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]

"Yeah, I heard," he says. "I have no objections to being your test case."

He ascends the stairs.

[imeanforever]

Promise supervises.

[kingsidecastle]

"Promise, would you like to participate? A second person sitting for rook will help to balance and strengthen the spell, and as far as I know the danger of magic addiction is only in the actual casting."

[imeanforever]

"Sure. What do I do?"

[kingsidecastle]

"You'll just have to sit in a specific place in the spell layout not doing much, like Royal did when I cast all those spells at the school."

She begins to construct a spell layout with eight points. Four wooden rooks and four metal rooks in an inner ring, each with its corresponding bishop holding a spot in the outer ring. A lot of those clear glass pebbles. Four glass bishops and four glass knights, on points between the inner and outer rings; numerous glass pebbles covering other places in the diagram. Promise is directed to sit in a particular spot between the inner and outer rings; Castle sits in the corresponding spot on the opposite side; Tea gets the center spot.

Castle begins describing a spell-narrative.

Here is a far-seeing traveller, knowledgeable and wise, with sharp senses and a keen mind. Here is an invisible landscape, its existence known to few, its features understood by fewer. But that can change. He can learn a new kind of sight.

Visions take shape around them, showing the harmonics of the room as they currently stand...

...and then flaring and warping into a spiky crystalline structure. Castle keeps talking, but frowns slightly. The structure shifts faster and faster as she speaks, blurring and warping in places. She offers a diplomatic suggestion that seeing and changing should not be the same, but the spell is having none of it; after a few more sentences she thanks the glass pieces for their help and ends the spell. The sharp-planed tangle of visible harmonics fades from the air.

"Well?"

[eversomuchfun]

"I'm definitely seeing something," he says. "If what we saw at the start of the spell was drunk harmonics, I think these harmonics have taken regrettable doses of hallucinogens."

[imeanforever]

Promise starts curiously surrounding Tea with fairylights.

[eversomuchfun]

The harmonics in his immediate vicinity are wildly unstable. You couldn't hope to map it; never mind writing anything down, the patterns move so fast that even building an accurate mental picture of a defined space by staring at gridded fairylights verges on the intractable.

"I'm starting to feel a little like I've taken regrettable doses of hallucinogens," Tea says dryly.

[imeanforever]

"Maybe if you flatten the harmonics around him that will help?"

[kingsidecastle]

"Worth a shot," says Castle. She cleans up the spell layout, reinstates the simple one for flattening harmonics, and says a quick version of the flattening narrative.

[eversomuchfun]

"That certainly flattened some harmonics," says Tea. "And yet I continue to fuck them up dramatically."

[imeanforever]

"Oh dear. I'm sorry. But I'm glad it's not me."

[eversomuchfun]

"It's sort of entertaining to watch, actually. But I wouldn't want to try learning sorcery in this state."

[imeanforever]

"You might actually be able to - enough attention to other factors can let you completely ignore harmonics, and it's not bad enough to shred established lights - but yeah."

[eversomuchfun]

Shrug. "And now you know. And I suppose you'll need a second test subject if Castle goes for another try."

[kingsidecastle]

"It's possible I could fix your problem somehow, but I wouldn't want to try it immediately," says Castle. "It's always possible that the effect will settle down if we give it some time, and if that does happen it'll be easier all round than trying to cast more spells to fix what the first one broke."

[imeanforever]

"How long until we know if that's going to happen or not?"

[kingsidecastle]

"I'd give it a week before I started trying alternatives."

[imeanforever]

Nod. "I wonder if you're going to disturb all the harmonics in your place until I can't use my map anymore. Oh well."

[eversomuchfun]

"Seems very likely, since I sleep there."

[imeanforever]

"Oh well. I'll map the roof."

[eversomuchfun]

"My nonsense mostly doesn't go that high."

[imeanforever]

"Mostly?"

[eversomuchfun]

"If my bizarre harmonic aura has a particularly energetic moment while I'm passing through the ground level of the crypt, you might have to amend your map of the roof."

[imeanforever]

"Then maybe I'll just map part of the graveyard you don't tend to pass through."