Animal Magnetism (Pt. 1)
Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 3:38 pm
Frost , 122
One fact that’s important to remember about Imogen Ward is that she has never been particularly good at tracking things. This we must keep in mind. It was once said of Imogen that she could miss a war while in the middle of it, and while most of those speakers were dead now, truth lives on in the world.
Thankfully, she labored under no illusions about her skills in that regard. She was aware that the… tapir metal spirit… thing… had instilled some kind of connection in her which was presumably meant to guide her, but she preferred to have a bit more certainty about destinations than that. If she’d learned one thing from her ill-fated journey into the northern jungles last year, it was surely that muddling about at random in Ecith was a marvelous way to get yourself killed.
Still, if she wasn’t much of a tracker and trapper, she was a witch. A good witch, too–if somewhat non-traditional–and the key to witchcraft was to take what the world gave you and imagine a way to put it to better use.
And if you had a magic metal pull in your mind, then the easiest way to make it explicit was with the appropriate totem: a magic compass. Sadly, Imogen didn’t have a compass (her last one was stolen by monkeys), but she did have something large and round which would help to make the implicit explicit.
The Orkhan woman hiked north for a short while from the beach. When she reached the line where the first trees became thick enough to be generously called “jungle”, Imogen leaned against one of the exotic flora and let gravity pull her to the soil. Thus seated, she closed her eyes, reaching into the depths of her spirit for one of the more familiar features of her magic.
Moments later, a quiet burst of flame announced the arrival of her enormous round shield upon the material plane. Imogen opened her eyes to find that her field of view was mostly consumed by the star-studded pattern of the Pact Weapon's shell.
"Great, first step done." Imogen said to herself, quietly. "Now, the hard part."
The witch reached out to the surface of her floating shield, observing the dim reflection of herself on its mirror-bright sheen. The surface seemed to give under the pressure of her hands as she sought for the invisible seam in the world which led into slipspace, matter and air alike rippling beneath the slight pressure exerted by the Rune of Traversion.
Traversion remained a bit of a difficult rune for Imogen to wrap her mind around. She’d begun to grow used to the silent, constant stream of information in the back of her mind, but she still wasn’t used to the instinctive indication it provided of the flaws in the endless, invisible barrier between the material and the astral. She could vividly recall the astral journey she’d been sent on when the Rune was first inscribed on her back, but actually tearing her spirit from her flesh as Carina had was still well beyond her understanding of the magic.
Much easier, however, was the creation of the small, almost-impermeable portals the Railrunners called Windows.
Windows were… well, she thought they were something like the predecessor to a proper portal, letting through light and sounds, but nothing else. They also required a reflective surface to manifest; in the past, she’d received orders through the mirror in one of the lesser-used lesson rooms in the Pfenning, but in a pinch the portholes had appeared in bathroom mirrors or (once) in the reflection upon her sword.
Now equipped with the Rune of Traversion, the mechanism for the Window became a lot clearer. That was good, as Carina hadn’t bothered explaining much, so she was left to guess at a lot of things which she’d known about only dimly from her time working with the other coven. It was a feature of the liminality itself, the place where light reflected an imaginary world, which permitted almost effortless Traversion… but of course, a mirror could not admit to the entry of a physical form.
The veil between Space and Slipspace was thin, infinitely thin. A sheet of parchment was sturdy as a mountain in comparison. But it couldn’t be broached by physical force, nor disturbed by it in any way; only a very exotic form of aether would suffice to tear the fabric of the world. Imogen gathered that energy about one claw (which had been a finger a moment ago, but it seemed adrenaline was getting to her) and snagged the meniscus of space where it intersected with the surface of her shield, peeling it away to reveal a wild riot of light beyond.
Without direction, the newborn Window wandered. The images reflected on the surface of the shield changed rapidly, without rhyme or reason, showing trees, then stars, then the sun, then some dark fastness beneath the earth, then the sea. Birds flew across it one moment, and the next it was entirely consumed by an enormous, inhuman eye, pupil shaped like a goat’s.
Ordinarily, Imogen would focus her mind and will on a place in order to center the Window upon it, but she let it wander for the time being. Instead of trying to direct it, she focused on the medium. The shield was connected to her soul, which was connected to the strange metal spirit’s plea; although she did not know where it wanted her to go, she should be able to combine the two magics…
The flickering began to speed up even further, chaos filling the shield as her eyes tried vainly to grasp for any individual details. Animals of every description flashed by, then a dragon, then mountains, then a metal pig, squealing as it fled, then-
Imogen grit her teeth as she willed the Window to center on the scene, trying to drag it back. At first, it seemed as though her efforts were in vain, the flickering images continuing to blast past at a rapid clip. But then the metal pig appeared again. And again!
