that, almost instinct, to follow the light. 'Now, let me see...what are you going to bring to this?' she asked of the vial she was observing, in the privacy of her own head. Blood could be leveraged for all sorts of purposes, not just binding – it was the stuff of life, after all, cargoed with all the knowledge of its creator, and if one had the knack of it, that information could be brought to the fore, flayed of its allegiance to blood and poured into an artifact. A sardonic grin slashed across Alses' face for a moment – wouldn't it be perfect if one could do the same thing for people? Magic was so fickle that way, alas, alas. And...relax...Alses shifted position in the chair, frowning at the usual barrage of wooden protests, then settled, happily ensconced. The day was a warm one, still clinging to summer, and it acted as a calming soporific on the sun-loving Ethaefal, soothing the choir in the back of her mind and letting her gently drift into a quasi-meditative state, waking her (admittedly meagre) auristic powers and making the soft shimmers of colour which now always adorned her sight rise and unfurl, a veil that revealed rather than obscured, more and more as chimes flew past. It still wasn't easy, that process of synchronization with the world, made less so by the clamour of disjointed recollection and the sheer unreality of Mizahar that she felt on some days, but the warmth and comfort of Alses' surrounds had quieted the braying masses and she felt almost – almost – as alone as she was in her mortal chain, perfect for this sort of investigation. |