Solo A Suitable Swarm

[Keene Ward]

The thirty-sixth day of summer, 515 AV

They were everywhere. A buzzing whine filled the entire cavern as Keene and the spiders alike fended off the bloodthirsty beasts that assaulted them from all sides. Had the mosquitoes attacked a season before, Keene would have been surprised by their size, but in comparison to the spiders he had seen, it was more of an unfortunate development rather than one of any real astonishment. His djed circled around him, gathering the information of the bugs as he swatted them away, slight shivers of disgust running down his spine has his skin made contact with a crunching strike to the various carapaces around him. He pulled the djed around him, the little icy particles latching onto his skin and solidifying into a crust of frost, immediately releasing several flashes of sickly yellow as the creatures rammed against him, proboscises probing but unable to reach him.

Over the course of throwing up his defenses, Keene had been bitten several times, thin trails of blood running down his arms and legs where the creatures had bested him by their sheer number. With the shield in place, however, Keene was better able fight back against the things without needing to worry about those that weren't within his field of vision. As he readied his djed to shiver into res, Keene took a quick note of the chaos around him. For the most part, it seemed the spiders were not the mosquito's primary targets, while the mosquitoes were most certainly the spiders'. While usually the creatures would have stayed within the darkness of their cavernous homes, they had scurried out into the open, ranging in size from a thumb's width to sizable cats and dogs. The spiders were impressive, leaping and clutching at the mosquitoes, tearing them apart as they dug into the meat, patches of white and crimson marring the bland grey of the stone in a macabre mural.

With res at the ready, Keene turned his focus towards the insects that still sought access through his shield, beady eyes dark and mindless in their pursuit. He had been experimenting with the element of glass for the majority of the season, finding that it was a far more difficult to manage than ice or fire. Glass, as its nature suggested, required a balance of craftsmanship and power. It was not a reflexive magic, at least not yet, but there was something about it that resonated with him. Smaller shards were much easier to create than any other element, and while he had yet to test them on anything other than pillars of ice crafted as training dummies, Keene had found them to be promising, especially when confronting biological foes. With no better time to test his theory than the present, Keene's fingers twitched, the pale blue mist around him swirling first slowly then with a speed that rivaled a storm's winds. With a snap of his fingers, the res transmuted itself into half inch shards of glass, wicked razors that whipped about him, tearing through the mosquitoes like a knife through butter.

Keeping the momentum of the spell going, Keene lifted the whirling dervish of shimmering shards up and over his head, careful to keep the width such that none of the glass would find its way into his own unprotected flesh. With a wave of his hand, Keene sent the glass careening through the bugs that remained. Gentle flicks of the wrist and dips of the hand guided the translucent cloud of destruction that was dotted with hints of blue where Keene's res remained to maintain control over the spell. Cutting down the buzzing creatures, Keene took care to avoid the spiders. Their truce had proved to be a lasting one, for what that was worth, and he had no intention of breaking confidence due to a careless mistake. It required his full attention, something that a spell of any complexity required, but was something that was not quite well suited for solo combat.

As the last of the insects in the immediate vicinity were dispatched, Keene pulled the glass back to him, letting the shards fall to the ground as his res released them, drifting in standby as he evaluated his performance. The spell had been effective, but it had left him open to attack from anything that he wasn't protected against. The amount of carnage about him, however, was an acceptable exchange for his loss of mobility. There were still more mosquitoes to deal with, however, and as the next wave of the pesky creatures descended from above the ravine's lofty lip, Keene readied himself once more, res drifting from his lips to join the partially decayed haze about him. It seemed that the day would be spent testing the combative applications of his newly acquired element, the only holds on his experiments being the djed he had available to him.

[Keene Ward]

Gathering the glass up with his res once more, Keene pulled it into a thin line, twitching fingers transmuting some of the pale blue mist to form a translucent spear. With a gentle nudge of his hand, the glass shot forward, res on either side of it as it rocketed towards the oncoming swarm before him. The farther it traveled, the more conscious Keene had to be about altering its trajectory by accounting for the delay in relay of information. At first, it was a clumsy, sparkling stick, resistant to his commands as it tore through what mosquitoes were unfortunate to be caught in its warpath. However, as the ticks turned to chimes, Keene was better able to maneuver the spear, finding that though its length was less than a foot, at any distance beyond the complete control of what had become his ten meter radius, it was too unwieldy to be worth the concentration required to control it.