Slowly, the images began to shift away from madness, resolving into shots of the pig- no, there was more than one. Just as she’d seen in her dream, a veritable herd of tapir were fleeing across the shadowy forest.
One by one, she watched as the shadows expanded, disgorging jaguars. The claws of the shadow beasts found easy purchase in metal, which could not simply shrug off the umbral blades. Metal was practically impervious to many elements, but shadows could be cast on it as easily as rock, or wood, or flesh.
"There they are."
The Ork rose slowly to her feet, as though she feared that any sudden movement might jolt the newly-opened Window out of alignment. The shield rose with her, hovering several feet above the ground as Imogen glowered into its depths, eyes fixed on the scene. There was no doubt that this was the place the pulling led, the slaughter the spirit so distinctly wanted stopped.
Yet there was no question of simply walking through the portal. Without training and practice, such a feat was well beyond the witch. If she tore open a hole to slipspace, there was little reason to imagine that she’d ever come out.
Still, it didn’t follow that she was going to simply walk there. With the Window open, affixed to the tether in her spirit, the sixth sense gifted by the Cardinal Rune of Traversion laid out the path through slipspace in a straight line. She could not simply make that jump in one go- but if she burned enough aether, she wouldn’t need to.
Preparing for what was going to be a nasty trip indeed, the Orkhan woman set her jaw anew and closed her eyes, summoning up the depths of the pool of power she’d cultivated since attaining Reaving years ago. The markings on her back flared with arcane light, power running like rivulets across her flesh. When she opened her eyes, they were filled with that same luminescence.
The air split open ahead of her, the veil betwixt hither and thither never much thicker than a daydream, and revealed a vast naught, an absence even of light and color, which made the untrained eye water and slide away. For a moment, if one cared to peer through the tears, ruins and rock and floating land was distantly visible, remnants of the war where that which should not be was caught in that which wasn't.
Then she stepped forward into nothing, and was gone.
One fact that’s important to remember about Imogen Ward is that she has never been particularly good at tracking things. This we must keep in mind. It was once said of Imogen that she could miss a war while in the middle of it, and while most of those speakers were dead now, truth lives on in the world.
Thankfully, she labored under no illusions about her skills in that regard. She was aware that the… tapir metal spirit… thing… had instilled some kind of connection in her which was presumably meant to guide her, but she preferred to have a bit more certainty about destinations than that. If she’d learned one thing from her ill-fated journey into the northern jungles last year, it was surely that muddling about at random in Ecith was a marvelous way to get yourself killed.
Still, if she wasn’t much of a tracker and trapper, she was a witch. A good witch, too–if somewhat non-traditional–and the key to witchcraft was to take what the world gave you and imagine a way to put it to better use.
And if you had a magic metal pull in your mind, then the easiest way to make it explicit was with the appropriate totem: a magic compass. Sadly, Imogen didn’t have a compass (her last one was stolen by monkeys), but she did have something large and round which would help to make the implicit explicit.
The Orkhan woman hiked north for a short while from the beach. When she reached the line where the first trees became thick enough to be generously called “jungle”, Imogen leaned against one of the exotic flora and let gravity pull her to the soil. Thus seated, she closed her eyes, reaching into the depths of her spirit for one of the more familiar features of her magic.
Moments later, a quiet burst of flame announced the arrival of her enormous round shield upon the material plane. Imogen opened her eyes to find that her field of view was mostly consumed by the star-studded pattern of the Pact Weapon's shell.
"Great, first step done." Imogen said to herself, quietly. "Now, the hard part."
The witch reached out to the surface of her floating shield, observing the dim reflection of herself on its mirror-bright sheen. The surface seemed to give under the pressure of her hands as she sought for the invisible seam in the world which led into slipspace, matter and air alike rippling beneath the slight pressure exerted by the Rune of Traversion.
Traversion remained a bit of a difficult rune for Imogen to wrap her mind around. She’d begun to grow used to the silent, constant stream of information in the back of her mind, but she still wasn’t used to the instinctive indication it provided of the flaws in the endless, invisible barrier between the material and the astral. She could vividly recall the astral journey she’d been sent on when the Rune was first inscribed on her back, but actually tearing her spirit from her flesh as Carina had was still well beyond her understanding of the magic.
