Legacy Tester (Panna Cotta)

[Hadrian]

"I'm torn," he said. "Should I try KS35 first? If it's successful and I see that GT145 is going to mean terrible things... Well, would you consider that empirical data that GT145 is defective without testing it?" It wasn't pure cowardice that motivated him. He actually was thinking both analytically and outside the proverbial box. After expressing the stratagem, he shook his head. "I've paid close attention to mathematics in my studies. I find it applies to world magics quite well. Logic, statistics..." He shrugged. "I'm following you." At the promise of maledicted items to keep, he brightened. Apparently that was the hazard pay. He moved over to loiter by the Preserver, the Konti skull in hand. "Do you want me to just...?" He indicated the golem's cage, but she was already looking into a new secret hidey-hole. So he stepped into the Preserver, which entrapped him without needing to be prodded. He gulped. "KS35. Password: mirror the moon." When the golem made its affirmation, Hadrian looked down at the skull in his hand, wondering what the woman had looked like. Konti were invariably beautiful, he had found. But he wasn't sure how to key the thing into action, so he settled for staring into its eye sockets and trying to clear his mind so there would be room for whatever visions he might have. He waited five minutes of nothing while Tieh grabbed whatever else she wanted him to do. Finally, he sighed. "I don't think I'm doing this ri-" He fell to his knees, but was unaware of this. In a flash of revelation, he saw himself in his parents' home in Syliras, surrounded by family. His mother lying on her deathbed. Faces. Tears. Father absent. Disjointed emotions, then blur... Blinking rapidly, his tears dispersed and the floor came into focus. "I think this one works," he groaned to the Preserver, who was making noises and analyses.

[Panna Cotta]

It was the golem who replied to him, "Test completed. Please step out while the results are being analyzed." The door opened, and Hadrian was free to go out.

Tieh finally responded, with half her body still bent over into the other closet. "It does? What did it do? You mean it work worked?" There was a sound of glasses clinking and heavy objects being moved around. "Did you see us getting married in the future?" She chuckled, "Just kidding. Sahova is my life, can't really see myself leaving." She eyed him curiously, "Unless, of course, you want to stay." She laughed heartily, meaning it as a joke. Tieh was in her early 40's, an age quite close enough to be considered Hadrian's mother. Not that she looked her age, of course.

She went near a specific apparatus connected to the Preserver, retrieved the disk, placed it inside a bag cloth and set it aside. As she turned around to resume her search, she asked Hadrian, "So, how do you feel about doing more of these?" She was smiling when she came back, holding a set of long wide and thin bones dangling on a metal wheel. "These are Radius and Ulna of skilled painters, fashioned into paintbrushes of different sizes. You need not use the preserver to test these lot, but you'll need paper, and lots of inspiration. Testing these will have to come last," she wheeled around once again and retrieved a box and a bottle. "Another tongue," she waved the box, "And, one of my better creations..." She stepped closer to Hadrian, bottle cupped with one hand. She raised it to their eye level. Inside the semi-translucent bottle was an eye. "Another Konti part. You gotta love those women, they are very valuable, even as a corpse. This would be the most expensive item I'm letting you hold. It comes with a string to tie around your neck, try not to touch the eye itself, okay? Same thing as with the skull, only I expect its powers to be... more accurate." She handed these to her apprentice and took the test results. "I'll have to check these out and do some necessary calculations. Well, I think you can do the rest on your own, since you survived and all..." Tieh moved passed him, busying herself with other safer and more important things.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian was a little shaky when he stepped out of the Preserver's cage, but he was circumspect in his care of KS35, putting it away properly. But he was silent for a moment as he collected himself, counting his breaths the way he did while in meditation until his heart stopped racing. Then, with one last deep breath, it was back to business. Even still, he preferred not to speak of what he had seen with the skull. "Do you have paper and paint or ink on hand?" he asked. "I would rather attempt a bit of painting before going back into the Preserver with the glassbeak talon." He took the vial and started arranging test subjects in the order he preferred to test them: bones, talon, tongue, eye. Indeed, it was grisly work, but he was intrigued by how Tieh brought a scientific discipline to it. "How long did it take you to make these?" he asked, trying to pry a little more applicable information out of her. From what he understood, Malediction didn't require nearly the time and financial commitments that Magecrafting did.

