Musings no Longer (Madeira Craven)

Savis and Madeira delve into the fruits of their previous labors.

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The Diamond of Kalea is located on Kalea's extreme west coast and called as such because its completely made of a crystalline substance called Skyglass. Home of the Alvina of the Stars, cultural mecca of knowledge seekers, and rife with Ethaefal, this remote city shimmers with its own unique light.

Musings no Longer (Madeira Craven)

Postby Savis Maren on January 22nd, 2019, 1:55 am

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There was a defined window that the Spiritist woman had, based on her tale of how she'd acquired this place. Savis witnessed the falling stars, but didn't dare investigate them. She'd had enough miserable experiences with magic stones for a lifetime, and wasn't sad to miss out on the dangers nor the rewards of it all. Instead, she put her mind to task, and allowed herself to reason the distinct possibility that no one else had yet visited this place with her. The woman seemed to have this unpractised grandeur in the showing of it all, and the Nuit, if she was right, was quite pleased by it.

Living or dead, souls are not so different after all. Madeira Craven kept her hidden prowess close to home, but everything else she's been very forthcoming with. Everyone has their secrets... but how will they react when those secrets are known?

The undead resolved to probe into Madeira Craven in the utter privacy of this sanctum. In a place where none could eavesdrop, lest the Spiritist wish to keep her powers hidden from the house and her servants. She listened further, her resolution intact even as Madeira lavishly laid down the ideas of honesty, placing a practised smile that led Savis Maren on to the belief that she even might have been mistaken. Were there truly secrets to be had between them?

Yes. There are. But no longer, she reinforced as the Spiritist described her items one by one. The room, her spy sphere. Her 'trade' tools, born from her Spiritism. Savis Maren allowed djed to breach from the depths of her soul at last. The conversation took time, as Madeira Craven showed her through item after item, but rather than probe the items with her djed, she simply saw Madeira.

The rings around the woman's eyes flared with the practised usage. If Savis Maren looked at her own aura, she saw the familiar signs of it, too. Deep within her eyesockets, at her elbows and along her forearms were the marks that could only be seen if a great deal of time was spent looking for them. As Savis Maren was shown the bone ring, she broke her concentration. The last impression she had from Madeira Craven was self-assured hope. The very same sort of realization that Savis Maren had with her improvement in her capacity for Glyphing.

We're working towards a goal, improving for the sake of a cause. This alliance feels like the collision of knives, each sharpening the other in preparation for what comes next.

The Nuit reached for the bone ring, curious to see what might come of it. She placed it on her finger, and immediately an incredibly artificial heat thrust through her chest. Her eyes widened, the sensation so utterly unfamiliar to her. She reached forward, clutching at Madeira's wrist, long nails caressing at the bony joint before she pulled away. The Nuit's fingernails pierced into the grass between the both of them as she allowed the ring to slide from her finger and onto the grass.

That's what Malediction can do? How perverse, she thought. There could be no cold sweat dripping from Savis' forehead, but nonetheless, she seemed disheveled, her form wracked with ghostly tremors born not from the nerves, but the mind. Then, the Spiritist thrust a cloak over her shoulders, and the Nuit reached for the fabric, she saw that the Spiritist tied the brooch about her neck.

"H-hide," she said with a degree of uncertainty, still clutched by the sensation that crawled through her undead flesh, impossible to know through ordinary means for her. The Nuit's body vanished underneath her, and she found this tool of Madeira's far more benign than the other. She allowed a chuckle to escape her lips, undoing the brooch and handing the garment back to Madeira Craven before she said,

"I have a few things at my disposal. Most of the magic items I have are creations born from Animation. Obviously, you know of the platform we made together. There's also," she began. One by one, Savis pulled the creations she'd pulled into being. The Gadget Arm was first. In its hand, she placed the Defender's Sphere. Alongside the two, she laid Tunes onto the bag. Lastly, the Voice Box, a familiar sight to the Spiritist if she recalled it, was put on the ground.

"the Gadget Arm. It was made from the hunter, Raeyn, and possesses a dexterity similar to the hunter's own. It follows commands and heeds them by sound alone. Obviously, its capacities are limited due to its blindness, but it's very good to use as a means of holding something up. Maybe I'll use it as a coat rack in my new abode," she mused with a laugh.

