38th of Ash, 124 AS
Several more days had passed in relative peace. Cycle after cycle Lyra observed the wards and the magic which made them up, further refining her approaches with each new iteration. As she continued to practice Lyra found she was able to hold onto more and more of her aether with every attempt, but inevitably she had begun to reach a plateau. There was simply an upper limit to the amount she would be able to resist, and over time the scales would balance once more as Lyra became locked in simply maintaining what she had stockpiled and not adding to it. The time had come to begin finding a way to secure the aether she gathered, and prevent it from being stolen from her again.
There were several approaches Lyra thought to take. The first was perhaps the most obvious. She wrapped herself in a Veil of fortified shadows, focusing her efforts on maintaining one, much larger, sphere than multiple smaller ones. She again cycled the aether in the spell to form pictographs to increase their resistance. This approach worked remarkably well against the passive draining wards. Inside the Veil she could almost completely contain her aether, preventing its escape, but ultimately this solution was not viable in the long term. She still had to focus to maintain the Veil, and whenever her attention slipped (which was apt to happen as the draining wore on) more and more of her aether would escape into the wards. More troublesome was the simple fact that she still had to allow for a certain amount of aether to pass through, otherwise she risked drawing the suspicion of her jailers. In the end this was a very rudimentary approach, and it completely fell apart under the pressure of the active drain.
Lyra had also discovered another flaw in her approaches. It was true that, with various methods, Lyra could hold onto more aether over time across all of the draining cycles. Yet there was an upper limit. Her free reserves eventually reached a peak where she could not fully contain it, or suppress it, enough to resist the active draining any longer. It was like trying to hold water in a cup that was already overfull. So long as there was no changes the surface tension would keep the water in place, yet the moment something disrupted that delicate balance all of the aether in her reserves would quickly be pulled out and away like water running down the side of a glass. This was a simple, and extremely infuriating, realization, that no matter what she did she would not be able to hold onto her aether so long as it was kept freely within her essence inside the prison. It was not clear if this was an intentional design imparted on her prison, but be it chance or intent it made Lyra glare in annoyance at the wards around her.
Her first attempts to circumvent this issue were... simplistic. First she tried condensing her essence down as much as possible, pulling in her smokey form and taking on the more viscous, slime state she could adopt. This did marginally increase the amount of aether she could hold in reserve when using her Veil, but it too had an upper limit. Next she tried one of her first approaches, multiple smaller Veil's scattered at different points across her prison. This was even less effective, as the more spheres she made the more she had to split her attention, resulting in more loss over time as she could not maintain the required focus to resist. If she were more rested, if she had more of her own aether to work with, Lyra felt this approach might have worked, but in her current state she simply could not divert enough of her focus even by shattering her soul. The smaller spheres also tended to be more fragile, and Lyra ultimately decided to abandon that approach. After that Lyra tried several other ideas, combining disruption with hexes and entropic wards with strategic glyphs made of shadows to interrupt or redirect the aether draw. It all ended the same. Small, incremental improvements that ultimately amounted to no great change in her situation.
After she had exhausted all possibilities with her current most effective tools, Lyra began to examine other options. In the end the solution was obvious, if not simple to execute. She needed a way to store the aether she collected. It needed to be something that she could fill up slowly over time, completely resist both active and passive draining attempts, and remain undetected by those on the outside. That left Lyra with very few options. If she could somehow create something akin to a soul gem... Then an idea came to her. One so obvious she wondered how she had not considered it before.
Gathering herself into the center of her prison Lyra cast a Veil around her form and once more took on her more viscous slime state. She swirled in endless patterns beyond the view of the wards, and at her center she began to focus. It started small. There was a flicker of crimson energy laced with gold as Lyra drew upon her rune of Vitalis. Immediately the hunger which gnawed at her spiked with vengeance, and she could do nothing but suppress the pain that came with it. All this time Lyra had avoided using her mark for this very reason. The very nature of vitalis required a constant supply of vital energy to be fed to it, usually through the blood a vamypre consumed. Imprisoned as she was Lyra had not been able to feed in... she was not certain. Seasons surely. A normal vampyre would have likely perished by now due to the pain and hunger, but Lyra was not a mere vampyre. She was the Outsider of Souls, and she was able to draw upon the power of the countless souls within her to keep her own lifeforce alive. Yet she could not simply ignore the effects of continued blood starvation. The pain she felt was her very essence screaming for nourishment like thirsty man screamed for water. She felt parched, aching from every inch of her being, but she had relegated those sensations to distant part of her mind while she worked. Using her magic, however, brought all of those pains surging back to the forefront of her mind, and she groaned at the sensations.
