[Dusk Tower] An Instructive Day

by **Alses** on September 9th, 2012, 3:03 pm

Timestamp: 28th of Autumn, 512 A.V.

Alses and her instructor faced off against one another in one of the many – relatively spartan – chambers high in the Dusk Tower. The room was a simple, vaulting expanse of skyglass, glowing with all the colours of the sunset, not a stick of furniture to detract from the subtle, shifting beauty of it. At first, these practice rooms had made Alses feel sick, nauseous and dizzy, the subliminal shifting always catching her eye, befuddling her senses and disrupting her concentration; since the disastrous first few sessions she'd forced herself (and Syna above, it had been hard) to do her own researches here – at least, as much of it as she could stand.

After the first few times, and shamefaced requests of the Tower servants for a mop, some water and a bucket, they'd started to leave a discreet bowl in there for her. No-one said anything, she hadn't had to ask or explain, it had just begun appearing, a simple stone hemisphere rubbed with some oil or wax that smelled rather pleasingly of lemons. Whilst, as a rule, Alses neither ate nor drank, sustained by the warm presence of Syna during the day, her stomach still sometimes rebelled in queasy tandem with her eyes, and if she'd drunk to slake her Konti thirst in the night...she thought ferociously of four-dimensional glyphic interactions and their applications in magecrafting until the revulsion faded and she no longer felt like bolting for the privy.

“You are calmed now?” The soft, breathily hesitant tones of Chiona Dusk broke the cathedral-hush which had descended over the pair. Dark eyes, perfectly rimmed in sweeping lines of black ink and shimmering with the elusive touch of magic, blinked slowly at the radiant Ethaefal; Alses cursed internally. Sometimes it was a disadvantage to be studying auristics – your teacher generally knew a lot more about yourself than you generally ever wanted them to.

“Yes, thank you, ma'am.” Alses had been attempting to cultivate the quiet and measured cadences of the Lhavitian accent, trying to overwhelm the upper-class Zeltivan drawl she'd been brought up speaking. It was very heavy going; at this stage, it seemed like she would be stuck with it for the forseeable future.

“Good. Now, attend. Today, we'll be considering secondary auras. I have been monitoring your progress, and I feel your grasp on the basics of auristics is sufficient to proceed.” Chiona Dusk had been nothing if not pleasant and polite to her ever since they had first been introduced, but deep in her soul Alses just didn't feel comfortable around her. Chiona was beautiful, true, but in that specialised sense of the word that people use when talking about a naturally pretty girl who, through cosmetics and three hours of skilled labour every morning, has managed to achieve the manufactured, distant beauty of a porcelain doll; that flawless and somehow faintly melancholy mix of pallor and rich darkness, a face of dramatic, designed contrasts. There was a coldness about her, a distance that cut a little close to the bone for Alses' liking; the two of them were cordial, but no more than that; neither would dream of inviting the other out for tea at Mhakula's, for instance. A greeting, should they happen to meet in the street, that was about as far as it would go.

“Thank you, ma'am.” That was how all these sessions went, words shifting from one to the other in measured time. Chiona seemed to like that pattern for some reason.

A glacial incline of the head. “Indeed.” A wave of her hand, indicating the line of, well, objects, between them – chunks of stone, a bowl of soil taken from the Dusk Tower gardens, a few pieces of wood, a hunk of skyglass...all common, everyday items. “At your current level of the discipline, you may not find this technique as useful as at higher planes of understanding. However, it is a useful teaching tool and something which grows in usefulness as your proficiency does. Thusly, it is Tower policy to instruct our pupils in its intricacies early on. Now, your Sight at present is fairly rudimentary – you do still percieve auras as washes of colours over objects, yes?”

Alses cleared her throat. “We – I -” she winced; Chiona was very particular about how Alses spoke to her. “-I am finding that I hear and touch auras more and more, ma'am,” she murmured. No sense in letting her know about the unsettling changes and shifts that the djed storm had wrought. Perhaps if Chiona had been more affable, approachable and likeable - in essence, more like most of the rest of her family - well, then Alses might have confided in her; as a cold porcelain doll, never.

