Closed [Sullin's Residence]A First Step[Amelia Cross]

[Clyde Sullins]

6 Summer 513 Clyde had got a message delivered to Amelia, saying to meet him today for her first lesson, in his lab. She would be able to enter into the common area, but would need to knock in order to enter the lab. Once she knocked, he would unlock the door, let her in, and re lock it behind her. Upon entering, she would see his preparations for the lesson. He had sat in his lab this morning, going over some last minute things. He had parchment, quills, and ink, all out on his desk. This would be for showing her some Glyphing, just the basics. Once she had that down, he would move on to Reimancy, and help her figure out how to exude res, and what her element was. Sitting on the pedestal in the center of the room, was 3 objects. A candle that had yet to be lit, a bowl of water, and a rock half the size of Clyde's fist, sitting in a small bed of dirt. The room was filled with air, thus making the fourth and final element. Clyde then waited, meditating, closing his eyes, sitting on the ground with his legs crossed, and focusing on his breathing. He pictured the void, emptiness, nothing, and breathed out. Clearing his mind, quietening his thoughts, as he waited. Breath in. Breath out. Waiting for the sound of a knock at the door.

[Amelia Cross]

Getting up earlier than the past days, Amelia started her preparation routine of the morning. Ever since her initiation, the first steps being washing and bandaging her wound with a fresh set of bondages. The cuts were healing relatively fast, so she was sure it wouldn’t be much longer that she would need to bondage them. That out of the way, she braided her hair, in order to keep it from getting in the way of whatever Clyde had in store for her today. A few more things done here and there, her lips drawn on and an average meal consumed, and she was ready.

Walking was once again not in plans for the girl, as she kept the words ‘rested’ in mind. And despite the fact, that Amelia was able to walk the distance on an everyday basis, was it for work or other needs, but this was different, so a ravosal was once more her choice. Her trip along the canals was calm, the weather was nice, as always and the man was also pleasant to chat with. And before she noticed it, she had arrived.

The girl stepped on the walkways and paid the man. As always a smile on her face as she wished a good day. Finally, she turned around to come to the door. She was said to meet Clyde at the lab, but common courtesy told her to knock on the main door before pushing it open and entering. The common area was slightly dim, what made sense from it having one window. She closed the door behind her and slowly, step by step, came closer to the door that led to his lab. Amelia had a slight shiver come over her as she remembered the experience of her initiation, but it wasn’t horrible enough to flee, not to mention, she didn’t really have that option anymore.

Finally, manning up and bringing her small knuckle to the door, she knocked tree times. And waiting for Clyde to open the door, let her look drift away to the paintings she had noticed upon her first arrival. For a moment, the thought of getting him something nice, a painting of sorts, crossed her mind…she was sure that with the help of her father, she could find something really wonderful. But, she was also sure that if her teacher wished to have something like that, he would.

[Clyde Sullins]