"There's the Voice Box, a curious cube born in the Summer. Storms of wild djed left me mute very early on, and I devised this as a means of communication. It's been rendered unnecessary, as you can hear," she said, pleased with the item's service but otherwise not needing it. "Perhaps a child could learn to spell with it," she mused before moving on to the Sphere held in the Gadget Arm's hand.

"I don't know a lot about this. I acquired it in the Autumn. It produces a large shield, but with no danger to test it out on, I've yet to find a reason to activate it."

"Then, there's Tunes. An Ethaefal known as Mauriel helped me devise this. Out of all of my automata, this one has the most prominent personality, but its primary function is to repeat or sing text written into its pages. Then," the Nuit thought on. She didn't bring Wheels with her, but it was in the basement they'd exited.

"There's Wheels, my most prominent creation. He's combined the use of voice, movement, and cognitive abilities and is a true automaton among otherwise more niche functionalities. He often accompanies me into the city and is intelligent enough to be useful without having luxuries like free will."

With this necessary comparison of their arcane acquisitions completed, the Nuit turned to what she'd been dreading most. It seemed as if Madeira Craven was wanting to leave now, but it was now or never.

"I know you've been hiding things from me, Madeira. And while I can appreciate the need for secrecy, I can't abide those things anymore after hearing you preach about trust and sharing secrets. I enjoy this partnership of ours. You've helped me see this city as more than just a sanctuary. You've even given me a sort of family, as perverse and unnatural as that might seem.

But there's more to you than what you've shown me. Auristics isn't all of the personal magic you're capable of. As I've grown in that talent, I've seen things from you, a power that rises from your eyes and leaves its mark around them. Tell me, please, what you seem to want to hide from everyone else," she implored the younger mage.


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Musings no Longer (Madeira Craven)

Postby Madeira Dusk on January 24th, 2019, 11:44 pm

Madeira watched with hungry curiosity as the Nuit slipped the bone ring on her own hand. Truly, she expected it to do nothing. Was there any power in the world that could awaken dead flesh? Yet as she was musing on that thought, the spark of a distant memory flashed behind her eyes: Hurik, her lost servant, standing on her front steps on a misty Spring morning. She was male at the time, as casual slips of gender, race and age were common in Alvadas. The ill-fitting female clothes on her body had given the ghost pause, and she remembered the flush in bloodless cheeks, and the very visible tent in his incorporeal trousers. While mortifying at the time, she looked back on the event as Savis slipped the ring on and she wondered if it wasn't the flesh that incited ones lust after all, but the mind.

This hypothesis came to heart stopping conclusion as out of nowhere Savis made a grab for her wrist. The cloudy pupil of her eye was blown and her dry, gummy mouth open in shock. A yellow nail caressed the joint of her wrist and Madeira's skin crawled. She had just enough time to reason that though she was frail and small by human standards, she outweighed the Nuit by an easy forty pounds. Thankfully the observation proved unnecessary, as Savis quickly got ahold of herself and had the sense to shake the ring off before the fetish could cling too deep.

Savis was visibly shaken. Having been dead for nigh a hundred years Madeira realized this was probably the first time she has felt lust in a century, and probably never so heavily. Marveling at the sudden influx of information, Madeira stored away these realizations of the power of the ring and the nature of lust and the mind.

She tucked the ring away in its velvet pouch as Savis warily tested the cloak. Finding it much more agreeable, she chuckled and handed it back to Madeira to be tucked it away as well.

Savis, following Madeira's example, laid out her own magic items. Most of which she had made herself, much to the Spiritist's delight and jealousy. The Defenders Sphere would be a great help to both of them in a crisis (and she considered that a 'when' rather than an 'if') as neither of them were hardy enough for true confrontation. But the automatons that were obviously moving up in quality with each acquisition would be great tools on a daily basis. Perhaps she should ask for a automaton from Savis one of these days. Something that could help with the slow progress of her Malediction...

"I know you've been hiding things from me, Madeira."

Her musings stopped in their tracks, and Madeira's entire body went cold. The sweet smelling breeze from the hills turned sour in her mouth, and the plush grass turned to needles under her thighs.

