Closed [Sanctuary]Target Practice

Combat oriented reimancy training with a fellow novice wizard (Caelum)

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Built into the cliffs overlooking the Suvan Sea, Riverfall resides on the edge of grasslands of Cyphrus where the Bluevein River plunges off the plain and cascades down to the inland sea below. Home of the Akalak, Riverfall is a self-supporting city populated by devoted warriors. [Riverfall Codex]

[Sanctuary]Target Practice

Postby Xira Hezmek on May 1st, 2015, 10:43 am

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Mid-spring, 515

It seemed that life's interesting events all happened at night. Mostly it was because Xira was busy during the day, but on those few days that he gave himself the day off (the joys of self employment) he found himself being far more active in the evening. That evening started with some magic practice in the training room in the Sanctuary. It occurred to Xira after interacting with Aoren that he should actually work on magic as a means to defend himself. It was typical of a wizard to bring down the wrath of the elements around their foes. Or so the stories go. So it certainly made sense to work on playing the part.

The training room was a perfect place for such training as well. It was hidden away from disapproving eyes and held useful tools such as a target and various training aids from the armory. As he stood there, twenty paces from the target with his gear and a stack of books near the doorway, his thoughts turned to Aoren and Caelum. It was muddy mental waters to wade through when one thought of Caelum on his own, but Aoren had a similar effect but in a different way. Where Caelum was physically attractive, with a brooding personality to match, Aoren's personality meshed with Xira's in a way that he had never encountered before. Kindred spirits perhaps?

The courier drew up his res with a gesture of his hand and a vocal key. While intellectually he knew they were not necessary, the ritual helped focus his concentration. It gave him control over his djed. He started to shape it as he thought. There was something between those two as well. Something instinctual that Xira picked up on, and the man was dense to social situations. It was interesting, to say the least. It somewhat mirrored his feelings for Kavala. They smecked of his feelings of desiring her but also not really knowing enough about her. They were friends, and perhaps lovers, if she thought about it that way. Perhaps he was wrong about Caelum and Aoren. Perhaps his own feelings were... not wrong, but mistaken. It sort of amused Xira at how the situation could easily be something far more complex than a love triangle if someone did the wrong or perhaps right thing.

Of course, this was not the best time to be thinking about romance.

Xira cleared his mind of the distraction, seeking his core. When his mental hands reached that stone, what he had come to know his self to be, he spread his awareness out of his body and into the djed being shaped before him. He needed to hit the target before him and to do that he had to overcome his range. To do that he had to figure out what that range was. How far could he actually still control his res. Xira made another gesture and spread both his palms and fingers parallel to the ground. With that gesture he commanded his ball of res to split up into ten equal parts. Each glob was roughly the size of a marble.

He eyed each violet colored sphere of liquid res suspended in the air. The wizardling took a moment to marvel and wonder at the beauty of just... magic. It wasn't even his doing that he could appreciate, just the creation of supernatural things. He pointed at one of the globules of res and concentrated on it carefully. Truthfully, it was difficult to isolate the res into ten parts, but it helped when he attached the mental image of his fingers. If they were extensions of his digits, he could keep better track of them. So with one res ball in mind, he pushed it farther and farther away from himself until he felt his contact with his djed sever. He imagined that it was like losing a limb or a vital sense. It was not dissimilar to transmutation, but that was usually accompanied with a sort of blindness. Perhaps that was an instinct? It made sense if it meant habitually cutting off portions of one's essence to be made into base materials.

His range appeared to be roughly a few arm lengths away. Great for close combat, not so great if he wanted to use it as a missle. Already the Res out of his control was dissolving into air. At least he had 9 other bits of res available to him.

When Xira was working with Aoren over his shielding dilemma, Aoren asked him to attack his shield with Reimancy as a object lesson. Xira knew he could create stone and then lob the stone that way. Depending on his throw, he could do some serious damage this way. However, this was neither ideal nor efficient. What he needed was a way to achieve more speed, to transmute his djed in mid strike rather than rely on the limits on his body.

Something near the doorway caught his attention then. Something like the rustle of cloth, or the soft footfalls of leather soled boots. "Hello? Who's there?" He called out as he turned to face the newcomer. Surely it wasn't too late that people would not be about, but time in Semele's embrace had a way of distorting. He squinted his eyes and attempted to make out the form coming near. The lack of concentration and his emotional state caused the balls of res to orbit slowly about himself, as if he might use them in an instinctive strike of some sort.

