Solo Grinding Stone

[Kamilla]

Kamilla Circe Gordon

18th of Spring, 515AV

Kamilla stood in the cramped yet empty room on the third floor of The Quarters, she'd awoken only half a bell ago to find that the weight that had been pressing down on her arms for the past few days, since her little game with the warden initiate Keene, had finally disappeared. The lack of unnatural weight left her body feeling back to normal and her mind focused on returning to her reimancy training. The goal of the day was simple, to try and master the air chakram technique that she'd seen Keene use several days ago. She'd seen the process as well as the spell in action and had finally made a complete recovery from the overgiving of their challenge. It was time.

After eating breakfast she quickly got dressed, putting on her knee-high boots first, followed by a black skirt and finally, grabbing her newly animated red scarf and holding it against her back, Kamilla spoke in what could only be described as an attempted man voice giving the scarf, Scarlet, the command to tie itself. "Scarlet: Bust." with the comically low voice which she used to speak the words, the red scarf jumped to life, wrapping its length firmly around Kamilla's chest until it had no more to offer. It's animation process had been fairly successful, the only real downfall being that the scarf only responded to a low voice.

Once she was dressed and had seen to the brushing of her mane of deep brown hair, Kamilla left The Quarters building and made her way through the creepy courtyard and away from The Citadel, choosing the spot where Keene had bested her as her practice spot. Evidence of their competition, or rather of her spell, was still scattered about the area, holes where she'd pulled the earth to feed her large spell and most notably, the large rock that she'd thrown before Keene had cast the winning spell.

The loss was still a bit of a sore spot for her, with one spell the warden initiate had shattered most of her self confidence when it came to reimancy, his skill making her own seem laughable in comparison. Keene was a skilled reimancer with impressive control over his res and elements and when faced with his abilities Kamilla just looked like a fool throwing stones. It was a sad truth, but one that she intended to change, regardless of how long it would take her to do so.

[Kamilla]

Kamilla Circe Gordon

Grabbing her inscribing paint before dropping her bag on the ground below, Kamilla dipped her index fingers in the substance and began drawing the stylised focus glyphs on her palms as she seemed to be doing quite often as of late. There was no mystery as to why she did it, from her very first attempt she had noticed that the runes made her djed more responsive and therefore enabled her to produce res at a faster rate than usual, until the glyphs disappeared at least.

The art of glyphing was certainly something that Kamilla was interested in, so far she'd successfully used it to bolster her reimancy as well as the animation process and something told her that she'd barely scratched the surface. No doubt with more skill and experience the world magic could be even more useful, though knowledge of 'how' wasn't easy to find. She had certainly improved since she'd arrived on Sahova, the simple spirals and rings of her regular focus glyphs taking less and less time to draw with each passing day, but she was eager to take it to the next level though she didn't know what that would be just yet.

Completing the runes on both of her palms, Kamilla placed the inscribing paint back into her bag and gently pushed the pack aside with her boot, casting a glance up at the clear sky as she did. It had been a good choice to wear Scarlet today, spring had barely begun yet Sahova's climate seemed determined to maintain it's humidity day in and out. Seeing that none of the large hideous birds lingered above today, the young sorceress turned her attention back to the ground, calming her mind as she directed her djed towards the focus glyphs on her palms.

As usual, her inner magic took a few moments to respond before it began flowing from her, glistening lavender liquid gathering in front of her right palm, her res production was slowly getting faster and more effortless but it was still a long ways away from flowing out of her with ease as Keene's had done. Ignoring the envy that she felt for the warden initiates skills, Kamilla stretched out her arm, sending the ball of res forwards to test her range of control, her grasp over the energy beginning to waver after it had travelled about five meters. Keene's had easily reached the fourteen meter mark and once again she had to try and ignore the envy that bubbled up inside of her.

It was very clear that her range and control couldn't compete with the young man's yet, but that wasn't something she could fix in a day, so instead Kamilla focused on what she could accomplish, the air chakram. She was glad to have witnessed the technique in action, her own ideas of how to use the element of air had long since proven ineffective, though she could not be blamed, it was after all the complete opposite to her primary element of earth and therefore required a very different approach. Where earth relied on weight and force and shape, the results fairly obvious when it came to visualising, air required motion, method and pattern, all of which she was finding difficult to grasp.

[Kamilla]

Kamilla Circe Gordon

Pulling her hand upwards as if she were removing a blade from its sheath, Kamilla began to shape the ball of res into a thin column about three feet in height, just as Keene had done, but where he'd transmuted his into solid ice she turned hers to stone. Repeating the step twice more, Kamilla was left with three columns of stone in a fairly straight line, with about five meters between each. The columns would serve as her practice dummies for the spell, she'd figured that if successfully cast, the spell had the ability to slice through solid ice, surely it was capable of doing the same to stone.

