The Glyphing Ghost [Noaru]

by **Gad** on April 15th, 2014, 7:42 am

Spring 11, 514AV
Just West of the Aquilar Hot Springs

Here it was, a good a place as any. And the dark, the dark helped. But, of course, he needed some light to do the work by. He retrieved a flint, the fire starting kit, and the torch. It was like a small log, a branch, with one end lathered in tar and oil, and wrapped with some kind of cloth. Snikt snikt went the flint. He tried for maybe ten bells to get the sparks on the flammable end, and then it lit up. Now, there was light. Something for the wizard to see his work in the dark. It wasn't like anyone was looking, or cared that he was out here, but he wasn't always comfortable working on this sort of thing during the day. This sort of thing being magic. He needed something to shield him from the hateful eyes, the predatory gaze of the mob that would be too eager to beat to death or string him up, just so they could have someone to blame their problems on. He didn't take it personally though. He'd stopped doing that along time ago. He'd just come to the realization that people were dumb, and in large numbers they were dangerous, but didn't tend to get any smarter. So, he'd settled on just avoiding that confrontation altogether being the smart move.

Now, what was it? Ah yes, the glyphs. The summoning, that caused quite a bit more ruckus and would need to be carried out away from here, somewhere where the sounds and smells wouldn't carry. The glyphs also left some form of physical evidence, but they were largely unreadable to anyone not initiated into the craft and much more quiet than the summoning. Still, they weren't something you'd leave hanging around after you were done, but, of course, Gad didn't intend to. Mud, for whatever reason, was his preferred medium. He supposed it's inconspicuous nature was what drew him to it. Gad didn't much like the idea of being seen around with ink all over his clothes, stained with indigo like some sort of scholar, or banker, bother having more wit and money than he'd present himself as, respectively. Mud, though, no one looked at. Muddy hands, elbows, knees? Well, you were just working. Where? Oh, the mine. Oh, you work in the mine? Sorry, long day, meant the field. Oh, look at the time, got to go. There, tied up. Neat. No questions that couldn't be answered, no answers that wouldn't be forgotten. Only problem with the mud was, it was a seasonal occurrence. Easily rectified, of course.

Gad first rubbed the sole of his shoe against the ground, brushing any debris off of the patch of foliage free dirt he'd selected to work on. Once it was cleared, he took out his water-skin, which was filled fat with fluid. He untwisted the top and started to pour it out over the ground until he had a small working space nearly two feet by two that was saturated with water. He picked up a handy twig which was twice the length of his index and fatter than his thumb. Like a pen, or a brush, and without the hand of a master scribe, he dug it into the wet earth. The reddish clay soil that packed the ground beneath the city of Sunberth cracked and caved as he carved it with the stick. Good. Now, what was the glyph? There were a few that he was sure could come of use. Something for summoning, that also worked for the projection. He needed stability, fluidity, and something else... transmission is what he settled on. First, stability. It was the glyph most familiar to him, so he was able to recall it in his mind the most easily. He closed his eyes gently, so that the flickering flame of the torch in his right hand was still easily perceived. He breathed in, and out, slowly, calmly, and let himself be transfixed by the flames as much as he could. The warmth coming off of it, the rhythm of it's crackles and breaks syncing to his own breathing. Then in that empty place in his mind, once it was as clear as he could manage, Gad called up the idea of stability.

This wasn't a memory, or even the word itself but the broadest concept that he could muster. The idea of something being stable, without being caught up in specifics or semantics. It was a difficult concept to draw on, because Gad didn't really know much about stability. For him, it was always a fleeting experience. But then, somethings were constant. Syna always rose in the East, Sunberth was always where it was and it's people always were the way they were. Something never changed, and that was what made them so hard to notice, Gad realized. But, those stabilities were there still, those constants, though they were hard to notice, you could look at the things around them that did change, and see how the constants remained the same in the face of all that. Now, Gad had, he thought a clearer understanding fo that idea 'stability' and he was able to pull that idea to the surface. It was like a buoyant piece of metal, iridescent. It had been pulled to the bottom of a black lagoon, and in his understanding he'd untied what was anchoring to the bottom, and now it floated readily to the top, where he could make out it's shape.

