1st Day of Ash, 124th Year of the Age of Steel
Ecithian Wilds
Ecithian Wilds
It had been a fortnight since they had fumbled their way through Slipspace and appeared in Ecith. The sun was a problem. Here there was no sewer to slink away into or any cozy underground compound to hide in. Masagh had determined early on that he would need to dig himself a hole and rest out the daylight as a snake if he could not find better shelter.
Indira spent the days exploring the jungle nearby. Contrary to his worries, she was enjoying the adventure of it all. As a ghost, the jungle harbored significantly less danger to her than most. While he was coiled up underground, she was floating through trees and watching monkeys scavenge. She enjoyed it so much it actually raised his own spirits to be greeted at twilight with her recounting the day. Hundreds of years she might have, but he sometimes forgot how little she had truly lived in those years. She was far too smart and curious to be denied the world.
Masagh stretched when the last rays of light had passed below the horizon and night fell. Another cloudless night left everything bathed in that pale white light of the moon. Indira seemed to glow in more than one way as she recounted the adventures of a young baboon learning how to pick apart fruits and stumbling from trees. He grunted in response.
“Maybe you should keep a journal, Indira.” He said through his stretches. “We have the extra book for it. It’s not like we don’t have time for a bit of possession during the night after all.” He grinned, letting Ghoulblade come to rest on his shoulder in a familiar move. “Turns out survival is not so complicated when you don’t need to cook your food and you can control a weapon with your mind… Apart from the sun that is.”
“Oh I don’t know, aren’t we using those for important notes?” The ghost asked, unable to fully mask her excitement at the idea.
He grunted. “Eh, I’m sure we will be able to get more somewhere. Not like I’ve made much headway there anyway. Do it. It could come in great use.”
She tilted her head at him, askance. “Really?” He was not being polite.
“Yes, from what I remember Ecith is largely unexplored by today’s population.” He said. “You could log what we come across, where we came across it. Who knows when we will need to reference these things.”
She spun slowly in the air thinking on it. “Okay, that sounds good. Maybe I can even publish it someday. I can do it with Materialization if you are working tonight?” Her tone raised it to a question.
He nodded, lifting one foot after the other out of the dirt and shaking them. Ever since he had abandoned his tattered boots he had formed the habit. “I want to make a few scrolls to protect our shitty little caves.”
“How are you going to do that?” She asked, curiosity pulling her attention from the featherlight bag that housed their supplies.
“You’ll see.” He grunted.
Masagh crossed to the featherlight bag and pulled it open. He retrieved one of the four simple leather-bound books he had taken from the Creth Compound. Passing it to her with ink and pen he bent to retrieve his own items. It had been wise to take the extra time to grab the bag and pack it before going to rescue Sabrione. If not, they would be out here with nothing at all. Now at least he had the rudimentary supplies for what he needed to do.
He retrieved a novice scroll paper and infused ink as well as the collapsible workbench he had painstakingly crafted himself. He wouldn’t be using its Runeforging functionality tonight, but he did need a flat surface to scribe on.
These were hardly ideal circumstances, but he could make do here. They had come to a clearing in the jungle bush. It was more just a mossy gap in three large protruding tree roots that provided shelter. Masagh sat cross legged on the softest bit of moss he could find and set about planning his venture.
He was not practiced at the scrollwork, having had little practical use for it before. As with the other world magics he had learned, he suspected Scrivening would prove to be more useful than he first thought. Gone were the days of his youth where he dodged those classroom lessons. Now he was eager for any magic he could get that would help him in his goal.
Laying out the parchment he pondered his options. He could use Animus to transform whatever touched the scroll into something else… but that might still be dangerous. It wasn’t that he was particularly worried about the average jungle denizen. Masagh was more worried about whatever it was inadvertently exposing him to the sun. The other options were to have the scroll traverse the victim somewhere else or perhaps have it summon Ghoulblade to dispatch the thing.
Masagh decided on the Traversion scroll. He would have the portal exit somewhere far enough that the creature would not be able to return. It was the safest option for him. With that Masagh bent to being the work. Across the little forest nook from him Indira was bent over her book, squinting as she scribbled. Birds and bugs called out to the jungle all around them.