Taking several steps backwards so that the columns were a few meters away from her, though still within her range of control, Kamila began to produce res from the remaining focus glyph on her other hand, forming it into the practised ring that she used for her earth chakram spell except that this time she didn't transmute it. Instead, just as she'd seen Keene do, Kamilla began to will the ring of lavender res to rotate, using one of her fingers to guide its movement. It moved slowly at first, picking up speed as time passed until a chime later she believed that it had reached its top speed, spinning impressively as it hovered a meter in front of her.

Taking a deep breath in preparation, Kamilla began the second step, willing the outer layer of the rotating ring to attract the air surrounding it, just as she'd seen Keene do. The speed at which res was spinning took far more concentration to maintain than that of the earth chakram, but although it wavered slightly every now and then it continued to do as she willed it to. At first she was greeted with the gentle wisps of the air as it brushed against her skin on its way towards the ring, her hair and tail of her skirt following the air's lead as they began to wave back and forth.

The soft wisps of the wind grew steadily and within a dozen chimes had been replaced by the loud sound of rushing air as the ring continued to pull the element from its enviroment, which was mostly air. At first glance the spell seemed as if it were ready to be tested, the rotating ring of magic spinning quickly and dragging the winds along with it, but just as Kamilla was beginning to will it towards the stone columns to test its effectiveness a small vortex of wind started to form around it. Her eyes widened in surprise at the sight of the faint twister that hung in the air, barely two feet in height and only one foot in horizontal width, just like the ring of res that created and maintained it.

Kamilla chose not to stop the attraction effect or the rotation in hopes that by giving it time, the small twister would collapse in on itself and the spell would be ready to use, but after a chime it became clear that this would not be the case. Given more time, the faint outline of the twister had quickly grown into what was now a vortex of air roughly the size of Kamilla herself, the winds that had once gently brushed against her skin from behind now whipped against her front, hair and dress flapping violently and brown eyes narrowing to protect themselves from the onslaught. She allowed the spell to linger for a few hopeful ticks longer before opening her palms and releasing the attraction effect along with the res' rotation.

[Kamilla]

Kamilla Circe Gordon

Without Kamilla's magic to sustain it, the man-sized twister remained for a few ticks longer before quickly shrinking in size and eventually dispersing, leaving the young sorceress both shocked and amazed by its unintended creation. Although she was happy to discover a new technique through her failure, she was more focused and confused as to what had gone wrong with her actual intention. She had done exactly what she'd seen Keene do, though she supposed that was exactly the problem, she'd observed the visible process of the technique but not the fine details. A loud groan escaped the young woman's lips as she realised that this spell, like every other, was going to be yet another case of 'easier imagined than done', something that was becoming a common theme in her life.

After taking a minor break Kamilla got back to work, attempting the spell just as she had before though this time paying far more attention to its workings, perhaps she'd just made a silly mistake during her first try? If not, she intended to find out why and how the spell had failed and turned itself into a mini twister instead. Unfortunately the spell ended with the same result as her first, much to her dismay, and only half a bell after her first break Kamilla found herself taking another. However, the second was far longer than its predecessor as Kamilla took the time to brainstorm the faults in her attempts as well as re-draw the focus glyphs on each palm as the first two had been consumed by use.

Once she felt that she had a solution, or rather a new angle to attempt, Kamilla returned to her experimentation, using the fresh glyph on her left palm to produce a sufficient amount of djed to create a ring of res, much like she'd done before except this time the ring was smaller. The logic behind this new change was that, maybe, the ring had been too big and therefore pulled too much air into too large of a cycle, therefore creating a messy twister instead of a slicing blade of compressed quickly rotating wind. That was the idea at least, but whether it was an accurate one remained to be seen, though the answer would soon be known as once again the ring reached the maximum speed of rotation.

This time, after willing the outer layer of res to attract the air and waiting a chime or two for the effect and gathering wind to plateau, the resulting spell was not a miniature twister but instead a steadily rotating ring of res with an equally steady stream of wind rushing toward and around it, it was a constant wind that rested somewhere between a gust and a breeze with the sound produced halfway between a wisp and a rush. Maintaining the spell for a chime more revealed that, it was stable and with no more unexpected occurrences Kamilla began to will the ring slowly towards the first stone column, both palms raised as she mentally pushed it forwards.

The spell inched slowly closer and closer to it's target, with Kamilla doing the same from a few meters behind until, finally, the spinning res made contact with the stone column. The result, to Kamilla's disappointment, was not a simple slicing like Keene's had been but instead a resisting force pushing against her palms as the column resisted the touch of the spell. Determined to make some form of progress, instead of halting the spell, Kamilla pushed back against the invisible resistance with her palms, digging her boots into the dirt in order to maintain balance as she leaned forwards into the push, forcing the spinning res to collide with the column once more.

The invisible resistance proceeded to push back against her arms, growing in intensity the more she pushed back against it. Although she could not see the effect her spell was having on the stone column from her position behind both, there was a soft sound that sounded something like the faint scraping of sand against a harder surface, though she supposed it was just a result of the winds that accompanied her spell and the plentiful dirt that surrounded them.