A small smile touched the edges of Chiona's Cupid's bow lips, but her voice was as studied and calm as ever. “That is an encouraging sign of progress. Let us examine the stone, first. You will find meditation helpful; find a comfortable position and empty your mind with your breaths. Let the mountain breezes sweep your thoughts clean; invite them in as you inhale, and allow them to carry away all distractions as you exhale. Clear your mind until it becomes as the snowfields, clear and white, untouched by anything.”

Whatever her other faults, Chiona did have the right sort of voice for meditation, when she wanted to. Low and soothing, never hurried or startled, and her auristic talents meant that she could see – and perhaps understand – distractions, from the vibration and colour of her student's aura. It was rather unusual, admittedly, for such basic sessions to be one-to-one, but the djed storm and its aftermath had thinned the ranks of the aurists considerably, though the Dusk Tower was still perhaps the best-off of the Council of Towers. Many novices had nonetheless left two seasons ago, after seeing the effects of overgiving first-hand for the first time, and while most of the masters had fully recovered from their ordeal, intake was at an all-time low, even if Lhavit as a whole embraced magic. People had been served a powerful reminder of exactly how dangerous a calling magic was, causing many a young Lhavitian to rethink their path in life, away from arcane power and mastery and towards something more mundane that generally didn't carry the possibility of horrific, mangled death or insanity with it.

Chiona was impatient; even with her eyes closed, Alses could sense that, a tight prickling of her skin, an indefinable sour smell, so faint as to almost not be present. Perhaps the instructor remembered herself, for shortly after she had begun to meditate, too, and quickly those phantom sensations receded; Chiona evidently had a much better grasp of the subtleties of that particular art than Alses did.

Meditation was hard; not because of a lack of patience but because of the continual presence of whirling thoughts - 'I should be writing that book,' 'I wonder how Zeltiva is faring?' 'Perhaps I'll go and watch the Taiyang dance later on,' a continual litany of vague ideas and plans for the future, things which needed to be done, things she wanted to do...the list was endless, and supremely unhelpful in attaining a state of relaxed, logical calm.

'My mind is a snowfield,' she thought, trying to focus on the picture of blank whiteness as instructed, an expanse of fresh snow swept by the cleansing breezes, tossing up snowflakes in shimmering patter-'No! Focus on the breath and the heartbeat. Go back to what we know.' In and out, her chest rising and falling, hearing the steady, thrumming rhythm of her heart, beating out all other thoughts, just the pulse of steady, reliable life pounding in her chest. Her breathing calmed and slowed with the sound, drifting into the back of her consciousness, ripples of thoughts smoothing out into the background.

“Very good. You're getting quicker. Look here, and tell me what you deduce from the stone.”

by **Alses** on November 1st, 2012, 9:39 pm

Now the meat of the lesson – but there, ah, Alses had an advantage. Her hands and arms, buried in folds of fabric, were covered in glyphs – sigils of purification – self-triggered, of course – of clarity and of perception, all of them laboriously drawn in thick black ink. 'Thank Tanroa for the Blessing,' she thought, glad she hadn't had to wait for the curling curlicues of the glyphs to dry. They'd taken quite enough time to inscribe - 'A full bell to draw them all, and then we found fifty-four mistakes and it took us three more bells to correct them,' Alses winced briefly, remembering turning the air blue at the Respite with various inventive curses, having finally exhausted reserves of patience she wasn't even aware of having. She'd nearly broken the quill in a fit of pique after the nth painstaking correction – or perhaps a correction of a correction; it was only the thought of having to buy another, to brave the autumnal chill in her thin summer shifts any more than was absolutely necessary that prevented her from snapping it like a particularly annoying twig between her slender fingers.

They were done now, though, and she exulted as she called up the solar prominences of her personal djed up from the blazing sun around her soul. Normally, this was a delicate task, the weaving of a complex threadwork matrix, winding the djed through every facet of her body, funnelling the flows and tides up to her skin, and then – crucially - beyond, unleashing the artist unseen to do his work with manifold brush and infinite colour. Now, though, there were glyphs twining sinuously through her hands, interlacing with her fingers and spiralling up her arms: a different approach seemed to call. The bright glow that was her soul in her mind's eye, garlanded about with all her reserves of djed, blazed brightly, a star going nova that hurled djed instead of stellar fire in an expanding bow wave all through her body, lighting up that intricate tracework, waking the latent fire of the glyphs of clarity and perception – Alses was swept up in the casting, her mind nearly swept free from its moorings as her expendable reserves of personal djed gathered just below her skin, drawing power from the sigils impressed upon her flesh before bursting outwards once more.