"And while I can appreciate the need for secrecy, I can't abide those things anymore after hearing you preach about trust and sharing secrets." Savis was looking her in the eye, determined to say something Madeira guessed had been on her mind a long time, and every word was a barb that struck blow after blow against the only shield she had left between Savis and herself.

"But there's more to you than what you've shown me. Auristics isn't all of the personal magic you're capable of. As I've grown in that talent, I've seen things from you, a power that rises from your eyes and leaves its mark around them. Tell me, please, what you seem to want to hide from everyone else."

There was a beat of silence, as complete as the graves around them, before Madeira could bring herself to speak.

"Can't 'abide'?" she laughed, and the sound was a brittle, hollow thing. "I'm sorry. You cant abide these things?" A true, hot anger was rising within the Spiritist, bubbling up from the very core of her, bleeding through the holes in the defenses the Nuit just ripped through. "I have laid down everything for you. My past, my future, my skills, my home and everything I own, and you demand more?

An Aurist, of course, her soul cried. Petching aurists. This city was full of them. She was surrounded by them at work, and now at home. Aldgare, Chiona, Savis... were her secrets so easy to read? Was she truly so weak to these powers? This fear and anger was something she had never fully realized until confronted by the one person she needed on her side. Hypnotism was what allowed her to get the Nuit to listen to her and forge this alliance in the first place. She needed this power. But Savis knowing she had it all but destroyed her ability to use it on her. It was the one thing she could never know and she had sussed it out because Madeira let her defenses down around her. How could I be so blind?

"Well, since your greed won't be sated", she leaned forward conspiratorially, a sickle smile on her face and eyes burning blue and cold. "I'm a Hypnotist, Savis. How do you think I ever got you on my side? How I ever got Laird on my side? Hell, Jomi would still be possessing dogs in Alvadas if I didn't give him a little nudge with it. I've been manipulating people for years and you're no different. I caught all of you with my magic and kept you with my words."

Madeira sat back, closing her eyes and exhaling hard through her nose. The rage had put high colour in her cheeks and water in her eyes. She willed it away with a deep breath, using this place that had been her sanctuary to fill her with its serene peace. Only when she was centered and beginning to regret the whip of her defensive emotions did she open her eyes again. She was used to putting on an act, and these skills did their best to control the emotions that still lingered on her face.

"And I'm getting better too", she told Savis more levelly, like the last few ticks never happened. She rubbed a hand over her face. Gods, how'd this all go so wrong so fast? "I'm getting better every day. Of course, knowing what you know you'll never be affected the same. But perhaps I can give you a test of proficiency, like you did for me with your Animation."

She had always preferred to ferry her hypnotism on her voice, if she had the choice. Her body language and her eye contact had never been as influential as her spoken word. She willed her dijed forward to sit on the bed on her tongue, weaving it through every rise and fall of her breath and vibrate with the sound of her voice until every syllable dripped with it. Her voice was low and persuasive, gentle, like she had once used on Laird.

"I can take you back to your past, Savis." she began, and her voice hummed through the enclosed space. "Farther, farther... Time doesn't matter here. I have it all in my hands, molding it as I please. The decades roll back, faster and faster and... there." The words meant nothing, it was all a dramatic set dressing. This was not a trance she was pulling Savis into, but a hallucination. She remembered the day they first met, and Madeira had invited the Animator into her home. They spoke briefly about their past, and their motivation for leaving. Sahova did not agree with my sensibilities, Savis had said with disgust. I've served masters in the past and frankly, have no desire to maintain such a status quo.

"Safe and sound at home again
Let the waters roar, Jack", she sang with a low purr,
"Safe and sound at home again
Let the waters roar, Jack "

With the sound Savis would experience her life on Sahova, in the lab she work in under the master she served. Madeira had no insight to what Savis' own mind would use to fill in the blanks, but she was able to push the feelings of trapped, suffocation and tedium to influence it.

"The best of friends must part
Fair or foul the weather
Hand yer glove for a shake
Now a drink together"

Look at where you've come from, Savis, and remember why you're here. she thought desperately. I'm the best thing that's ever happened to you. I fought for your attention, made you part of my strange family, and now you're mine.