[Kamilla]

Kamilla Circe Gordon

After a chime of pressing her spell into the stone column with her force of will and some of body, having begun to grow tired, or rather uncomfortable with the constant resistance of the clash, Kamilla felt her control on the rotation waver for a brief moment and then, her face was in the dirt and a particularly tasteless taste was in her mouth. Quickly pushing herself up and onto her knees as she frantically wiped at her face and spat out the assorted dirt that had found its way between her lips, a look of disgust present on her features as she spoke. "What the hai happened!?" Kamilla got to her feet to pat at her sand covered clothing for several moments longer before she finally turned her attention to answering her own question though it did not take long for her to do so.

She'd been putting too much of her weight into physically forcing her res against the stone column and not enough mentally, the steady and speedy rotation and attraction of the wind had created a solid enough ring of air that refused to dissipate and pass around the stubborn stone, so when the speed of the spell had wavered, even though only for a tick, the rings integrity had been compromised and it had simply broken against the stone, the sudden lack of previously existing resistance sending Kamilla face first into the dirt. Though the analysis had been accurate enough, it still didn't help to assuage her embarrassment of the situation, having effectively tripped while doing a spell, her once pristine figure now coated in the unappealing substances that made up Sahova's dirt.

Her chest rose and fell slightly from the moderate exertion it had taken to maintain the spell while physically pushing it forward and she let out a loud groan, her second for the day, as she made her way over to her bag in order to retrieve her waterskin and wash her mouth of the lingering taste of filth. As far as Kamilla was concerned, she'd failed at two things for the day, the first being the successful recreation of Keene's spell and the second, remaining upright and clean. This was one of the moments that she was thankful that there was hardly anyone around on Sahova, she doubted she would have been able to survive the embarrassment that would have ensued had her faux pas been witnessed by a person or worse, a crowd.

It wasn't until several chimes later, once Kamilla had accepted that no matter how much vigorous patting and dusting she did she wouldn't be able to get any cleaner, that the young sorceress finally cast a glance towards the still standing stone column and noticed something odd. Moving quickly towards the obelisk in what could be seen as more of a rushed dash than a graceful stride, Kamilla knelt down to inspect the column that had seemed to stubbornly resist the onslaught of her attempted 'air blade' with, what she'd previously thought to be not even a scratch.

[Kamilla]

Kamilla Circe Gordon

Now, upon far closer inspection, it was clear that her assumption had been completely incorrect, while she had failed to replicate Keene's spell, her attempt had certainly not left the stone column unaffected. Where once stood a well formed cylindrical stone column of uniform shape, now stood a very similar stone column except that where her spell had hit, or rather continuously pressed against, the obelisk now had a large gap. It seemed that while the high velocity rotation of air caused by her spell hadn't been enough to slice easily through the stone, it had succeeded in slowly tearing away at it's surface with each passing moment, leaving a large curved gap where it had made contact.

That had been the cause of the faint scraping sound she'd heard during her trial, the wind of the spell was literally grinding away at the stone with each passing moment and although it may not have been the clean cut she'd been hoping for, it was certainly a step in the right direction and one that drew a massive smile from Kamilla's lips. There was probably about an inch of stone remaining on the narrow part of the column where her spell had ground the stone into dust and surely if she'd maintained the spell a few ticks longer, the spell would have cut all the way through, though the resulting face drop would probably still have occurred.

Unfortunately the progress that she'd experienced between her first and second attempts at recreating the warden initiate's spell proved the be the last that the day had to offer as Kamilla tried to properly perform the spell twice more after that, taking a short break between each attempt, though they ended with the same result as the first, the only noticeable difference being the time taken to for the spell to reach maximum it's intensity. With the attempt following her literal fall, Kamilla had managed to grind away at the remaining inch of stone on the narrow part of the first column and with her second she managed to grind right through another in what was probably about half a chime, though each spell took at least an entire chime prior to build up enough speed and pull for both to stabilise.

Kamilla supposed that it couldn't be helped, her shoulders shrugging in defeat as disappointment washed over her features, though it was somewhat diluted by the successful progress she'd made during the course of the day. At her current skill level, she just wasn't able to reach the speeds required for the rotation to be powerful enough to cut clean through the columns and although it meant she was still a long way from catching up to Keene, she was confident that once her res control had improved enough, she'd be able to successfully use the impressive technique.

[Orin Fenix]

Kamilla

Skills

Planning 1
Tactics 2
Land Navigation 1
Observation 4
Reimancy 3
Endurance 1

Lores

Location: Keene's Testing Ground
Glyphing: Augmenting Res Production
Reimancy: Whirlwind
Reimancy: Stone Columns
Reimancy: Wind Chakram Theory
Reimancy: Grinding Down Stone with Wind
Lore

Rewards/Consequences

Overgiving: For the next eight days Kamilla will be hyper aware of every passing breeze.

Notes :

It's great seeing Kamilla struggle with the idea that there is still a long way for her to go when it comes to magic. I think she's making lots of progress.