2nd Trial, Cylus, 719a
13th bell
13th bell
Continued from here
He didn't need to rush. He wasn't going anywhere. They were trapped here, the three of them (he'd didn't count an infant that barely even knew how to cry for its mother). He didn't know if all Rynmere was looking for them and the streets were flooded with hunters, or the news of the king's murder in Andaris City was just gossip. They couldn't take the chance, either way. Better to stay out here, across this inland sea they insisted on calling a lake, and wait for the trail to the coast to become... a little less narrow.
It wasn't Kasoria's first time. But those times, he'd had the sewers and tunnels to hide himself in. Burrow into the darkness like a rodent and wait for the storm to pass. But that was back when he was the Raggedy Man, and when he did not have magic.
How times change.
He didn't rush his Spark. He let the ache and hissing needles of his Overstepping drain out of him like poison from a wound. It gave him time to remember what Sima had taught him. Those handful of breaks that he'd burned into his brain like she'd burned her own Spark into his body to awaken his own. The lessons she'd taught and the damage she'd done.The wisdom she'd imparted, the warnings given.
Kasoria breathed in and opened his eyes to darkness. Darkness marred only by an ocean of sparks. He looked up and lost himself in the sky. No stars like this in Etzos; not the city, anyway. Too much light, too much smoke, too much architecture. You'd have to climb to the top of the Citadel or wait until the clouds were completely gone or the foundries still before you could glimpse such a panorama. But out there, by this "lake", miles from any settlement of note... there was nothing to trammel creation.
The murderer, the assassin, the fugitive, the mage. All of them sat in one body, silent and patient. Gnawing, jaded whispers plagued him as he sat there. What did he know of this peace, this calm, this tranquility? He was being of death and fury. He'd butchered more men than he could remember, and yes, women and children, too. He'd killed so often and so much that his mind scarcely noted the time it took for him to go from peaceable to slaughterer.
The whispers receded. They were old voices, old woes and fears and doubts. He could switch them off or dull them like another man would close a door on a rambling visitor. He shut the door, and bolted it. Turned his mind back to the lessons he had to learn. The power he had to manage. He breathed in and summoned his Spark as he did. By the time his chest swelled fully, he could feel it crackling about his upturned palms... and now he had just to will it.
Magic is power, and power has no form. Just the potential of form. A metal rock can be a plow, or a sword. An infant could be a great king, or a beggar. It all depends on how you mold it.
Kasoria breathed out, and pictured in his mind what he wanted. Pictured it according to what Sima had told him, all centered around a single phrase:
Preemptive Bubble
Well, mostly what Sima had told him. The first word was right, but the second word she'd used had been "field". Yet when she'd said it, hr hands had raised and his fingers spread and blossomed around her like... well, a bubble. Kasoria had latched onto the image then, and was doing so now. Whatever he needed to make the leap from the abstract to the reality. He was fat learning that when it came to magic, understanding of what you wanted was crucial. So when the ether started to flow from his palms, curling into the endless night of Cylus like green-black smoke, he knew what he wanted it to do.
He raised his hands in front of his face. Felt that lightning that was not lightning course across his rough skin. Then he spread out his hands... and the air around him began to fill with smoke.
Sheer, primal, human instinct told him to panic. It was smoke, after all. Logic and generations of inherited memory told him it was deadly. But he could breathe in the middle of it. In fact, when he breathed out... yet more ether came with the exhalation. The glow around the man in the Thunderbolt Position began to spread, covering him, shimmering around him. A bubble of magic that stretched from the moldy dock boards to the air above him. Kasoria looked around and realized that the sounds... weren't muted. The ether danced and writhed around him, making the air thick with itself, but every night sound of beast and insect and distant human was still as sharp as ever.
Kasoria suppressed a sigh. It was fine work, he thought, but only half-done.As with most Abrogation spells, you never knew how effective it was until it was tested, and that required another mage. This "Preemptive Bubble" was meant to weaken any magic cast towards him. If it penetrated the bubble, it would find the atmosphere within it... negative. Kasoria understood it as trying to get a man to fistfight under water. He could do it, yes, but he would be far weaker than if he were on dry land. Fireballs and jets of water, the Sap of Necromancy and the Jamming of Attunement... they would reach him, yet be shadows of their former power.
But you won't know, until you're tested.
The newly-minted mage sighed again, and began to drain the ether back into himself. More and more, waking up that mouthy little twat in the main house was looking like his only option.
But not quite yet.
