The endless waste

[aestrix]

Once, this planet teemed with life. It doesn't do that, anymore. The ground is dry and cracked and occasionally broken up by charred remains of trees. There are no birds, no bugs, no living plants - nothing but an empty, endless waste.

With one exception.

But the world is so very big, and the exception so very small. If someone showed up away from it, they could be quite forgiven for thinking this world is completely dead.




with Sable (Kappa)

with Aisilian (Link)

with Grendyne (Rockeye)

with Temple (Curiousdiscoverer)

Comments

[characterquarry]

She sets down her broom and most of its contents at the first convenient surface, but brings along something hand-sized that she holds like a weapon but doesn't point at anything in particular. She gives the magic thing a suspicious glance and a wide berth.

On closer inspection, she looks... Really tired. Run-down. Not that this affects the absolute torrent of essence still pouring out of her.

[light_another_life]

The magic thing does nothing at all to her.

Past it is what looks to be a storage room. The young woman looks over her guest, frowns a bit, and then goes and retrieves a bit of food and drink. If the guest would like it.

Either way, the young woman holds up a finger ('Wait') and searches through the storage room for various items. A doll of some kind, a pouch of something, a dried flower, and a needle and thread. She retrieves a knife from a pocket somewhere, and opens a seam on the doll. Inside goes glowing dust from the pouch and bits of the dried flower - followed by a drop of blood from the young woman as she draws blood with the needle. She does it casually and without hesitation, and only a mild expression of discomfort.

Then she cleans the needle and sews the doll back up, turns to her guest, and mimes plucking a strand of hair from her head, and points to the guest.

[characterquarry]

Her guest has consumed the food and drink almost before it arrives.

She watches the magic things with a tired stare and raises an eyebrow at the hair thing, but obediently hands one over.

[light_another_life]

The young woman inclines her head, wraps the hair strand around the doll and ties it off so it won't come loose.

Then, with a perfect accent, she says in the guest's native language, "There, now we can talk. Um - hello, are you okay? You look exhausted."

[characterquarry]

"Big wave of attacks. I've been on no less than seven emergency Neuroi interceptions in the last sixty hours. Of course I'm exhausted. But I keep going. I'm young so my body can take it and I've still got plenty of mana, and if nobody kills the Neuroi hundreds or thousands will die. In fact, I'm almost too exhausted to be scared of all the weird magic you have. You're not a Witch, are you?"

[light_another_life]

"I am not a Witch," she agrees. "The Neuroi are the - monsters you showed in your illusions?"

[characterquarry]

"Yep. It's damn near impossible to kill the flying ones without magic, so we Witches can't just leave it to the regular army."

Her uniform has a nametag: Grendyne Nylund, Witch 3rd class, 42nd Witch Wing.

[light_another_life]

"Okay, you are - obviously from very very far away." That was such an understatement. "Do you know how you got here?"

[characterquarry]

She leans on a wall rather than continue to support herself standing up. "Lytee was doing a transit spell. It was supposed to teleport the entire wing from our base in Baltland to South Karlsland. I guess it got messed up. Is... Is this not the planet of Terra?"

[light_another_life]

"No. Uh. I can see about trying to get you back, but I - really can't guarantee anything, this is kind of unprecedented." She looks at Grendyne with concern. "Ah - I have chairs if you would like one, also more food and water, and I don't mind letting you sleep in my library."

[characterquarry]

"I'd just ask for more stimulants if I was still in a position to fight something, but it's not like I can get to the Neuroi from here. I appreciate the hospitality."

[light_another_life]

"Well, of course." She fetches more food and water. The food this time is bread with berries and nuts in it. The water is water. It's trying its best.

"How does your magic work?"

[characterquarry]

"I'm a Witch. About one in five hundred girls on my planet are Witches. We acquire our magic over our first few periods, it peaks in power when we're fifteen to eighteen, and then rapidly declines from there as we get older. The oldest active-duty Witch I know is 31, and she's coming up on retirement any day now. It's hard, fighting so hard at such a young age, but who else is gonna do it?"