It was similar to Runeforging to be honest. Scrollwork embodied the same principles of capturing aether and trapping it with pictographs and glyphs. The difference was that in theory it was simpler. In theory. Where in Runeforging he needed to draw out traits of materials, here he was simply trying to capture his own spell. What more familiar aether was there than one’s own?
The problem came when the spell and parchment met. If even one stroke was out of place, the whole thing could be ruined. In this case, his scroll paper would simply be pushed off into Slipspace.
To ensure this didn’t happen Masagh inked in the corner symbols of the scrolls. Four double mirrors. The mirror was meant to absorb and reflect aether that came in contact with it. If he misplaced a stroke in this step his spell would not even impart itself in the scroll. Masagh mentally gave thanks at the many frustrating nights he had spent developing the collapsible workbench. Here in the wild jungles of Ecith it was definitely coming in handy. For any other writing it would be a convenience. For Scrivening it was essential.
After he finished the mirrors immediately his pen moved in an intricate and ancient dance of paths and convergences. This was no common lexicon. Masagh had been taught in the runes of the old Empire. Even the language lexicon was designed based on this more ancient arcane one. He expertly cut the scroll into intricate woven segments with the ink lines. The pathways would determine the function of the spaces between them.
For a Traversion spell like this only a tri-part Vortex would be suitable as a safety valve for the chaotic back aether. He leaned back and cracked his knuckles before bending to that task. Any misaligned strokes could interfere with the spell storing glyphs in the center of the scroll that he had yet to make. Masagh smirked as he finished the last curved line of the Vortex. It was funny that mastering magic could mean anything from swinging a sword with your mind to perfectly drawing a simple curved line.
Before putting pen to paper Masagh had decided on a two part glyph. One of storing to hold the spell. The second was one of initiation, and was significantly more complex. The intricate lines and pathways of it took longer than the rest of the scroll combined. He needed to incorporate the trigger, being touch by someone other than himself. That meant he had to backtrack and add pathways to the edges from the mirrors. Then he had to impart the function of it barring him from the effect, which was just very complex. Masagh was forced to get creative with where he placed all the pictographs for that command.
But finally he was finished with the scrivening and the scroll was ready to impart the spell. The ghoul set his pen carefully down next to the uncorked bottle of magical ink and leaned back. Groaning, he methodically cracked each knuckle and his wrists. It was dull work, Scrivening. There was no denying the benefits of the craft though. He knew he was better for the knowledge as well.
Perhaps this safety measure wasn’t really needed. Perhaps it was largely paranoia that was driving him. But habits made you who you were. He wanted to be a careful man after everything that had happened to him. Needed to be a careful man. If he could do this today on a scroll, perhaps some tomorrow he could do it on a city block. Perhaps he could even blot out the sun and let his people enjoy true freedom. Someday.
Masagh rolled his head around once on his neck and bent back to the work. In truth, imparting a traversing spell into the scroll was child’s play. He had already finished the hard work. Placing a fingertip on each mirror on the scroll, he invoked his aether. The magic flared and seeped into the scroll’s pictographs. Then it faded.
Standing, Masagh gathered up all the tools and the workbench. “Indira.” He waved the scroll at her. “I’m going to place this and then go flying.” He began to place the tools carefully back in the featherlight bag.
She looked up owlishly at him from where she was still writing. “Oh. Which way are you going tonight?” She asked. He had taken to flying in large swaths of the jungle at night to scout out their next day’s travels and possible necromancer locations.
“North I think.” He said as he squatted down by the small den he had dug himself for his snake form. He carefully placed the scroll inside the entrance about half a foot and unfurled it. “I want to check the mountain out. This place might have more frontier people on the other side. Maybe they will know something.” He said hopefully.
Their recent lack of progress had done little to dampen his mood. For one, Indira was loving their adventure. He too was loving eating fresh kills and not bearing the guilt of his inaction in Gel’Grandal. There he had just been the stir crazy son. Here, even on slow nights like this, it felt like he was moving to his goal.
“Okay, be safe.” Indira said, already bending back to her book.
He grunted and transformed. The tiny pterincus flapped off into the darkening sky. He hadn’t found anything to hint at the mysterious necromancer Lithiricus had visited those hundreds of years ago, but he would. Fate had brought him here from across the world. Surely there was a reason.