Solo A Side Venture: Part 2A[The Prairie]

[Clyde Sullins]

60 Summer 514 Once more Clyde found himself amongst the barren lands of Sahova, the prairie. It seemed a good enough place as any to do some summoning. In fact, considering some of the skeletons about, the markings in the ground, the sigils and glyphs of a magical nature, and the general air thick with residual djed, it seemed as good a place as any for such a summoning. Especially seeing as it was outside of the citadel, and away from any risk of something summoned being released about to eat people. At least if it got away out here, people expected things to be about. So it was better than amongst the corridors of the citadel. Considering what he was making, a good summoned creature would work as a feasible catalyst. In this instance, a glassbeak was what he desired. A bit tricky of a summoning, beyond his ability to control in truth. But he did not want to control it, simply to capture it. And with his superior glyphing, he believed he could manage that. The sand of the ground would work well enough for a spot to draw out his gateway, since it didn't need to last forever. The capture scroll though, needing to hold the summoned creature long term, would need to be on a physical piece of parchment. With that in mind, Clyde had brought along his basic Glyphing supplies, enough to make a decent scroll at least. That and Cha, his ever present ally and companion of sorts. She'd serve well enough to draw out the gateway in the sands, supposing he found a open enough place. First off the checklist, the storage scroll. Out came the ink and a quill, along with a piece of parchment. After a chime or so he found a nice flat open spot, and set to work. A barrier was a simple weaving snake of a sigil, a paired and twining serpent with a eye set within each of the inward curves, rigid and staring. That expansed across the parchment, at each side of the curving circle almost touching the outer edge of the writing material. Inside he scrawled out a focus, a large one, large enough for a person or in his case a glassbeak to stand upon it. Possibly... Size was hard to gauge, and the description of the size of a glassbeak was hazy at best. He did not bother with a trigger, since he did not plan to use one, instead directly extracting the djed out of the focus and through his Magecrafting hammer. He set it down, planning to place it just outside of the circle he was about to make, letting him stand on the far side of it. Hopefully the summoned thing would be lured toward him, and would walk over the scroll, being trapped inside before reaching him. With that done, Clyde passed on to the gateway, starting by scrawling out a large circle in the sand with the bottom of Cha. Large enough that Clyde could stand within it, stretch out his arms, and still have a good foot of clearance between his hands and the edge of the circle. Stepping out of the circle, Clyde dropped his bag, going back to his summoning book. Though he knew the basics of summoning, he still preferred to read out the astral coordinates, rather than risking messing up of failing by having the wrong number. Clyde paged through the book till he found it, Shoyden, and its coordinates, all 16 digits. 0012926672185630

[Clyde Sullins]

Now was the time to get down to the real work of crafting the gateway. If nothing else this was the largest summoning circle Clyde had attempted, but due to the size of what he was summoning, he supposed that was necessary. Slowly, using the bottom of Cha once more, he drew in a second inner circle, looping around from the outside till he completed the circuit. He had to be careful though to not mar the drawn gateway, and thus null a bit out. With the two circles drawn, the outer one for the outmost layer of the gateway, and the inner one for the coordinate circles to lie upon, next was the coordinate circles. These were drawn so that the outer bit of the circle touched the edge of the outer circle, and the inner circle cut through the middle of said small circle. Clyde started with a large X or + depending upon how you looked at it, crossing from one side of the other of the inner circle, and then cutting through the middle to do the same and make the other arm of the X. This gave a good point to begin drawing the coordinate circles, drawing in one at each of the four points where the ends of the X met the inner circle. He worked his way round and round the gateway, adding in bits in passes. Next was the second 4, each spaced equally between the initial four. Finally he added in the last 8, each spaced out between the 8 already drawn. Going back to the book, Clyde reread the coordinate, and slowly wrote the numbers in their circles, going counter clockwise as was required. 0 0 1 2 9 2 6 6 7 2 1 8 5 6 3 0. One by one the numbers were put in, giving the gateway a destination, that of Shoyden. Apparently it was similar in nature to the sea of grass, a place Clyde had never actually visited. The last thing to do was the final central circle, marking it in carefully, stepping inside of the other lines while being careful not to mar or step on anything already drawn. Now Clyde simply had to open the circle, or gateway as it was properly called. Going back to his bag, Clyde took out a small dagger that he generally used for such things. With a concentration of will a small spurt of res rose from Cha, about the size of a miza, and floated just under the blade. Using the central res to contain it, Clyde transmuted the outer layer into flame, letting it bathe the dagger blade gently in fire, focusing mainly on the thrusting tip. After a chime or so of this, of the dagger slowly growing redder showing it had been properly sterilized, Clyde cut off the flow of flame, and reabsorbed the excess res into Cha. Clyde waited another chime or two, letting the blade air cool, not wanting to use water to quickly cool it as it might damage the blade, and also possibly make the blade non sanitized. Finally done, Clyde used the tip of the dagger to prod his smallest finger of his right hand, the hand holding Cha. It made holding her a bit odd, but better than the other fingers. As he pulled the blade away, a bead of blood dripped, and then another. Carefully Clyde bent down and pressed the bloody finger against the outer layer of the circle. As he did the gateway opened, a swirling maw opening with the constraints of the outer circle, awash with light and colors, blinding. Once the light cleared, and Clyde could properly see, he was looking down upon a new landscape through the gateway, a open grassy expanse.