With an iron will Lyra focused on the small point at the center of the swirling black liquid that was her body. At its center, where the sparking crimson gold energy collected, a small speck began to take shape. More and more Lyra began to focus, weaving her very essence, blood and aether into the steadily growing crystalline structure. This was a simple use of the Crystalize ability, commonly used by Vampyre's to store blood for later consumption, or for attacks. The concept here was similar, but Lyra had another idea for how to utilize this ability. As the crystal formed from her black blood she also shaped the outide into a perfect sphere. With a breath and a surge of aether Lyra drew on a piece of the Veil to extend toward the crystal, and with fortis she began to carve and shape symbols on it's surface. One after another they formed, beginning with a circle on both ends, each with the symbol of an eye with a curled snake for a pupil. Around the diameter of the crystal Lyra carved the same pictographs as made up the Veil itself, and as she worked she collected small parts of the veil and had them funnel into the crystal. Slowly she worked, quickly growing tired as more and more of her miniscule aether reserves were drained away.
As the last pictograph was put in place Lyra reached inward and touched her own soul. Then, with barely a thought, she fractured a tiny piece, a mere sliver, and implanted it into the crystal. Another series of glyphs were added and finally the last of her aether, including that which held the veil, funneled into the crystal causing the entire structure to glow briefly before fading.
What remained was a nearly smooth circular crystal, its surface lightly carved with the eyes on either end and glyphs around its diameter. It possessed a very soft golden glow that came from inside the black crystal itself. Lyra could feel that small shard of herself inside, encased in her own crystalized blood and surrounded by the veil of magic that would hide it from the wards attention. Then Lyra reached deep inside, grasping at the tiniest fragment of aether she had remaining, and sent it into the crystal. It absorbed it eagerly, and through the link with her shard Lyra could sense the aether's presence inside.
It would take several days, maybe longer, but Lyra would fill this crystal. Once it had been saturated with as much aether as she could push into it, then Lyra would begin the true first steps to her escape. For now, she needed to rest. Gather her aether, and after every cycle push what aether she held onto into the crystal and repeat. She settled herself down to wait.
Several more days had passed in relative peace. Cycle after cycle Lyra observed the wards and the magic which made them up, further refining her approaches with each new iteration. As she continued to practice Lyra found she was able to hold onto more and more of her aether with every attempt, but inevitably she had begun to reach a plateau. There was simply an upper limit to the amount she would be able to resist, and over time the scales would balance once more as Lyra became locked in simply maintaining what she had stockpiled and not adding to it. The time had come to begin finding a way to secure the aether she gathered, and prevent it from being stolen from her again.
There were several approaches Lyra thought to take. The first was perhaps the most obvious. She wrapped herself in a Veil of fortified shadows, focusing her efforts on maintaining one, much larger, sphere than multiple smaller ones. She again cycled the aether in the spell to form pictographs to increase their resistance. This approach worked remarkably well against the passive draining wards. Inside the Veil she could almost completely contain her aether, preventing its escape, but ultimately this solution was not viable in the long term. She still had to focus to maintain the Veil, and whenever her attention slipped (which was apt to happen as the draining wore on) more and more of her aether would escape into the wards. More troublesome was the simple fact that she still had to allow for a certain amount of aether to pass through, otherwise she risked drawing the suspicion of her jailers. In the end this was a very rudimentary approach, and it completely fell apart under the pressure of the active drain.
Lyra had also discovered another flaw in her approaches. It was true that, with various methods, Lyra could hold onto more aether over time across all of the draining cycles. Yet there was an upper limit. Her free reserves eventually reached a peak where she could not fully contain it, or suppress it, enough to resist the active draining any longer. It was like trying to hold water in a cup that was already overfull. So long as there was no changes the surface tension would keep the water in place, yet the moment something disrupted that delicate balance all of the aether in her reserves would quickly be pulled out and away like water running down the side of a glass. This was a simple, and extremely infuriating, realization, that no matter what she did she would not be able to hold onto her aether so long as it was kept freely within her essence inside the prison. It was not clear if this was an intentional design imparted on her prison, but be it chance or intent it made Lyra glare in annoyance at the wards around her.
