Getting Back In The - Oh Petch It All

by **Thannis Daraktheon** on January 6th, 2014, 2:09 pm

Timestamp: 10th of Winter 513 AV

He didn't sleep any more. He just lay awake grasping the candle that had been left in his room by the owners of the Inn. It was life and warmth. It was the exact opposite of the Void. It was exactly what he needed right now. As soon as the sun began to rise in the morning he would leave the Inn. Sometimes he would find a place to sit and other times he would simply stare up at the sun. The sun was the exact polar opposite of the Void. Sometimes Wisp found himself muttering a prayer to Syna. He would always stop himself just short of saying her name. He didn't deserve the worship of other Gods. He was a twisted creature of Uldr now and he did not deserve the sun's radiance. He never tanned any more.

This particular morning, after he'd made his way down into Sunberth proper, he was approached by a cloaked individual. The man seemed rather shady. His walk was agitated and bore hints of aggression. “Good morning.” Wisp said tersely when the man was within range.

“Morning, my good man. Could I interest you in some fine wares?” Opening the side of his cloak he revealed many pockets and each pocket had a different piece of jewellery hanging out of it presenting their precious stones.

Wisp may never have grown up in Sunberth but he wasn't exactly a fool. It was probably all fake or stolen. In any case Wisp didn't exactly want any jewellery. What use would he have for sparkling gems? These were fit for ladies not men!

That was when he felt something. It was a slight little pressure in his side. His pocket! Wisp whipped around to catch the perpetrator but no-one was there. He whipped back around to face the jeweller but he was hurrying off down an alley. “Stop!” Thannis cried running after him...

Credit to Skerry

by **Thannis Daraktheon** on January 6th, 2014, 2:10 pm

He turned into the alley. The con man was now flanked by two rather burly looking men. What was this? A double con? First they pick your pockets then they mug you? For a brief moment he considered fighting. As quickly as he had thought of it he had also turned and fled from the alleyway. Mistake #1 – There were no guys flanking the exi-Oof! Wisp knocked into a man and sent him sprawling to the ground. Okay they had a guy flanking the exit. Not any more though, he thought as he sped out of the alleyway. He just hoped nobody had any ranged weapons. Just as the thought popped into his mind he swore he heard the thud of a crossbow bolt hitting the earth but he was fleeing so quickly he didn't actually see anything and rather hoped it was his imagination.

Wisp never turned to check how far ahead he was. He never even checked to make sure they were following him. After several turns and thoroughly tiring himself out he took a seat on top of a barrel and panted. No one seemed to be after him for now at least. Oh if Uldr could see him now. Pathetic, the Gods voice still rang in his ear. Truth be told Wisp wondered if he could ever forget the thunderous sound of the God's voice.

He did a quick damage assessment of all of his belongings and found five gold mizas and a few silver mizas were missing. Whomever had picked his pocket had done just that. Stolen from only one pocket. Wisp scowled. He'd rather thought he was better than this. Better than being robbed in broad daylight by a common pickpocket.

He considered going back. Perhaps there was a way he could get his money back. He didn't have the speed or training to fight three thugs and a conman. He'd need to be some sort of expert for that. Okay so magic then. Hmm, the Void. He hadn't... Not since... It was hard to think about. That dark place. No direction. Everything was nothing and nothing was everything. It was... It was... Wisp had to take deep, calming breaths to steady his mind. It wouldn't do to get worked up. He didn't know what he would do if he got worked up.

He would need Glyphs. Certainly. He'd only practised Glyphing theory before. For his Exam he would have had to produce a real working scroll but that had been a ways off and he'd not gotten around to practician it yet. He supposed he had to try sometime. He'd bought parchment and ink the day before last. If anything was a prompt to learn how to do this it had certainly been this event. Then again... Well... No, he couldn't let fear rule his life. Not many got a second chance like he had and he had to make the best of it. He had to fulfil his potential.

Receipt :

Credit to Skerry

by **Thannis Daraktheon** on January 6th, 2014, 2:10 pm

It had been a while since he had sat hunched over a desk with his ink and quill out. He tried to remember his lessons. What was the first thing you were meant to do when you created a Glyph? Wisp frowned. He sat in his small room above the Aquillar Hotsprings hunched over a small desk they had provided him. He reached down and pulled out an empty notebook. He opened it up to the first page dipped his quill into ink and wrote.

First experiments with Void Glyphing – Void Premises

Okay what was his premise. What did he want the scroll to do and how did he want it to do it.

This scroll will release one Portal to the Other Side when the word “Abast” is spoken.

Was that enough? He'd noted what he wanted to and how it was to be done. It didn't sound like enough. He thought about what the actual sigil would look like. A focus with a barrier around it and a wee trigger at the side. It wasn't complex but he feared the task might be. There was also a strange, nagging doubt in the back of his head. Maybe he ought to be more descriptive about the Portal. He struck out the last sentence and wrote a new one underneath.