After the initial surge, overwhelmed by the dazzling colours and sounds, the feel of shapes, the subconscious scritch-scritch-scritch of Chiona Dusk's heel against the skyglass floor, the wheeling sense of disconnection that settled just over her left eyebrow, Alses' mind slowly regained its equilibrium, the upturned paint-pot of a million colours resolving itself into a masterwork pastiche of feelings and impressions.

Chiona Dusk was at the centre of a webwork of pale vines, breathing deep and slow – Alses looked closer; the pale threads were flushed green at the very base, an undercurrent of jealousy that her instructor probably wasn't even aware of. The rest of her aura was remarkably still and calm, though, the pale white of a serene mind, only very lightly touched with the usual distractions that so coloured normal auras, proof positive that meditation actually worked.

“The stone, Alses. Describe the aura; tell me what you can deduce. Take your time.” Alses was still only a novice; time was necessary to perceive anything more than the most basic of facts. Time, and lots of djed.

Auristics was as much about intellect and reasoning as it was about sight and extension of faculty; because each impression was unique to the visualising wizard, everything had to be interpreted for an outsider. Even bolstered by the glyphs, at least a bell and a half had to have passed before she was able to say anything with any real confidence. “The aura is flattened, sharply contoured around the angles, although that fuzzes a bit at one end...It is quite static in appearance, much smaller than any sentient being's aura, which is what we would expect, and the colouration is quite dense to me. There's-” Alses squinted, synchronizing djed roaring in her ears, easily pouring back and forth to daub the world in obscured patterns. “-there's a touch of...” she shivered, suddenly, as the ghost of heat shimmered across her arms “...a touch of heat, maybe? Right at the core.”

Pale white vines mottled with gold, suddenly; Chiona was impressed. “That's very good. What do you think you can tell me about the stone?”

Alses paused, momentarily stumped; Chiona broke her question down. “What do you think the heat might tell you?”

“It's very faint,” Alses murmured, by way of reply and thought both. “More like...like a memory than anything. Wait – I've read that aurists can see the past; has the rock been in a fire at some point in history? Or-” she said, aware that the simplest explanation was often the right one “-has it simply been in the sun a lot?”

The sense of a wince, a bright flash of silver chopping at winding threads; chagrin. “Seeing the past is an overexaggeration; we do not step far into the realm of Avalis or Tanroa - or Nysel, for that matter. However, time is an aspect here, nonetheless, so well done there. Think again about where you felt heat; where did you focus your power when you touched the warmth in the stone?”

“The centre,” Alses murmured. “The oldest part? So...was it – is it a volcanic rock? Has it been molten, or, or, or on fire, once upon a time?”

A smile, fresh spring-green tinged with lilacs. “Very good! It's been lava, once upon a time. Interpretation and deduction are key, you see. If it had been in the sun for a long time, you would probably feel heat on the outer layers of the stone most strongly, decreasing as you moved inwards. Now, what did you mean by dense colour?”

Alses pulled her power away from the revelation of molten lava in the rock's distant history with some reluctance; there were threads woven into other threads, whole tangled skeins of other wonders in there, too, she was sure, only maddeningly obscured by kinks of colour and phantom force. “Everything's thick and close, like it's all been compressed. There are so many layers, and they've all been pushed together. Is that right?”

The sense of another gentle smile. “I don't know. We all see auras differently. Keep looking exclusively at the stone, though – ignore me completely. Tell me if you see a change.”

Obediently, Alses bent every scrap of her vision towards the hunk of rock – the twining vines of Chiona's aura faded and became almost intangible as the last vestiges of her focus there vanished. There was a sharp crack, which almost jolted Alses out of her concentration, but she saw a change immediately. “What did you do? Parts of it are even more closely-spaced, but there's a giant diffuse area now, right through the top!”