[Panna Cotta]

"Well, fast, as a person of my competence should. I prefer scribing than carving, but I am equally competent in both. It's just that drawing a circle is way faster than the elaborate art of carving. With the right kind of care, the circles would last long enough anyway." Tieh was somewhat distracted, but she gave Hadrian directions to get a package covered in brown paper and a drawer that contained paint of primary colors. Upon opening it he would find large pieces of paper, the thick and sturdy kind. "Oh," she said, "I forgot to tell you. Those bones?" She looked at Hadrian over her shoulder, "They are also a Konti's. She was gifted a number of Seer talents, and I hated that she would go to waste just like that. So, if ever you'll paint something, it'll still be a vision. Try to see what our baby will be like, I'd prefer a girl" She let out a hallowed laugh, and was suddenly concentrated on writing in a journal.

Finding out "what the future holds" was not Tieh's interest when she first arrived in Sahova, but, during her stay, she became a slave to the unknown benefactor who goaded her into doing projects from behind the scenes. Some of the requests she often got was to research on Divination and Fortune Telling. Eventually her repetitive work got to her, and she started craving to see what will happen in the future. She bought Konti corpses, rare as they may be, for her projects. If Hadrian checked the logs of her works, he will figure out most had to do with maledicted items performing magic related to or imitated, even if only attempted, the gnosis Divination, Dreamwalking and Lykata.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian was starting to see a bit of a pattern. Three of the five maledicted items were... wait. "Is this tongue also a Konti tongue?" he asked. If so, that would be four of five being Konti remains. Perhaps that made sense; after all, she claimed she got the other three from the same woman's corpse. It was just a matter of things coming in a run. Surely she didn't have a fetish for Konti women, though she was laying it on rather thick with the talk of getting married and making babies. Per her instructions, he had retrieved the paper and the paint. He set up paper and paints in separate dishes so as not to mix the original supply. Not sure he wanted to see any more of the future, he began to work reluctantly. With all this work at divination through malediction, he wondered if Avalis would just grant them gnosis so they would stop collecting the bones of her favorite race, or if she would come down and scold them for trying to take the gifts that might be given of her own beneficence. He stopped paying attention to what he was painting, figuring his own mind would get in the way. He just painted using the ulna brush, and let his thoughts roam along the lines drawn out by Tieh.

[Panna Cotta]

"Of course it's a Konti tongue, it's the same Konti." She humored dryly. Tieh kept to herself, glancing towards Hadrian every now and then. Three bells passed, and she decided to check on her sweating apprentice. She laid a hand on his forehead and asked, "You feeling well, dear?" She leaned from behind, her cheeks brushing his, as she looked at his work.

"Oh, what is this?" She snatched the unfinished painting. She moved quickly and leaned on the table he was working in, snapping him out of his reverie by shoving the paper in front of him, looking away. "It's a man. A dead man." She frowned and asked, "Do you think this could be you? I doubt though, since you do not have a beard, and this one looks much, much older." Hadrian would not understand what the other human meant. The drawing was nothing but a myriad of green and brown and gray, splattered in the middle with a long black shape. He wouldn't understand what Tieh was talking about at all, for his eyes have rolled up, revealing only the whites, his hands moving on their own accord. He was still painting, painting, painting on the paper, on the desk. "You don't have any skill in painting or drawing do you?" She looked contemplative, "Yes, maybe that's it. Wait..." She finally took a better look at her apprentice.

"Hadrian!" She gasped and clasped his shoulders and shook the young man. A sudden wave of panic waved through her. He was still having a vision! Hadrian's lips were trembling, his body rigid.

