Dreams In Iron [Pt 2]
Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2024 12:10 am
Frost 14, 123
South Of Ailos
An intemperate wind blew in from the northern seas, carrying chill rains. The droplets beat lightly on the beach now, but for much of the morning the rains had driven every living thing on the shore for shelter.
The witch had sought shelter beneath a lean-to, suspending a length of cloth between herself and the weather. It wasn’t just that it was more comfortable; she wanted to keep the fire she’d built lit and visible. And now the consequences of that decision approached.
The grey rains split to reveal a band of six men. Only one was Orkhan, and most of the group were shorter even than Imogen, but they walked with assurance. Once, their attire might have been rich, silks and fine brocade and gold and silver accents on buttons, but the gods of the sea had torn and worn and desaturated everything about that.
As the pirates approached, Imogen Ward stood, pushing aside her makeshift shelter to face them with steely resolution in her eyes. She held out her hand and silvery light coalesced within, raw energy gathering itself into matter and congealing from shine to steel. The Ork walked forward, her sword rising until the tip was pointed directly at the leader of the grinning brigands.
Then, she flipped the sword around so that she was presenting him with the pommel.
"Got something which’ll fit the hilt?" she asked.
“Aye,” the man said, his voice thick with malice and calumny, “But that be a tall order, don’t it? It seems ter me and me boys that we’ll be having to ask yer to double the price.”
"Scoundrels." Imogen hissed, "I could get three of the stones for that in Gel’Grandal."
“Oh? Then do so, and begone with ye!” the leader spat, “We be imposing a fee fer the convenience, aye, but also- our warranty ‘o trade is-”
“This isn’t right!” protested the young orkhan boy.
Imogen paused in her retelling. "What do you mean?"
“You said there was going to be a fight against pirates!”
"I said nothing of the kind." rejoined Imogen, indignant, "I told you there were going to be pirates, and here they are."
“But they’re pirates, you can’t just buy stuff from them.”
"Certainly you can. They’ve got to sell the things they steal to someone, haven’t they?"
There was discontent among the audience at this. Plainly they had expected the pirates to be antagonists in this tale, and they weren’t about to be satisfied by economic struggles. Well, that was just too bad, wasn’t it? Sometimes stories were for teaching as well as entertaining.
“Well, what did you buy?” asked one child, curiosity overcoming disappointment.
"It’s called a lorestone. Want to hold it?"
Imogen produced a sparkling polyhedron from nowhere, opaque and translucent and clear and rainbow-tinted all at once. The kids jostled for it, excited to get a good look.
The memnosyte in question wasn’t especially big. In Gel’Grandel, where the stones were commonly used for the many strange foundations of the Imperial communications network, it would have cost her an aven, maybe two or three. The pirates had charged ten.
“What does it do?” a girl asked, peering at the natural varicolored circuitry of the gem.
"These store memories," the witch explained, "Just as you’ll remember this stone, it will remember you. And the reason you need that is-"
The witch stood on the northern shore of Ailos and prepared to cast An Answer To Suffering.
That wasn’t exactly the title of a spell, actually. It was simply what the author of the book had suggested the purpose of the spell was. “Spells” weren’t really discrete things, as such- they were procedures, combinations of actions which some witch had found tended to produce a beneficial magic effect.
This one was not often used, for it had been developed to treat a very rare kind of condition. When one of the coven survived some struggle but their shock never faded, it was meant to sort of… shock their conscious mind back into action. All it really did was record a couple of days of the caster’s life and then impart it to the target in the form of a dream.
Reaving wasn’t a magic well-suited to that task, but the first secret of magic was that anything was possible. The correct admixture of dragonshards, glyphs and intent could temporarily turn a Pact Weapon into a bridge between two living beings.
Imogen began with the easy part, joining her Pact sword to the memnosyte, which would permit the weapon to record her experience. This step called for a series of glyphs, which she scribed onto the sword’s blade with sorcerer’s ink to the best of her ability, hoping that it didn’t need to be too precise.
