[Flashback] Changes (Solo/Open)

[Seidaku]

Timestamp: 80th Day of Winter, 507 A.V.

Seidaku lay sprawled on an unmade bed in what he liked to think of as meditative contemplation, but an observer would call a petulant sulk, scowling at the ceiling with his arms crossed over his chest. Over a fortnight since he had seen Wrenmae's display of magic, and he had little more than a name for what the boy had done.

Morphing.

The display had been fascinating, but even he had been perceptive enough to see that the boy did not want to talk about it. Despite an obvious skill with the arcane arts, he suffered from an common - and deserved, he admitted to himself - belief that magic was somehow inherently wrong. His response to that thought was a loud, "Humph!" He had heard all of the cases against magic. It had caused the Valterrian, it meddled with forced 'man was not meant to control', it twisted the mind and soul toward evil, and others even less rooted in reality.

He knew the truth, though. Any historian could tell you, as his master Vauthor had taught him, that uncontrolled emotion, a "human" failing, had caused the Valterrian. And for the other two points, fire was dangerous if one let it run rampant, and it could burn, maim, and kill. In much the same way, magic without careful control could burn the mind and body of the user.

He was more frustrated with a lack of resources than he was with Wrenmae, of course. Even though the boy made a convenient target of his ire, he knew that the ire was misdirected and if faded as quickly as it had flared. The information on Morphing was even less readily available than it had been on Summoning, which at least had a scientific grounding. The tomes he had found in the Sunken Conundrum had been little more than rhetoric; "The mind and the Djed know the true shape of a body moreso than the physical shell. The shell is clay, the Djed is blade, and the mind, sculptor."

Nothing in either of the books he had been able to unearth had given so much as a starting point, beyond the fact that it would 'come from within'. The Scholarly Abode of Intellectual Pursuits had been even less fruitful. For such an enlightened group, they had been surprisingly reluctant to even discuss magical theory. Disappointingly superstitious.

Still contemplating, he would never admit that it might be sulking, he rolled off of the bed and began pacind the length of his room, back and forth.

[Seidaku]

How could he have been so wrong?

The passages he had taken for empty rhetoric had been the key, he was sure of it now.

He still paced the room, but it was an energized stride now, one needed to bring his body's movement in time with his mind's. It was so ridiculously simple! Just like Voiding, the power for Morphing came entirely from within oneself. The statements were clever clues, not just idle turns of phrase.

Now, all he had to do was figure out the key to it. With Voiding, it had been envisioning and then using Djed to create a point of perfect emptiness in the world for the Void to reach out toward and make a connection. The other clue was the sculpting analogy. He could sculpt the clay of his body, with the knife of Djed, wielded in the hand of his mind. It was a remarkably apt metaphor if he was right.

In order to prove his theory, there was only one course of action. Quiet contemplation. He considered the circle of Glyphs on the floor, and then dismissed it out of hand when he realized in a bolt of insight that it had the potential to do heinously more harm than good.

Standing now in the mirror of his room, he settled to the floor, with his legs crossed and his hands resting palms up on his knees. With his eyes closed, he took a deep breath and emptied his mind. Into the stillness of his thoughts, the emptiness of the Void leaped immediately into being, but this was not what he wanted. He had become so accustomed to the behavior though that, no matter his best efforts, he could not dispel the blackness that had settled upon his mind's eye during his meditation.

Several frustrating hours later, Seidaku had nothing to show for his efforts but cramping legs, a sore back, and a headache. It was during an attempt at stretching aching muscles that inspiration struck. If he was could not dispel the image of the Void, he could use the Void to his advantage.

Settled back on the floor again, Seidaku summoned the Void to mind once again. This time though, he used the perfect blackness, free from any imperfections, as a canvas. On this canvas, he formed an imagine of himself, in as great a detail as he could summon to mind. He focused on controlling his breathing, six cycles of in and out every chime. He focused on the flow of Djed around himself, bringing himself just to the cusp of grasping hold of it with his will and then releasing it, over and over again.