[Clyde Sullins]

Clyde could feel the gateway. He could feel it due to his connection by blood, linking him to the gateway. He could feel it by the effervescence of djed, a gentle puff rubbing against his aura, something easier for him to feel with his skill in Auristics. As he looked down, he waited, willing something to pass through. He wasn't sure if it had any effect, but he mentally imagined something approaching the gateway, walking up and passing through. Imagined the image of a glassbeak, even though he did not totally know what it looked like. A large bird type thing with razor claws on its feet, and a similar clawed beak, all made of a glass like material? To be honest imagining it simply by the description was hard. Was it feathered? Or was it scaled like a lizard? Was it a bird or a reptile? The description was a bit confusing, and so did not totally explain things. Clyde waited a chime, two, three, and another, but nothing happened. Nothing passed within sight of the gateway, though there was an occasional gust of wind that brushed across the grass. Finally, after a uncertain amount of time, Clyde felt the connection to the gateway break, and the surface of it slowly began to break and then recede. Within a moment it had vanished, leaving the ground as it had been before he had started. Though he had waited the entire time, nothing had passed through, nothing had been lured by his gateway into entering Mizahar. “Petch!” Clyde said to himself. “Well... I guess I'll have to make another...” Letting out a sigh, Clyde held up Cha, looking over the work he had done. Some of it had been marred, and it looked like he'd need to redraw parts of the gateway. In particular the numbers for the coordinates had been ruined. Using Cha once more, he redrew the inner bits of the gateway, in some place simply overwriting and deepening the markings, in other places completely redrawing it. The inner bits were easy, but the tough part was the coordinate parts. Clyde carefully drew each one by hand, or by Cha, once more using her base to mark with and draw the design, the circle after circle, while rewriting the inner circle. Finally he had to redraw the digits, all 16 of the numbers, rewriting as before the numbers in counterclockwise fashion. Looking down at his finger, he saw the bleeding had stopped, the small pinprick on his finger having clotted. Using the blade he still held, and which was still clean, he prodded the same spot again, reopening the wound and restarting the flow of blood. Bending down Clyde once more pressed it against the outer line, reopening the gateway. Once more there was a flash of blinding light, a swirl of color within the outer demarcating circle, and the scent oddly reminiscent of oil, or of something overly oily. Along with that he heard an odd sound, something that made Clyde think of someone large suddenly drawing in a heavy breath. Once more Clyde could feel out with his dual-ed sense, aware of the summoning gateway by the way its djed radiated outward and rubbed against his aura, and by the innate connection his blood allowed. “Now foul beasts I do call. With a whoop and a cry, and a fist in a ball. Come forth and greet me with claw and tooth. Upon Mizahar your kind I shall loose.”

[Clyde Sullins]