Next, the witch called forth her Pact shield, which she’d long ago infused with dreamstone to protect herself from nightmares. She let the tip of her sword rest against the shield as the glyphs she’d scribed drew dream energy, preparing to create the bridge which could conduct memories across any distance.
When this was done, she reshaped part of the sword, inscribing a word upon it: “Deravaecia”. That left only two steps.
Under ordinary circumstances, the hardest part would have been to draw blood. Here, though, she was entirely confident that Deravaecia wouldn’t react even if she cut one of her claws clean off. Imogen casually drew close to one of the great iron dragon’s hands, choosing a spot without much armor, and carefully drove her sword’s tip into flesh.
Even intending only to gather a single drop, it wasn’t easy to actually pierce her flesh. The Sunsinger’s weapon skidded off rubbery skin a few times until Imogen eventually gave in and turned loose a greater magic, transfiguring the sword from one of steel to the strange primal metal she’d gathered from the Silent Fisher. It was an aether-intensive process, but the harder metal bit easily into the dragon’s hide, letting a thin rivulet of blood flow over the glyphs inscribed on the weapon.
The witch withdrew the sword and held it at eye level, focused on the energies intermixing upon the blade. She raised her chin, and spoke with as much force as she could muster:
“Thiovan, Keela and Malgar attend
This lesson, O lords, must come to an end.”
The ritual concluded without fanfare. There was no rumbling of thunder in the heavens to signify anything, the sword did not glow, and Deravaecia did not react at all. Nevertheless, Imogen thought she felt a surge within the blade as the joined magics aligned for their purpose.
The Sunsinger took her hand off the sword, but did not dismiss it. Dematerializing the weapon would end the ritual, and the ritual wouldn’t do a blessed thing if it didn’t run long enough. No matter; Imogen could keep a single Pact Weapon manifested indefinitely. A week’s manifestation was no real strain at all for a mage of her calibur.
By way of apology, she began to bandage the shallow cut she’d inflicted on the insensate dragon, wrapping a length of clean cotton around the wound. It looked like it would probably clot by itself, but she had no idea whether dragons were at all prone to infection, and certainly didn’t relish the thought of completing her ritual to find she’d inadvertently killed the patient.
As she finished, however, something came loose, thumping gently to the sand. Imogen blinked in surprise and knelt, finding that a coin-sized iron scale had somehow become dislodged.
The witch collected the scale. There was no use for such a thing in the ritual, but many magics did exist which could benefit from any part of a dragon. Worst came to worst, she could probably pawn it off on some alchemist somewhere.
Spell concluded and obligations satisfied, the witch took one last look at the lonely beach and stepped out of the world, intent on returning to the Temple of Light before nightfall. The hard part of her ritual was now completed, and she had little to do but wait until the end and see if the magic worked at all.
When the witch returned to the Temple of Light, she spent some time monitoring her Pact sword to make sure that everything seemed… normal? She couldn’t really tell if the ritual was working; even if it was, there was no telling whether the magic would do as intended. But it seemed stable, and as long as the working didn’t literally blow up it was a success of some sort.
The rest of the day she spent touring the ruins, intent on doing a little of the sightseeing she’d intended to do when she first came to the isle with Moon. It was a bit uncanny. She’d seen many ruins throughout central Ecith, and even in Karnor, especially in the Warrens, but those had been ancient ruins. These had been intact buildings only a few decades ago. In a way, it was more like walking through downtown Zaichaer than anything else.
Once she was finished, she retired to the chamber the caretakers had thoughtfully permitted her to stay in. The ritual hadn’t been exhausting, by any means, but between that and the lengthy jaunts through slipspace to access the shore, Imogen was still pretty tired. She climbed into the big nest bed, expecting to fall asleep at once.
…but she didn’t. Something filled her with anxious energy, and she couldn’t figure out what.
After some time spent tossing and turning with no real progress towards slumber, the witch decided to rouse herself and do something more useful, like meditation. As she righted herself, she felt Deravaecia’s scale dig into her skin. Imogen dug it out of her pocket, admiring the way the dull scale seemed to gain additional depths in the shadowy light of the room’s wan illumination.