A hallucination was like a Lie, Madeira knew, as she built the scene around her. It didn't take much, nothing but a structure, a skeleton of an idea, and the recipient will build their own prison. Savis was on guard and wise to her magic, so no doubt she was aware of reality, but she would still not be able to stop the vision Madeira was assaulting her with. Her words, now completely nonsensical, reverberated with the power she was pushing behind them. She was blowing through her dijed faster than was wise, and she wouldn't last for long.

"Since we sailed from salty seas,
Four years gone, or nigh, Jack
Was there ever chummies, now
Such as you and I, Jack? "
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Musings no Longer (Madeira Craven)

Postby Savis Maren on January 25th, 2019, 12:55 am

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You are no god, Savis thought as she watched the poised disposition of Madeira Craven fall to a mania. To understand aura was to understand the soul of a being, and the wisped miasma of the Hypnotist's presence showed the dark soul that lingered beneath the mountain of lies. In an allegiance born and hinged on supposed trust, the revelation of hidden knowledge on both sides proved an explosion.

"I've been manipulating people for years and you're no different. I caught all of you with my magic and kept you with my words."

The power that Madeira Craven acquired was considerable. The pregnant woman's youth wilted before Savis' very eyes. Silver hues watched an unhinged woman, one she'd never seen before. The Sight remained steady, and the Nuit breached into the djed that rested wthin her hues as she saw the familiar steps of djed use. It rose from within Madeira Craven, poured into her mouth and sat on her tongue before rising forth in a familiar beat. The voice Laird had succumbed to and even the voice that Savis herself was undone by. Madeira Craven laid herself bare before Savis Maren, at last releasing the true extent of her power as she hummed wthin the space.

The sound vibrated along, and the Spiritist took the undead for a voyage. Deep into the past Savis Maren was thrust, her silver eyes wide and unblinking as they always were. Arms folded in front of her as she stared at the Spiritist with a hollow visage, the snare of hallucination. The reverberating words were lush with djed, and though the Nuit knew what she was fighting against, nonetheless she was pulled into the void.

Savis Maren stood within the halls of Sahova, the high and runed walls of an empty sanctum. Madeira Craven couldn't take her all the way there, but the footfalls of the Nuit's memory opened the doors as high and cruel laughter rang throughout the laboratory. Thick but invisible fingers curled around the Nuit's throat as she was thrown to the floor. The lack of oxygen did not affect her, but the indignation of being held by a projected leash caused hatred to spill down and crash over the senses.

Silver eyes glared at an undead, known only to the Nuit as Castius Mora. The hatred in his pale eyes caused illusory chills to rip through the undead's spine. Fists clenched into tried and tested soil, black nail beds ripping into the earth as the words fought the cascade of hatred and pierced the interior of thought.

Look at where you've come from, Savis, and remember why you're here. I'm the best thing that's ever happened to you. I fought for your attention, made you part of our strange family, and now you're mine.


Savis Maren plunged into the depths of her anxiety, those words piercing her mind over and over again. She glared at the Spiritist, her chest heavy with disdain before her fingers curled and unfurled in repetitive patterns in the grassy gnoll.

Savis raised her hands from the earth, those silver pools fading of the light of djed manipulation. She clenched her fists anew, this time reaching forward and seizing the Craven woman at the shoulders. She was careful to keep her hips back, having no intention of touching this wretched, unhinged monster any more than she needed to.

The Nuit leaned forward, breathing her next words into the Spiritist's ear,

"Look at where you are not, Madeira Craven. Remember why you are here. I was a slave once, and I know their look when I see them. You think yourself mighty and hide behind the pretty words that protect you. You hope that no one can suss out the foulness, that they fall for your ploy.

You are neither goddess nor queen, and I am no unwitting fool to bow to the distressed wailings of the shamed and broken."

No one could speak to Savis Maren how this woman spoke to her. No one had since the isle of Sahova and she'd had those terrible leashes that were both physical and metaphorical that lashed about her neck.

"There are no nooses to hang me by. Banish me from this place if you wish to. Release me from this alliance and mark yourself a coward. Or, get up, get me the fuck out of this realm. I've suffered enough solitude with you, and we have much to work on if you prove yourself in possession of a spine."

Savis Maren wouldn't argue with the Spiritist. She was right in that she'd done much for the Nuit, and Savis Maren was not so petty as to ignore that. However....