Now was another waiting game. Clyde could feel the open gateway, could sense it before him through his link by blood. He supposed then he'd also be able to sense anything able to breach it. And he also knew that he could attempt to control or hinder something that passed through by using the leash, by willing it to stop and to be pulled back into the circle. A chime passed, then two, then three, and five, before anything changed. At the periphery of the gateway Clyde saw a shadow, a hint of motion. Something moving fast, too fast. It darted by and then was gone. In another chime he saw another shadow, another hint of motion, just out of range of the gateway. Then suddenly there was a flash of motion, a blur, and something moved right at the gateway, hitting it and passing through, rising outward from it. As a fish jumping from the water, a form rose from the gateway, slowly rising and passing through the circle and the level of the ground, rising through it like it was a separating layer of water, a membrane, and the creature passed through. Clyde could feel the breach, could feel the passage, as the thing passed through. Once it stood fully erect, having fully passed through, Clyde finally got a good look at it. In some ways it looked as the book had described, and in some ways it did not. The beak and claws on its feet certainly looked as described, like hewn glass only sharper and more deadly. It seemed to keep rising, taller and taller, till it was at least half a foot higher than Clyde at his full height. Along with that it was feathered, the feathers having the same green hue as the grass that Clyde could see through the gateway. The bits of it that were not covered in the colorful green feathers were instead covered in tough looking scales. The beast looked back at Clyde with intelligent eyes, clear that it stared back at him, and did not simply look at him by chance. Around it was the mark of his blood, as a bright silvery aura of djed rested about it, marking his essence in its passage. Along with that a leash dropped down from it, a line of concentrated djed of the same silvery color. Clyde glanced down at the storage scroll, resting between himself and the glassbeak. All it had to do was step forward, onto it, and be trapped... He waited, still, keeping its gaze. Finally it moved, only not towards him, but rounding about in the other direction. So quickly his plan had failed. Trying to force it to go towards him and onto the scroll, Clyde willed for the glassbeak to stop, to freeze. For the smallest fraction of a moment it froze, unable to move. And then with a rending the leash broke, split into a infinite number of pieces, freeing the beast utterly from his control. “Petch...” Clyde said to himself, realizing how dangerous this could be. He had utterly no control over this beast, something that was deadly enough in its own right... He had no hope of catching it alive now, he would have to fight it, and hope to not utterly destroy it. As the glassbeak moved away from him, and stepped off the gateway, Clyde last hope shattered. If the gateway had closed while the beast was still on it, it would have been pulled back... But now... Willing his res to rise, a cloud of thick djed emitted from Cha, poofing outward like a cloud as a gas. As he molded and shaped it, the glassbeak arced about, circling around the gateway, and coming at him from the side. As it neared, Clyde sent a thought at the res, and a chunk broke off, flying toward the bird beast. With another thought, a willing, the chunk of broken off res transmuted, turning into flame. A ball of fire soared towards the bird beast. However it missed, as the beast turned at high speed and arced about again, coming at Clyde from behind. All pretense gone, Clyde let out a shout, “Ha!” and surged a onslaught of res forward. As the bird neared Clyde willed it again, turning half of it to flame, and using the other half to control and mold it, to thrust it and pull it at the bird beast. Intense flames crashed into the bird, roasting it to black color in a moment, swirling about its body, its head and torso, as Clyde swirled it about with a circular stirring motion of Cha. As the glassbeak opened its maw to make a sound, Clyde thrust more flames at it, more res, pouring it down its throat, roasting it on the inside. Within a few more moments it was over, the blackened and roasted corpse of the glassbeak falling, its flesh roasted away by the intense heat of the flames, even the bones blackened. With a small grin Clyde looked down, to see that though its body was destroyed in general, its feet remained intact. Perhaps since he had concentrated the fire at its body and head, and so they had been furthest from the flames. Each of the remaining feet was a small stub, ending abruptly as it met scorched and blackened bone, made brittle and weak. Intact also was its toes on each foot, three sickle like talons on the end of each, amounting to a total of six. Stepping over to them, Clyde struck with Cha at the point where flesh ended and blackened bone began, watching as the bone connecting to the last bit of flesh that was unscathed snapped off, succumbing to the blow. Clyde repeated the strike once more on the other foot, at the same spot, watching as it too snapped. Setting aside his dagger, and tucking Cha under one arm, Clyde picked up the pair of feet with their toes and talons, and dropped both into the open storage scroll left by the gateway. Both vanished, sinking into the focus and disappearing. As had the gateway, though Clyde only just now noticed. Apparently at some point during the fight the gateway had closed. Along with that his finger had clotted once more, and was no longer bleeding. Wiping the small bit of blood off of the dagger, Clyde stowed it away, along with his other things, and wrapping up and stowing the scroll with the pair of glassbeak feet inside, Clyde headed out. His mission was a success, or least not a failure, even if it had not gone as planned.

[Ink]

Fate has dictated the conclusion to your journey...

...And now, only Fortune awaits you.

I am Ink, Mistress of Sahova; and it is my pleasure to award you with this bounty of XP and Lore. If you have any questions regarding this Grade, please do not hesitate to send me a PM. Fret not, I tend not to smite...often.

 

Clyde

XP

• organization 1
• glyphing 1
• medicine 1
• summoning 3
• composition 1
• Drawing 1

LORES

• What is a Glassbeak?
• Summoning from shoyden
• Summoning: losing control
  

MISCELLANEOUS

• Loot: 1 pair of scorched glassbeak feet

With Regards,
Ink