It occurred to her, then, that while the scale was small, it might suffice as a Totem. There were many stories of old Ecthian heroes who had borne such things; fought in dragon-shape, or simply used the power of dragons in their battles. Such heroic tales did not go into details, but weren’t dragons living creatures too? Presumably the process would be similar.
And she’d experienced no issues assimilating the aether of the hydra, after all. That creature had been comparable in size to Deravaecia. What was the worst that could happen?
Fully convinced by this rationale, the witch arranged herself in a seated position, holding the scale, and began to meditate upon it. The ritual to create a Totem was time-consuming, but uncomplicated; much like that to bond a Pact weapon, really. One simply had to unify the aether and come to understand it at a level beyond conscious thought. She even had an advantage, having come to know the dragon’s life’s story in the broad strokes.
After she’d spent sufficient time in meditation, Imogen fed aether to the Cardinal Rune of Animus and brought the scale to her chest. Her markings glowed visibly in the shadows, as she felt the scale begin to-
Without warning, Deravaecia’s scale transmuted from iron to energy, a dull grey lightning which seemed to rush into the witch’s bones. Imogen gasped in surprise and pain as the aetheric pathways throughout her body were suddenly overloaded by the strange energy. The shadows in the room seemed to loom, then spin- then the entire room was spinning.
The witch fell backwards, stunned, and the world grew black around her as consciousness fled.
In the corner of the room, leaning against the wall, the Sunsinger’s pact sword glowed with sudden light, the clear lorestone in the center pulsing as it discharged information. And then it was dark again, and there was neither light nor motion in that night.
An Answer To Suffering
In any life, it may transpire
Vicis’ design will extinguish the fire
Hopeless and bleak, bound for the pyre
Light it with happiness, dread and desire
Call forth your weapon, supple and strong
Give it a memory, ancient and long
Put it to sleep with a dragon-borne song
Etch with the name to whom hope should belong
Let your blade have just a taste of their blood
Even a droplet will bring on a flood
Thiovan, Keela and Malgar attend
This lesson, O lords, must come to an end
South Of Ailos
An intemperate wind blew in from the northern seas, carrying chill rains. The droplets beat lightly on the beach now, but for much of the morning the rains had driven every living thing on the shore for shelter.
The witch had sought shelter beneath a lean-to, suspending a length of cloth between herself and the weather. It wasn’t just that it was more comfortable; she wanted to keep the fire she’d built lit and visible. And now the consequences of that decision approached.
The grey rains split to reveal a band of six men. Only one was Orkhan, and most of the group were shorter even than Imogen, but they walked with assurance. Once, their attire might have been rich, silks and fine brocade and gold and silver accents on buttons, but the gods of the sea had torn and worn and desaturated everything about that.
As the pirates approached, Imogen Ward stood, pushing aside her makeshift shelter to face them with steely resolution in her eyes. She held out her hand and silvery light coalesced within, raw energy gathering itself into matter and congealing from shine to steel. The Ork walked forward, her sword rising until the tip was pointed directly at the leader of the grinning brigands.
Then, she flipped the sword around so that she was presenting him with the pommel.
"Got something which’ll fit the hilt?" she asked.
“Aye,” the man said, his voice thick with malice and calumny, “But that be a tall order, don’t it? It seems ter me and me boys that we’ll be having to ask yer to double the price.”
"Scoundrels." Imogen hissed, "I could get three of the stones for that in Gel’Grandal."
“Oh? Then do so, and begone with ye!” the leader spat, “We be imposing a fee fer the convenience, aye, but also- our warranty ‘o trade is-”
~~~
“This isn’t right!” protested the young orkhan boy.
Imogen paused in her retelling. "What do you mean?"
“You said there was going to be a fight against pirates!”
"I said nothing of the kind." rejoined Imogen, indignant, "I told you there were going to be pirates, and here they are."
