Starfall

[Caesarion]

5th of Summer, 515 AV

It was an interesting morning, to be sure. Yesterday was exceptionally wild, and only made calm by his meals. This morning he bathed in the well, soaked his attire, and calmed his nerves so that he might not go awry. Of course, like he always wanted to these days, he aspired to return to the lands outside the citadel immediately in order to return to his magical and physical pursuits. After only whispering his goodbyes to Ameer and Telemaran, Vox was gone from the household, equipped for the new day ahead.

The first thing he noticed in the sky above him was the cloudiness. It was strangely cloudly for a place like Sahova, though if anything it meant there might be rain to wash away all of the nastiness in every avenue of the citadel and outside of it. All the bloody test subjects, all the disgusting piles of whatever the hell the mages kept trying to make, all of the alchemical failures that littered the ground. Not to mention the nasty Nuit themselves. He felt that perhaps if Sahova rained daily, he wouldn't mind living here so much. So long as the undead had the natural sense to let the rain remove their failures rather than hordes of foreign slaves and sycophantic apprentices.

By the time he had gotten out of the Vestibule to see the Prairie, the sky began to crackle. Sounds of thunder - though it was always unusual for lightning to ever follow. He continued forward to the Forest of Thorns, walking in a linear direction down the Prairie. As he walked, his curiosity flared, watching all of the apprentices from afar and witnessing their bizarre attempts at improving their magic. He was almost tempted to go over and watch them from closeby, even knowing that their paranoia might leak out and they lash out at him. Of course, better judgement took hold, and after his brief stop he decided to return to stepping forward.

Then, a gigantic bolt of lightning hurled from the sky and impacted the ground. One moment there was a flash, then - simply - the fastest impact he'd ever seen came from sky-to-ground, and so destructive that he was sure if he'd kept walking forward, he'd have been at least blasted back. It was probably only fifty feet away from him. "Holy mother of Priskil!" He yelled. The lightning had not been the only damage - there was suddenly flames, spreading outward, and he was in a bit of trouble if he maintained his current position so near the impact. So, Vox drew back and focused his Res. He decided he could at least hope to avert the wildfire, focusing his energy into a somewhat potent blast of air that would push back some of the flame. He was sure that he couldn't actually stop it from spreading, though, only slow its advance. Fortunately, other mages seemed to be leaping forward to the task.

He decided this would be rather enjoyable an experience. So, gathering around with some of the other Reimancers, he focused his energy yet again to stem the tide of the flames. He continued with using blasts of air, but he wondered if he could use his fire Res to simply disperse flames instead. That might save him Res and also hasten the lessening of the wildfire, which seemed to be spreading as fast as it was being depleted by the mages. One thing he remembered was certainly the second usage of Reimancy: to manipulate already existing elements. It was cheaper and easier to control something that was already around you, rather than creating it anew. This was perhaps why air seemed to drain so slowly, as it had limitless quantities to pull from. You weren't really 'creating' air.

So, he used his fire Res to attract the flames and push the ones near him back into the epicenter, hoping that would do the trick of lessening the expansion of the wildfire.

[Caesarion]

The flames spread further and quickly. Even though his efforts had helped to decrease the radius, the outward expansion was faster than what his limited amount of Djed could cover. He tried to conserve until now, but he wasn't quite sure if he would make enough progress without going hefty into it. Still, that was dangerous, and he would risk overgiving - so that was a risk he certainly needed to take into account. For now, he simply calmed himself and relaxed, smoothing his thoughts as he released the Djed necessary to suppress the flames and draw them further back. He would again see the fire directly in front of him recede, being manipulated by his energy. Luckily, around him, mages had grown in number and began to contribute their own magics to decrease the potency of the wildfire. There were many different types of wizards and apprentices that had begun to attend. In the corner of his eye, he saw voiding, with which the mages would attempt to use to send the fire far away.

The flames would embrace their portals to nothingness, and disappear. This was certainly not a bad tactic, especially around the source, though it seemed costly in Djed and the flames still continued to push. A voider would never actually be capable of stilling the wildfire themselves, most likely, and so there were more mages behind the scene. This was actually the first time he'd seen a large collection of wizards acting in unison in Sahova, and the sight was interesting to behold. Water reimancers would drop large loads onto the flames, lowering them only for air reimancers to disperse the fire. Then, of course, other mages began to weave their own craft: shielding. A large dome of energy would appear around the flames, preventing them from expanding outwards entirely. Of course, that would eventually drown it out, but Caesarion was eager for results. So, before the shield completely enclosed, the man formulated a sort of vacuum of air reimancy and sent it inward. He would only be able to sustain it for a short while before overgiving, so he decided to keep its usage exponentially brief. The air closed around the fire as a dome of its own, drowning out oxygen. Caesarion held his palms forward and focused, keeping the shape of the Djed balanced so that it would remain an air-tight vacuum. Of course, after not too long he began to feel tired, so he dispersed the air.

However, the result was that the fire had decreased in girth significantly and was almost absolved of the field. He certainly felt that with his magical innovation, he had done a great deal in containing the wildfire, which was a great accomplishment in his eyes. Not long after, the fire was drowned out and the mages would mostly disperse from the area. As if this was no big deal, something common, no need for comment. Some of them talked, though it was largely bragging about how badass they were and how much they did. No one bothered to engage him, possibly because he was simply 'a slave' and didn't deserve their immediate recognition. He didn't really care, though. He'd done well, even though he felt exhausted enough that he knew he'd probably overgive if he used much more magic. So - he decided not to use any more magic, and instead would exercise out the rest of the day. Near the spot of the wildfire, nonetheless, he'd begin his sit-ups as he patiently eavesdropped on the conversations of the wizards boasting about their success. "My voiding has evidently progressed over the last few days," one professed, though they were obviously a Nuit and thus they probably meant over the last few decades. He rolled his eyes.

