Shielding Practice(solo)

[Antar]

90th of Summer, 511av.

Noth sat within his tent this evening, just pondering the necessities of life as he considered what was truly important to him. He'd spent two seasons in sunberth now, training , growing stronger. But what did that strength really mean? What was he doing here? Would the fact that he was still alive, ever be known to his former Masters?

He didn't know.

But what did that make him? How much of himself was 'himself' anymore and how much was their influence? Was it natural to to hide away most of his emotions , except only the ones that would keep him alive in Sunberth; anger and sadness? Did he have no need to hide from the world, but continue to do so out of habit; in almost any way he can. Even if this meant keeping himself from bright daylight most of the time?

Well that wasn't completely true, he enjoyed the light in the wilds, sometimes climbing the South hills to bask in Syna's glow. He enjoyed the feel of the sun on his skin when swimming, so long as it was away from other people. It was merely a manner of barriers he'd place in between himself and others.

But now, after the last few nights practice there was a different sort of barrier which came to his thoughts. The barriers invoked by shielding. The magic was fascinating to him, in its long term implications. If he could manage to master its methodology, perhaps, in the long run he might try and fathom its mysteries enough to enable him to walk in the light, with as fair amount of protection as possible. For now, that meant study, preparation, and more importantly Sight to let him see what he was crafting.

[Antar]

A simple object lay resting upon the ground at his feet, a worn rounded stone, picked up from the edge of the camp in the slums. It was the object of his concentration right now, the focus of his thoughts and intentions.

Today, he was going to try to shield something using auristics, using whatever technique he could to weave it strand by strand. He wasn't caring for its form or size it could wrap around an object today. Not it's tasking, or its purpose. Just for the simplest thing he could think of: how it formed and began to knit together in the most methodical way possible.

If he could discover that, they he could later begin to experiment to gain better controls on how much djed power he needed to imbue a working in order to have it set properly around an object. He hated waste in all forms, and excess energy spent in haste was anathema to him.

He began by meditation, controlling the breaths which entered and exited his body in order to gain a cadence of motion to the stillness of his sitting form. Closing his eyes he began to do two things, he brought forth a bit of djed from the point of his stomach to his eyes in order to open the pathways of his Sight for auristics. Looking at the point on the tent floor where the stone was held between his hands , Antar could barely see a translucent theel of the djed within the stone like a wavering heat image over its edges. It was far less then anything within a human or another sentient being, far less then a plant even, just one thing normally cast into the background of colors which made the sea of the world present to Auristics.

In fact, if he hadn't been alone in his tent, save for his falcon kelvic Ellise, he was quite sure his Sight would have missed it entirely if not for his focus upon such an object.

Beginning the shielding process slowly he felt the lightning feeling of his djed travel up his shoulders and down through his arms to his palms. Now... with his second sight he could begin to see the sky blue strands of djed beginning to seep from his fingertips as fine as spider's silks towards the stone. Antar bent his will to the efforts... bringing them closer to one another, like the strands of an ever tightening net.

[Antar]

Twisting filaments of off-white blue began to twist to his will as he began to See them come together. Like threads on a loom his mind tried to form them into a firm weave that came together in an array of scintillating energy. It was difficult in the extreme to do... his mind seemed to ache at the struggle as the power seemed to wish to flow where it wanted too. It wasn't a factor of overgiving, but rather a headache born of astute concentration.

The threads of djed were like wild stallions waiting to be tamed into a shield to cover the rock, but instead they wanted to flow like water over the stone surface, a settling fashion which he did not wish to allow. In a sense it was as if he was fighting himself, trying to instill iron clad order on a potential energy that might be used for something else. Like trying to ride a bicycle backwards in the ray with your hands pushing the pedals. Not that he didn't know what a bicycle was, save for seeing a design once in a pre-valt book of gadgets. In truth the picture had been stenciled with the words "foot powered horse.'

Feeling his mind begin to stray , he concentrated on the focus of his meditations. The ever present sight of the frozen waters of avanthal with the light refracting through its icy surface to create a wash of rainbow colored auroras.

With his mind on the focus, Antar bent his will again on the task at hand. Trying to curb the bits of djed lines into some semblance of sense. Slowly, after many minutes he managed to weave the strands into a crosshatched pattern of lines above the face of the stone. He could see the djed wanting to loosen, to fill the spaces in between to let the shield take its dismal weak hold upon the surface. But at this point, to him that would coincide with failure. Marshalling his efforts he tried to bring the netted strands closer and closer together to remove the inch long boxes between them, holding their cohesion together with the stubborness of his will alone.

[Antar]

Slowly, fingerlength, by fingerlength he struggled to press the strands closer to each other. The fabric of the Shield's weaving resisted his efforts, seeming to slow like molasses as the threads of spun djed bucked like a bronco in an effort to reform to their larger size and liquify themselves over the stone. It was as if the strands of energy laying flat were repelling each other with magnetic force that could only be neutralize by melting into a puddle of energized goo.

Thinking of it like a loom, he realized that the strands of djed were not weaved in and out of each other's passing like the strands of cotton cloth he wore in his shirt. Taking the lowest horizontal strand of djed stretching from his thumbs he began to weave it over and under the vertical strands, seeking to master the intricacies of the task of simply molding the djed of his which was used for shields. When it was finished he noticed a slight change in the aura around the two strands, it seemed to be less opposing the strands it intersected, though the resistance was still there.

Not Content with this small success, the rogue pushed himself harder to work the second horizontal strand, trying to duplicate the exact meshing thread he had created with the first. But that backfired though, as the djed filament seemed to tear away like the broken string of a guitar. Cursing slightly his will manage to refocus on that strand enough to prevent the entire structure he had fashioned from being ripped apart as easily as a spiders web. This day's exercise was solely focused on the building of shields, and today he'd build one the way he wanted to or find out why his things wouldn't work.