“Calm yourself, Alses.” Her voice was low and soothing. “Nothing is accomplished in Auristics by getting excited and losing your focus. Control and concentration are essential to the novice. I struck the stone with a chisel, putting pressure on the bit of it beneath and to either side of the blade.” A touch of embarrassment tinged her next words. “I hit it a little too hard, actually, and broke it – that's why you're seeing that fuzzy patch. Tell me what you deduce from that, then.”

“Well, the aura was very thick and uniform all the way through – but there's the other softened area that I have no clue about at all...it's obviously been put under pressure at some point, but then other things have released that pressure, maybe? There's a sort of faint second corona, too; I can only just make it out - is that the secondary aura?”

There was silence for a while. “Perhaps I should have chosen a simpler rock,” Chiona said quietly, and perhaps slightly ruefully. “What you're seeing is pressure – and this rock has been under a lot of pressure for a great length of time. However, that pressure was released when this stone came to the surface – which might be the reason for that faint corona you're seeing; the most recent auristic impressions don't carry that sense of compression. Furthermore, the rock was turned into masonry – hence the regularity – but it got broken at some point, which relieved stresses and changed the aura again, giving that more diffuse section. Sum up the facts you now know about this rock, please.”

“Postulate-” Chiona was very fond of that word “-One. This is a volcanic rock. Verification: the sense of heat occasioned by looking at the very centre of its aura, the oldest part, and not found to any significant degree elsewhere.” Alses recited, clearing her throat more out of habit than anything. “Postulate Two. This rock is very dense. Verification: the dense layering of colours close to the rock surface, also it seems heavier than would be accounted for judging on size alone. Postulate Three. It has been used as building material. Verification: the strict and regular angular nature of the aura, indicating perhaps a block shape?” 'Also, you told me it was a bit of masonry,' did not seem like a helpful addition to Postulate Three.

“Correct on all counts, with a bit of coaching – which is only to be expected, of course.” Chiona intoned magisterially, and then produced, magician-like, a slim leather-bound book from the manifold recesses of her robes. “This is an auristics-based study of the geology – that's the study of rocks and earth – of Kalea that a former student sent to the Tower and the Bharani Library. The pages you'll need are 224-228; tell me which one of those you think it is.”

The book's pages were thick and creamy, high-quality parchment, and the penmanship was very fine. The pages indicated were full of delicate, intricate diagrams, cutaways of rock structures annotated with many observations in an elegant copperplate hand that was easy on the eyes. Her eyes scanned the text quickly; now focused on the more mundane world, her Sight receded and the fire of hidden glyphs on her hands and arms died to a faint flicker. “Granite?” she asked, unsure and at length.

A raised eyebrow, a perfect arch of dark hair in a flawless porcelain face. “Why not basalt?” the question came back very fast.

“Basalt produces the central heat component that is one of the defining characteristics of volcanically-produced rocks,” Alses read out. “However, the indications of pressure are much less evident than in other such rocks, and there tends to be obvious layering or roping of the structure.”

Chiona nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Very good. You're doing exceptionally well, you know – but we'll take a little break from the practical portion of your instruction for now. Caution is ever the watchword, even if we suffer less from overgiving than some other disciplines.”

by **Alses** on November 2nd, 2012, 8:23 pm

A resounding 'crack', the sound of flesh on flesh – Alses toppled sideways at the unexpected force and the bright rose of pain suddenly flowering on her cheek; Chiona was on her feet, hand upraised, having delivered a powerful open-handed slap, her eyes glittering with anger.

True-blue light flickered across her cheek; the bruise was quashed before it even had time to fully form, fire-opal skin remaining unblemished and undamaged. “You hit us,” Alses hissed, eyes narrowing into slits. 'Bugger serenity,' shouted the multitude of past lives that always thronged her head. 'She's fair game now! Burn her for her presumption and hubris!'

Memory burst behind her eyes, some event far in history that had been significant for her resonating with the moment. Her left hand rose, clawed of its own accord, as she picked herself up off the skyglass floor; had she been a reimancer, it would have been holding a blazing ball of elemental flame, hot enough to melt flesh from bone in a single, searing instant, or perhaps a tempest, ready to tear and rend in seconds.