Slowly, Gad began to transcribe the glyph he held in his mind's eye. Even as he wrote it down, however, he could feel the weightiness of other things tying themselves back to the rune, and it started sinking down beneath the black surface of the lagoon in his mind. Gad huffed, in and out, and closed his eyes as he was in the middle of drawing the rune. At first he was having trouble calling it, because he was focused on remembering the rune as it had first appeared to him. However, his concept of 'stability' -ironically- had changed since then, and the glyph he saw now was slightly altered from the one he'd started drawing. He considered tacking on this new rune to the old one, but he decided it was better to start over from the top. He did so, and after many pauses and moments of silence he was able to draw out the full form of that rune for 'stability' as it appeared in his mental lexicon. Now, drawing it was a more difficult matter. He etched the odd curves and right angles, pips and dashes, that made up the magic symbol into the wet mud, but it moved like molasses or even concrete. Words were heavy, and they were especially heavy when they were written the the True Word, the glyphs that were the language of magic. Yes, he was pushing mud around with a stick, but truly, the medium he wrote with was djed. Finally, he managed to eek out the shape of 'stability' on to the ground. He looked at it, satisfied. By his eye, he was improving, but who could say if that were true or not, it wasn't like he had someone to compare it to.

Just then, as he was looking over his handiwork with a special affection, he became aware of a familiar cold feeling, something that chilled through his skin and past his bones so that he could even feel it in his astral body, and it ached his spiritual joints. It wasn't as if the feeling had just appeared, but that Gad was so focused on the glyphs that he'd only just recognized it for what it was. There was a ghost here. The flames on his torch flickered. Somewhere, between the concern for his life, and the desire to dismiss the sensation as paranoia, Gad wondered why he'd had to run into so many ghosts. There were two last season which were enough interactions for him to start to recognize that distinct feeling of being in the presence of something older, colder, and more mystical than he was. In the torch light, he could see his breath. While suppressing shivers, Gad twisted around to catch glimpses of where this other was. His ears twitched at the sounds of wind rustling twigs and leaves and his skin crawled when his shoes made the pebbles on the ground grate against each other. He swallowed down the dry fear in his throat, and Gad spoke up. "Hey? Anybody out there that's got something to say to me?" Well? What else was he supposed to do?

by **Noaru** on April 15th, 2014, 7:44 pm

Spring 11, 514 A.V.

Under the veil of night, Noaru levitates in the darkness, waiting for the object or soul Lhex would place within his sight this tonight. He levitates soundlessly through the dark forest, where the late night breeze causes the trees to creak eerily above and all-round him. The trees which were the symbols of nature’s longsuffering and wisdom were now tall black pillars, standing to transfix those unwary souls who dared to venture this darkened hour. This was a dark night Noaru could agree on, his invisible form was rendered nigh imperceptible on nights like this one—when his powers would be strong and far reaching.

Noaru’s mind was empty and void of thought, resembling an empty and abandoned sepulcher. He lingers in the foreboding darkness for awhile before a faint light captures his notice. The torchlight resembled a star that had fallen into an abyss filled with vast and heavy blackness. The torchlight draws Noaru to it, just as the fallen star called to the great leviathans, drawing them from the depths. He travels towards the light with his gaseous form breaching the branches of the trees and taking flight.

Noaru glides over the trees—over the darkened forest he calls his home to approach the light. Once he was close enough to get a clear picture of the torchlight, he descends to the ground and watches for movement in the surrounding darkness. Noaru hears a young man’s voice, as he closes the distance between him and the torch. He remains invisible and outside the direct range of the torch to prevent casting a shadow. Noaru notices Gad during his endeavor to remain concealed. He looks at the patterns that Gad had written on the ground and notices how these patterns resembled words.