“But they’re pirates, you can’t just buy stuff from them.”
"Certainly you can. They’ve got to sell the things they steal to someone, haven’t they?"
There was discontent among the audience at this. Plainly they had expected the pirates to be antagonists in this tale, and they weren’t about to be satisfied by economic struggles. Well, that was just too bad, wasn’t it? Sometimes stories were for teaching as well as entertaining.
“Well, what did you buy?” asked one child, curiosity overcoming disappointment.
"It’s called a lorestone. Want to hold it?"
Imogen produced a sparkling polyhedron from nowhere, opaque and translucent and clear and rainbow-tinted all at once. The kids jostled for it, excited to get a good look.
The memnosyte in question wasn’t especially big. In Gel’Grandel, where the stones were commonly used for the many strange foundations of the Imperial communications network, it would have cost her an aven, maybe two or three. The pirates had charged ten.
“What does it do?” a girl asked, peering at the natural varicolored circuitry of the gem.
"These store memories," the witch explained, "Just as you’ll remember this stone, it will remember you. And the reason you need that is-"
~~~
The witch stood on the northern shore of Ailos and prepared to cast An Answer To Suffering.
That wasn’t exactly the title of a spell, actually. It was simply what the author of the book had suggested the purpose of the spell was. “Spells” weren’t really discrete things, as such- they were procedures, combinations of actions which some witch had found tended to produce a beneficial magic effect.
This one was not often used, for it had been developed to treat a very rare kind of condition. When one of the coven survived some struggle but their shock never faded, it was meant to sort of… shock their conscious mind back into action. All it really did was record a couple of days of the caster’s life and then impart it to the target in the form of a dream.
Reaving wasn’t a magic well-suited to that task, but the first secret of magic was that anything was possible. The correct admixture of dragonshards, glyphs and intent could temporarily turn a Pact Weapon into a bridge between two living beings.
Imogen began with the easy part, joining her Pact sword to the memnosyte, which would permit the weapon to record her experience. This step called for a series of glyphs, which she scribed onto the sword’s blade with sorcerer’s ink to the best of her ability, hoping that it didn’t need to be too precise.
Next, the witch called forth her Pact shield, which she’d long ago infused with dreamstone to protect herself from nightmares. She let the tip of her sword rest against the shield as the glyphs she’d scribed drew dream energy, preparing to create the bridge which could conduct memories across any distance.
When this was done, she reshaped part of the sword, inscribing a word upon it: “Deravaecia”. That left only two steps.
Under ordinary circumstances, the hardest part would have been to draw blood. Here, though, she was entirely confident that Deravaecia wouldn’t react even if she cut one of her claws clean off. Imogen casually drew close to one of the great iron dragon’s hands, choosing a spot without much armor, and carefully drove her sword’s tip into flesh.
Even intending only to gather a single drop, it wasn’t easy to actually pierce her flesh. The Sunsinger’s weapon skidded off rubbery skin a few times until Imogen eventually gave in and turned loose a greater magic, transfiguring the sword from one of steel to the strange primal metal she’d gathered from the Silent Fisher. It was an aether-intensive process, but the harder metal bit easily into the dragon’s hide, letting a thin rivulet of blood flow over the glyphs inscribed on the weapon.
The witch withdrew the sword and held it at eye level, focused on the energies intermixing upon the blade. She raised her chin, and spoke with as much force as she could muster:
“Thiovan, Keela and Malgar attend
This lesson, O lords, must come to an end.”
The ritual concluded without fanfare. There was no rumbling of thunder in the heavens to signify anything, the sword did not glow, and Deravaecia did not react at all. Nevertheless, Imogen thought she felt a surge within the blade as the joined magics aligned for their purpose.
The Sunsinger took her hand off the sword, but did not dismiss it. Dematerializing the weapon would end the ritual, and the ritual wouldn’t do a blessed thing if it didn’t run long enough. No matter; Imogen could keep a single Pact Weapon manifested indefinitely. A week’s manifestation was no real strain at all for a mage of her calibur.
