Ether and Candied Apples

[Alistair]

9th of Ymiden, Arc 718

Though he had delved into Transmutation in the past few trials, he was far from mastering it - or even breaching the concept of expertise. Alistair was a naturally gifted mage, with a patient and studious nature when it concerned the arcane, but with equal skill and innovative ability. For Transmutation, also, he wanted to innovate and grow and truly understand. He wanted to call himself a master - akin to Talia, if not superior. He was not far from being a true master of all three sparks, greater a mage than Ellasin in technical skill... and with Transmutation, he would bear many artifacts as she did - the thing that had previously pushed her beyond his own level of skill.

So of course, artifacts had always been his interest in his third and final spark. And to trial, he would delve further into them. Qualities, for one, were on his bucket list... and further, the full three steps in action. Though he had theorized of Deconstruction, Alteration and Reformation, he had only barely put the first two into practice - and thus, he was lacking in mechanical skill.

This trial, however, he planned on fulfilling the summation of his goals... which were still mostly to overcome his persistent incompetence. Alistair had three items before him - a steel masterwork longsword, that he had named quite romantically - once upon a dream. Bear Whisperer, a name adolescent and stupid... yet also endearing, and tragic. Further, a sleeve of Terrendyte breastmail, once owned by the man he'd named the blade after.

And finally, nothing but a candied apple, dipped recently in a thick caramel flavor, covered in it still, though it had hardened. He wanted to see if he could make one thing taste like another... though he was still uncertain as to whether consuming a Transmuted food product would be even remotely safe. Apparently, the artifacts had a tendency to corrode after a time. What would the stomach's flames do to such a thing? He could only wonder. Damien, surely, would be the test subject - it wasn't like it mattered, anyhow. Even if his stomach imploded, it would promptly after recover. Such was a Lich's misfortune.

[Jonathan Burr]

Jonathan had wrestled with everything in the last few dozen trials but he'd found a good middle man. Transmutation was his first spark, but Aberration would be just as grand if not grander. He had been practicing the more dubious magic as much as he'd been practicing the other. He had flayed, multiple times though Alistair was ignorant of his transgressions. He'd keep it that way. There was no reason for his lover to know. With the mastery of Transmutation had come changes. Large changes along his arms, the back of his neck and his shoulders in the form of large chunks of topaz. They were artfully arranged, beginning at the heel of his hand and the base of his hairline, slowly trickling into larger and larger stones. The largest of which at the center of his spine and the middle of his forearm, were inches long. He had to wear his sleeves rolled up at the elbow now, or risk shredding the hell out of them.

He had no fear of wielding the gemstones in Kaelserad. But he had to show Alistair eventually. That, and the deep furrows in the lips his lover kissed. His lips had split straight down the middle; it looked like someone had gone after his face with a very small, well-placed handaxe attack. The left and right sides of his upper and lower lips could now move in independent triangular flaps thanks to the mutation. Very much like Hob's own face. He might have wanted to show his lover the gemstones but he was afraid of what Alistair would think of his face.

He knocked quietly on his lover's office before entering. The first two objects on his lover's desk were...normal. A beautiful longsword, and a set of chainmail. The last...he raised an eyebrow at. "Didn't take you for having much of a sweet tooth." he said, a bit nervously. He raised an arm to ruffle his hair, throwing orange and amber light over the walls. "Um...I wanted to show you so you didn't panic. I woke up with these."

'Hiding them isn't going to do much good at this point, though I must say... I like the fact that we can kiss a little more normally now.'Hob chuckled in the back of his mind. The biggest change he dared not tell Alistair about.

[Alistair]

Amidst the quiet of his study, he found himself perplexed by what felt like new additions to his beloved blade... Bear Whisperer. Though he'd always known of its sharpness, durability and smooth perfection, he had not quite understood previously just how well it had been crafted. Even with the shaving scalpel of Sculpting, he could not have performed the shaping of a blade so excellently as this . . . a true smith's masterpiece. It was sharp, rigid and yet softer than skin. His touch left fingerprints visibly along the blade, the instant at which his fingers rose from the surface. Wiping down the blade had to be done with exceptional caution, as the sword would cut through any cloth or rag instantaneously.

He studied the quality of the steel itself. It was not made simply by arbitrary, smelted ore, but likely a refined batch of a more purified substance. The metal within each rock had been extracted, clumped together and smelted only then. He nodded his head, observing the object intently. Until he felt that he understood it; the sheer, dicing, rigid, unbending blade before him.

As he raised his hand and reached for the following object of examination, the Terrendyte mail, he was interrupted by the subtle sounds of footsteps as a man - too weighty to be Kleine and too quick to be Damien - approached his office. He could tell by the footsteps alone that it was Jonathan - Alistair's perception, of late, had been trained to a perfect pitch.

Yelling for the man to come inside, he turned to view him, immediately glancing upon the partition of his lips. Alistair's brow rose, though he didn't make any estranged or unfortunate expression. He was not disturbed so much as he was perplexed. Then, as Jonathan stated he'd woken with this... alteration, Alistair understood. It was a mutation - a transmogrification of his normal, physical form, to reflect cast-off oddities manifest within his spark. Alistair immediately smiled, faintly, and accepted it.