Noaru remains silent to watch Gad, who seemed aware of the lands spiritual atmosphere and ethereal natives. Noaru wanted to see the degree of Gad’s sensing abilities and more of those strange patterns he wrote on the ground.

by **Gad** on May 8th, 2014, 4:38 am

Gad's mouth got dry. He snorted a nostril full of night air. He held it tight in his chest and let it warm. He exhaled. Yes, he could see it. It shouldn't have been so cool. Sunberth was seasonably warm this time of year, firstly, and the otherworldly nature of the cold, it made it clear. Was it Ruvyn? Come back to haunt him? Or, the Pale Lady... did he bring the ghost miners with him? His nose twitched, a jolt of discomfort that moved to his ears then down his spine. Yeah some real supernatural shyke was going down tonight. Gad wasn't exactly down with that. But. He supposed there might be worse ways to go out than death by ghost. When he thought about it, it was kind of poetic. Well, it wasn't like there was much he could do about it, was there? It wasn't like you could kill a ghost. That'd be ridiculous. And, even if you could, which doubted, how would you fight it? That bit of twitch shocked through his brows. He raised them as the the thought fomented in his head. He remembered, Ruvyn, the ghost, he could touch the thing with his astral body. Well, it was worth a shot. Gad considered for just a moment more. Well, no matter what the odds, you'd always lose if you didn't role the dice. Or, something like that. Whatever.

Gad knelt down, and near where he'd drawn his glyphs in the ground, he excavated a tiny hole. He stuck the unlit end of the torch in there until it was propped up. He then sat himself down with crossed legs just out of the umbra of heat. Now, what to work with? Damn, he needed to get some pens. He started brushing away the top surface of dirt from the ground till he got down to the ruddy clay beneath the top. He picked out some pebbles and evicted a few insectoid denizens. He looked over the small chunk of clay he'd retrieved. Then he whooshed some spit around in his mouth, and once his mouth was watering, he tossed in the clay and started chewing it until he had a more runny, red pulp. He spit it on the ground near him in a little puddle of red-clay-spit-goo. Gad then dipped an index finger in it, and drew across his palm the symbol for "expulsion'". On the back of his hand, he drew a rune for "detachment". He then glyphed up the other hand similarly. "Well, if you won't give up the ghost. Eh heh. Heh. Hehehehe. HAHAHAHAHA! MWAHAHAHA- ack!" Gad spit out a bit of stone that had been lodged in the back of his teeth, he must've missed that one.

He focused his djed, a steady pulse, a rhythmic push and pull as he smoothly filled the glyphs with his magical energy. There, that was enough, they were full up. Then, he did the exercise again, pushing that djed down his wrists to his fingertips until his hands went numb and all the feeling and motive force slid out and was floating in the air a few feet from their mortal coils. Oddly though, in the magic hands he could feel a phenomenon taking place on the physical ones. There was an uncomfortable searing sensation as the wet clay mixture he'd drawn in dried, they heated up until steam came off of them, perhaps made more visible from the cold aura permeating the area, and once they were dry, they crusted up and blew away as dust in the wind. Weird. Guess it's what happens when the magic's all gone. Gad considered the use of his glyphs. They didn't particularly make things go easier, but he saw how with more work they might actually have some value. Eventually.

Well, whatever, his hands were floating around out there now. He felt around in the dark with the ghostly ligaments until he got a touch of something that was even more ghostly. The cold shock almost made the magic mittens return to their body but Gad continued to feel around in the nebulous cloud for the specter that was lurking around out there. As Gad moved his Astral Projections about, he got the impression that this ghost was of perhaps a more nebulous variety. "Wooouuu," Gad started in a paranormal tone "woouuuwuuwuuwu. Woo?" This was getting frustrating, Gad couldn't shake that near unmistakable sensation of a spirit long dead hanging around the joint. "Ah? You think the dark is your ally. But you only adopted it. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until the morning after I was born- and by then, it was nothing but blinding!" Gad grasped violently at the night. Nope, nothing.

by **Noaru** on May 10th, 2014, 11:10 pm

Spring 11, 514 A.V.

This was probably the weirdest mortal he had ever seen, what was he doing? Noaru in that moment came to understand the meaning of the word awkward. He levitated quietly in the darkness, just outside of the torches light. Noaru could see that his companion was probably someone with an affinity for magic—it was interesting. However, there lied a veil of distrust between Noaru and Gad. He did not want to cause a conflict and have his existence known by more than the number of souls he was comfortable with. This number was ten: a healthy number.