No longer will chains bind me.


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Musings no Longer (Madeira Craven)

Postby Madeira Dusk on January 27th, 2019, 1:02 am

Madeira's control was broken when Savis reached forward and seized her by the shoulder. Her already failing dijed rattled and stuttered to a stop, dying on her tongue and leaving a fading atmosphere of power in the enclosed space. The Nuit leaned close, her breath foul with flowers and embalming fluid, as she whispered in her ear.

Every word from her mouth chipped away at the inferiority complex the Spiritist kept well away from the light of day. Her need for control, her obedience to her family, the cruelty she was capable of in her pursuit of power, Savis' words were digging into all of it as her nails dug deep into her shoulder. She was pretty on the surface, but rotten on the inside, and now Savis knew it too.

But you're wrong. I am a queen, her soul snarled, protecting itself from her attacks. And I'm not shamed and broken, I am rebuilding. She has lied to others but never to herself. She knew she was useless without the skills and protection of others, but wasn't every monarch? She had lost her kingdom but not her crown, and she was fighting tooth and nail for every inch of ground she reclaimed. I am mighty, and these pretty words do protect me. This foulness was the price I paid for it, and you are a fool if you don't see it too.

Allister once killed a sixteen year old sailor boy in a misguided attempt to protect her, and she helped him hide the murder from the crew. Jomi and Hurik once suffocated a wealthy man to death and she protected them from the consequences. She had abandoned her first lover when her family told her too and exploited the purity of a holy man because she saw gain in it. She was covered in sin and she would not balk at it. Being a leader means making the choice between what is best and what is right, and she had never been squeamish in her choice of path. She was mighty, and these pretty words and strong friends were all she needed to make it so.

"Banish you? Hang you?" Madeira looked truly puzzled by the insinuation. "Savis, dear, I need you. Oh, but isn't that just the thing? Because you need me too." she shook off the Nuit's hand and got heavily to her feet, holding tight to the top of the bone gravestone. "I might be queen of my dead and broken things, but you are queen of your soulless little toys just the same. You'll never leave. We're too much alike, with our big dreams and rotten souls and taste for power. And now we're bound to this together because we won't make it alone. You don't want to be my fool, fine, but you're mine all the same. Just as I am yours."

The silver key was lifted from her neck and held out in front of her, and after a moment the silver door reappeared in thin air. The graveyard was cool and quiet, the rage and anxiety and suffering the two women had worked up between them never touching the serenity around them. But inside both of them were bleeding.

"After you, your majesty."
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Musings no Longer (Madeira Craven)

Postby Savis Maren on January 27th, 2019, 6:24 am

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Fury washed over the soul of Savis Maren as she breathed those venomous words. When she was done lashing oil and throwing flame over the civility and poise both women sought so ardently to persevere, she pulled back from Madeira Craven entirely. Savis Maren was bleeding. Within her chest roared the breath of fire, given no release for her physical shell reacted in no way to the inferno of the mind. She stared at the Hypnotist from a distance, djed funneling from the spirit and rising at her elbows. She severed the connection between astral and physical, gone from a kneeled position to having her rump on the floor. Legs stretched out, Savis Maren knew that standing up would take her some time.

The undead used her djed judiciously, throwing her arms forward and plucking, one by one, the golems and arcane items she'd shown to Madeira back into her satchel. Savis Maren didn't move to rise immediately, drawn into the depths of thought once the astral forms that were her arms slid back into their corporeal puppet shell. So enraged Savis Maren was that she neglected to absorb the gravity of what had just happened. A fierce hallucination washed over her senses, poured into her mind and she genuinely felt as if she'd been in the Nuit-plagued citadel of Sahova. The Nuit found the vestiges of memory overwhelm her as it seemed that Madeira Craven took her time recovering from the verbal assault the Nuit laid before her.

I haven't felt the presence of Castius Mora in forty years and yet... I was just on Sahova. A tremor rolled through the Nuit's corpse shell, her silver eyes narrowed as memory after memory of her hateful servitude under such a being tore through her mind.