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[Sanctuary]Target Practice

Postby Caelum on May 4th, 2015, 12:42 am

The healer came in smelling of horses and wind. It was thick on his skin with the ghosts of grass and forest and day. He had been at it again, wandering off horse back on his own, seeking some strange form of flower for a medicine or simply racing the setting sun. There was a part of him that still believed he could reach it if he rode fast enough, flying with the will of Zulrav with weight of the sky on his back. Caelum believed a lot of impossible things, though, and all too many of them had a habit of leading him into trouble.


It was a dead man who walked down the Sanctuary's hallway toward the practice room. Kasb'el Sunsinger had lived and died so long ago that maybe only these stones and the surrounding earth of Kavala's home could commiserate. He looked young and energized all the same as he appeared in the doorway and out of shadow, the light catching at the gold in otherwise dark eyes. He smiled, quick and startling magnetic, at the site his friend made standing there with violet balls of humming res floating around him.


"Hail, great and mighty wizard," he intoned, humor an echo of Syna's own joy transforming an otherwise human face. His trousers were even too long, worn hems slouching against the scarred toes of his favorite pair of riding boots. There were grass stains on his tunic, the sleeves tied back over his elbows, and the heavy knot of Drykas-style braids at the nape of his neck was partially unraveled. A few locks of hair spilled into his face before he scraped them back with one hand that then lowered to his chest, fingers splaying over his heart. The shining gnosis of sweet Rak'keli gleamed golden as it spun snakes up his wrists.


He bowed, deep and low with an old world grace. "I come in peace. Please refrain from flinging magic spears at my face. Some consider it to be a rather nice face and I would like to keep it."


Dramatically, he straightened and a grin climbed up his mouth and right into his eyes as he made a study of the professional courier. "I have spent the last three bells riding fit to break my neck and I can't shake the restlessness in my bones, Xira. It's petching awful."


Roaming a few steps further into the practice room, Caelum cast his eye on the targets set up and nodded a little to himself. Both hands lifted, palms upturned as though in offering, and he focused the whole of his concentration on the transfiguring strands of his very djed into the ripe, blood orange res that was his reimancy's calling card. Thick ribbons of res began to rise from his fingers like steam, potent and wild, and gathered slowly into gently floating spheres.


He cocked an eyebrow. "Want to play?"
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[Sanctuary]Target Practice

Postby Xira Hezmek on May 13th, 2015, 6:55 am

Xira was completely taken aback by the resulting snark of the healer in question. "Sorry Cael, perhaps I am becoming paranoid. I thought everyone was asleep by now, though truly I do not know what bell it is. It is a fairly nice one, surely the women and perhaps even the men of this world would be unhappily deprived should something happen to it." He brought his res back under control and slid them along his arms instead, out of the way but still available for use. His eyes kept drawing back to Cael and his features. It never ceased to amaze that a man could be so different given the state of the sun. Either form was deliciously handsome, even for a man who considers women a creature of physical enjoyment. The courier smirked and offered the target.

"Please be my guess. I was just testing the range of my magic. Though... I was not aware you were a reimancer as well. What element or elements do you use? I hear that Kavala has mastered all the elements." He said, rambling on. "Maybe you will have better luck in range than I, presumably there is a way to work past your own range and make a projectile hit the target. Easier for stone users like myself, I bet. They tend to keep their momentum."

He pulled up a ball of res from his forearm and began shaping the res in his hands. He sculpted the substance as if it were merely clay, the translucent purple substance behaving as its intended substance as he rolled and slid the lump around his fingers. He worked the piece with his thumbs until he was satisfied and willed the inside of it to become hollow. Once satisfied he closed his opposite fist and the reimancy turned to stone. He showed the crude bird-like sculpture to Caelum, "I could easily get this to hit the target. Like throwing a ball or something. But water, fire or air... Tricky tricky."

He turned on hill for a moment. "before you go blasting our target... Let me Shield it. Aoren showed me a trick to protect against magic." He sprinted over to the target and started to seek his core. He closed his eyes and moved his lips as his outstretched hand rested over the target. He reached for his power, the one so often used for Reimancy, and instead tasked his essence to protect. To really protect something this time around, rather the practice. He gave it a mission, to keep magic out. His djed slid over the target, both willing the curtain of protective force and shaping it with his hand. It took long minutes to get it all set up, but at last he had it.