Clyde meditation was interrupted, as he heard three knocks at the door. He got up, headed to the door, unlocked it, motioned for Amelia to enter, and then closed and locked the door. "Hello. I see you have arrived on time, good. Today will be your first Reimancy lesson. But first, I think an introduction to Glyphing is needed, to help you with it, to better focus and channel your djed. Really it will help with any and all magics you practice." Clyde led Amelia over to the desk, and told her to sit in the chair. Before her was several pieces of parchment, blank, along with ink and a quill. He would stand behind Amelia, forcing her to either turn about in the seat to look at him, or to face away from him. Either way, he would pace about as he spoke, only occasionally looking at Amelia during a particularly important phrase. "Now, I would like to know what you know of Glyphing. You have seen me use it, when I initiated you into Reimancy. A procedure which was greatly expedited and eased by those Glyphs. But what do you know of them? What if anything have you heard they can do? " Clyde would give Amelia all of the time it took for her to explain what she knew, or had heard, about Glyphs. Likely if she knew anything, it would be an exaggerated tale of what they could do. Once she was done, Clyde would smile at her, and begin speaking once more. "Now, this is what Glyphing does. At its base, Glyphing affects and influences magic. All magics, both personal and world, are affected, guided, and influenced by Glyphing. It can allow you to use your magic in ways not normally possible, or to combine normally disparate branches of magic into one greater thing." "But on its own, Glyphs are simply shapes. Shapes unique and important to the person who draws them, given intent and purpose by the Glypher. But on their own, they are just shapes, ink, written nonsense. By their own, they are a boat sitting in the middle of a dry mud caked puddle. It is only when water flows by, that they gain purpose, and do something." "Magic is like the boats on the waters of Ravok, flowing about on their own, doing as they will, uncontrolled, not penned up. Half the time they will not go were you want, or will go about haphazardly, being wasteful of time and energy. But Glyphing, is like the canals. It is a guiding force, which by itself does nothing and would be silly, but when combined with the waters and the boats, it is given purpose and influence. Now the canals guide the boats, forcing them to go they way you want, directly, without waste, without getting lost half way across the lake." "Glyphs can guide and control magic. Store or release it once you are a bit more skilled. Channel the magic to a spot or along a route, deflect it from were you do not want it, or confine the effects of the magic to a specified place. "

[Amelia Cross]

Amelia had already realized that Clyde, isn’t the one to waste time on polite chatter. He aims straight to the point, probably a reason he is so well off with magic. Even now, there was just the direct question, that Amelia had little to know knowledge for ”well…I have heard of the discipline, but the knowledge was limited to overhearing…from what I heard though, it’s a form of magic that can work as a trap…but how exactly it works, I have no clue” she confessed, but wasn’t ashamed of her knowledge being as little as it was ”but from you earlier mentions of the initiation, and channeling…I can assume two things, that the glyphs disappear as soon as they have done their job…and that it has channeling or maybe even gathering properties?”

The time she sat by the desk, and spoke, she didn’t really turn around to look at him. Maybe rude, but she preferred it this way, as it felt common. Her mother used to teach her while being behind her, so did her father. This just felt, safer.

Everything he said came off as new and interesting to Amelia. She was curious to know more, but she was also confused. Was Glyping really a magical discipline? It sounded more…more of a science and most definitely made her think it was quite useless without any other form of magical knowledge. So as soon as he was done, she began her own set of questions that were thrown at him ”is glyping a magical discipline then? Or not? From what you said, it makes me think it’s worthless without someone being adept in some form of magic…” she started, actually turning to look at him ”and if the symbols are meaningful only to the user, then does it mean it has no rules? No existing patterns? Isn’t that too chaotic to be safe then?...and…if it stores magic…how does it work exactly? Can’t you put away too much and sink into overgiving? ”

Waiting for Clydes answers, she turned back to face the desk, the parchments and ink…was he planning to make her draw glypes? ”and do you need special tools for it? Or is simple ink enough…if it is…isn’t it too accessible of an art?” so much like when she was a child. "its so weird, it sounds so simple yet so...complex and dangerous..."

[Clyde Sullins]