By way of apology, she began to bandage the shallow cut she’d inflicted on the insensate dragon, wrapping a length of clean cotton around the wound. It looked like it would probably clot by itself, but she had no idea whether dragons were at all prone to infection, and certainly didn’t relish the thought of completing her ritual to find she’d inadvertently killed the patient.
As she finished, however, something came loose, thumping gently to the sand. Imogen blinked in surprise and knelt, finding that a coin-sized iron scale had somehow become dislodged.
The witch collected the scale. There was no use for such a thing in the ritual, but many magics did exist which could benefit from any part of a dragon. Worst came to worst, she could probably pawn it off on some alchemist somewhere.
Spell concluded and obligations satisfied, the witch took one last look at the lonely beach and stepped out of the world, intent on returning to the Temple of Light before nightfall. The hard part of her ritual was now completed, and she had little to do but wait until the end and see if the magic worked at all.
~~~
When the witch returned to the Temple of Light, she spent some time monitoring her Pact sword to make sure that everything seemed… normal? She couldn’t really tell if the ritual was working; even if it was, there was no telling whether the magic would do as intended. But it seemed stable, and as long as the working didn’t literally blow up it was a success of some sort.
The rest of the day she spent touring the ruins, intent on doing a little of the sightseeing she’d intended to do when she first came to the isle with Moon. It was a bit uncanny. She’d seen many ruins throughout central Ecith, and even in Karnor, especially in the Warrens, but those had been ancient ruins. These had been intact buildings only a few decades ago. In a way, it was more like walking through downtown Zaichaer than anything else.
Once she was finished, she retired to the chamber the caretakers had thoughtfully permitted her to stay in. The ritual hadn’t been exhausting, by any means, but between that and the lengthy jaunts through slipspace to access the shore, Imogen was still pretty tired. She climbed into the big nest bed, expecting to fall asleep at once.
…but she didn’t. Something filled her with anxious energy, and she couldn’t figure out what.
After some time spent tossing and turning with no real progress towards slumber, the witch decided to rouse herself and do something more useful, like meditation. As she righted herself, she felt Deravaecia’s scale dig into her skin. Imogen dug it out of her pocket, admiring the way the dull scale seemed to gain additional depths in the shadowy light of the room’s wan illumination.
It occurred to her, then, that while the scale was small, it might suffice as a Totem. There were many stories of old Ecthian heroes who had borne such things; fought in dragon-shape, or simply used the power of dragons in their battles. Such heroic tales did not go into details, but weren’t dragons living creatures too? Presumably the process would be similar.
And she’d experienced no issues assimilating the aether of the hydra, after all. That creature had been comparable in size to Deravaecia. What was the worst that could happen?
Fully convinced by this rationale, the witch arranged herself in a seated position, holding the scale, and began to meditate upon it. The ritual to create a Totem was time-consuming, but uncomplicated; much like that to bond a Pact weapon, really. One simply had to unify the aether and come to understand it at a level beyond conscious thought. She even had an advantage, having come to know the dragon’s life’s story in the broad strokes.
After she’d spent sufficient time in meditation, Imogen fed aether to the Cardinal Rune of Animus and brought the scale to her chest. Her markings glowed visibly in the shadows, as she felt the scale begin to-
Without warning, Deravaecia’s scale transmuted from iron to energy, a dull grey lightning which seemed to rush into the witch’s bones. Imogen gasped in surprise and pain as the aetheric pathways throughout her body were suddenly overloaded by the strange energy. The shadows in the room seemed to loom, then spin- then the entire room was spinning.
The witch fell backwards, stunned, and the world grew black around her as consciousness fled.
In the corner of the room, leaning against the wall, the Sunsinger’s pact sword glowed with sudden light, the clear lorestone in the center pulsing as it discharged information. And then it was dark again, and there was neither light nor motion in that night.
Sevenfold days must the magic endure
And life in each aspect the caster secure
If both can survive to the end of this tour
They may then return, if not as before