Solo To Truly See

[Annalisa Marin]

24th of Spring, 514 AV

The Quarters were always rather a quiet affair, due to the lack of the living upon Sahova and usually only in use by Nuit on the occasion of a body transfer. In an empty and unclaimed room not her own, a tall dark haired woman could be found sitting cross-legged and facing the far wall of one of the broom closet sized rooms. Her eyes were closed to the world around her and she herself dressed rather commonly, sandals tucked neatly in the corner and a pair trousers and shirt adorning her body. Long dark hair reached down to her back, unbound, thick, and loose. Upon her right ring finger was a silver ring, the sides glinting with rubies and the sigil of a burning scroll upon it.

Wizard Annalisa Marin carefully measured the length and volume of each breath taken in through her nose, filling her lungs with the filthy air of the Quarters before releasing it slowly through her lips. This cycling of breath was her means of clearing her mind in a form of meditation, the most common technique she possessed in clearing her mind. Today especially she needed clarity of mind, to dispel all distractions from her thoughts so she could focus upon the task at hand.

Calm had settled over her features, her face in a relaxed state and her body settling into the rhythm her breathing had set. Everything started to melt away as the chimes went by, her thoughts focused upon on that one concept of sight and seeing. She had heard of and done a small amount of research into the nature of the magical discipline of Auristics, the ability to see the Djed of the world. She had witnessed its uses and thus had found her mind more focused with actually attempting to learn it, thus she was here attempting it.

Politics, threats upon her life, the very nature of Sahova all started to slip away as her mind started to fall only upon the concepts she desired. Of course this was only the beginning of the whole process; a clear mind would help as would her understanding of the functions of Djed. She understood how it should work due to her education and her vast experience in Glyphing, but had yet to actually understand how it looked. To stare upon the tapestry could only assist in her understanding of the art itself, to further her understanding of magic as a whole.

Sight, the ability to look upon the world and then from that glance to translate it into understanding of what something was. Her eyes could look upon something and know what it was, however to truly see one needed to look beyond what was obvious and peer into the tapestry of creation itself. Despite what others might say she knew that knowledge itself was power, the more intimately she understood magic, the more powerful she could become. By truly for the first time seeing the world as it was meant to be seen she could stand even further above those around her.

Was it merely sight though, or did it extend into her perception of the world? Was it the world as she saw it rather than how others could see and understand it? Sight gave her an understanding of the properties of something on a basic level, but the translation to knowledge was actually based upon perception. So perhaps, while she did indeed see something and view the world a certain way it was not the same as other would. For instance her Portals possessed personalizations, much the same as her res. Personal magic seemed to be open to the caster’s interpretation to some degree, perhaps a reflection that no two people were the same.

The deeper she allowed herself to fall into her mind, the more she was able to draw conclusions based upon her own knowledge and experience. Perhaps they were inaccurate but it seemed rather sensible to her mind, all the possibilities opening up before her as she reached clarity. It was an easy state to maintain given the quiet and peaceful air of the Quarters. It was rare that Anna truly got a chance to meditate and reflect upon her own experiences and thoughts, to ponder over them on a conceptual level. It was all geared towards the same goal of course, to unlock the ability to view the world in a way beyond the obvious.

[Annalisa Marin]

Her mind placid, as smooth and glassy as the surfaces of the pools in the Palsa Hydrasa were though beneath it laid far more turmoil than most could suspect. For the moment though, she was calm and clear minded as she was distanced from the cluttering of distraction. Her cycled breathing continued as she attempted to take advantage of this calm to then focus upon the tapestry of her own Djed, to tug upon the strings of her being to attempt to gain desired results.

The tall dark haired woman focused upon this energy within her, this power that could be used to shape the world around her as she willed it. She felt the Djed within her and then focused it up, concentrating on the ideas of sight and perception, attempting to task it for such a thing. Her face became a mask of concentration as she willed it to be so, that her eyes might glaze with Djed to allow her to view the world in a different light.