Her first attempts to circumvent this issue were... simplistic. First she tried condensing her essence down as much as possible, pulling in her smokey form and taking on the more viscous, slime state she could adopt. This did marginally increase the amount of aether she could hold in reserve when using her Veil, but it too had an upper limit. Next she tried one of her first approaches, multiple smaller Veil's scattered at different points across her prison. This was even less effective, as the more spheres she made the more she had to split her attention, resulting in more loss over time as she could not maintain the required focus to resist. If she were more rested, if she had more of her own aether to work with, Lyra felt this approach might have worked, but in her current state she simply could not divert enough of her focus even by shattering her soul. The smaller spheres also tended to be more fragile, and Lyra ultimately decided to abandon that approach. After that Lyra tried several other ideas, combining disruption with hexes and entropic wards with strategic glyphs made of shadows to interrupt or redirect the aether draw. It all ended the same. Small, incremental improvements that ultimately amounted to no great change in her situation.
After she had exhausted all possibilities with her current most effective tools, Lyra began to examine other options. In the end the solution was obvious, if not simple to execute. She needed a way to store the aether she collected. It needed to be something that she could fill up slowly over time, completely resist both active and passive draining attempts, and remain undetected by those on the outside. That left Lyra with very few options. If she could somehow create something akin to a soul gem... Then an idea came to her. One so obvious she wondered how she had not considered it before.
Gathering herself into the center of her prison Lyra cast a Veil around her form and once more took on her more viscous slime state. She swirled in endless patterns beyond the view of the wards, and at her center she began to focus. It started small. There was a flicker of crimson energy laced with gold as Lyra drew upon her rune of Vitalis. Immediately the hunger which gnawed at her spiked with vengeance, and she could do nothing but suppress the pain that came with it. All this time Lyra had avoided using her mark for this very reason. The very nature of vitalis required a constant supply of vital energy to be fed to it, usually through the blood a vamypre consumed. Imprisoned as she was Lyra had not been able to feed in... she was not certain. Seasons surely. A normal vampyre would have likely perished by now due to the pain and hunger, but Lyra was not a mere vampyre. She was the Outsider of Souls, and she was able to draw upon the power of the countless souls within her to keep her own lifeforce alive. Yet she could not simply ignore the effects of continued blood starvation. The pain she felt was her very essence screaming for nourishment like thirsty man screamed for water. She felt parched, aching from every inch of her being, but she had relegated those sensations to distant part of her mind while she worked. Using her magic, however, brought all of those pains surging back to the forefront of her mind, and she groaned at the sensations.
With an iron will Lyra focused on the small point at the center of the swirling black liquid that was her body. At its center, where the sparking crimson gold energy collected, a small speck began to take shape. More and more Lyra began to focus, weaving her very essence, blood and aether into the steadily growing crystalline structure. This was a simple use of the Crystalize ability, commonly used by Vampyre's to store blood for later consumption, or for attacks. The concept here was similar, but Lyra had another idea for how to utilize this ability. As the crystal formed from her black blood she also shaped the outide into a perfect sphere. With a breath and a surge of aether Lyra drew on a piece of the Veil to extend toward the crystal, and with fortis she began to carve and shape symbols on it's surface. One after another they formed, beginning with a circle on both ends, each with the symbol of an eye with a curled snake for a pupil. Around the diameter of the crystal Lyra carved the same pictographs as made up the Veil itself, and as she worked she collected small parts of the veil and had them funnel into the crystal. Slowly she worked, quickly growing tired as more and more of her miniscule aether reserves were drained away.
As the last pictograph was put in place Lyra reached inward and touched her own soul. Then, with barely a thought, she fractured a tiny piece, a mere sliver, and implanted it into the crystal. Another series of glyphs were added and finally the last of her aether, including that which held the veil, funneled into the crystal causing the entire structure to glow briefly before fading.
What remained was a nearly smooth circular crystal, its surface lightly carved with the eyes on either end and glyphs around its diameter. It possessed a very soft golden glow that came from inside the black crystal itself. Lyra could feel that small shard of herself inside, encased in her own crystalized blood and surrounded by the veil of magic that would hide it from the wards attention. Then Lyra reached deep inside, grasping at the tiniest fragment of aether she had remaining, and sent it into the crystal. It absorbed it eagerly, and through the link with her shard Lyra could sense the aether's presence inside.
It would take several days, maybe longer, but Lyra would fill this crystal. Once it had been saturated with as much aether as she could push into it, then Lyra would begin the true first steps to her escape. For now, she needed to rest. Gather her aether, and after every cycle push what aether she held onto into the crystal and repeat. She settled herself down to wait.
