Completed A Shaky hand

[Draven McNiel]

22nd Day of Winter. 515 AV
Draven found himself laying on his back within the confines of his room deep within the stormhold castle. The room was shrouded in darkness not a single light to be seen. This was in Draven’s own words an attempt to get over his fear of the dark. However an hour in he found himself growing tedious of this exercise; it wasn’t the fact that he was being partially illuminated by the light underneath his door, nor the fact he was nestled up right toward the door to come into contact with the said light...No, it was the fact that he was doing absolutely nothing at all. He felt himself growing impatient with the environment that Draven had placed himself inside of.

”What else is there to do?” He murmured to himself as he lifted his right hand, with a torch held tightly in case it got too much for him. His teeth clattered slightly due to the cold floor and partially due to the quickening of his heart beat. He closed his eyes and reached toward his djed slowly drawing from the well that was his soul. He could feel a tingling feeling slowly escape from the center of his body and slowly make its way through his arm causing his muscles to tense ever so slightly as the djed travelled through his nerves and out of his finger tips. A green, translucent gas escaped through the left arm. He opened his eyes and willed the res to clump up into a small ball before having it move toward the torch on his right hand.

The res swirled for a second spinning faster and faster till it ignited. The flame burst into life lighting the torch, the room was illuminated all of a sudden showing a bare room containing merely a bed, table, hearth and a chest. Nothing else was there beyond a backpack on top of the chest and a torch holder on the wall. The young male stood up and placed his torch on the holder. He sighed before bringing some more res to life. ”Fire comes easily enough, but why can’t I make another element? What am I doing wrong?” He said to himself moving his hand through his hair before sighing. He grabbed his bag from his bed and placed it down on top of the table.

He opened the rucksack, rummaged through it only to pull out a closed vial of ink as well as a parchment. After a few more seconds of searching he managed to find a quill and placed that too on the table. Before closing his bag and placing it on the floor next to him. The young magician picked up his quill before closing his eyes in what could pass off as a self calming gesture. ”I might as well keep up with this, I’ve been slacking recently.” He muttered to himself. However his slumped shoulders, hanging head and irritated expression showed that he wasn’t all into this; a slump stood there in his path. A semi-lit room, solitude and utter silence always caused his energy to dip in such a manner.

[Draven McNiel]

He picked up the quill and put it down to the parchment; slowly beginning the usual manner of tasks that he usually failed at however he had a good feeling about today, it was just that his heart was not into it. ”Four in-pointing triangles…” He said to himself as he traced the lines in his mind. His hand was following his eyes however the shakiness of his hand prevented him from being able to draw proper lines causing slight slips in the quill.

He moved his hands slowly as he tried to finish off the first triangle as fast as he could, drawing the first line then suddenly tracing up in a diagonal angle to finish one side, however this came slow. The quill was never a fast instrument for drawing, and he had only used it because his father had done the same. It was a thin line that he traced across the parchment nothing spectacular at all, the opposite in fact. His hands shook side to side causing the ink to drip across the sides, the first triangle was done, however there were dots of ink on either side, wobbles throughout the piece as well as a small splatter just below it. ”Tch. It’s nothing, I can carry on.” He grunted to convince himself that it was still fine.

He dipped his quill once more into the ink, this time accidentally bumping the quill off the edge only to notice that it wasn’t dripping anywhere near as much. He shrugged and put quill to parchment once more and traced his line across, up and back down; also making sure that the two tips touched one another before turning the parchment to begin with the other two triangles. ”Why does this always take so looong!”

He dipped the quill in the ink once more, this time bumping it against the edge to notice the ink dripping of. He rubbed the edges off the tips, and went back to drawing the glyph. The line was far more subtle as he traced the bottom line; Draven began to notice the fact that the line was getting fainter and dipped it back into the ink before bumping it off the edge of the ink vial and rubbing the edge of the quill to get the ink off before he began to draw the second line of the triangle making sure that it met the other two triangles and traced back downwards. He completed the same process for the fourth having avoided having anywhere near the amount of ink splodges as the first two. He sighed a breath of relief as he finished the hard part, however the glyph looked decidedly more screwy than before.

”Surround it in a square...Or was it the other way around?” He said as he knocked his head to the side, attempting to remember his father’s teachings when it came to scroll making, still it didn’t stick very well inside of his head; he was after all more interested in being his dad than learning how to properly utilize magic. He began with the square around the four triangles and realized that he should have drawn the square first as the triangles all had different base lengths. He shrugged and continued on anyway as he finished off his glyph, before putting down his quill on the table and closing the vial of ink to see just what magic he could do here.

[Draven McNiel]

Draven looked at his finished glyph and smirked a little at his handy-work, it was nowhere near his father’s level but in his eyes it worked well. He was sure that it worked well, oh well; not like he couldn’t find out directly through a practical experiment. The young man picked up the parchment, placed it down onto the hearth, just in case it malfunctioned, and stepped back from in preparation to unleash his magic onto the seal. ”It should seal properly...It should seal properly, it should seal properly.” He muttered to himself in an almost prayer-like manner. The young male was at the end of his rope, he hadn’t made a single step of progress since the death of his father 4-5 years ago.

The young man closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, before breathing out very very slowly as if he was trying to siphon as much energy as he could from the air. He reached toward his djed and felt the energy throughout his body, almost jetting around yet it remained constant. His head became filled with a gushing sound, yet he had to ignore as much as he could to reach for the mystical energy, feel it transform itself into res as it approached the edges of his skin. A green liquid began to seep out of the edges of his skin slowly bundling itself into a slowly spinning ball which ignited from the edges at first and those flames slowly creeped inside only allowing the core to remain as res. The young man watched as his flame slowly creeped forward before dropping onto the parchment. A big grin was on his face as he watched the glyph light up for an instant…

Then the parchment went up into flames in an instant, Draven felt his legs wobble and then fell onto his knees with a sigh as the flame lit up his room perfectly before sizzling out just as fast as it had been lit. ”Guess it’s back to the drawing board.” He sighed lightly as a thought popped into mind...He needed a teacher, someone to break down the basics to him, somehow and someway.

[The End]

[Konrad Venger]

Nice job! Your work has pleased The Sloth! Draven XP: Reimancy - 2 Observation - 1 Glyphing - 2 Lore: Glyphing Requires Patience Sealing a Glyph Practice makes Perfect (but Not Always) Click Me! : Okay, first of all, PLEASE change your font when you post. That shade of purple is VERY hard to read on the brown/clay background. Secondly, try to avoid "4-5" when using numbers in sentences; use the WORD instead, it looks much better. Thirdly... I like this! Wasn't too sure exactly WHAT you were trying to actually DO with this scroll (store Reimancy fire, I guess?), but you took it slow and steady and were willing to show us just how far Draven has to come. I appreciate that. Oh, and please make sure you go back and edit your post in the Request Thread to reflect the fact this one is now done and dusted. PM me with any questions and later 'tater!