Instead of that however, the sorceress felt a warm fluid begin to leak out of the corner of her eyes which opened and her fingers brushed it away to reveal a purple translucent substance. Her Res, the tool of a reimancer but not exactly what the tall sorceress had been hoping to manipulate at this very moment. Anna sighed, slowly drawing the res back into her body and her state of clarity disrupted as frustration started to creep into her mind. It was seemingly a simple task; however the sorceress was having the same problem she had when she had first started using Voiding, getting her wires crossed.

The downside to being a skilled Reimancer like herself was that that Res generation was as easy as breathing which sounded rather good, until one realized that that the generation could overlap with other Djed expenditures. Anna set her jaw and then merely attempted to regain her clarity of mind again, closing her eyes and pushing this incident from her mind. Her breathing was cycled once again, her body settling back into the rhythm she had possessed earlier as the roiling waters slowly began to settle down.

As the calm slowly started to return Anna wondered perhaps if she was going about attempted this the wrong way, as most of her magics were unlike Auristics. The majority of her personal magic dealt with ejecting something from her body, of placing it outside of herself. Auristics seemed like it was less like that, it was using internal Djed but affecting mostly her rather than another. So perhaps she would need to focus more upon herself and her spirit, upon her Djed, than she would with another more destructive discipline. It was the only theory she could have considering her limited experience with the magic that affected the sight.

So that it what she did now, the tall woman used her clarity to focus upon her own Djed and identity as well as the parts of herself she wished the power to affect. She was Annalisa Marin, though that was merely a name and though it conveyed parts of her identity it was not who she was. She was a wizard, a human, a woman, and a Chaon though those labels only were part of the whole that made up her identity. It was through a combination of them that who she was could be found, a jumbling tangle of emotions and positions in life that made who she was. It was upon those she focused her attention on now.

[Annalisa Marin]

The calm was spread back through her entire body, her cycled breathing continuing to echo in her ears and served as a focus. The sorceress felt her mind begin to fall heavily into the concept of herself, the interpersonal ideas that made up her identity and thus her Djed. Anna grasped hold of that as she opened her eyes, holding her left hand up before her and starting at the extremity as she took in the basic information she could see.

There was a scar there, upon her palms that served as the vestiges of her initiation into the art of reimancy, one of her less than pleasant memories. Four fingers and a thumb, her nails were longish but kept in control though were hardly the greatest example of manicuring. No callouses adorned her hand, the flesh was soft and untested by hardship of the physical variety. There was the tiny webbing between each finger that was present in every human, all it all it looked like a normal human woman’s hand. Nothing out of the ordinary as far as she could see.

It was her hand, but there was more to it than just flesh and she knew this to be the case. The tall sorceress suspected that there was something beyond the flesh and bone and blood that identified it as being part of Annalisa Marin, that made it different from other hands. She needed to know what that was, to see the difference for herself so she could truly understand the part of herself. It was a hunger she had not known many times, a strange desire to simply understand how the simple things functioned and what made it so they could.

Her brow was knit in concentration as she reached within herself as she focused upon her hand, closing her eyes for a moment as she plucked at her Djed again. This time as she moved it up to her eyes she focused upon the idea of looking beyond the physical, to see the true nature of the world for all it was. The sorceress wanted to look upon her own aura, to know what made her Annalisa Marin beyond the obvious of flesh or trappings of status.

The energy was drawn from her body in a rush, her eyes shooting open wide as they did and showing Annalisa Marin an entirely different world. She looked upon her hand, only it was not the hand she remembered and this world was far different as well. A swirl of color was before her, dizzying and awe inspiring to her as colors that she had never even seen before using normal sight overwhelmed her Djed glazed eyes. The rainbow of color seemed to rise out from the hand itself as well, though she noted that among the combination was prominently purple. It was without a doubt the most beautiful thing she had ever gazed upon and despite the exhaustion that was falling upon her shoulders it was impressive.

The dark haired woman moved her fingers about and as she did a flaring of green shot out, its purpose not exactly immediately known to her. Was it signifying energy spent in a movement? In a physical exertion perhaps? The color was there briefly before being swept away in the tide of colors, the rainbow of her aura filling her vision and it was only the Aura of her hand she was gazing upon. The sorceress could only imagine what the whole of her body would appear to be in this kind of light.