My hands are bathed in blood... she thought to herself as she looked down. She could almost see the crimson embed itself into nailbeds, up along smooth ivory skin in a time when she could acquire any body she reasonably wanted. Some parts of life within the citadel were tolerable... Others threw fire into her senses, burned hatred into her soul and gave an incredibly convincing sensation of bile rising up her throat as she took part in, as a spectator or more, in horrific torture that served no apparent purpose.

Cold sadism and detachment is not what I want for myself, she resolved. She went along wth the demands of Lhavit so happily when she'd arrived. For all the darkness, crimson and black, was a painting illustrated unwillingly, brush strokes of iron and wood made at the demand of others. Savis, when at last she withdrew from the depth of her despair, steeled herself for what Madeira Craven's answer might be.

However. to her immense surprise, Madeira Craven looked at her with confusion.

"Banish you? Hang you?" the confusion was apparent in the metre of her voice, so stalled and quite unlike the calm and composed Madeira Craven of normal circumstance. And certainly, utterly distinct from the unhinged maniac who'd just thrust her 'ally' into a past she never mentioned with any sort of detail.

For good reason.

"Oh, but isn't that just the thing? Because you need me too." Slowly, when Madeira Craven rose to her feet, the undead looked up at her with no shortage of curiosity. Gone was the hatred, but its mark left in her piercing gaze, an eternal echo of the hardened soul that manifested out of necessity and not want.

"You'll never leave. We're too much alike, with our big dreams and rotten souls and taste for power."

"... We're bound to this because we won't make it alone. You don't want to be my fool, fine, but you're mine all the same. Just as I am yours."

The cold humour of the situation arose at last, when Savis Maren knew she was being made a fool. A fool for knowing that the Spiritist was right. A silver tongue she most certainly had, but more than that, she most certainly was not a coward. She took the Nuit's insults in stride and instead made clear her position. Their position, and how the two would move forward and beyond such squabbles.

We have similar ambitions, but my tongue could never lash out with venom then abandon the tactic so quickly. You've honed that weapon into a blade, an invisible dagger that I'll never understand the same way.

Savis Maren knew this of Madeira. While the woman was young, her mind was honed to that of others. She knew what to say to blow open the defenses of others, and even Savis, having seen her outburst, was remiss to contest anything she'd said after it. At last, Savis Maren answered the Spiritist, her narrowed eyes looking over the pregnant woman before she rose to her feet as well, speaking only after she rose and had her satchel on.

"We are mirrored reflections, Madeira. Alike in infinite ways, and yet... reversed and apart. You're a master of the mind. Your words will one day bring ruin to those you deem 'foe'. That power isn't mine to have." Savis Maren did not elaborate, keeping to silence as she mused on the talents she did possess. It wasn't necessary to share them, for Madeira Craven could see the answer on anyone's tongue. That was the impression the unhinged Spiritist gave her in that moment.

When Madeira shifted their conversation to the outside world, touching the key and creating a portal back to the basement, Savis couldn't exit it quickly enough. She kept her mouth shut, but her mind whirled with the endless thoughts of what had transpired. Their showing of magical items, the confession of Madeira's powers, a fateful confrontation between two mages bound together by fate and similarities. The undead faced her mirror and saw the swollen, living flesh reflected back her way.

My rotten soul is a byproduct of circumstance. How did yours come into being? she wondered before she motioned to the yellowing bones laid out on the table adjacent to them.

"So, Lucis referred me to a method I can use for this. I'll drill into the larger bones, binding them together with metal and snaring them with movement at their natural bends. It'll take some time, but the bones aren't going to rot on us so long as the skeleton is maintained.

There's something else we need to do in the meantime, isn't there? The Twuele might have information regarding who the woman was. Property information... next of kin, perhaps? You'll get more than enough to go on."


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Musings no Longer (Madeira Craven)

Postby Madeira Dusk on January 28th, 2019, 10:39 pm

Madeira followed the Nuit out of her sanctum, and the portal closed soundlessly behind her. Once again in the real world the explosive confrontation felt like a dream. Or a nightmare. But here in the lab she blinked in the bright yellow light of the scones and looked over all her familiar tools and trappings of magic, and she knew something had changed. Not physically, perhaps, but the air was thick and rank with the shattered remains of the two mage's broken trust. They could not have been in the Starfire room for more than a few chimes, but that was all it took for the two souls to be laid completely bare to each other and their barbed words. Now paranoia was clotting in the bleeding edges as Madeira wondered just what else the Nuit could guess at.