"Anyway. All Witches can fly with the right tools - absolute minimum is a stick with twigs at one end, but my steelwing is a lot more sophisticated. We all get mana flashes - those lights - and starbursts, a really wasteful undirected magic blast attack that will exhaust you in a hurry if you rely on it too much. We can also do shields and a little elemental stuff. That's the basics. On top of that, every Witch gets a special thing they're intuitively good at. I'm a copier. I copy magic. It's never quite as easy as the person doing it themselves, but it makes me really versatile."

[light_another_life]

"Just Witch magic, or any magic?" wonders Saevetei, as she retrieves a chair for Grendyne. "And can you copy things you're not intuitively good at? Like a transit spell?"

[characterquarry]

"I've never actually seen any non-Witch magic before. I don't know if I can, but it'd be best to try it on something really simple. Mm. It's more like - My intuitive magic is copying. Whatever I copy, I'm never as intuitively good at it as those who have it natively. And I can only keep copied magic for more than an hour or two if it's really simple easy stuff. I could transit-spell a small object across a town right now, but not people, and definitely not to another dimension."

[light_another_life]

"Ah. Then I suppose I'll have to figure that out if we're to ever get you home. Okay. ... Do you feel up to testing if you can copy my magic, or would you rather pass on that for now?"

[characterquarry]

"I can try one or two things. But after that I'd like to sleep for about twenty hours. This is good food, by the way, much better than more stinking fish and rice again and again every day."

[light_another_life]

"Thank you. I can actually make, well, not literally everything, meat's a bit tricky still, but just about everything. Given time. I'll avoid fish and rice if you like." She puts the language-doll on a shelf with other dolls. "I'll put you in my library, if you don't mind? I'll need to make you a bed, but that's not especially hard. You can try copying my magic as I make it?"

[characterquarry]

"Sure, I'll try to copy some of your magic. I can get feedback about what you're doing even if I can't grab onto it. But first, what the hell happened out there if it wasn't Neuroi?"

[light_another_life]

"Well," says Saevetei, searching through a shelf for something, "basically - we can use a thing called essence for magic. Everyone, not just certain people. There are naturally wells of essence in the world, and for convenience we moved them to places that were easier to reach." Search search search ah ha! She retrieves a little strange circular device that looks to be made out of some kind of glimmering silver-blue net thing, with a copper frame. "And this turned out to be a really, really bad idea, because new wells of essence - we call them nodes - formed in the empty node-less places, but without any essence themselves. So they stole it from everything in the surrounding area, and this killed everything nearby." She goes looking through another shelf that looks like it's for vials of some kind.

"To make matters worse, the nodes that were all brought to the same location turned out to, ah, eat each other when put in close quarters. And the last node doesn't stop eating essence once it's run out of fellows to eat. Which also kills things." She retrieves a vial of clear liquid. "And both of those together caused that. I'm fixing it, but it takes a while."

[characterquarry]

"Ouch. I think I could hear the nodes when I listened to life. Glad I decided to avoid them. I'll probably have a better chance at copying anything you do if you explain what the stuff is for, by the way."

[light_another_life]

"Yes, they're very dangerous, some more than others. And sure, I can explain." She holds up the little net-thing. "This is an essence weave - it's kind of like a pattern for something. This one's for making a bed. The vial is a vial of pure essence - basically essence that is easy to prototype into other things. I'll be forcing the essence to follow the weave's pattern and turn itself into something." She motions for Grendyne to follow her out of the room. "It's possible to make something out of essence without a weave, actually, but it's difficult to do and very inefficient. I'm not very good at it, but I can do some things in a pinch."

[characterquarry]

"The pure essence smells like starbursts."

[light_another_life]

"Does it? It doesn't smell like anything to me. Is that a magic sense?"

[characterquarry]

"Yeah. I usually smell magic, that's how I wrap my head around it enough to copy it. I wonder if starbursts are the same stuff as essence? Should I try one on the roof or something?"