Completed First Time Lucky

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An undead citadel created before the cataclysm, Sahova is devoted to all kinds of magical research. The living may visit the island, if they are willing to obey its rules. [Lore]

First Time Lucky

Postby Alija on February 22nd, 2017, 8:39 am

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26th Winter 516

“We need more D-wire. And a glypher for the keystones. You know glyphing?” the wizard spoke quickly, skinny arms scavenging through the mess of an alchemy ring to recover what he could out of the ashes. Most had been turned to a sort of dust from the built up djed, still radiating lightly from the ring. Alija shook her head quickly, before stuttering out, realising he couldn’t have seen her from where she was standing.

“N-no. I’ll fetch some.” The woman scurried out the lab quickly, before stopping and hurrying back in. “Um, where do I get some?” she asked nervously, glad that he was too occupied in the failed experiment to focus on her lack of coordination.

“Synchrograph's. Tell them it’s me and it should be delivered quickly enough.” With that, she left again, finding her feet pounding through the halls with one destination in mind.

Being Arios’ apprentice was… odd. Not because it was a reversal of her own situation only a few seasons ago, although that was weird too, but because of her duties, her tasks, and the complete and lack of immersion into magic. She had been surrounded by it all from day one, but she had never been taught it. She had just been expected to do what he asked, whether that was magic related or not, and had to learn everything from observation so if it was magic, she could help.

It was a hard way to learn, to say the least, but she was picking things up.
For example, Alchemy: it was all in the rings,  or “doors” as he always referred to them as. Of various sizes, they were always metallic, mostly simple iron or steel although she wasn’t certain how much the material affected the magic that took place. Shape too, it seemed, wasn’t the most important, as long as it was a closed ring, but Arios still cared. The larger ones were placed on the ground, the smaller ones were vertical, which she could tell was desired, but was complicated as there had to be a pedestal to hold the object in the middle.

The most important part about the rings were the glyphs and the D-wire, both of which she was looking for. The glyphs came in the form of keystones, and D-wire was this mystical material that seemed to prop up a lot. The Synchrograph's Office would have both, the main problem would be acquiring it.

“What do you want?” The voice was full of annoyance as beady eyes stared at her, looking the Pulser up and down with clear distaste. “Don’t waste my time, fill in a form. I might get to it in a few days, if I’m not busy.”
Alija trembled before the nuit, hanging her head as he rifled through another filing cabinet while he waited for her request. “I’m sorry to bother you Mr. Etnerius. I just… Can I have some D-wire and keystones? For alchemy? Please?” After a moment of testing silence, she realised she had forgotten the most important part. “For Arios. He over-charged his ring, I think.” Was that even a thing? She hoped so, because she didn’t want to be called out as wrong. “Please.”

With a disgruntled snarl, Bebe turned back around. “You should have said. I’ll have the golems send it to his lab immediately.” With that he gave a stare so sudden, she knew it was about time to leave. With a quick ‘thank-you’, she hurried back out, finding her way through the maze of corridors towards the lab again.
Last edited by Alija on February 23rd, 2017, 10:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Alija
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First Time Lucky

Postby Alija on February 22nd, 2017, 8:40 am

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By the time she had arrived, Arios had cleared up most of the mess, and the ring was ready for the new materials. “Charging, it’s too much. Couldn’t control it, not quite.” He looked up at the arrival of his apprentice, still crouched by the large ring on the floor. “What do you think? How do I make charging it easier?”

Alija rubbed her hands against the tunic she wore, wondering whether he was expecting a real answer. In reality, she had no idea, but she could make some guesses from what she had managed to figure out.

Charging was the middle step. Loading always came first, something Arios cared the most about. It was all about the placement, he had always said, shifting the “founts” and “filters” left and right, or up and down, trying to figure out the order. It was those things that actually decided what happened. The founts added, the filters blocked various aspects of them. “If you use less chargers, would that work?” Smaller rings had always worked for him before. And those smaller rings always had less things placed around them.

He seemed to think about it for a moment, before shaking his head. “No, not good enough. We waste too many materials like that, risk too many breakdowns. And we have to do more reactions – more radiation, more djed usage. I’d prefer not to.”

What else did she know about charging then? He cut himself, pressed what should have been a bleeding finger against the ring and... something. Something with djed, and then the ring began to glow and shoot out energy occasionally. “More djed, then? I don’t know how you’d manage that, but if you could figure out how to push more of it onto the ring, then maybe you could control it better?” Although that didn’t make sense, usually more djed meant less control. “Or less djed? So you can control it more easily. Although then the whole thing might not happen. There’s just too much djed for you to handle.”