The young woman had no idea what these dizzying and dazzling colors meant exactly, however she did know that they were each part of the tapestry that made her Annalisa Marin. She was gazing upon the very fabric of Djed, gazing upon the essence of what made her a wizard, what made her a woman, or even just what made her human. Would a Nuit’s Aura look different then, would some colors be changed around or merely absent entirely? The tall woman could only imagine how varied with world could be in this kind of light.

[Annalisa Marin]

Anna could see a splotch of crimson continuously rising from the spot on her palm where the scar was, it was the only constant that the sorceress could look upon reliably at this basic level she possessed. Was her sight trying to tell her she had been injured once upon a time? Her Auristics could then perhaps show her the physical parts of a person then? So if someone was bleeding it would be able to tell her that the person was wounded and where perhaps? If so it seemed to be an extremely potent informational tool.

Tears leaked from her wide grey eyes, dribbling down her cheeks as the sight was held and more of her Djed was poured into the action. The urge was pushing her onwards though it was not nearly as pronounced as in Voiding or Reimancy, nor was the drain nearly as bad. Still it was noticeably exhausting to maintain the sight over this extended period of time, much like any personal magic it required that she give up parts of her own Djed to maintain.

The colors danced before her eyes but Anna was slowly beginning to recognize the constants, though beyond recognizing where the colors were and where the originated from the sorceress was at a loss. There was simply so much to look upon, so many colors that assailed her vision and begged for her attention and it was almost mind boggling to imagine that every single thing in the world possessed something like… this around them. How could the sorceress ever hope to decipher the whole of her Aura and to understand what each aspect meant? It was like she was looking upon the pages of a whole book, a massive one at that and the book was called Annalisa Marin.

Anna blinked furiously to clear the liquid stinging at the corners of her eyes, her face a mask of concentration as she gazed upon the swirl before her. It was bright, the Aura of just her hand being an extremely potent thing and certainly complex. Auristics was the magic of gazing upon the Aura of something but that Aura was giving her information she could barely comprehend, much less hope to begin to decipher. Each time she thought she could try and isolate something a new color sprung up, a new piece of information teasing at her sight.

The Sahovan Wizard flexed her hand again, that flare of green shooting out briefly to inform her that it was indeed moving or that it had moved. It seemed, judging from the green and crimson she had seen, that physical things about her body were the easiest and most obvious to understand. They already existed and were obvious parts of her, however anything beyond that was just far, far too much too fast for her to begin to fathom as she had just only chimes before unlocked the power to do this.

Finally the sorceress simply stopped feeding her Djed into the power, closing her eyes and massaging the bridge of her nose as she felt a slight headache beginning to develop. She felt tired, exhausted really for having maintained the vision as long as she had however she had succeeded in manifesting the sight at the very least. The tall woman had learned from this the barest basics of what it was like to look upon an Aura, as well as what Auristics really was. She had looked upon something so basic as her hand and had been overwhelmed with the amounts of information to be found there, it was mind boggling really.

Anna slowly but surely blinked open her eyes, wiping the tears from them and rubbing them as they did feel a bit strained from having housed the magical sight of Auristics. It was a new tool but it seemed so very complex, something that seemed to be beyond anything she had ever attempted. This power made Voiding and Reimancy seem simplistic by comparison, the amount of information before her vision had been dizzying. This was definitely going to be something that would take a bit of time to develop on any level, however Clyde Sullins seemed to find it useful so perhaps Anna could as well.

[Strange]

Annalisa Marin

Skills

Skill Name	Experience
Meditation	2 XP
Auristics	3 XP

Lores

Philosophy: Peronal Magic Reflecting Unique Personalities
Annalisa Marin: Wizard, Human, Woman, Chaon.
Auristics: Looking upon your own Aura
Auristics: Identifying a Past Injury
Auristics: Physical Properties Are Easiest To Identify

Comments :

Congratulations on your new magical power, Anna. You're really gobbling these up.

I have awarded your grade to the best of my ability. Of course I'm not infallible so if you have any comments or queries about your grade feel free to PM me.