He guessed it was just the tinkerer, or craftsman in himself that demanded such things. Experience had taught him to accept his faults and move past them. This was just one of those things to keep himself trying harder, even if the pounding of his blood in his ears felt like he was trying to slam his head through a brick wall. He had build brick walls in the past, and knew just how damaging that could be.

Staring at this puzzle , he tried to weave the filament again. This time alternating the direction of how it weaved around the strands around it. Where the first had come up, this one looped downwards, and where the first folded downwards to disappear under the next vertical strand, this one came across the top. It was an alternating stitch, much like basketweaving.

He sighed as he felt the pressure between the strands begin to release itself. As if the forces of the magic in the djed seemed to be complimenting one another, like he had stumbled on a certain key element to crafting a proper shield formation. He bent his will to the third strand, weaving it as he had the first, and continued up towards the fifth to gain a crosshatching of five strands gridlocked over five other strands. Each direction of the djed stitchery formed from the strands coming from the fingertips of his hands.

In the end it was still hard to squeeze the space from the strands distance from one another, but eventually he managed to get the boxes in between each crosshatching down to about half an inch, with the flow of energy 'bubbling' like a meniscus of water in a glass to let the power of the djed cover the empty spaces. It looked to him like a set of scales tied up to fishnet stockings that seemed popular with Svefra women, and boy did those svefra women have a great set of legs.

Cursing his inattention again, he thought it was time to begin seeing if he could anchor the shield properly, so he moved the stretched weaving closer to the stone. He noticed a slight shaking in his hands, a far cry from the age old precision he used on picking locks at his stepfather's worktable. He'd have to remedy that soon with a bit of nutrition and rest. He just wanted to finish this for now. With his Sight steady, the rogue could see the beginnings of the pattern he was forming take hold upon the rock.

[Antar]

As the net covered half of the stone his eyes and attention could see the energy grip upon the item's surface. It was an interesting phenomenon to see the faint haze of the stone's aura, suddenly encompasses by a glittering stream of pulsing blue around it's lower hemisphere. It seemed that the strands of djed seemed to stick to it like beads of glue to let it settle the weave, allowing the physical structure of the stone to create the framework of the shield's construction, yet still keep the strands closer together like he wanted instead of pooling over the stone like water.

Not completely satisfied with his progressed he began to force more filaments outwards from his body. This time he concentrated on bringing two sets to flow from his fingertips and bending them towards the top hemisphere of the stone to help complete the shield's fashioning. Keeping the image of the basket like weave of the first attempt in his mind allowed him to take less time to shuttle the strands through each other , up and over one another to form another grid locked pattern

He spread this towards the stone, watching with his Sight as the strands interacted with the first weave he still kept in contact with his djed, melding downwards to form a larger weave. It wasn't smooth joining, nor was it like layering one shield over the other. He didn't think he had the skill for that yet. No, instead it was like trying to bring a patchwork quilt together with vague lumpy stitched hoops to brace them together. It wasn't perfect, and he could see the djed loss flare in the space between them as holes in the shield's fabric would appear and disappear as the energy ran about the stone.

But it worked for now.

Severing the strands connectiong to his hands he allowed the shield to truly anchor itselfs and he settled the djed of his auristics use in his eyes, releasing the flow back into the normal currents of his body, just in time to see the glinting strands fade visually from his normal eyesight.

The shield was done.

So there was only one thing left to do. Raising his hand over the stone he brought a small big of djed from his stomach, to his shoulders and then down to his palms as the Res began to weep from the pores of his skin. Slowly, fastening his will to the creation a ball of earth formed, and small clumps of Res surrounded in sand began trickling down towards the stone.

He allowed his Aura Sight to begin again for a detailed observation. At first the resistance to the impacts of the res sand spheres could be seen by the flashes of bluish white spots of light wher ehte stone lay. Both inside his Sight, and outside as the shield 'flared' from the impacts. Within his sight was a different bit of information that was important to him. The rogue could 'see' bits and parts of the makeup of the shield splintering and fragmenting like dust particles as they were sheared from the shield itself. The blue-white light of the crosshatched lines faded fast, from colors which burned to low oranges, then reds with larger gaps of spaces between them, then dull browns and finally black like ashe before the Shielding's weave disintegrated completely.

Breathing deeply he began to steady himself and ponder as he turned off his auristics sense.

It hadn't been a complete success... but neither had it been a complete failure. It would simply take time and practice to wield tighter and tighter weaves until they were almost imperceptible to the farthest eye. Like the smallest links of chainmail one could imagine could be weaved together.

For now though, even those his body wanted to continue the process, the white haired man resisted the urge, and settled back down upon his bedroll's mattress to close his eyes and rest. Antar was halfways to unconsciousness when a small wind and a chortling chuckle brought him back to wakefulness to see his falcon peering from her cage at him. Chirping for food. Sighing loudly he lay a small handful of seeds into her carved bowl and took a bit of refreshment for himself which consisted of salted meat from the last hunted animal he had brought home and a bit of water from his drinking flask.

Laying heavily down upon the bedroll, the rogue's eyes would shut in time to grant him another few bell's worth of sleep before he would have to get up and go to work to start his day all over again.

[Ink]

And in the Aftermath . . . The Rewards are Revealed. Antar : Skills: Auristics 4 Meditation 2 Reimancy 1 Shielding 3 Lore: Shielding a Small Object Recognizing a Shield's weakness with Aurisitics Technique: Weaving strands of Djed (Basic) Written in the ink : If there are any concerns or problems with my grading please feel free to toss me a PM. I am more than happy to explain my reasons or reevaluate them if you feel I've been unfair.