This scroll will release one Portal to the Other Side for ten seconds before collapsing when the word “Abast” is spoken.

Now that looked a bit complicated to draw. He'd have to put in a switch and he wasn't quite sure how to make those work yet. They were tricky. He'd always gotten them wrong at the University. Maybe there was a simpler way to do all this. Glyphs could repeat what they were shown if done right. Maybe that was the way to go. He scratched out his previous sentence and began afresh for the second time.

This scroll will copy the djed use within the barrier and repeat it when the word “Abast is spoken.

Wisp smiled. This was better. He liked this. It would work this time for sure. He outstretched his hand in front of him. He reached out just one finger. He closed his eyes and thought about Djed. He though about it streaming out of his finger. He thought about it becoming nothingness. It would be completely empty. The opposite of the sun. He opened his eyes and saw the black dot just in front of his finger. He stared at it with a mixture of apprehension and respect. “You killed me, didn't you? You insignificant speck of nothing. My murderer and my only weapon. My nemesis and my saviour.” That last sentence was not said to the small portal. His thoughts had turned to Uldr for a moment. Clearing the God from his head he collapsed the portal in on itself. And hence died the first Portal of the Marked of Uldr.

It had been such a tiny portal. He wondered how big the average shoulder to shoulder length of a person was. He wondered how many times that those burly thugs had been. As he considered this an unbidden thought popped into his head. The barrier would have to be extremely large. If he wanted it to record exactly what occurred within the barrier than in order to get a larger Portal he would have to make it look almost like it had risen from the paper. In other words rather than laying flat in the air on it would have to stand tall meaning someone would literally have to walk into it. It took him about 10 to 15 seconds to open a portal all the way up to be able to engulf a human. About 10 to 12 to start it and about four or five seconds for it to grow.

Wisp scowled. There was no way this was going to work. Voiding was not a Combat Art. Only a Master could truly use it to such an advantage. Thannis scowled. He would have to resort to brute-ish methods. He was going to have to rely on the other gift. This body was strong and it really didn't look it. This was an advantage. Probably the only one he had. He would make some scrolls now but tomorrow he would go to the armoury and get something to turn this advantage into an asset.

Credit to Skerry

by **Thannis Daraktheon** on January 6th, 2014, 2:11 pm

He put the notebook to the side and rolled out his first sheet of parchment. Okay it was time to put ink to paper. First he would draw the focus. His professor had always loved a star. He'd always believed there too be something kind of magical about a star. Thannis thought that was nonsense of course but he couldn't help falling back on what he knew. What he drew was a little bit more intricate than a star. There were many interlocking lines that came in the at the middle to form up the star.

Wisp was almost done when his hand, for some reason or another, gave a little jolt and curved. Wisp gasped and fumed. He'd had too much good luck already with his drawing. He didn't want to waste parchment but he knew his focus of all things had to be completely perfect. Then he saw it. A curve. Yes. He could turn it into a circle within the star. He did so and sat back looking at his master piece. He was rather surprised how well he had managed. The lines were as straight as he could have hoped for.

The Focus :

It wasn't exactly fancy (he'd seen one that looked rather like a vast and complicated painting once) but it would work for his uses. He wrote a word in each of the four triangles around the central square. Daeqt he wrote on the left traingle “To make by defining boundaries” Djed he wrote on the top one “That which I have shown” Pechit he wrote on the right one “to unite” Abase-Roza he wrote on the bottom one “beginning and end”.

Wisp took a deep breath. Those simple words had taken over a half hour. The Ancient Tongue was not his strong suit. Any Ancient Being who came upon this scroll would likely be traumatised by it's inaccuracy but it was the best he could do. He was confident that he had drawn this glyph well enough. Time for the barrier.

Credit to Skerry

by **Thannis Daraktheon** on January 6th, 2014, 2:12 pm

Barriers were easy. Well he had always thought of them as such. A circle, he preferred interlocking ones, around the focus but far enough from it so that it didn't actually touch the barrier. He made a mental note to buy paint brushes next time he was at the seaside market. It would make the design of the barrier much easier. Finally, after some time (for it was indeed very necessary to work slowly. He'd become rusty with his drawing which had never been entirely good to begin with), the barrier was done.

The Barrier :

He littered some binding words around it and... Presto, he was finished. Barriers were your friend. So now it was time for the verbal trigger. He didn't really know how to make it respond to his own voice but by making it triggered by Abase than surely no one would accidentally say that. He'd be fine. Wisp drew out his trigger slowly and methodically. It was symmetrical so he drew half from one side in and then the other half from that side in to meet the already drawn part.