The image in his mind slipped, though. Was his nose really that sharp? And he could not really remember the exact color of his eyes. He thought he remembered a mole on side, but he could not be sure. Overall, the image in his mind was indistinct, figuratively blurry, and frequent changing.

This was not going to work.

He needed a mirror.

[Seidaku]

Timestamp: 82nd Day of Winter, 507 A.V.

Despite his enthusiasm to begin his study again, Seidaku's steps dragged as he walked away from the Bizarre. Mirrors had proven to be staggeringly expensive. Even worse had been the fact that he had needed two of the things. No matter how he had contorted himself in the stall of the Bizarre, he had been ubable to see the entirety of his body with only the one mirror. As it stood, he had been hard pressed to see everything he needed with a pair of them.

He had tried to talk the price down, but that had been an abject failure.

"Ten gold Mizas... each?," he asked, incredulous, "I could, ah, fill my home with fanciful beds and, umm, and furniture for what I am paying for that, that, that... that litle piece metal."

"Steel," had been the unflinching replay, "Steel would be the word you are looking for. You are paying ten gold rimmed Mizas for a piece of worked, polished steel ten inches to a side." With an appraising glance, she had added, "And you should be glad I am not adding a surcharge for having to watch your little contortionist show. Ten Mizas or you can keep walking."

He had not kept walking, of course. He had needed to return home for the rest of the money necessary, but he had bought the mirrors, and likely was now responsible for the majority of the harpy's total monetary gain for the year. With a sigh, he admitted to himself that the proprietess was very unlikely a harpy. She had even been kind enough to include a small leather pocket in which to carry the mirrors so that they would not get damaged in transit.

Still, he thought with an even more resigned sigh as he fingered his empty belt pouch, this was going to be a lean Season, now.

(OOC Note: Self Moderation, subtract 20 gold Mizas and add 2 Small Steel Mirrors.)

[Seidaku]

All of this was how Seidaku found himself in his shack, stripped to the skin and sweating with exertion, despite the chill in the air. For his attempt to work, he would have to have a template to from. He would have to truly know the form of his body before he could hope to achieve even purely aesthetic changes, to say nothing of the level of study that would be needed before he could even think to try something more substantial.

He had placed one mirror on his desk, propped against vials of ink and a sheaf of parchment to keep it upright and oriented toward the front of the room. It was here that Seidaku stood, facing away from the first mirror and staring intently at the second, which he held clutched tightly in the fingers of one hand. If he positioned it just right, he could see past his sweat streaked hair and catch an image of his back and buttocks reflected from the first mirror before his arm or hand shifted position slightly, and he was staring at the back wall of his home.

With a frustrated grunt, he swapped the mirror he was holding from one hand to another and shook out his tired left arm. He was getting it, though.

[Seidaku]

Hours later Seidaku sat, stark raving naked, in the middle of his room. After a level of scrutiny that felt invasive, even to him, he thought he could finally form an image of himself in his mind. First though, to prepare the canvas.

The first step was the easiest. He had to prepare and clear his mind. With his eyes lightly closed and his hands resting palm up on the knees of his crossed legs, he took deep, even breaths, holding them slightly and then releasing them. He felt his heart rate slow, and his mind emptied of distractions.

Behind his closed eyes, in his mind's eye, there was only the perfect blackness of the Void. It was into this blackness that he formed an image of himself, sitting cross-legged on nothing. After hours of study, the image was perfect in every detail, down to the newly formed bruise on his right hip where he had fallen over while trying to contort himself to memorize the back half of his body.

With that perfect image formed in his mind, Seidaku imagined himself as a sculptor, working with himself as the clay... and the illusion shattered at the contradiction.

[Seidaku]

He was both the sculptor and the clay. That was an image he could form fully in his mind now. He was both the sculptor and the clay, and Djed was the... all of the other sculpting tools. The metaphor worked better if he stopped scrutinizing it.