In his mind, Hadrian was seeing the faces of people he would be meeting in the future, but they were all a blur. He saw one blurred scene after the next, incorrigible voices melting together in his ears. He saw visions both good and bad: danger, loss, adventure, learning, money, magic and death. Most were too fast to make any sense. And then it was all haze. Gray haze swirling, swirling about him.

Tieh was still frantic, for Hadrian would not let go of the paintbrush. He had just knocked the paints over, spilling rainbow colors over the sheets. Tieh was slapping his face, but he made no signs of waking up. She pulled him away from the chair, carefully assisting his body into the Preserver Golem. Halfway there, she found herself pulling Hadrian on his legs. He was not very heavy, but her strength was easily exhausted.

Pushing him into the cage, she commanded the Preserver a string of special words. Bluish green smoke puffed out from the cage's floor, swirling about Hadrian. It was a fair dosage, one that would knock out Hadrian for a bell or two. Instinctively, Tieh raised a hand to cover her nose and mouth.

When he chooses to open his eyes, he will find himself unable to move, a weeping Tieh sobbing right behind him, both of them inside the Preserver.

[Hadrian]

The visions didn't end with the Preserver's spell or whatever it was. For however long he was under, the feverish seer's dreams. So much was revealed to him of the future that did not make sense, but as his consciousness rose again toward the surface, the visions receded into the shadowy portions of his mind, perhaps to assert themselves at some later date. But for now he awoke to a migraine headache and a bedframe of dying bones and pillows of weeping flesh. Blinking back unshed tears, he cleared his throat a few times before he could speak. "Did it... ah... Did it work?" He saw paint on his hands, or perhaps it was the spectral auras of the encroaching migraine. His stomach began to rebel, but he quickly shut his mouth and willed it to settle down. He could only hope that his mind was undamaged. But clearly he was still alive, so his mind strove to latch onto the details of their experiment. "What did I paint?"

[Panna Cotta]

"You painted you. You painted this exact same scene." Tieh said, in between sobs. "Had you not I would not have known how to save you. You would have died." More sobbing. Tieh wasn't crying over the possibility that she could have lost an apprentice, for she could hire and others. She was devastated because her Maledicted items seem to be such a failure.

"This, this is unforgiveable for somebody who have graduated with honors from the University of Zeltiva." Her voice was a mix of anguish and desperation, bordering mad hatred. "I cannot understand why I'm so...compelled to do these things I'm not really good at!" She shouted, eyes burning. Hadrian could not move, however. The most he could feel were tingles on his feet and the tips of his fingers. He seem to be paralyzed from the waist down. His senses were slowly returning, his head aching, his vision was starting to focus, his voice no longer quivering.

Tieh pounded a fist in his chest, but he couldn't feel it. She was still trembling when she whispered, "Do not waste your time lying down here. We have work to do." She transformed in a flash, stern eyes looking down on him. "Clean up, and work. I don't wanna be here if you attempt to die again." The Master stood up and marched out of the room.

In the next few chimes, Hadrian would be able to crawl around, the paralysis fading away. Part of the laboratory was very untidy, a chair was lying around, the desk out of its place, papers in disarray. Once he could wobble, he could check out the desk where he worked on. A few pulls here and there will allow the apprentice to form figures among the paint-splashed desk and papers. Arranging them will reveal a colorful abstract-like drawing of a sleeping man lying down on a woman's bosom, her head bent and lips partly open as if they were about to kiss. It would have been lovely, had the woman not have the dagger pointed at his chest. If he took the pages that were on the floor, he could see that the rest of the drawing was framed within the preserver.

And then a surge of pain. He could only feel it now, the sudden pulsing and throbbing on his palm. It was neatly stitched, and taken care of. Tieh, thoughtful despite herself, had left Hadrian a note, explaining that she had to do "something" to pry away the paintbrush from his hand and that it would heal "as if it wasn't there in the first place" after a few weeks. Beside it was a basin of water (no doubt she summoned it herself) and a few strips of clean cloth.

