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

[kingsidecastle]

There is a large flat space cleared in the center of the classroom, with desks and chairs stacked against the far wall. Castle unstacks some chairs, sets them at the back of the classroom, and indicates them. "Non-participants over here," she says, and then starts checking a compass and laying out a geometric figure on the floor with masking tape. "Participants are just me, Royal, and Vampire Two for the first round."

[summa_iniuria]

Royal assists her aunt with the masking tape and also asks Vampire Two, "If you were a chess piece, which one would you be?"

[burning_gold]

"...Is this a trick question?"

[imeanforever]

"What's a chess piece?"

[kingsidecastle]

"Chess is a very old and widely-played game involving a number of pieces defined to have different abilities and characteristics," Castle explains. "The pieces are king, queen, rook, bishop, knight, and pawn. The kind of magic I practice involves setting up metaphors in which spell participants are represented by various chess pieces. I'm very strongly a rook, also known as a castle, hence the nickname; Royal's strongest pieces are king and queen, though she can take knight in a pinch. The setup spell here is a pawn promotion, which references a move in chess where a pawn, normally the weakest piece, can be transformed into a queen, knight, rook, or bishop. I'm going to represent Vampire Two as a pawn in the spell and then ask the magic to show me which of those four he has strong associations with. But it can be helpful to have an idea ahead of time."

[imeanforever]

"Ah."

[burning_gold]

"I... guess maybe a knight?" says Vampire Two.

[kingsidecastle]

"We'll see. Sit here, please." She indicates the center of the geometric figure. "Facing me. Royal, if you'd get the pieces? Glass set for him, steel set for us, no harm in priming things a little."

[summa_iniuria]

Royal retrieves some chess pieces from a box: a king, queen, and pair of rooks in stainless steel, and a pawn, rook, bishop, knight, and queen in clear glass. She helps Castle set them out in a square-within-a-square configuration.

The glass pawn goes directly in front of Vampire Two, with the knight just past it, and a steel rook beyond that; the glass rook goes to his right, the glass bishop to his left, and the glass queen behind him. The four possible promotion targets thereby form a square with Vampire Two in their center. The outer square of steel pieces is completed by a queen on his right, a king on his left, and a second rook behind him. Royal sits down behind the second rook as soon as she's placed it.

[kingsidecastle]

Castle sits in front of Vampire Two, opposite Royal.

"Now I'm going to talk to that glass pawn for a bit. There will be some illusory special effects related to the spell metaphors. Nothing too exciting, probably. It'll show us what you promote to, and it might hint at some other things about your life and history. Sound good?"

[burning_gold]

"Sure, okay."

[kingsidecastle]

"Further questions from the gallery before I start?"

[imeanforever]

"Special effects?"

[kingsidecastle]

"It might look like other scenes and objects are replacing or overlaying this room," she says. "Mysterious figures appearing and disappearing. That sort of thing. None of it will be real in the traditional sense. You won't have to worry about throwing a blanket over your vampires if the metaphor shows daylight, or anything."

[imeanforever]

"Noted."

[kingsidecastle]

"All right then."

Castle addresses the pawn. In a pleasant poetic rhythm, she talks about metaphor and resonance, symbols and associations. The light in the room seems to dim. Castle acquires a sort of faint aura depicting a round stone tower with blocky crenellations, a rook writ large; Royal acquires a faint golden crown on her head and a faint silver sword on her back. Vampire Two is at first unchanged, then acquires a hint of a vague and formless shadow hovering at his edges.

A minute or so passes. Castle continues speaking softly as these images solidify. The ceiling of the room acquires the appearance of a sky and cycles from night to clouded day to night again, starry and moonless. Then she inquires of the pawn what it might like to grow up to be.

The response is slow in coming. Castle waits in silence for several seconds. Then the knight in front of Vampire Two flares. A spark of white light travels from it to the pawn. The spark grows, reaches out, wraps around Vampire Two, and settles into a mantle of light. Something that might be a cloak, but carries a hint of wings. It displaces his shadowy aura almost completely.

Castle thanks the pawn. The images fade.

"Interesting," she says. "A knight metaphor, but not a strong one; I'm pretty sure it was trying to tell me you make a solid pawn too. And your knight metaphor isn't that usual either. Knight-as-cloak? It makes sense, kind of, but I wouldn't have come up with it on my own."

[burning_gold]

"That was weird," he says. "Cool, though."

[imeanforever]

"Having established this association what do you do with it?"

[kingsidecastle]

"I move on to the actual warding. Cloak actually seems like a pretty good metaphor to build a sunlight ward off of. Lucky Vampire Two. In practical terms, I restructure this arrangement of chess pieces, add a few extra things, and sit down for a second round of addressing mediocre alliterative verse to inanimate objects. Royal, help me out? I'm thinking keep the steel as-is, give him the pawn in front and the knight at his back, you can sit anchor with the stone, and I'll deal with the miscellaneous circle items."

[imeanforever]

"What does 'alliterative' mean?"

[summa_iniuria]

Royal gets up and starts moving pieces around to achieve the described configuration.

"Alliteration is when words start with the same sound as each other."

[imeanforever]

"Oh."

[kingsidecastle]

Castle retrieves some more presumably-relevant items. Small rocks and round glass pebbles. She passes a large smooth river stone to Royal, who places it prominently in the diagram; the miscellaneous objects go in a circle around the outside, enclosing Castle and Royal and all the chess pieces. Then they sit down again.

"Round two," says Castle. "Quiet please."

This time she talks to the river stone.

She describes in somewhat fanciful language how old it must be, how it was formed by geologic processes and made its way through the forces that shaped it into its current form and carried it at last into her possession. The imagery she calls up comes faster this time, and more strongly: the darkness beneath mountains envelops the room, lightening eventually to the gloom at the bottom of a river. Darkness is a definite theme here.

She asks the stone to lend its strength to this working. She describes a cloak of safety wrapping around 'this traveller', shielding him from the harmful light of day. She describes the strength of stone walls, solidity, opacity, permanence; her personal tower-image surrounds the spellcasting area, a translucent but nevertheless firmly solid stone wall. The metaphor gives him, not a cloak, but a pair of sleek black raven's wings.

Outside the image of the stone tower, an illusory dawn breaks, spilling illusory sunlight into the room. It pours in through the walls of Castle's tower, but loses some of its fire along the way; by the time it reaches Vampire Two, it's thin and weak. He sits in a comfortable shadow. Even as the sun rises to illuminate him fully, the walls are there to protect him. His illusory feathers shine, and he is unharmed.

Castle thanks the stone for its help. The metaphorical sun sets; the metaphorical tower fades; Vampire Two's metaphorical wings are the last to go.

[burning_gold]

"...That was really cool," says Vampire Two.

[imeanforever]

Nod nod.