With slow, deep breaths, he set the stage for his work. First all thought fled and his mind was blanketed in pure, endless blackness. Then, upon that blackness, appeared his own body, perfect in every detail, the clay upon which he would work. Then, present but at the same time non-existent in the mental image, himself again, prepared to force matter to the shape of mind.

Finally, there was Djed. He could feel its gentle ebb and flow, washing through everything, touching everything. Floating in emptiness, he could feel how the Djed around him interacted with that of his own body. He could almost see the currents as they washed against each other, joined their flows together, and then flowed on and away from him, taking a portion of himself on into infinity.

Reaching out with his mind, he altered the flow of Djed slightly, much in the same manner that he would have if he had wished to create a portal. He then directed his will inward.

Seidaku's eyes snapped open and his concentration fled as he realized what he had almost done. Manipulating his own Djed, his own body, the way he would manipulate the world to create a portal would be a quick and horrifyingly painful suicide.

He needed to change how he was approaching the problem.

[Seidaku]

Timestamp: 83nd Day of Winter, 507 A.V.

Somehow, he had managed to work through the night and most of the next morning without realizing it. Sitting silently, contemplating his own form and the way that his own Djed interacted with that of the rest of the world. That had been the key, really. Even though the catalyst that powered that change came from within, the so called blade that would shape his form came from without.

This realization had come from reaching further than his grasp. The question had struck him during the night, how did experienced Morphers adopt a form that was larger or smaller than their native without increasing or decreasing their density? Similarly, how could the tales he had heard, even if only partially true, accurately support the existence of mages who could harden their skin enough to stop blades without causing them to give up mass for the necessary increase in density?

The answer was so simple, so obvious. They could not. Those were immutable physical laws. Which meant that their form had to go somewhere, or come from somewhere. Which was where the ambient Djed entered the equation. They used the Djed to convert their form into Djed, or form additions from Djed. Therefore, energy was neither created nor destroyed, and those natural laws remained unbroken.

And he thought he had figured out how.

Breathing deeply and returning his wandering thoughts to stillness, Seidaku closed eyes that were now grainy from lack of sleep and formed an image of himself in his mind. Unkempt now, with several days worth of stubble dusting his cheeks and dark bags beneath his eyes. In his mind's eye, he could see the currents of Djed lapping against his own life's energy, curling against it and then washing onward.

In the spaces between his breaths, he reached out with his own Djed to draw that of the world toward him, pulling and flattening, pressing it against his own energy the way a sculptor would add damp clay to his work. The image of himself that he had formed shivered at the strain and almost broke apart back into nothingness from the strain, but slowly, almost invisibly, a change began to occur.

He had needed to start small. Nothing dangerous. Nothing that could kill him, or maim him. As he worked his will, he felt a tingle in the fingers of his left hand, still sitting upon his left knee, palm up and fingers slightly curled. The sensation was... unique. Slightly uncomfortable, but not painful, and ultimately not enough to distract him.

He did not know how long he had worked, but the sun was bright outside his windows when he again opened his eyes and looked down at his hand. What he saw caused him to leap to his feet with a pleased laugh and hop from foot to foot in what could generously be called an excited jig.

He had done it!

Holding his hand up in front of his face, he flexed and curled his fingers, examing his handiwork. There, extending from the ends of his fingers, the nails of his left hand had grown just over an inch in less than a day. It was a small step, but it was a step none the less.

Still laughing in delight, he watched as the nails slowly shrank back, reverting to their natural form as their maintaining Djed bled away and flowed onward.

He had done it.

[Bedlam]

Thread Completed!

Seidaku

Experience:

+3 Meditation
+2 Morphing

Lores:

Morphing Basics

Notes: Sorry this took so long. I wasn't paying attention to my office.

I feel like you should know; after a while it felt like you were just repeating yourself. You tried the same thing, you failed at it, you tried the same thing later, failed again, tried the same thing later and it worked. You know?

If you have any problems feel free to contact me. I don't bite!