Clyde finished his short rant on Glyphing, having once more fallen into teacher mode. He had long since considered becoming a magical teacher, especially for Glyphing, but his life simply had not worked out to allow him to do so. Once he was done, it seemed Amelia had questions of her own. Some he would have answered in due time, but others were more vague or random, unique to her perspective. "Yes Glyphing is magic. In general, anything that affects magic, is by itself magic. But what makes it magic is not in what it does, but how it does it. Often that is the case with world magics. With personal magic, you expend djed, to transmute it into a magical effect. Cause, and effect. Direct, and obvious. But world magics are not like that. They work by some intrinsic nature of the world, some set of laws that allow them to work. World Magics one and all allow you to skirt normal conventions, what is normally possible, and go beyond to affect the world in magical ways." "It is not by accident that the common shape used in World Magics is the circle, and that it is also a recurring symbol. The circle is a strong shape, never ending, flowing, and often in world magic a circle is either directly required, or will greatly aid your work. Glyphing is no different, and I often try to include circles either directly or indirectly in the intent and layout of my Glyphs." Clyde paused for a moment to take his breath, and to allow his words to sink in, before continuing with her questions. "So perhaps you would say a quill is useless, without the ink? Just because it works better with something else, does not make it a useless tool. It is a tool all the same, but meant for specific uses. And you will find most magics are like that, they only work in their own specified way, within the limits of the craft. And when you are truly good at Glyphing, as I am, you will see many other uses for it than just affecting and storing your own magic. That Grand Oath I made, is one such example. But there are many more. But it is a tool all the same, meant to affect magic." "There are some rules, some commonly used sigils, however the important thing is not what those symbols or Glyphs look like, but what intent and meaning they have to you as the creator. But you cannot just smear ink on a parchment, and expect it to do wonders. Of course, being able to see these patterns, and understand what another Glypher is attempting to do with his Glyphs, is something that will come in time. Now, I could glance at another Glyphers work, and be able to tell what each symbol and Glyph will do, what sigils were used, and what the Glyphing will do." "As for overgiving, you cannot just store djed in a Glyph, it does not work that way. Glyphs will aid in focusing your task, and possibly in expediting it, but it will not make you expend less djed than if you had created it without Glyphing. You can store completed spells in a focus, but not pure djed or say something that is unstable like your res. You would simply cast a spell like normal, and send it into the open focus to hold it. And it will come out in reverse, the same way you sent it in." "As for tools, not really, though most commonly used is ink and quill on parchment, or paint on other things. You could as easily draw your Glyphs in dust on a table, or scratched in the dirt, or painted in blood. The shapes are important, not what they are cast in." Her final question actually made Clyde smile for a moment, as it seemed rather humorous to him. "To accessible... Answer me this, if I gave you paint and an easel, could you make a piece of art worthy of tales, of being put in the halls of one of the families, and of people coming from far off cities to see it for its beauty? Just because you have the base components, and can draw a sketch, that does not make you an artist, nor a great one. Just as anyone COULD pick up paint and easel and draw a masterpiece, for the same reason as why they do not, everyone does not Glyph. It is a skill just like any other, and not an easy one at that." Clyde would pause, giving Amelia time to answer his questions, before going on to the next subject. Next he would explain the various commonly used sigils to her, and how they broke down into Glyphs.

[Amelia Cross]

Amelia chose to stay quiet and just listen to the answers to her own question. She was found of listening to answer to her own questions, despite them being silly or maybe useless to someone as Clyde, probably even dumb. But Amelia learned from scratch and she was a highly curios child, that grew into being just as, if not more curios. She listened carefully and refused to think of things other than the words coming from her teacher. Clinging on every bit of information, and sticking something in between only when she felt that it was asked for.

”so, no symbols is really out of place in a glyphe? And to be successful at creating them, you should be aware of them all?” quite obvious, and she didn’t really want him to drift into another monologue, she just wished for a simple and short answer, maybe even just a nod.

Only towards the end of his monologue did Amelia realize how much of a fool she must have appeared to him, or was she being paranoid? It was uncertain, but the feeling wasn’t one that Amelia enjoyed. In a subconscious gesture Amelia covered her mouth with her palms. Not slapping them over her lips, just holding them casually over them, as if she wanted to stop herself from saying anything. To be more true to herself, she just didn’t want to humiliate herself any more with awkward answers and even sillier questions.

But she couldn’t avoid speaking, not with the last question from Clyde, that came directly at her. She could have probably just nodded and avoided speaking at all. But, her nature didn’t let her chose that way... ”I assume not, and it’s the same with ever skill, isn’t it…everything requires practice and knowledge… and basic knowledge are not enough to work with the art of painting…nor with glyphing…you can know what colors complement each other, and you can know what some basic symbols stand for…but…it wouldn’t be enough, would it?” a question that didn’t ask fro an answer ”no magic is accessible…and no magic is easy, but …it’s just that, you made it sound…so simple” Amelia confessed, with a slight blush of embarrassment on her pale skin.