Much easier, however, was the creation of the small, almost-impermeable portals the Railrunners called Windows.
Windows were… well, she thought they were something like the predecessor to a proper portal, letting through light and sounds, but nothing else. They also required a reflective surface to manifest; in the past, she’d received orders through the mirror in one of the lesser-used lesson rooms in the Pfenning, but in a pinch the portholes had appeared in bathroom mirrors or (once) in the reflection upon her sword.
Now equipped with the Rune of Traversion, the mechanism for the Window became a lot clearer. That was good, as Carina hadn’t bothered explaining much, so she was left to guess at a lot of things which she’d known about only dimly from her time working with the other coven. It was a feature of the liminality itself, the place where light reflected an imaginary world, which permitted almost effortless Traversion… but of course, a mirror could not admit to the entry of a physical form.
The veil between Space and Slipspace was thin, infinitely thin. A sheet of parchment was sturdy as a mountain in comparison. But it couldn’t be broached by physical force, nor disturbed by it in any way; only a very exotic form of aether would suffice to tear the fabric of the world. Imogen gathered that energy about one claw (which had been a finger a moment ago, but it seemed adrenaline was getting to her) and snagged the meniscus of space where it intersected with the surface of her shield, peeling it away to reveal a wild riot of light beyond.
Without direction, the newborn Window wandered. The images reflected on the surface of the shield changed rapidly, without rhyme or reason, showing trees, then stars, then the sun, then some dark fastness beneath the earth, then the sea. Birds flew across it one moment, and the next it was entirely consumed by an enormous, inhuman eye, pupil shaped like a goat’s.
Ordinarily, Imogen would focus her mind and will on a place in order to center the Window upon it, but she let it wander for the time being. Instead of trying to direct it, she focused on the medium. The shield was connected to her soul, which was connected to the strange metal spirit’s plea; although she did not know where it wanted her to go, she should be able to combine the two magics…
The flickering began to speed up even further, chaos filling the shield as her eyes tried vainly to grasp for any individual details. Animals of every description flashed by, then a dragon, then mountains, then a metal pig, squealing as it fled, then-
Imogen grit her teeth as she willed the Window to center on the scene, trying to drag it back. At first, it seemed as though her efforts were in vain, the flickering images continuing to blast past at a rapid clip. But then the metal pig appeared again. And again!
Slowly, the images began to shift away from madness, resolving into shots of the pig- no, there was more than one. Just as she’d seen in her dream, a veritable herd of tapir were fleeing across the shadowy forest.
One by one, she watched as the shadows expanded, disgorging jaguars. The claws of the shadow beasts found easy purchase in metal, which could not simply shrug off the umbral blades. Metal was practically impervious to many elements, but shadows could be cast on it as easily as rock, or wood, or flesh.
"There they are."
The Ork rose slowly to her feet, as though she feared that any sudden movement might jolt the newly-opened Window out of alignment. The shield rose with her, hovering several feet above the ground as Imogen glowered into its depths, eyes fixed on the scene. There was no doubt that this was the place the pulling led, the slaughter the spirit so distinctly wanted stopped.
Yet there was no question of simply walking through the portal. Without training and practice, such a feat was well beyond the witch. If she tore open a hole to slipspace, there was little reason to imagine that she’d ever come out.
Still, it didn’t follow that she was going to simply walk there. With the Window open, affixed to the tether in her spirit, the sixth sense gifted by the Cardinal Rune of Traversion laid out the path through slipspace in a straight line. She could not simply make that jump in one go- but if she burned enough aether, she wouldn’t need to.
Preparing for what was going to be a nasty trip indeed, the Orkhan woman set her jaw anew and closed her eyes, summoning up the depths of the pool of power she’d cultivated since attaining Reaving years ago. The markings on her back flared with arcane light, power running like rivulets across her flesh. When she opened her eyes, they were filled with that same luminescence.
The air split open ahead of her, the veil betwixt hither and thither never much thicker than a daydream, and revealed a vast naught, an absence even of light and color, which made the untrained eye water and slide away. For a moment, if one cared to peer through the tears, ruins and rock and floating land was distantly visible, remnants of the war where that which should not be was caught in that which wasn't.
Then she stepped forward into nothing, and was gone.