The house was reading the energy in the room and the turmoil of Madeira's thoughts as they stepped through, and rose to linger anxiously in the back of her mind.

What's happened? Where did you go?

House, she commanded its attention nonverbally, pulling its consciousness completely into her thoughts. You are to watch Savis. I want to be able to know where she is, who she is seeing and what she is doing at all times. Do you understand?

A flutter of unease batted through the young Architectrix, but Madeira refused to soothe it or even address it. Anxiety would make it all that more watchful and attentive.

We like Savis. The house insisted, digging in its heels with a stubbornness it had never displayed before.

And we will watch her all the same, Madeira circumvented its stubbornness rather than brute forcing the issue. She's clever and observant, and that makes her dangerous. We can like her and still not trust her.

The consciousness wordlessly melted away, and the Spiritist couldn't know if it was taking the task seriously. But before she could rouse it for more answers, Savis spoke, turning her attention back to the bones laid neatly on the table.

"So, Lucis referred me to a method I can use for this", she had begun, making a concerted effort to steer them back to a normalcy that Madeira was all too happy to oblige.

"No, there's nothing else. You have a much better grasp of the gadgeteering aspect of this than I do, so I'll leave it to you. I'm a pretty good investigator though. I can find some information about her easily enough. I'll interview her family, find out how she died, make sure there are no skeletons in her closet..." she rolled her hand as if to say 'and so on'. "The fact that she died less than two seasons ago is a great improvement from what I usually have to work with."

The contractor, the house suddenly pushed into her mind with an unmistakably agitated tone. Her wagon is cutting up my lawn.

Madeira fought the urge to chuckle, and adopted a more regretful feeling to impress upon the distressed house in its time of crisis.

"The builders are here. I should go." Her gaze lingered longingly over the bones they had yet to assemble, but she couldn't help but be grateful for the interruption. She needed time to process everything that had happened between her and Savis. Without another word she turned and left, shutting the door securely behind her.

Watch her, house. Madeira implored to the Architectrix again as she donned her cloak that still hung by the back door. She now knows more about me than I do about her, and that cannot continue.
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Madeira Dusk
long may she reign
 
Posts: 1774
Words: 1599220
Joined roleplay: October 11th, 2016, 7:45 pm
Race: Human
Character sheet
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Plotnotes
Medals: 11
Featured Contributor (1) Featured Thread (3)
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Musings no Longer (Madeira Craven)

Postby Madeira Dusk on February 28th, 2019, 11:38 pm

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Grades Awarded!

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Madeira Craven

Skills
  • Rhetoric: 5xp
  • Negotiation: 1xp
  • Architectrix: 4xp
  • Embalming: 1xp
  • Auristics: 2xp
  • Subterfuge: 2xp
  • Planning: 3xp
  • Politics: 3xp
  • Psychology: 1xp
  • Hypnotism: 1xp
  • Intimidation: 1xp
  • Singing: 1xp
  • Leadership: 1xp

Lores
  • Architectrix: a capricious, artistic intelligence
  • Lore of hiring a contractor
  • Persuasion: an honest woman makes a good test of ability
  • Architectrix: able to communicate with ghosts
  • Embalming: boiling bones
  • Subterfuge: half-truths and lies
  • Auristics: using taste
  • Architectrix: has learned Spiritism
  • Politics: securing an alliance
  • Cursed Ring: works on Nuits
  • Psychology: lust works in the mind as well as body
  • Hypnotism: hallucination
  • Politics: taming a rival
  • Leadership: a monarch is nothing without her people

Awards & Retribution
+Item gained
+Trait recieved
-Injury
-Mizas spent

Notes
Notes here.
User avatar
Madeira Dusk
long may she reign
 
Posts: 1774
Words: 1599220
Joined roleplay: October 11th, 2016, 7:45 pm
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Plotnotes
Medals: 11
Featured Contributor (1) Featured Thread (3)
Mizahar Grader (1) Overlored (1)
Donor (1) One Thousand Posts! (1)
One Million Words! (1) Lhavit Seasonal Challenge (1)
2018 Mizahar NaNo Winner (1)

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