[Clyde Sullins]

Clyde shrugged, as Amelia asked her next question. "Sort of. More or less any symbol can be used, to be counted as a Glyph. And there is no knowing all of them, as it will vary person to person. Sometimes I use a Glyph multiple times, others I will customize the Glyph to the specific usage of Glyphing." Once he had finished his last chunk of speech about Glyphing, he waited to hear Amelia's answer, if she had one. In a way it had almost been rhetorical, but she might have answered it anyways, as it turned out she did. However as Amelia finished up, and blushed scarlet, Clyde smiled once more. It was funny how close she had come to the truth, in her statement of "you made it sound…so simple." "That is because at its base Amelia, Glyphing is very, very, simple. It is more or less unique in that respect. Now don't get me wrong, you will learn many a trick over the time you study and get better at Glyphing. But unlike most other magics, at least all that I know of, you do not learn new techniques, new ways of doing things. You simply build upon what you first learned." "Once you learn the basics I will teach you today, you will more or less have everything you will need to know to take you to its mastery. You will simply get better at using those basic lessons, and learn to use them in new and inventive ways. But you will still be using those same lessons you learned on this first introduction. You will just apply them differently, or on a larger or more refined scale, or in ways you previously could not succeed at." "What is a Grand Oath but a trigger laid upon the foundations of the Ukalas? What is anti-magic but a usage of barriers and paths? And triggers... Those especially will change as you get better. Becoming ever more complex, ever more defined and explicit." Clyde paused for a moment, looking at Amelia, a smile on his face, as he fondly spoke of Glyphing. "I like to think of Glyphing as the alphabet. Oh, and you have probably already noticed, but I like using metaphors to make things clearer, and easier to understand." "Anyways, Glyphing is the alphabet. Just like with learning to write and read, it first starts with some very simple things, learning of your letters. Once you have learned them all, there are no new letters to learn. Instead, you will combine them into ever varying ways, into ever bigger words. That is just how Glyphing works. And though you will start out with some simple little words, cat, bat, dog, once you are truly skilled, you will be writing the equivalent of sagas and epic poems, each time you Glyph." "Now, the basic component of Glyphing, is a single Glyph. This is as far as Glyphing breaks down. Each one its own symbol drawn. Though sometimes they can be so close, they all but morph into one mass of writing." "When you collect a number of Glyphs into one thing, to perform one task, it is called a sigil. Such as an entire scroll, to hold a spell inside until it is triggered to release. That would be one sigil. This series of interconnected Glyphs can perform various tasks, and will have many parts, using some of the commonly used blocks of Glyphs to form the sigil." Next, Clyde would go in depth on these various blocks of Glyphs, which would be so important for Amelia in her coming usage of Glyphing.

[Amelia Cross]

Amelia enjoyed seeing Clyde smile. Probably, because despite his young age, he came off as a distant and slightly cold man, maybe it was just her imagination or paranoia, but it was still there. So, when he smiled, she felt a bit more welcomed and she saw Clyde, as more human, even if the smile could be nothing more than his amusement of her cluelessness or even mockery, though she doubted the last. Either way, she eagerly continued listening as he spoke of glyphing and answered her silly statement, somehow he appeared to be slightly more cheerful, something in his voice gave out the impression he was particularly fond of the topic.

His latter comparing of glyphing to the alphabet made it sound even easier. She became more and more eager to take a try at this…form of magic. Even despite her knowing that her skills of drawing were limited to drawing stick figures and pretty letter, she sincerely hopped she didn’t need to learn how to paint for this, though she wouldn’t have much choice of she did. Regardless, her eagerness didn’t stop her from paying full attention to the monologue of her teacher. Though it awoke another silly question in her mind, but for latter, probably.