Releasing his hold on the glass, Keene let the shimmering weapon fall from the sky as he called his res back to him. While the mist gained distance on the many insects who had avoided death by clumsy spear, Keene partitioned some of it into small disks of pale blue liquid, spinning them as he might a blade of wind. Only, instead of gathering the air that the res passed through, Keene snapped his fingers, transmuting the res disks into thin blades of glass. Unlike the wind blades, the glass blades were thicker in the middle, tapering thinner at the edges. He had found that glass too thin shattered easily in his trials against the icy statues, and if he reinforced the points of greatest strain, he could still use paper thin edges without worrying too much about shattering, though with the delicate element it was still always a possibility. Careful to keep the blades spinning in time to the draw of his res, Keene guided the glass through the bodies of the insects, slicing through them in a zig-zagging pattern before pulling them around him to slingshot back into the fray.

The blades were far more effective than anything else he had tried, as while they required his attention, he could easily maneuver them to protect himself should the need arise. Unfortunately, the disks were not quite suited for stone. Flick of a wrist two ticks too late resulted in a shattering crash as the disk exploded against the unyielding stone, sending glass splinters careening down towards the spiders below. Gathering up the shards with a sweep of his res, Keene set the glass down, the remaining disks hovering in place as he switched his focus. Once the debris was safely out of range of his magic, Keene finished cutting through the bugs that remained, setting the three glass disks before him as he released his res' hold. Judging from his tests, it seemed that glass was well suited for unarmored combat. If stone was enough to shatter his reimantic weapons, Keene imagined that an ill-aimed blade to an armored husk would hardly produce the same results as it had tearing through the buzzing bodies that lay scattered all around him.

The spiders had begun to collect the spoils of Keene's experiment, taking care to give him a wide berth, but still moving with an aggressive purpose, hissing the words "Eat. Eat. Eat." as they passed. Some stopped to feast then and there while others dragged the sizable bugs back towards their tunnels, disappearing in to the darkness and taking with them their whispered chants. The buzzing, however, had not stopped, and Keene turned to watch the retreating figures of the mosquitoes head out towards the prairie. While there was no direct order for him to follow the creatures, Keene had little reason not to. They had proven suitable targets for his growing understanding of glass, and there was still more he wanted to test. Before he turned to leave, however, Keene knelt down to examine the blades at his feet, noting that while they had been crafted to a fine point, the edges had dulled quickly, parts of them chipped and ragged. While the disks were only about the width of his palm, Keene determined that the element was best kept to smaller projectiles, something that he could wield with accuracy to avoid immediate degradation of their respective lethality. Leaving the glass behind, Keene fetched his water flask from its place among his supplies, adding a few handfuls of dried fruit to his pockets before falling into pursuit of the retreating insects.

[Keene Ward]

His next set of tests involved the viability of glass as a true projectile. While it could perform well enough as a blade, Keene had found that the smaller, spherical marbles of glass were incredible difficult to break. Though the reasons for the element's resiliency as a sphere as opposed to a disk or shark weren't quite known to him, Keene had drawn the conclusion that glass could potentially serve as incredibly durable blunt projectiles, like a crossbow's bolt only smaller and more focused upon blunt force over piercing power. As he walked, Keene's djed shifted within him, the calm clouds rolling through the grey skies of his soul, drifting ever upwards, ready to fuel the magic that tingled at his fingertips. He eyed his targets, judging the distance between himself and the bugs that had passed him over in favor of more easily drained targets. From what he could tell, the nearest buzzing menaces were about fifteen feet away, close enough that he could guide the spell entirely if he chose to do so.