“Don't do anything rash, girl,” came Chiona's voice, from far away. It had shed its breathy hesitance, and was now cold and hard. “Ethaefal or no, I can still gut you like a fish.” Something cold and sharp prickled at Alses' torso; a gleaming length of steel sharpened to a razor-point. “Wash those runes or whatever you call them off your hands and arms – did you really think I wouldn't sense them? Such unthinking arrogance and pride. I expected better of a god's chosen; even one that has fallen.”

'It took you a while though, didn't it, for all that you crow your skill in Auristics to the rooftops!' Alses snarled, but only for internal consumption. Sod forgiveness: Chiona had instantly earned herself a spot in the 'I shall dance on your grave' list – a list currently consisting of exactly two people. Then and there, Alses resolved to learn reimancy or some other offensive magic at the earliest possible opportunity, in order to have some means of defending herself.

Ruefully, under the cold and watchful eye of Chiona – still with that Dao sword in hand, ready to hiss around and cut right through her without even slowing down, likely as not; Dusks were nothing if not strict and efficient – Alses resentfully scrubbed her fire-opal skin free of the ink, watching hours of painstaking work go sluicing off into the water-bowl that a Tower servant had brought, silent and unnoticed, the beautiful patterns blurring and sloughing into nonsensicality, merging with the natural djed flows of the world. It was a travesty, really. 'All I was doing was making full use of every resource at my disposal!' she grumbled, wise enough not to give voice to her internal thoughts. Chiona Dusk would not bend to Alses' point of view, devoted as she was to the purity of each discipline of magic that she practised.

“Now. Let us try the exercise again, this time just using your skill in auristics.” A black frown – Alses let her personal djed (or rather, what was left of it) synchronise her senses with the auristic notions of every object around her in order to escape Chiona Dusk's expression. Not that her instructor's aura was much better; the twining vines had become interleaved with barbed, stabbing spines of red and orange that tore at the air. It was definitely much harder to percieve things without the benefit of her glyphs, without their subconscious steadying, calming, regulating presence. Thick blocks of colour and nonsensical sound lay over what she knew, now, to be lacework regressions of geometrical shapes, or delicate symphonies cargoed with meaning – but, regardless of Chiona Dusk's opinion on the matter, it had been worth glyphing herself, even if her cheek and eyes were still throbbing, despite the Blessing.

The niggling little squiggle in the middle of the stone, tickling at the very edge of her augmented senses, for instance, she now knew that, if she focused on it long enough, hard enough, spent enough djed, it would resolve itself into the faint and fading ghost of heat, whilst the shimmering vibrations that muddied the silver-gray of the rest of the granite's aura she now knew were separate impressions of the great pressure the rock had been under in the far distant past. So what if she hadn't been able to sense them clearly without the aid of glyphs? The magic was still magic, yes?

Everything was wobbly and half-formed without those painstaking sets of glyphs, however, and pushing her auristics to try and See at anywhere near that level was causing her to practically haemmorhage djed, a fire that was rapidly burning up what little was left of her expendable reserves.

'Just a bit more,' Alses thought, stubborn in the confines of her own head. 'We'll show that purist our combination wasn't worthless!'

'Look at yourself,' snapped the more rational part of her mind, that bit of everyone (or rather, almost everyone) which put the brakes on murderous impulses, quashed the mad little voice that whispered 'Go on, jump' on high precipices and generally helped to maintain the facade of a reasonable, intelligent creature. 'You're going to burn out any second! Then what use will you be?'

Suddenly, it was as though every aura was as bright as the sun at noon, searing and somehow hot, brilliant brands that lashed across the back of her eyes. A pained shriek burst, unbidden, from her lips as the burning lines flashed into incandescence and then vision snapped off, abruptly, plunging her into complete darkness. Her hands were clawed over her eyes – she could feel the pressure of her fingertips, and the heat radiating from her palms, but it was as pitch black as a new moon at midnight.

“Not the dark,” she moaned, rocking backwards and forwards, reeling from the shock, unable to believe that the most precious of her senses had been snatched away, just like that. “Not the dark!”

“Apprentice!” the voice came as though through water. “Apprentice Alses, can you hear me?” There was worry, now, in that voice – Alses felt a flash of mean pleasure at that. 'Serve the Ice Flower right,' she thought, briefly, but the yawning darkness rose up against the distraction.