A chime passes before Noaru decides to manifest in the torches presence. The light of the torch recedes from Noaru and refused to occupy the space he claimed. The light would not spread any further, acting as though an unseen object or boundary of sorts was placed to block its path—only that this obstacle did not reflect the light on its surface. The soulmist around Noaru’s form fluctuates in a fashion reminiscent to brimstone and ash—the visage of a dying flame. The light cascades over him, returning to the area he bathed in darkness, as a wave would embrace a shore.

Noaru stood in front of Gad, his body partially exposed to the light. He took on the appearance of man in his early twenties but one could the sense power of the ages accompanying him. Noaru sets his eyes upon the glyphs drawn by Gad and then looks up to Gad himself, wondering what this strange person was doing under the cover of night. There were many things he could’ve assumed but refused to do so. Noaru learned that appearances were deceiving and that by understanding the essence of one, he could gain a perspective of the many.

“You have a hand in art it seems.”

There was always something to interest him, always an object or being to catch his eye. Although he had met nigh destruction in the Valterrian and lost important aspects of his being within the rapture. He would not forget the simple wonders of the world or lose that part of him which recalled them. Noaru levitates closer, his body now entirely exposed to the light. The torchlight exposes his inhumanity, as threads of soulmist created slithering shadows along the ground around Noaru’s feet.

by **Gad** on May 21st, 2014, 10:28 pm

There was sixty ticks of cool silence in the presence of this great, otherworldly force. The wannabe wizard could feel nausea and dizziness clenching in his gut until something started to appear from the fabric of the night. Gad staggered back as the form of a young man began to coalesce from the dark. Gad gulped. Well, he did want the thing to show itself, didn't he? Gad reached down and withdrew the torch from it's place and held it up. Though the light was now cast further the details of the specter still receded into darkness and Gad started to put together that it was a conscious decision on the ghost's part to remain obscured, nebulous and partial amorphous. Gad nodded as he looked over the ember and molten ash appearance that flitted throughout the ghost's cloud-like body, the murmurs of bleeding flames which mirrored the light cast by the torch. The wizard raised a brow; was this for theatrics? For his benefit? Or did this ghost die in some kind of fiery incident. He didn't have any specific knowledge to confirm it, but sense he'd seen his first ghost, Gad had suspected that their appearances were flecked with bits of their demise. That was his suspicion at least, he thought it might be rude to ask.

Once formed, Gad could see this being's features. The entity appeared, like Gad's self, to be a young man, but the spirit creature's ethereal eyes held a type of agéd weariness. Gad followed the ghost's line of site as said eyes traced their way over the glyphs he'd been working. He looked back to the specter and nodded, bowing his head a bit in reverence. "Yes, I do. A hand in..." Gad raised his gaze to meet the ghost's now. He took his astral projected hand and dragged a finger through the dirt, creating his personal rune for "affirmative" in the ground with his projection. It was a slow few ticks, long ticks, as the shape seemingly carved itself into the ground from thin air. The direct contact of his astral body with magic made his soul itch, in a way. His astral finger grated across the ground's surface, deforming the djed of the soil, bending it's meaning and purpose to his own ends, changing the very essence of the stuff with his hand-writing. "...and a hand out too." Gad grinned a little before dusting the symbol away with his projection. He then floated the projected hand over to the ghost-man, and reached to grab the ghost's hand with his own and shake it. As his hand neared he could feel the uncomfortable cold like sensation even more. "Gad, at your service." He introduced himself formally. Unlike the numerous mortals whom Gad would only pretend to respect in order not to get his wrists broken, the young gambler wasn't faking any respect or reverence for the ghost. He was genuinely impressed with ghosts, and reasonably afraid of them to a healthy degree. Maybe it was his penchant for Projection or just the idea that something, somehow could survive past death on this world. Gad turned his head over his shoulder and looked at his glyphs. "Would you like to know what they say?"

by **Ablation** on June 18th, 2014, 10:49 pm

Grade Awarded!

Noaru :

Please don't be afraid to PM me with any questions ^-^ and please don't forget to remove your grading request from the list.

Thanks to Alia for the exquisite template!

Closed The Glyphing Ghost [Noaru]