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

[light_another_life]

"Poppets do wear out eventually and need to be replaced, but - reasonably permanent, yes. I don't mind making it at all." She retrieves the weave and reviews the steps. It's certainly not the most difficult thing she's done, but she's not quite good enough to jump straight into making it without a review. Best to be safe. Arrogance gets her a lot of wasted essence.

Watching her technique is interesting. She's methodical, but instead of only doing one timed section at a time, she juggles two (and at one point, three) at once. The reason for this becomes apparent as she finishes - it gives her a bit more time to complete a very tricky section at the end.

And then she has a deceptively ordinary looking purple gemstone. It's pretty, but doesn't look very magical.

"Filling it is actually a completely different sort of thing than making it," she says, offering Grendyne the gem for inspection. "And I'll show you that thing with something simpler before we touch charging this. It took me years to get charging an attunement stone right, though, I warn you. It's okay if you hand it off to me to do."

[witchwatcher]

She's going over some more detailed notes right now.

"Starting with something simple sounds better, yes. The ability to sense what's going on and practice at shaping magic, albeit a different sort, only goes so far. Will charging it incorrectly ruin the stone?"

[light_another_life]

"A bit, yes. Charging it badly enough will, ah, cause it to explode." Pause. "... I'll just be honest, okay? It's killed me before. I really don't recommend it when you're just beginning."

[witchwatcher]

"You're the expert. I think I'll try making one again, since that, at least, is nonlethal."

She gets it wrong again. It's not like she doesn't have essence to spare on all this trial-and-error, though. And after a half-dozen more tries, she produces an acceptable result. Hurray!

[light_another_life]

Saevetei offers suggestions throughout, but soon enough there's not much she can offer. It's really just practice. So, she retrieves a book and has them both move outside while Grendyne's attempting to get the attunement stone right. The place she moves them to has a large stone dais and a little shed-like thing that's filled with various items. Nearby is a neat little firepit, with a stand that looks like it's meant for a cauldron or pot of some kind. The cauldron or pot in question must be inside the shed.

She flips through her book to the correct page, reads the instructions, and then goes and retrieves other items she'll apparently need. A few of them were made by Grendyne, but others, like a little case filled with various colors of magical chalk, were not. She's just about gathered everything up when Grendyne successfully makes the gem.

"Congratulations!" she says sincerely.

[witchwatcher]

"You're right about how complicated this stuff is. I think I'm only doing as well as I am because I already have years' worth of experience copying stuff. I feel like I should be learning the theory behind it, too. Is this feeling correct?"

[light_another_life]

"I think you should," she agrees. "But the theory behind it would, ah. Take a while. And I'd want to get you some books that would explain it better than I could, which needs the poppet. But I can explain some basic principles, if you like."

[witchwatcher]

"I'd appreciate it. It's not like there's a school of magic where I come from - Witch powers are all intuitive."

[light_another_life]

Saevetei nods.

"Right, so - this - version of magic, I suppose, is based around leading essence from reasonably ordinary objects down certain chalk paths to refine them into what I need them to be. I can't just pick anything, the object has to have some relevant kind of essence. I gathered things for an easy demonstration, and the thing I'm making we'll need for connecting you to the dream world anyway. So. I thought it'd be smart to do it all at once."

She kneels down and starts drawing with a white chalk, only occasionally checking the book. It looks like a pretty simple design.

"So this is really, really easy, for a ritual circle. There isn't a lot of refining necessary, just pulling out what I need from various things I'll be using." She motions to a modest stack of apparent ingredients. It mostly seems to be plants, but there is a clear glass lens and a pouch filled with something. "The different colors of chalk do different things - some of them are naturally the colors they turn out to be, others are color coded to keep it from being confusing. White chalk doesn't do much of anything, except move things." Draw draw draw. The lines don't look random, but there's not an obvious pattern to them. "But even when it just moves things, some essence is lost. The longer the chalk line, the more that is lost. This is what's supposed to happen, because you're trying to get it to a certain power level and type."

More drawing! The chalk is sort of all flowing towards a central place. Saevetei has started having some chalk lines combine - others purposefully meander. She doesn't connect all of them, though. Some are purposefully separate.

"Golden chalk," she explains, once she's apparently done drawing in white, "is - not quite like the other types of chalk. For one, it doesn't lose essence that travels along it, and it doesn't change it at all. For another, it steals from nearby chalk lines. It doesn't need to touch the chalk line, actually, it just needs to be within a certain distance. And that distance changes depending on which type of chalk you're using. Because of this, it's almost completely useless in the actual refinement part of the ritual - in some complicated ones it crops up in tandem with how different chalks have different stealing distances, but that's very very advanced. It's used in the attunement ritual."

