Flashback Etching the Map

[Triphilar]

5th Summer, 509 A.V.

The candle did nothing to illuminate the room, though it sufficed to give light to the battered old desk where he worked. Triphilar glanced apprehensively from his parchment to the wooden bowl of ashes sitting at the corner of the table. Three years ago such a mundane item would never had been so intimidating. He busied himself inking his quill. The blackness of the stuff had already spread to his fingers, the first two and the thumb. Some sand had kept him from smearing the parchment. It probably didn't matter though, Triphilar thought to himself as he set the quill against the parchment as he had countless times before.

The path came almost easily. The woven pieces of his glyphing runes appeared in dark contrast to the egg color of the parchment. The practiced movements of the hand saw the scribing of a path sigil along the parchment. It wove in a way that was a contrast to the spiked runes of Ephilar. Triphilar carefully drew the point of the quill across the fibers of the parchment with precision. Indeed, the precise markings were the intent. A flaw here or a warbling of lines there could mean pain later on. The runes, not quite words and not quite picture, nonetheless told a story. It was one he was very familiar with. The tale had come to pass and would come again for him.

It was the tale of a magic, a structure for the act.

Triphilar looked up from the desk at the door. It stood sentinel, barring the unknown in which his father undoubtedly resided. They had both been very zealous about the studies. If Triphilar had been older and wiser he may have been more worried about the unhealthy obsession, but he was a mere thirteen. He was happy to have found a connection to his father, though the unnaturalness of the manipulation of djed left his nerves frayed. He knew, even at this young age, that to do the workings they did was to walk the line between life and death.

The youth set the quill to parchment once again. The weaving of the thin runes he imagined as threads in a rope, entwined and with parallels to guide. The ink was the shoulders of a long, white roadway. He had drawn them first this way as a remembrance of his mother. A smile crossed the smooth face as he etched the runes on the page. The weaving of the path was not the rigid and confining work of a channeling. He scribed in the more relaxed weave of runes of a path designed to guide but not confine. It was a method of focusing for a spell that was complex. A comfort in the chaos, if you will.

The quill did not waver in his hand anymore as he continued his candlelit work. Once the boy's mind was awash in the method, his nerves steadied and in their wake, his fingers. He reached the end of the path and immediately began a secondary barrier with an entirely different intent to the pathway. This barrier spiraled in a circle with the intent to spread djed, but not release it. The flow of the runes dictated the scope of the djed. This was all to control the movement of the djed, fore Trip had yet to attempt a personal magic of such magnitude and the glyphing map would help guide him. Or so his father said.

Triphilar glanced at the door once again.

[Triphilar]

The mundane work associated with the magic had always made the boy rueful. When first his young mind could understand what it was that his father did he thought the man was ranging the wilds defeating monsters and gathering ancient artifacts. His young mind had filled with images charged with suspense and danger. In truth, the danger of magic was much more subtle, and internal. The mundane scribing of runes and scholarly study was, he understood now, to combat those dangers. Triphilar wondered vaguely if he would ever be as confident in the mysteries of their studies as his father. He knew now that the man was not off trampling monsters in the wild or gathering hidden artifacts for power. But he was braving dangers to help the city, dangers few understood.

The ink clung to the quill as he dipped it once more into the well, leaving a dripping blackness at it's tip. Triphilar studied it for a moment before wiping the excess away at the well's tiny edge. He began to mimic the first path but branching off in a separate direction. The twin barriers exactly the same but opposite. The woven runes were, as he imagined, like the art his mother might make. It added a dimension of personality to the work. It helped him come to terms with the complexities his father kept nudging into his magics.

The ability to weave more and more complex glyphs was not, in itself, a magical practice though. It carried the same gravity though, because it was equally as important to the success of a magic as the actual djed manipulation. Triphilar finished the second path sigil, the last rune of the weaving ink set up to incorporate a second spiraling barrier once Triphilar started on it.

This particular project would be an extensive body map designed to focus attention and control djed change. Triphilar had never radically changed his entire body structure before and hopefully the thorough glyphing would make the transformation a success. Trip began the familiar spiraling barrier. this time, however, he made it spiral in the opposite direction. He could not have said why, it just felt more correct to the young mage.

Eventually he finished this second spiraling barrier. The crude body map was beginning to come together. He could see how the djed would shift together. The candle wavered slightly and the ink on his parchment flashed with light momentarily. The boy clenched and released his hand, stretching the cramping out of tired fingers. This was the third draft of the glyphs he had done that night. But a cramped hand was a small price to pay for arcane breakthroughs.