Arios looked up at her, his face curled into a childish grin. It was strange, being an apprentice to a man who looked so young. Worse, someone who took the bodies of children, basically children. She only wished she could let it repel her, but she couldn’t. That would make everything about this place unbearable.

“I think you’ve got the right idea,” he said, eyes glinting as he finally got up, lanky limbs pushing himself upright, “How can there be less djed for me to handle?”

Alija blinked, not sure what or why he was asking. Was this a test? Did he know the answer and was simply waiting for her to stumble across it? She couldn’t be certain but if it wasn’t that, she had completely misjudged him. “I’m.. I’m sorry, I don’t know. Not without lessening the load.”

He smiled again, moving over to the desk where he kept his notes and checking through them once more in relation to the ring. Perfect, except for the missing pieces. “Let me re-phrase that. How about you helping me out? Two wizards charging it is much better than one.”

The woman began to open her mouth again, trying to get an answer that conveyed all her emotions – shock, misunderstanding, eagerness, reluctance, fear – when she was interrupted by someone – or something – entering the lab.
Last edited by Alija on February 22nd, 2017, 8:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Alija
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First Time Lucky

Postby Alija on February 22nd, 2017, 8:41 am

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“Ah! The supplies! Help me out here, Alija, to set the ring up again!”

After quite a bit of time later, mainly figuring out which way up the glyphs went (Alija had been convinced the glyphs were flipped, but it turned out she didn’t understand them in the slightest), the D-wire had been twisted all the way around the ring and the glyphs, or “meridian keystones” as Arios had insisted, were in.

“Right, now, where were we?” he asked again, rubbing his hand together in playful delight. “Ah yes, getting you to actually get your hands dirty with some magic. You’d think, as a smith, your hands would already be dirty, but you haven’t really helped out with it, have you?” As Alija opened her mouth to protest, he shushed her, bringing her round to the ring. “It’s okay, I’ve noticed you’ve been watching. Learning. Makes me not regret taking you as an apprentice so far. Anyway, I’ll give you a quick run through so we can make a start!”

He gestured at the chargers, “Founts and filters, familiar with these?” Alija nodded sharply. “We will the djed from them – not our own, remember. This isn’t a personal magic. We will it around the ring. Push it harder and harder, let it rush around. Then, when I say and only and exactly then, push the djed towards the centre – or to me, if you really must – and move your hand away. Move away entirely. You’ve seen what can happen if you’re standing near and it goes wrong. Understand?’

“I don’t know. I... not really. I don’t get how to do it – and it’s a big one, what if it goes wrong, what if-”

“I’m here, I’ll be doing the bulk of the work. Just help me along a bit. Should be easy for someone who already knows magic so well. Just a different structure to it. Now, you need to bleed on it.” He passed over a dull black knife, already having cut himself and pressed the hand against the metal. Gritting her teeth, she ran the blade over her palm, feeling the pain as she cut flesh. Blood. Red, wet, warm against her hand. Before she could think about it, the woman hunched over and pushed the open woman against the metal. It stung, where she touched it.

She focused her mind, bringing her breathing in and out steadily as she searched for the djed of the chargers. Inside her, she felt her own rising and falling with each breath, channeling it naturally to her aura, letting it linger on her fingers and on her eyes. There it was, the steady pulsing of the djed of the chargers, creeping across the rings slowly. Arios’ work, not her own. But she could find it, now, so surely that meant she could control it.

Her eyes focused in on the djed, latching onto it slowly as she felt around it with her auristics. At every opportunity, she snatched at it, letting it form into firmer images in her mind, so she could twist it and poke it to get it to reveal what she needed.

That wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to force it round, to make it move not to watch it. Grappling with the djed some more, she tried to make it do what she wanted, make it flit around like Arios was trying to do, faster, faster – or moving at all. With one desperate gasp, she pulled up all her own djed into a tight knot inside her, before trying to release, forcing her mind to try and do something.
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First Time Lucky

Postby Alija on February 22nd, 2017, 8:44 am

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Yet nothing happened, Arios slowly stepping back as the djed slowed to a halt. “You’re doing it all wrong.” He sighed heavily, with a weight completely unbefitting of his appearance. “Forget about your own djed. Let the connection of your blood – your life – and the doorway guide you to the djed, not your aurisitcs. It’s that djed you’re guiding, okay? You don’t even need to guide it – just push it along, help it along the path I give to it. You don’t even have to understand what the formula is, so you have none of that to focus on. Just find the djed and give it a little push.”

“I’m sorry, it must be easy for you. I’ve.. I’ve never done anything other than auristics.” Her own djed was the only djed she knew. But she had to have control over the charger’s djed. She had to be able to do it.