Instead, he turned his focus towards those far more in the distance. The point of using the marbles was they they could be flung far and without much of a decrease in speed, making them ideal - in theory - as replacements for a bow an arrow, something that Keene could hardly draw back, let alone fire with any accuracy. While Keene firmly believed that magic was a superior tool to any weapon that could be created by the hands of men unaided, it didn't change the fact that there were functions that weapons served for good reason. Gathering his focus, Keene let res drift from his lips, only a small amount floating before him before he took aim. His hand extended forward, finger pointing at the exact spot he wanted to hit. He let an eye close as he concentrated, the res quivering before his focus of will. After a few ticks, Keene's gesturing finger twitched, and the res burst forward, pale blue mists condensing into a small, translucent ball as it shot through the air at a speed that Keene found difficult to follow. Several bugs were taken out in the marble's journey, slipping through them as if they were little more than rain water, but to Keene's frustration, the bug he'd intended to hit had moved just enough that his spell whizzed by, ripping through several more creatures until he lost sight of it.

Some of the mosquitoes turned to confront him, but the brunt of the swarm moved onward. From what he could tell, as the creatures drew near to him, there were more than simply the group of insects he followed. High above, there were even more of them, dark specks against the grey skies, all heading towards the prairie, which in turn implied the citadel. As he pulled his remaining res through the several insects that had turned on him, slicing through them with a small disk of glass that wove its way among them, Keene raised his focus upwards. The little targets were more challenging, certainly, but there was less interference in terms of bodies for his spells to pass through. Gathering a small amount of res once more, Keene took aim, careful to make sure his finger pointed slightly away from him rather than straight up, as gravity still applied. With a twitch, another small marble shot off into the sky, glinting for a tick before it drew too distant for Keene to keep track of it.

He eyed his target, and frowned when another dropped from the sky. Unlike the other elements, glass didn't have an inherent side-effect to it, though it did require a fair bit more of res to transmute than the more natural ice or lightning. Fortunately, glass' strength was not in its scope, but in is use in small amounts. Those small amounts, however, were bound to add up, and as he breathed out another small cloud of res, Keene took about a chime to aim before shooting off another translucent projectile. He didn't want to waste his djed, but the practice was invaluable. If he grew too tired or drained, he would simply retire, as there were far too many mosquitoes for him to deal with single handed. Again, the glass missed, this time taking nothing with it. Each time, Keene adjusted his aim for another variable: distance, rate of fire, trajectory of the target, arc of the spell's path. Each time, his spells fell short.

Switching between the closer group of bugs and those that flew in the upper reaches of the sky, Keene found his accuracy had increased with his various trials, but that each spell required at least a chime's worth of aim before he could confidently hit his target. He supposed it was an acceptable cost for the benefit of a long distance dispatch, but it wasn't efficient for anything more than a few isolated marks. Lowering his hand, Keene let his djed rest, falling into a steady step behind the buzzing mass. The heat of the day combined with the labor of his efforts was enough to warrant a break, and as he took a few swigs from his water flask, Keene let his mind shift from tactical evaluations to that of ecological speculation. He had never seen mosquitoes so large, nor never so many. As he thought on it, he supposed that the summer season had seen a rise in insects, enough that he had had to further augment his shields to keep himself from gathering any more bug bites than he already had. Absentmindedly, he scratched at his arm, a welt in the place of where one of the unusually sized insects had dug into him. He supposed it was possible that the bugs were a seasonal occurrence, rather than what he had at first thought to be a magical one. They seemed adamant about their path, especially after they had deemed Keene unfit for food, something that natural animals did, as far as he was aware.

Whatever the case, Keene doubted that the bugs would be good for the citadel, and as he walked behind them, he gauged how much res he would need to set them all aflame with a single burst of magic. He had only left the ravine a few, short times, unsure whether it was allowed of him or not, and while the mosquitoes were certainly alarming in their own way, Keene was positive that the shielders of the citadel would have little issue keeping them at bay. He wondered if the nuit would even find them much of a hassle, as from what he could tell, the bugs were more keen on the living than the dead. Whatever the case, he resolved to take care of what he could before they reached the end of his domain, at the very least.

[Keene Ward]

As he set flame to first insects to fall, spreading the fire like a plague through the ranks of the would-be blood suckers, Keene realized two things. The first was that once something caught flame, it was easy to manipulate the fire to encompass an exponentially greater area as long as there was fuel to do so without expending any more res than what was needed to guide the initiate blast. The second was that, while he'd been practicing with glass regularly since his revelation, he'd never transmuted as much glass as he had in one day in the several bells that he had been practicing; and the toll he'd thought had only been a slightly higher ratio of res to element in favor of the pale blue mist wasn't the only cost of wielding the far more complicated spells he'd been casting. His skin had taken on a slight sheen, one that he had thought to be sweat until the last of the pale blue flames tumbled to the ground, consuming the writhing creatures that fed its transience.

