blood sweat tear

[imeanforever]

He's moving her to a different court to see if it'll improve her attitude. She's allowed to fly. It's been a long, long time since she was allowed to -

She is only allowed to fly to her destination, not anywhere else. She notices that she is not where she should be, that she cannot progress to where she was told to go, and she careens out of control when her wings won't flap anymore, and she crashes.

---

with Miles (kappa)

with Minus (kappa)

Comments

[eversomuchfun]

"Unquenchable flames. Petrification. Turning you into a rat. Turning you into an unquenchably burning stone rat. Locking you in a box and dropping you in the ocean, that wouldn't even require magic. Summoning an appropriate variety of demon or spirit to possess your body. No one's going to look at you and think you're especially likely to have a soul they might want to rip out, unless they miss the wings somehow."

[imeanforever]

"Ah. ...I have no idea what unquenchable flames would do to me. I've never actually been burned down to nothing before and don't know what would happen except that if killing a fairy were that easy we wouldn't consider ourselves immortal."

[eversomuchfun]

"If you ended up on fire for the rest of eternity this would probably still be very inconvenient even, perhaps especially, if it didn't kill you."

[imeanforever]

"Well, maybe I could figure out how to make the uncursing potion even if I was on fire at the time."

[eversomuchfun]

"But probably not if you were also a stone rat."

[imeanforever]

"That would admittedly present more of an obstacle."

[eversomuchfun]

He snickers and goes back to searching for scrying-related texts.

[imeanforever]

She puts down vampires book and picks up mirrors book.

[pythbox]

Mirrors book actually has an entire section on scrying-related mirrors, but it has nothing on how to make them, so it's not very practically useful.

There sure are a lot of types of magic mirror. Mirrors that show you what you ask for or what you need to see; mirrors that you can walk into and explore; mirrors that you can walk through and end up in another location entirely; mirrors that contain bound demons who do various things like warp nearby reality, send messages on command, or scream foul obscenities at anyone they see.

[imeanforever]

What an interesting array of mirrors. Does it say how to make any of the non-scrying kinds?

[eversomuchfun]

The demon-bound ones presumably involve binding a demon, but it doesn't actually say how to do that, and it doesn't go into even that much detail on how the rest were made.

Sherlock comes back when she has it open to a description of a mirror that shows your heart's desire. "Wouldn't that be fun," he comments. "But vampires don't have reflections, so I'm not at all sure if I could play."

[imeanforever]

"What a strange property."

[eversomuchfun]

Shrug. "It's supposed to be related to the soul thing but I think that's a fable."

[imeanforever]

"I assume rocks don't have souls and they have reflections."

[eversomuchfun]

"Yes."

[imeanforever]

Promise shuts the book and reaches for the scrying one.

[eversomuchfun]

He found three. He hands her the one on the top of the stack.

It contains actual practical scrying instructions and you don't even need to disassemble any animals!

[imeanforever]

Hooray! What do you need to do?

[eversomuchfun]

That depends on who or what you are trying to scry and how you are able to identify said target.

The most general-purpose scrying ritual involves a candle, a metal bowl, a pinch of salt, a splash of ink, and a drop of the caster's blood. One adds various target-specifiers at various steps of a short ritual, culminating in burning all burnable ingredients in the bowl and then pouring the ink over the ashes, filling the bowl with water, drawing and adding the drop of blood, and staring into the bowl until a clear image forms.

"These are all written for a human audience but I don't think the spell will care," Sherlock mentions.

[imeanforever]

"Why do you think that?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Assorted demons can use magic just fine and unless a picky god gets involved or someone has an applicable type of innate magic they can cast all the same spells as humans."

[imeanforever]

"I don't think my kind magic ought to have anything to do with it... okay."

[eversomuchfun]

"Going to try spying on anyone?"

[imeanforever]

"I'm not sure where I'd get most of these things."

[eversomuchfun]

"I could acquire them for you."