The Trigger :

The usual triggery words were input and Wisp gave a great sigh. It was done. Several hours and a lot of thought had been sacrificed for this one scroll and it was still practically useless. For now, after all that, came the tricky part. Now was the time for Voiding.

Credit to Skerry

by **Thannis Daraktheon** on January 6th, 2014, 2:13 pm

Wisp didn't want to. He was tired. Not physically but mentally. He needed some break time to reorient himself. Then again he didn't really have any break things to do. Perhaps he could go for a walk? Wisp looked around the small room. It would probably be much better to arm this scroll outside too considering how small the room was. He didn't want to... He couldn't face the possibility of... Doing that again. He had to take all precautions.

So he rolled up the scroll looking wantonly depressed at all the other bare sheets of parchment. He was getting better but he still did not retain the skill in Glyphing nor in drawing that would allow him to make multiple scrolls without it taking many, many hours. It had taken long enough to create just one. He sighed and swept out of the room. He nodded at old Max as he left the springs. If he had any idea of the old codger's past he would have up and moved down the Drunken Fish within the hour.

It was still day outside. After all he had been mugged in the morning. Of course the day was wearing thin. It was winter after all. Wisp sighed as he took in the sun's rays. “Oh the bountiful sun, praise be your luminescence, your luminosity, which brings life and heat into our world and separates us from the cold Void. Your divinity-” Wisp took a deep sigh. He had never been the religious sort before. His time in the Void had given him a deep appreciation of the simple realities of ordinary life. In the Void there was no direction. No solids. No light. No air. No warmth. No cold. It was just infinite nothing. Infinite fear.

Wisp suddenly felt very cold. He hurried off down into Sunberth trying not to give the Void another thought. He tried to think instead where he would perform his recordings. Sunberth was a dangerous city and he didn't need to be worrying about being mugged while he was concentrating. Indeed the more and more he thought about it his room seemed to be the safest place despite it's risks of self-voiding.

He sighed wondering if it was all for not and decided he might just have a sneak peak at his sigil. So ducking into an alley he'd made sure was empty first he popped the top off the scrollcase and withdrew his scroll. He unravelled it and instantly gave a grunt of anger. Smudged! He hadn't let the ink dry. Wisp crumpled the paper in his hands before violently ripping it apart. Hours of work! Hours of work ruined!

Wisp held his head fury building up in him until he was trembling with rage and that was when a drunk man stumbled into him. The man had really picked his timing. Thannis reacted out of both rage and instinct. He grabbed the man who was almost silhouetted in the declining dusk. He threw him around smacking him into a wooden wall. The wood splintered and the man fell to the ground. Thannis kicked him transferring all his rage onto this one man. His vision was blurred. Everything was a haze of rage and anger. The man didn't arch in pain or really make any kind of reaction to the kick. He had either passed out or was already dead. This didn't seem to matter to Thannis who continued to kick. Again and again.

Some time later reality seemed to come back to Thannis. He gave the man a last, limp kick and sighed. What had he done this time? He looked up and down the alleyway. He couldn't see much. It was fully dark by this time. Thannis crouched down next to the man in the darkness. “Oh dear, someone forgive me. What have I done? What is this anger that seems so pronounced now? Did it always lie within me or is it another cruel gift of my Master?”

He groped around in the darkness to put his hand on the man's head. Almost as if he wanted to say sorry. He touched something sticky and wet. He brought his finger up to his nose and whiffed. Oh! Thannis eyes lit up hungrily. His face twisted into a snarl. He was lost to a different feeling now. Hunger! His hands reached out instinctively in the darkness. Pushing his shoulders one way and his head the other he sunk his unnaturally sharp teeth into the neck of the dead man. Because he was no longer alive the blood didn't spray as it had done that first time. It made it harder to drink. He had to really work his jaw muscles to suck.

When he was satisfied he stood back up eyeing every corner of the darkness suspiciously. If he had to... do this he ought to think up a better way of doing it. They'd lynch him if they found out he was a Voider. What would they do if they found out he was a monster? Wisp put out his foot feeling for the man's neck. He pressed down with the full weight of his body feeling the neck crush down. He was rather hoping that the bite marks would be hard to distinguish if the neck was all broken and squished. Thannis sighed as he turned and left the scene of the crime. Thannis had no idea what he was doing. No one had prepared him for this. He was a Zeltivan Voider. A trash disposer. What had happened to his life!?

Credit to Skerry

by **Vanari** on February 20th, 2014, 5:49 pm

Thannis Daraktheon

Observation	+4 XP
Philosohpy	+2 XP
Running	+1 XP
Meditation	+1 XP
Planning	+2 XP
Glyphing	+3 XP
Writing	+1 XP
Praying	+1 XP
Voiding	+1 XP
Brawling	+1 XP
Drawing	+2 XP

Lores :

Loot :

Notes :