Luna was still in shock. Ionu, god (or goddess, nobody was really sure) of Illusion, had apparently chosen her to be blessed with his mark. What did this mean? Could she really weave illusions now? Did he expect something from her? She gazed at herself in the mirror, looking deep into her own eyes. They looked back at her, their usual emerald green. Change. She willed them to be brown. Nothing happened. She closed her eyes and tried to focus, clearing her mind the way she would before working her djed for Reimancy, and tried again. Still nothing. Suddenly she remembered the sensation she had felt when Ionu had held her. She tried to remember it more vividly and as she called the memory back she felt a faint vibration starting in her lower abdomen and then spreading through her body. She concentrated hard. The eyes, just focus on the eyes. She pictured herself with brown eyes, then looked again at her reflection. Still green. Shyke! She tried desperately to remember if she had ever heard any stories of Illusionists before. How did this power work? What good was the favour of a god if she didn't know how to use it? Oh no! What if he could hear her thoughts and decided she was being ungrateful? Argh!
She thought hard but she had certainly never met an Illusionist before (at least not to her knowledge) and she couldn't remember ever having heard tales of their magic either. Hold on, she thought, this is the power of a god, what if... She focused again while staring at her reflection. My eyes are brown, they have always been brown, they are not green, they have never been green. The vibrating came back, stronger this time. She felt the same warmth and excitement she had before as the power of Ionu surged through her body. She saw the green of her eyes melt away, to be replaced by a deep olive brown. It worked! Her sudden excitement made her forget to focus, and suddenly her eyes were green again. This is going to take some work, she thought with a fair amount of impatience, but she was also ecstatically happy to have this new power. She let herself daydream for a moment, lost in thoughts of all the magical and mischievous ways she could use this new ability, before recalling herself to the task at hand. Practice.
The day slipped by largely unnoticed as Luna practiced with her new skill. She focused on her eyes almost exclusively for the first couple of bells, until she was able to create some pretty wild effects, including a reasonable imitation of the ring of flames she had seen around the pupil of Ionu when she had gazed into his eyes. Well, the eyes of the man he had appeared to her as anyway. She wondered for a moment what his true form was, if he really was even a 'he' at all.
Next she worked on her hair. At first she was only able to create something akin to highlights or lowlights, subtle hints of a different shade woven through her natural deep auburn red. The more she practiced, however, the easier this became too until eventually she was able to make it appear as though her fiery hair was actually on fire, the wisps of flame licking at her cheek but giving off no heat whatsoever. It was a really crazy effect, and probably completely useless, but it sure was fun! She even managed to make it appear as though she was blonde for a while, and imbue her hair with the effect of golden sunlight washing over it, making it shimmer despite being indoors. Hiding marks and blemishes on her skin quickly became like child's play to her, and she decided she would use this skill to hide her mark when she eventually went outside again. She didn't want everyone to know, at least not yet.
Luna experimented with the other senses too, attempting to making the soup she ate for lunch taste like the most exquisite fruit. The effect didn't work out too well, but it did make the soup a bit sweeter. She also played with sound, attempting to emulate children laughing or stringed instruments playing. Again she managed to approximate these effects but not quite perfect them. The most convincing effects were still when she changed her appearance, something she had done all too often throughout her lifetime. She knew clothes, she knew hair - styles, textures, colour - and she knew her makeup, and these were the easiest things for her to manipulate by far. She also found that she could somewhat blend her illusions with her Reimancy or Shielding, creating blue or green flames, or even making the fire look almost like water (that might be fun later if she practiced a bit more). She could create small shields that looked like actual objects too, although on close inspection it was plain to see they weren't real. The more complex or rare the object, the harder it was to make it appear genuine.
She also found that she couldn't mix and match the senses. As soon as she tried to emulate a sound or a taste, any visual effects would break. She found that there was also a limit to either the number of concurrent effects she could create or the length of time they would persist before her focus forcefully broke. One or two illusions would hold for several hours, it seemed, but many more and they were far shorter. The ability also became harder to use as the day wore on and her attention was harder to focus. She was becoming tired and developing a mild headache from concentrating so hard.
It would probably take a while for her to learn hard and fast limits, she realised, but at the moment it was all just so much fun! |
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by Luna Sylvain on January 3rd, 2014, 6:39 pm 