“Where's the sun?” she mumbled, then repeated herself, louder, more urgent. Her mind was coming apart at the seams, a patchwork welter of confused impressions and memories assaulting her. Phantom hands at her throat, feather-light caresses – and more; her face blushed furiously – across her body, sounds that had no physical source, snatches of conversations long past. She barely felt hands around her, helping and supporting, directing her stumbling steps.

A

“Back with us, I see.” Chiona's voice had returned to equanimity. Alses had no sense of the sun in the sky, no hint of its position, but as muscles instinctively bunched, retracting her eyelids, blessed sight returned! Blurry and wavy, distorted, as though seen through a bowl of water – it was water, actually, she discovered, on raising her fingertips to her eyes and finding them coming away wet; she was crying freely. A noise – somewhere between a hiccuping sob of relief and hysterical laughter - fought its way out of her throat. “What can you see?” A pause, and then “Apprentice Alses, focus on the question. What can you see?”

Alses sniffed, making an effort to pull herself back together. “It's all blurry,” she complained, though without any real heat. Seeing glorious light again was enough. “But it's night-time. Are there torches?” Bright smears of light around her, and the smell of woodsmoke.

“There are.” A sense of movement, and then a scent of jasmine drifted into Alses' sensitive nostrils. “Open your eyes again, Apprentice. How many fingers am I holding up?”

Blearily, Alses squinted at the vague shapes in front of her, the images seeming to seesaw and ripple across one another, flaring brightly where they superimposed on one another. “Four? Six?”

A sigh, and then the feel of silk – once touched, never forgotten – brushing across her eyelids. “Try again, Apprentice.”

Alses squinted – some of the water had been wiped away, and her vision was now much clearer. “Ah. Two. Sorry.”

“As you should be, Apprentice. Divine child of Syna and wise Konti both together make twice the fool, it seems. You could have been blinded!” her voice cracked out, iron-hard in its control but so effortlessly conveying anger – and, perhaps, some small part of concern. “I don't know who taught you before the Tower, and I don't know how they taught you, either – but if you haven't learned this yet, learn it now. Magic is dangerous business. An invaluable tool, yes, but one that will turn on its wielder in an instant, an instant, if given the chance! I suppose you were trying to prove something, that you pushed yourself so hard; instead, you vindicated me.” Two warm hands grabbed her shoulders and shook her back and forth. “Nothing, no argument or, or, or point of pride is worth the price of overgiving! Zintila give me strength; do you understand?” A deep, shuddering intake of breath. “Apprentice Alses, do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma'am,” she murmured obediently, somewhat dazed from the shaking.

“Good.” Another pause, the sound of hands on silk; smoothing down a dress, Alses guessed. “Good. You are to do no personal magic – of any sort – for at least two days. Preferably three.” A warm finger tapped her cheek. “You got off lightly this time, Apprentice. Next time you might not be so lucky. As your instructor, it is evident you are in dire need of remedial teaching.” Chiona Dusk rattled off a list of books, obviously from memory, each of which dealt with a differently-gruesome aspect of overgiving. “I expect you to have read all these and be prepared to answer questions on any and all of them the next time we meet – which will be in two weeks, to provide ample time for recovery and study both. Further, you are required to answer, in full and with references, the following questions. Bring them to the Tower secretary when you're finished – he will see they are conveyed to me.”

Chiona Dusk imperiously held out a single sheet of paper; Alses' slightly-shaky fingers took it and she squinted at the fine writing there.

Question One: What are the most common specific symptoms of overgiving for an aurist?

Question Two: Define 'secondary auras' and describe how and why their diminution and blocking may be useful in the practice of Auristics.

Question Three: Describe, with examples, the three main stages of overgiving, drawn from disciplines of personal magic other than auristics.

Question Four: Explain, from first principles, why glyphs can be interpreted by any wizard.

“Now, I have wasted quite enough time waiting for you to wake up and stop screaming in whatever barbaric tongue it is that you know besides Common, so I shall bid you a good evening, Apprentice. Do not disappoint me in your tasks.” 'Again' hung in the air, unsaid.

With a swish of silk, Chiona was gone, leaving Alses alone on one of the Dusk Tower's many terraces, surrounded by a ring of flaring, guttering torches.