The whole concept of sigils and symbols, it all seemed to be understood. The only part when she seemed to be confused was the mention of anti-magic. But the term made her think that Clyde would explain it either way, as it seemed to have something to do with the art of glyphing. But as soon as he finished explaining it, she couldn’t help but speak, but not exactly about glyphing, at least not directly. ”Is it me, or are you particularly fond of this discipline of magic? You seem to enjoy speaking of it more…you smile more often when you speak of it, and even your voice seems to be a bit more cheerful” she wasn’t sure how he would react to her casual mention, but it couldn’t be all that bad, right? ”or were you just in a bad mood the other times we met?”

oocsorry for being overly short, but I couldn’t do anything else, without pushing it too much

[Clyde Sullins]

As Amelia asked her question, Clyde gave her a questioning look. "I... Hmmm... Perhaps so. I suppose I just like Glyphing, as I can actually use and enjoy Glyphing, enjoy pushing its barriers and seeing what I can do, without fear of going insane or destroying myself. It makes it a more enjoyable magic to practice, when it does not require one to be so serious and vigilant." Clyde paused for a moment, thinking about Reimancy. "Reimancy on the other hand, is a very serious magic. It seems to almost always be a life or death thing, a mistake can mean death or injury of yourself or someone else around. While combining Glyphing with other things can make it dangerous, as dangerous as the other magic itself since it is in fact holding or guiding it, Glyphing is always safe and secure. You can't kill a man with just Glyphing, nor can you kill yourself." Clyde let out a sigh, as thinking of Reimancy had brought him back to a more serious state of mind. "Alright, so the last thing, is to teach you each of the commonly used blocks of a completed sigil. There are five of them, though you don't need to always use all, and a simple scroll, as I will show you, only take the first three.You don't even need to know the last two for awhile, as you wont be using them. But I still want you to know them. So here is a simple scroll, using a focus to hold the magic, a barrier to keep it in, and a trigger to activate and lower the barrier, which as I said is what holds the magic inside the focus in. Which means once I activate the trigger, the barrier will drop, and the magic will be let out." Clyde went over to the desk and took a piece of parchment, along with a quill, and wet it in the ink pot, before quickly scrawling out some glyphs at lightning speed. He made a circle for the focus, a curved series of dashes that looked like a wavy line with gaps, as the barrier, and three lines that almost looked like a triangle with the single end poking into the barrier, and the other two ends sticking out. However none of the lines of the triangle touched. Next to the trigger he wrote: Activate when Incredible Inedible Intestines is spoken, to lower the barrier. "So, that is a simple scroll. At a starting level, such things would be far to unstable for you to make and expect to hold long term, but you can still practice it. So, a focus as you can see is one Glyph. It is always one Glyph, and is unique in that. It can store the djed of magic, though only stable magic. So res cannot be stored, as it is still unstable and decays." "Next, is the barrier. It is a series of Glyphs which encircle something, such as the focus, to keep magic from passing over it. In this case, of a scroll, it keeps the magic inside and from being released from the focus. So since magic cannot cross a barrier, a strong enough one will keep other magic outside of it, and magic already inside the barrier will stay inside of it." "The last one I used is the trigger. As you can see, I wrote out what conditions must be met for it to activate, which will lower the barrier. It can either turn on or turn off other parts of a sigil, though it is more commonly used to turn parts off. The important part is the wording, and the condition which must be met for the action to take place. As you get better, so will your triggers." "The other two are paths, which are more or less a pair of barriers side by side, which forms a road of sorts for magic to go down, to guide it. I used those during your initiation Glyphing. And a switch, more or less works as a fork in the road. It can act as a opening fork, to spread out a magic across the two sides of the fork, or as a closing fork, to concentrate the effects of two magics into one. " Clyde paused for a moment, and showed Amelia a blank piece of parchment, and gave her back the ink and quill, and left the scroll he made out for her to see. "Now, I want you to write out each of the 5 blocks on one side, and when you are done turn it over and draw a complete scroll sigil on the back with the same 3 blocks as mine used. Though using your own Glyphs, with meaning to you in the symbols."