After his dillydallying, Hadrian could check that the other Maledicted items he needed to test were still around, lined neatly on a separate desk. He had a lot of work to do, but there did not seem to be any indicator how long he had been knocked out, or if the moon had claimed the sun's place in the sky. He better work, though. Tieh probably wouldn't think kindly of him if he didn't get things done.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian's mind didn't truly clear until after Tieh had gone. There had been long, confusing moments where he thought she might be crying over him, but it would seem that had not been the case. He nodded to her words, trying to hold them in his head while he clawed his way back to full consciousness. Also, it wasn't until she had left that it fully hit him that his legs were not working. Panicking, he crawled through the clutter to the desk. Pushing the chair into place, he managed to get himself up with a bit of difficulty. He was not strong. He rubbed at the sheen of cold sweat bespangling his brow with a tingling hand. His toes were tingling too, more ferociously now, which he hoped meant that full sensation would return soon, as well as motor control. He pawed over the painting, amazed at what he had done under the influence of the arm-bone paintbrush. The abstraction did not look like a lack of skill, but a prophetic vision that was more than real. It was true. He wished Tieh were here to ask if the arm-bone had pulled this out of him or if it had come entirely from the maledicted paintbrush. But likely she would have an opinion and other wizards would have different opinions. He was going to have to decide what he believed on his own. Frowning, his brows beetling over chlorine blue eyes, he wondered if the knife and the kiss were symbolic or if she had molested him in his daze and... "Ow." He blinked at his palm where the bone had been cut from his hand. Strangely it wasn't bleeding much, but only now could he really feel it. The blood, or knowing it was his own, nearly made him swoon again, but he grit his teeth and looked hard at it. Then the note. Then the basin of water. He wrapped his hand with the strips of cloth and tied them off as best he could with one hand and his teeth. Apparently he was going to have to go back to work soon. He flexed his toes and was pleased even by the unpleasant needling feeling going up and down his legs. Pain was proof of life. He realized that he didn't know what time it was anymore; his stomach seemed empty, but he wasn't particularly hungry. He decided he would test another item before thinking about food. It would be bad to work without eating, else he might overgive or something else unpleasant. Sighing, Hadrian pushed himself up, leaning against the desk until he was more sure of his legs. Then he picked up the talon and used the chair like a makeshift cane to get him over to the Preserver. "Prepare to test GT145," he said to the Preserver before shifting himself into the cage. And then he triggered the thing against his better judgment.

[Panna Cotta]

Nothing, nothing happened. For what seemed like hours, Hadrian stayed inside the preserver. The boredom did not help alleviate his hunger. That was part of the price of staying in Sahova - not because Tieh promised him meals, it meant that he would be fed on time, and with the proper food. The basin of water may as well be his meal for the day. Or night. He wasn't really sure anymore. How did Tieh manage to survive Sahova all these years? He might remember the blood, she had a craving for it, that's for sure. Maybe, she had resorted to cannibalism? The only meat readily available were the corpses... if the thought ever passed his mind, he must not dwell on it. Once desperate, he might just get an idea out of it.

After much contemplating (or talking to himself, if Hadrian was that kind of guy), the Preserver went on its merry chirping way, affirming that the maledicted glassbeak talon was a success. That was it. A success. Hadrian felt nothing unusual, not until he stepped out of the Preserver, anyway.

When he did, he felt irritated and angry. He felt the need to be free, to escape, to run wild. The power trickled into his being: the strength and vitality of the glassbeak that owned the talon. He absorbed the supernatural. In the back of his mind, he also felt the need to copulate. Man slowly turning into beast. And boy, was he hungry!

Tieh had told Hadrian earlier - or was it yesterday - that the GT series were supposed to imbue speed to the user. From a quick logical deduction, the young mage would realize that, as Tieh had warned him, the GT series sometimes (most of the time) imbued Glassbeak traits into the person through the maledicted item.

What's even funnier (if you have a wicked sense of humor), was that Hadrian could not let go of the talon... Slowly, his human reason faded.

OOCSorry for the late reply, I was wondering what to do to you. Now, go act like a bird. You're free little bird, you're free.