He smiled, the shield somewhat uneven, but for now it would hold. The substance of what looked like interlocking purple crystels to his eyes shimmered as his hands left the target. He needed practice, but it was exciting to use it for a practical reason. Who would have thought he would get the chance to use it so soon.

"Alright, go for it Cael. Show me what you've got." As he sprinted back to the wizard and healer. He grinned at Cael as the man conjured up his essence into spheres like his own.
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[Sanctuary]Target Practice

Postby Caelum on July 7th, 2015, 11:45 pm

Laughter lingered in his face, making even its mortal confines illuminate. He might have been in the skin of a dead man, but he remained impossibly alive. Stepping deeper into the training room, Caelum realized something. "Do you really think Kavala's mastered four elements? Let me think. Earth, of course --" He ticked off on his fingers while the blood orange balls of res bobbed down and then floated higher, made buoyant by his desires. "It sings around us even now, her stone. Do you know that song, the one that tastes and smells like her, is my lifeline down here? I don't think I'd otherwise ever feel comfortable in the ground..."


He trailed off, rambling coming to a momentary conclusion. Typically more taciturn, he was in a rare mood and, to be honest, all of the many walls that had frozen him quite carefully inside of himself these years since his fall had begun to shudder and crumble in a slow avalanche of humanity and compassion. His joy was brighter, his vitality more evident, his energy practically sparking even as he whirled about to pace from one end of the practice room to the other. Though his strides were not as long in this form as they were in his celestial seeming, he made quick work of the distance nonetheless.


"Right, yes. So we have earth. I've seen her use water and she is constantly refreshing the ice house at Alements for me. That's three. Or does ice count as its own? How does that even work? Air -- I've seen her use air quite subtly. It was to allow me to keep breathing one day in the sea when some creature tempted Shayru away into the water. But, I don't think... No." He about-faced, quick and cutting, to address his friend. "I've never seen her use fire. Have you?"


He snapped his fingers at one of his two degrading balls of res and it prompty ignited, whooshing softly into the brilliance of a miniature sun. Light threw itself in all directions, making their shadows long and highlighting Caelum's grin.


"Fire's mine," he explained the obvious. "But that's all so far. What's this about range? Are you trying to lengthen yours? It would be sensible to, wouldn't it?" He dissolved into mutters that were only partially in the Common tongue, the rest an apparent tangle of verbal Pavi and something -- something else. Deeper. Older. Focusing on his remaining ball of res, he cut out his hand in a sweeping motion to move it slowly, inch by inch, toward the opposite wall. The small, burning sun began to crumble in on itself, sparks and embers trickling gently to the floor before the remaining whole of it collapsed. The novice pyromancer stepped absently over to stomp it out against the stone, his eyes never once leaving the res he was attempting to position far from himself. Once it reached more than two armlengths, it scooted to a halt.


"Huh." Dissatisfied, Caelum let the ball of res decay to dust where it floated and returned his attention to Xira and his antics. "That looks to be as far as I can maneuver it," he admitted. "I will have to throw it at that point if I want it to go any farther. And I'll also have to ignite it before I do or it will be out of my range to transfigure." Golden eyes came to rest on the wooden practice target that Xira was hovering about. "I'll burn it," he said simply. "Unless what you just did to it will protect it from fire? What did you do? And, for crying out loud, do you mean to tell me there's even more magic that Aoren knows?"


For half a second, the Drykas looked put out. Maybe even annoyed. The annoyance was not direct anywhere, however, not at Xira and not even at the absent Aoren. It was at magic, really, as a whole. Up until Kavala had begun her slow but rather competent process of bullying him into being a bonafide magic user, he had regarded nearly all matters of sorcery not rooted in the divine to be distasteful. Dangerous. Even lazy. And wouldn't the industrious and busy Kavala and Aoren have a laugh at that? Both of them had a work ethic that was at least equal to if not greater than Caelum's own.


He hesitated to proceed flinging fireballs at the target until Xira assured him that it would not burn. The last thing either of them needed was to face down their fellows Sanctuarians as they were all smoked out of the Within.
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