He remained quiet for a moment, thinking carefully. “Maybe a simpler one to start with would have been better. Then I could explain the whole founts and filters thing too. But too bad. We have work to do and I’d prefer to get this done as soon as possible.” Then he shook his head lightly, learning forward and pressing his and against the ring. “Follow me. Just follow me.”

“Sorry,” Alija muttered, taking the knife and freshening the cut with another sharp tinge of pain. That was not nice. Pressing it against the ring again, she let herself focus in a different way than she did with auristics. There had to be something there that she wasn’t sensing. Some way of feeling the djed without using her own.

And, slowly, she found it. The djed was moving again, grinding along as Arios guided it, and she mentally pictured it as a river, flowing faster and faster. She had used techniques like this when she had first started auristics. Picturing the djed as a physical thing and mentally drawing out its movements often helped to actually move it, helped to make it more tangible and something she could actually manipulate, rather than something that only appeared in theory.

Focus, she warned herself. No good remembering things if she wasn’t using them at that very moment. And as with all magic, she knew that focus on the magic was important so it wouldn’t go wrong.

The river. The river of djed. It was there and bubbling slowly, at the very start of a spring. She pictured it picking up speed, the waters tumbling faster and further. The rush of the djed, ripples in it as it moved through the ring. All along the path that Arios dug for it, marked out along the landscape. And she could see it, moving quicker, actually moving.

And it was. She could feel it. It was moving – it was moving – it was actually moving! Fast, too, like the river in her mind. Pressing her eyes tightly shut, the apprentice focused on the image some more, forming it clearer in her mind. The djed was less like water now, and more like djed. The river was less a river and more the ring it looped round, spinning, flickering before her eyes. Was it working? She thought it was working, and her heart filled with excitement, fluttering as she sped it up in her mind.
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Alija
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First Time Lucky

Postby Alija on February 22nd, 2017, 8:46 am

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“To the centre, now! Then move away!” came a distant voice, Alija making out words over her fascination with watching the imaginary djed run circles in her mind. The centre. The centre. How was she going to get it to the centre? In a burst of panic, she let go of the image, pushing her own djed as hard as she could before jumping back, pushing everything she had away and towards Arios. The wizard clenched his jaw, fighting with the sudden burst, before moving away quickly as well.

He stumbled for a moment, before regaining his strength and giving her a sharp look. Knowing what it meant instantly, the apprentice snatched up the tongs and pulled them round to the glowing object in the middle, seizing it quickly. With a sharp movement, she plunged it into the barrel of water that waited it, holding it in as long as she would with any blacksmithed piece of metal.

“Not bad,” he muttered, half to himself, half to her, “Very good for a first – second – attempt. I could feel you against the djed lightly. You did manage to push it a little, enough to support me at least. The ending was... not so good. We need to work on that before you help me with anything else. I managed to guide the djed you threw at me this time, but...” He shook his head, moving over towards her. With the movement, the girl lifted the tongs out, holding the ingot high. “Not bad, not bad. There’s more to do, but not bad at all.”

“What.. what is it?”

He gave a light smirk, snatching it from her quickly and moving over to place it with the other ingots he had been attempting to make. “That’s for me to know.”

“And for me to find out?”

Deciding to ignore her attempt, he spread the research notes on his desk out, pointing to various ones to match them up and figure out his next step. “We need some more gold. Ask Bebe for me,”

As if she hadn’t just tried alchemy, as if she wasn’t a wizard herself. The woman was still bursting with the excitement and the feeling of the foreign djed, the feeling of controlling it. Fetching gold and these menial tasks – why had she ever been satisfied with them before?


noteYes, Alija has no skill in alchemy. No, she didn't manage to charge a ring on her own. Although she felt like she was doing something, this was more of a test from Arios to see if she could pick it up and she was doing very little. Remember, she's working with an expert alchemist. So her support is akin to lightly support something he's actually carrying. I'm sure you know how much that is.
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Alija
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First Time Lucky

Postby Languish on March 21st, 2017, 2:53 pm

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Your grades have been summoned
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Alija
■ Alchemy + 5

■ Endurance + 1

■ Auristics + 1


Lores
Lore of Alchemy: D-Wires and Glyphing Keystones are Essential
Lore of Alchemy: Charging is Best Vertically
Lore of Sahova Location: Synchograph's Office
Lore of Sahova: Golem Delivery Service
Lore of Bebe Eternius: Stuck-up Synchographer
Lore of Alchemy: Founts Add Properties, Filters Block
Lore of Alchemy: Less Djed Per Person Allows More Control
Lore of Alchemy: Activate Link Through Lifeblood
Lore of Alchemy: Use World Djed, Not Personal
Lore of Alchemy: Push Djed into the Doorway to Charge


Additional Information
Injuries, loot, rewards, etc, etc, etc
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