Some people gathered around and started to research. Maybe they were interested in the properties of natural lightning, one of the most dangerous elements and certainly the fastest. He always wondered if a human could tame or simulate natural lightning. Maybe they wondered that too? He didn't know, but as he balanced his breath and warred through the repetitions of shoulder-to-knee, he would glance out of the corner of his eye and keep his ears open for the babbling of the overly curious apprentices of Sahova and their constant need to expand their power. Something, he'd learned lately, that he possessed a need for as well. He had been, after all, ridiculously obsessed with the concept of increasing his repertoire of ways to kill people. "Isn't that a beauty?" One bizarre voice asked, almost cute-sounding but deranged. "The scar on the earth where the lightning impacted. The mark left behind by the clouds, who are by far the best reimancers. Rain and lightning and thunder alike. Sounds to intimidate, water to wash away, natural lightning to decimate the unworthy. I find this sort of thing thoroughly fascinating!" She giggled.

Caesarion couldn't help but stand up and look at the source of the words. A girl with the most obscene, gigantic amount of blond curls. "You seem awfully jovial," he said to her, standing. "Does this sort of thing tickle your fancy?"

[Caesarion]

"Not now, slave, I'm trying to detail the effects of the bolt of lightning." That was the first thing she said to him. She - the woman of ferocious curls, who seemed excitable but then immediately prone to hardening up like a rock. She didn't seem particularly undead, which meant she was probably a human. How lovely, he thought, that the humans here were often even more of petchers than the Nuit. "Are you even a Reimancer?" he asked. She looked at him for a moment, shrugging her shoulders. "Doesn't matter. Reimancy isn't what I'm going for." He didn't understand how she could mean that. Lightning was a fact of Reimancy. Even though other magics could simulate such things - like perhaps Magecrafters and their ability to infuse Gnosis and whatnot, the phenomena of natural lightning actually being turned into a viable usage of mortal magic would surely be tied to Reimancy. It wasn't just that Reimancers could use lightning, but also that they could use a source to draw magic. They could do this with amounts of water or ravenous flames - taking this to the clouds was just another step, or perhaps a leap.

"I have had the thought of trying to draw out natural lightning using Res. The thing is, it's quite impossible for anyone to extend their Res that high upwards without overgiving one thousandth of the way up. Not only that, but natural lightning is a sheer and brutal force that far surpasses any spell I've known. Perhaps your research is pointless." He didn't speak condescendingly or rude, but instead critical of what she might be spending her time on. One thing he'd noticed about a lot of apprentices here was that they wasted their time frequently and on things that didn't matter and quite possibly wouldn't ever yield anything. Research was never a bad thing, but researching things that were vastly out of your league was such a ridiculously arbitrary thing to spend time on. Either way, she didn't seem to care, and she kept detailing mundane things like the burns on the ground and the state of the rocks. Wasn't it obvious enough that lightning was destructive? To go into perfect detail over something that could instantly end the life of another mortal, regardless, was yet another arbitrary thing. And that was probably his greatest issue with the people in Sahova - their need to do nothing and pretend that it is yet something. Most of the time they were only skilled at magic because they were old and obsessive. How often did all of this quill-biting yield results?

He decided to 'away' from the scene in favor of a different venue. He'd done his part in contributing to the removal of the wildfire, and he at least managed to indulge an ancient curiosity of his: the harnessing of more powerful natural elements. Eruptions, lightning strikes, blizzards. Did people ever manage to control such things? It would remain a curiosity.

He got back to the house and greeted Ameer, then Emarus Telemaran, heading to the laboratories to pick up his two weights and begin the daily insanities. The other slave came into the room, greeting him. "I have heard that there was a lightning strike in the Prairie. Weren't you at the prairie?" The young man asked. Vox nodded, and whispered, indeed. "I actually wasn't very far from the bolt when it hit. If I had been slightly more hasty, I would likely be ash at the moment." He couldn't quite smile at the thought. Nature was an untamed beast with nothing that could quite match it. Realizing that a single bolt of lightning was greater than anything he'd ever seen a reimancer accomplish was quite sad. Sure, he himself could manipulate lightning, but not to that degree. The planet was the greatest elemental. So, that begged the question - did reimancy stem from the planet? Some planetary God? What exactly was the origin point of this destructive magic?

"Ameer, would you like to join me in my exercises?" He said, moving his thoughts from the spectacle. Regardless of what exactly the questions he had entailed, the truth was that right now he just didn't know and he probably never would. The world had billions of volumes of hidden information that wasn't meant for mortal men. He would leave it to the Gods to figure out what was right for their servants and for now, he'd just continue to rip apart his muscles so that he may groan to show effort for the next morning. A brutish response to big questions, but the proper one for his level of expertise. "No," the other slave said. "I have to get to my work." He smiled to Caesarion, who in turn smiled at him, and then the other slave went his separate way.

"I swear," he started, lifting his arm up and exhaling. "That man is a manipulator."