She draws in golden chalk, at the center of the... thing.

"But, it is incredibly useful for the final parts of most rituals. It'll just grab everything you funnel into it without losing anything, and from there you finish off the rest of the ritual. Make sense?"

[witchwatcher]

"I'm probably missing scads of nuance here, but I get the general idea. I make little charts of how Witch specials run, sometimes. This ritual stuff is more definite and literal than that, though. Seems like a lot of math. And this is an easy one?"

[light_another_life]

"This is an easy one," she affirms. "And there's - just me drawing it for you wouldn't actually solve the problem, because the chalk isn't what's pulling the essence down it, it's the person doing the ritual. You can compensate for mistakes you make in the drawing by pulling faster or slower, but the other side of that coin is you can screw it up, too."

[witchwatcher]

"This is the sort of thing I am less used to copying. I probably have to learn it the long way, alas. At least it's interesting."

[light_another_life]

"It is that, certainly," agrees Saevetei, somewhat wryly. "I tend to avoid it if I can, though. I don't exactly suck at it, but it's. Not my favorite thing."

[witchwatcher]

Gren makes a confused face at the word 'suck'. "I think the translation poppet is having difficulties. Or possibly it's just a culture difference."

[light_another_life]

"Oh." She blinks. "No, that's not the poppet's fault, that's mine, sorry. Cultural difference. For reference, sickly nodes suck the life out of things because they're empty of life themselves. So..."

[witchwatcher]

"Ah, I see. Let's keep the fact that we've lived in two very different worlds in mind the next time one of us confuses the other. So, why do both these plants get the same sort of chalk?"

[light_another_life]

"Since I'm the one pulling the essence, I can sort of - choose what to pull, and what to allow to get lost. And this is a very, very old ritual that has been tailored down many, many times to make it as easy as possible on the one doing it; everything that would have needed the fancier chalk has been carefully replaced with something that doesn't and works just as well."

[witchwatcher]

She spends however long Saevetei will tolerate asking questions and confirming her understanding of the ritual. The details are all fuzzy and she gets several outright wrong, but hey, she's new at this.

[light_another_life]

Saevetei is pretty tolerant of answering questions. Many are answered. Specifics are explained.

Apparently all of the chalk can pull from other chalk, gold's just notable because it's lossless. She explains some more details of exactly what she's doing for the ritual, and upon running out of jargon that will make sense to Grendyne, she somewhat wryly offers to let Grendyne try just draining a single item through chalk just to get a feel for how it works, not to do anything at all.

Then she recalls that Grendyne probably needs a demonstration first. Would she like one? The ritual is ready, anyway.

[witchwatcher]

"I might or might not be able to do it without a demonstration, but you're ready, so may as well go ahead."

[light_another_life]

"All right then."

She sets down a bowl of what looks to be water on the golden chalk, and - definitely does something. It starts as reaching out and pulling on all of the assorted items, and then she keeps pulling, down and down and down the chalk...

It requires some micromanagement, but not as much as one might expect. Once she starts the pull something like momentum helps keep whatever it is going, and she adjusts based on various factors that Grendyne's not quite privy to. And soon enough it's all pulled into the gold chalk, still moving even when it's all in the same place, and she carefully combines them in an inscrutable order and then shoves that into the what-looks-to-be-water.

The what-looks-to-be-water turns milky white and sort of shimmery.

"Done," pronounces Saevetei. "Though I expect you'll get more out of it if you do it yourself."

[witchwatcher]

"Probably, yes. Have I told you that your ridiculously wide variety of magic is fascinating and interesting yet? I have, haven't I? Though a lot of what you've been doing seems to work with objects, and Witches are very much focused on immediate effects. I'd like to try pulling essence, if you don't mind."

[light_another_life]

"Thank you," she says, amused. "I like it. I'll get something to let you pull essence, yeah. We have the ridiculously wide variety of magic from - well, lots of people all over the world taking it in vastly different directions. And then we got good at fast transportation, and started combining them, and now it's a bit of a mess."

She draws out a simple line of chalk, long and straight, and picks a flower to leave at the end of it.

"There you are. I can offer instruction if it'll help, but you do the - copy thing, so."

[witchwatcher]

She smirks a bit at 'copy thing'. "Here I go."

...She manages that incredibly simple application of ritual chalk with aplomb. "Yeah, that'll be tricky when I have to juggle a couple dozen streams of it. It'll be something to practice in between the other stuff."

[light_another_life]

"It gets easier," she assures. "But yeah."