[Amelia Cross]

And once more, the words of death came up in a conversation about magic. She should have probably gotten used to it, as it manages to find its way into even the most little mentions of reimancy. Was the practice really as dangerous as Clyde had managed it to appear? Amelia hopped not. She might be patient, but when angry she can become quite moody…and it had been made clear that passion like that doesn’t work well with magic.

Her eyes were attempting to follow her mentor’s movements as he drew the glyph. It appeared to be so simple in it’s of way. There were no really complex symbols and the whole image of the glyph appeared to be fairly easy to reproduce, at least to what Amelia had expected it to be. The only part that confused Amelia was the trigger. In her head, she had thought of a bit different explanation of it, a bit fancier would be the best explanation, probably. Either way, it was not what she had expected. ”It can store magic, stable…but what is stable magic? Isn’t it all…unstable?” the girl wondered, upon the mention of the qualities of a glyph.

Upon being told to write down each block of a glype, she didn’t worry. She memorized what Clyde had said, well, memorized fairly well. Making her believe it wouldn’t be that hard to pull out the core of his words, without the need to copy it directly. So without much worry, Amelia brought the piece of parchment closer and wet the quill in ink repeatedly as she repeated what he had said before in her head.

First, she wrote down the word Focus and underlined the name before dropping slightly lower and beginning to write ‘a focus, is a single glyph, that can store [only] stable magic within it’ hopping that was enough and close enough to the point to not need extra explanations, that Amelia probably had missed.

Next came in the word ’barrier’, also underlined, and a line bellow she began writing it’s explanation ’a barrier is a series of glyphs, arranged in a manner of surrounding a part of a sigil, most commonly the focus. So the magic inside the barrier stays there, and other can’t enter.’ guessing that mentioning, that only skilled…glyphers? can actually keep other magic from entering.

Skipping the trigger, she wrote down ’paths’ in the same manner as before, explaining it as simple as ’two sets of glyphs, meant to guide the magic, being the path it follows’, and then she wrote down ’switch’ that last didn’t really come off difficult, as she explained it as ’a glyphe used to either split, or merge the magical effect’ so far so good. Yet, she didn’t know how to exactly go around the trigger.

She wasn’t sure, was it the wording that confused her, as she was never really as good in it as she’d like to believe, or was it the whole concept that brought up questions, but she couldn’t really come around and figure out what would be clearest to her. So she decided to copy what Clyde had said ’ It can either turn on or turn off other parts of a sigil, though it is more commonly used to turn parts off. The wording of the conditions is highly important.’ a little fix from her own part, just to remember the need of improving her own skills in it.

Amelia wasn’t sure, was Clyde able to read what she wrote down, so she didn’t really wait to hear an affirmation from him. She just fanned the parchment with her palm, to slightly increase the speed of the ink to dry. One thing she hatted was smudged ink! So as soon as she felt sure enough about the ink, she flipped it and began thinking, thinking about what her glyph would look like, occasionally dropping a look at the one done by Clyde.

A bit of thinking, and she came out with a concept, no, design. As she knew the meanings of the symbols as her father had explained them, but they didn’t really mean anything to Amelia directly.

She wet the quill once more and began drawing the focus, in a form of a ‘u’, the base flat and the stroke sharp. To end it, she drew a circle within its middle, and with that last stroke, she was done with the focus. Moving on to the barrier was simple. It was just a circle shape that was formed from a series of small symbols, a cross which was slightly arched and a simplified symbol that reminded a spider, the two mixing between each other. ”so far, so good” she thought as the last symbol was drawn.

Now she stood to face a small challenge. The trigger, she decided to copy the whole concept that Clyde had made. The trigger was formed like an open beak, with a circle in-between. The closed part of it was touching the barrier and then she proceeded into writing the conditions, well that was a problem as well. Was it supposed to be serious? Or could it be something silly? People would be less likely to figure it out, but did it matter? ’ Activate when Dance of the Ladybug is spoken, to lower the barrier.’ Well, could have been worse. Right?

"like this?"