by Seidaku on July 14th, 2011, 11:59 pm
While his pupil, he used the term with a pleased smile, bent to the task of tracing the symbols and glyphs onto a sheet of parchment, Seidaku was engaged in an almost identical exercise. Hunched over his desk, he assailed the problem of creating a working focus glyph. With frequent glances over at the much larger swirls of symbols on his floor, he thought that he had stumbled quite accidentally very near the answer.
The swirling lines of his Glyphs all circled a central point, drawing in the Djed he channeled, as well as trace amounts of the ambient energy of the city, toward a central point. Once it was there, he used it immediately, because it would almost immediately vanish into the ether from whence it had come.
Because there was nothing to keep it there!
It was so simple that he had to laugh at himself for not realizing it sooner. The focus was not a single symbol. It was a single Glyph! A focus was nothing more than an advanced barrier. One that stopped the Djed traveling out of an area, but not within. Therefore, the maximum capacity of a focus was the amount of energy that could be contained within the barrier of the focus before it was ruptured.
The only question was... how did he make a barrier that only worked in one direction? The first image that came to mind was of a doorway. A wall stopped a person from crossing in either direction and a doorway allowed them to pass freely. But a doorway that only opened in one direction would allow a traveler to exit but not enter, or enter but not exit.
He had not managed to go further than inscribing a circle onto the sheet of parchment, beside his idly scrawled thoughts, with directional arrows to serve as place holders for real runes, when he was brought back to the moment by Wrenmae.
"What?," he asked, blinking owlishly as his eyes focused on an object at a further distance than a few inches, "Oh, umm, yes. Channeling through the Glyphs."
Seidaku took the sheet of parchment from Wrenmae, careful not to smudge the still damp ink, "It's actually quite good," he murmured, half to himself, as he inspected the simple swirls of ink on the page. The boy was definitely a natural talent. Given a few seasons, or perhaps a few years, of legitimate study, he had little doubt that the boy would far ourstrip him. That knowledge was... the warm feeling of shaping the perceptions of a young mage far outstripped the momentary selfish pang of jealousy at seeing a greater talent.
"Actually," he said, placing the parchment face up on the floor, "This can, ah, serve as several important lessons all rolled into one."
He stepped back as far as he was able while still being able to work into the Glyph, less than a foot, but it would be enough, and gestured for his student to do the same. "This glyph, it, umm, aids in the channeling of Djed. And it does this, by, ah, by creating an area where Djed wants to flow. It will also augment your own energy with a small percentage of what is, uh, well, floating around, so to speak. The ambient Djed."
"Just reach out with your mind, your perceptions, and umm, feel the Djed," as he did so, he could actually feel the boy's Glyph, rough and occasionally stuttering, but still more effective than a raw casting, "Once you have it, you need to, umm, guide your effect through the Glyph, instead of just, ah, grabbing at the air, so to speak."
With his hands raised and his palms pointed toward the parchment, Seidaku closed his eyes and felt the rough currents of the boys Glyphs, pushing Djed through the twists and swirls and harnessing the energy that he already found swirling there. From the focal point of that energy, he reached out to a single point and pushed the world out of it with his mind. Through that single point of perfect emptiness, the Void flowed into Mizahar.
"And now, umm, for the second lesson," he said, turning to face Wrenmae with the portal still swirling, smaller than his palm, scant inches above the ground, "Your Glyphs, ah, any Glyph really, can only channel so much energy before it is, umm, full. Or empty. Or... well, done. It is important to know where that limit is."
He took a single deep breath, and then the portal began to rise slowly into the air, growing larger as it did so. Almost perfectly in time with the portal's ascent, the runes drawn onto the parchment began to dry and flake, and the sharp scent of burning parchment rose lightly into the room.
"Because the Glyphs channel energy, when they are destroyed during channeling, the energy, ummm, the Djed, it needs to go somewhere. Sometimes, that is as, ah, simple as crumbling to dust. Sometimes it can be a fire. It can even," before he could finishe the sentence, the simple rune detonated in a flash of light and a deafening thunderclap. In his surprise, Seidaku lost his connection to the Void portal and it began to swirl itself out of existence as the world rushed back in to claim its own.
"Sometimes it, ah," he said loudly, blinking away purple after images, "Sometimes it can do that. The effect is, of course, proportional to the, umm, the amount of energy involved."