He wouldn't have noticed the change if he had not hit his hand against the ravine's wall as he moved to pull the res back towards him. Where there should have been the sound of flesh against stone, there was a soft click followed by a sharp pain across his knuckles. Quickly pulling his had away, Keene had stared down at his hand to find the skin's surface fractured, hairline cracks running across a surface that was more glass than skin. At first, it had been alarming, the unintentional overgiving permanently altering the nature of his body a cost that was certainly not quite worth the benefit. As he had turned to head back to camp with a careful step and even more meticulous observation of his concerning predicament, time had proven an ally. His skin slowly but surely returned to normal, the cracks turning to ruddy cuts that, had they been any wider, would have been more of scrapes than anything else.

The longer he went without using magic, in the bell it took to return back to the stone tents, his skin had lost all sheen, leaving behind only the various cuts that ran across his hand and, to his probing inspections, about his ankles. Having destroyed what mosquitoes had lingered within the ravine, Keene found his condition more concerning than the potential need for him to follow the insects into the prairie's domain. If the other Wardens needed him, they would call for him. Instead, he settled down onto the ground, the only trace of the battle from the morning found in the rusty stains and pale white deposits that the creatures had loosed upon their untimely demises. He took time to check that no other part of his body had been damaged, and when he was certain there were no more surprises hidden beneath the thin folds of his clothing, Keene returned his focus to his stinging knuckles with a frown.

It wasn't so much that the wounds themselves hurt much. They were painful, but so was chewing on ice or banging one's knee. What elicited the contemplative expression was concern over his complete lack of notice of when the effect had taken place. He wasn't sure how many transmutations it had taken to alter his body's resiliency, nor was he certain whether or not it had to do with sheer volume of spells, the act of transmutation itself, or if it were something entirely different. While the element of glass had proven itself quite capable in combat, Keene found that there were more things he needed to test for than aerodynamics and maneuverability. Taking out his water flask, Keene carefully ran the water over the cuts, using as little as he could, before recapping the leather and raising his hand to the fading light that drifted through the valley, the clouds dispersing it into a soft, evening grey.

From what he could tell, the sheen of his glass-like skin had only effected his body's durability, not its mobility. In that sense, he was free to move around as long as he took care not to incur any injuries to himself should he experience simliar side-effects again, though the fractures about his ankles were concerning, as they implied that motions involving too much concentrated weight were dangerous as well. He needed to test more, but his sense of self-preservation suggested that, perhaps, it was something best saved for another day. His had been a long one, and while he had found new ways to use the slowly evolving mastery of his newer elements, he had invariably run into more problems than he had solved. He still didn't know what the ideal combative form of glass was, nor the most efficient size and scale of the spells to use it in. There was the disconcerting side effect, the increased use of res, and, though he had yet to notice them, Keene didn't doubt there were other things he had yet to discover.

[Shane Wallsly]

Grading in Progress

Keene Ward

XP :

Physics | 3 XP
Logic | 4 XP

Lores :

Reimancy Para-Element: Glass
Reimancy: Sharp Glass - Effective Against Unarmored Opponents
Reimancy: Glass Shards - Effective but Hampers Mobility
Reimancy: Glass Disks - Maneuverable yet Fragile
Reimancy: Blunt Projectile Glass - Long Distance, Long Aiming Time
Reimancy: Glass Skin Possible Result of Continuous Use
Physics: Accounting for Information Delay with Distance

Comments :

Hey, I saw you yet had no lore for the para-element of Glass so I gave you one but if you were expecting this from an earlier thread feel free to say so and I'll remove it from this grade . I found this thread a very fascinating read. The contemplative, scientific technique that Keene applies to Reimancy makes for a thought-provoking read and I enjoyed the inventive use of glass skin as a side effect. Very much in line with the Mizahar magic theme. Outstanding work, Keene.