"Why would I panic?" he asked, face shifting to demonstrate a... lightness. He was clearly, completely unbent by the revelation of Jonathan's change. "Magic is a beautiful thing, and so are its mutations. How can I claim to be a leader for our kind if I recoil in disgust from what the spark may produce?" Alistair asked this rhetorically, dismissing Jonathan's worries with an approving nod. The mage then gestured for the other to sit beside him, as he turned back to view the objects. The Terrendyte. The apple.

"Transmutation will change me, soon," he spoke, into a lulled whisper. "But my sparks - all of them - are quiet. And patient. Perhaps, in my quest to make them an unfeeling tool, they have lost their drive to shift me away from the humanity I so belong to. I do not know." He said this with risen eyes, looking out through the frame of the window, with a sort of... lost splendor in his gaze. It was clear that a part of him regretted treating his own sparks as such... but as a man with so many goals, and dreams, and such a vast ideology, he could not abandon his humanity. He needed to remain as he was.

[Jonathan Burr]

A little sigh of relief fell from Jonathan's lips. Had he figured out the mutation was due to advancing in Aberration? He might not have. His face was twisting to reflect Hob's. He knew what Alistair meant when he said he was a leader for their kind. He meant of all mages except Aberration and Necromancy. No, those he wished to either subjugate or destroy. He wasn't truly for all of their kind, but Jon wasn't about to get into that argument with him just yet. He stepped closer to Alistair, smirking a bit. "I thought you'd be a little scared of it. I mean...the gemstones are beautiful, but my lips...I don't think they're ever going to be the same." he said, demonstrating a little by lifting the left flap of his upper lip. It looked strange, exposing his teeth and gums like that. "They're...stronger than I expected them to be."

He stood next to Alistair and slid an arm around his waist. He winced when his topaz crystals caught and bit into the fabric. His arm wasn't built for smooth motions anymore. He lifted them, shaking the slightly ragged fabric free, and encircled Alistair's waist. "You have to stop treating your sparks like slaves and tools. Let them change you. I only feel stronger because of it." Jon urged. "You're still human. Just marked by the spark. It doesn't make you any different on the inside. Besides..." he chuckled and spread his lips wide, waggling them a bit. It looked like some sort of demented, four-petaled flower made out of flesh. "...I think I can find a use for these in the bedroom."

Jon's attention shifted to the sword and he approached it, laying his hand flat on it. His ether gently touched the steel. It was a skilled blacksmith that had made such a thing. He couldn't find any hints of cracks or weakness in it. The surface was smooth if a bit scratched from use. He frowned. "I didn't think you were proficient in a longsword." he mentioned.

"Talkin"

[Alistair]

Somewhere throughout the day -- through his observations and ministrations -- Jon and him had gone their separate ways. The other mage had gone off to practice... something undisclosed, which to Alistair certainly meant Aberration, at least presumptuously. That was fine. The mage continued to research and understand the Quality of Terrendyte, or more specifically, its durability. He realized that by learning how to mimic the durability of Terrendyte through Transmutation, he could infinitely replicate the exceptional properties of the metal, even far away from Uthaldria and without the specific material at hand. He only needed to ensure that he did it correctly the first few times, so that he did not begin to delve into the incorrect formula.

Alistair imagined that the same could be done for the sharpness of Sorelian Steel. He wondered if one would conflict with the other -- if you could not have the durability of Terrendyte, and also the sharpness of a more precise, cutting-edge weapon. The inquiry would have to wait, however, as he had none of the mentioned material on hand. Terrendyte it would have to be.

He felt that he understood, now, the quality of the Terrendyte metal. It was extremely thickly woven - even the ore were densely comprised of the metal itself, with very little diluted content. The ore had little compromising materials within its core, and thus smelting it was rather easy. The only issue was smithing it, he could imagine; it was so thick and dense that it would be hard to mold, and any one mistake would dry and force the smith to smelt it once more, likely to lose product due to the density of the material; it would sink, and stick to the edges. The more he considered each property of the metal, the more he began to understand how the thing worked. And in fact, he learned of Qualities in general; every object he studied had its own inherent traits, that were usually as a result of other traits, which typically had their benefits and drawbacks. Everything in nature seemed to develop for a particular reason, and though he'd scarcely thought of such things before, studying the magic before him seemed to bring him closer to that understanding.

Regardless, it was time to mage-smith, as he quite accurately called it. Now that he understood the quality of the Durability of Terrendyte, he would attempt to imbue it into one of his shirts, to create an extremely dense layer of armor that was portable and non-imposing, and would not constrict his movements. He did note, however, that the density of the layer - like his shirt - would result in less of that durability actually guarding him. They would only need to puncture a fraction of an inch of Terrendyte to pierce his shirt, whereas with true plate, it would be a much more difficult measure. Alistair decided that, as a compromise, he could likely just imbue the trait into studded leather . . . but that was for later. This was a test.

He had to remember the steps, and perform them accurately. Alistair placed the shirt into a large 'basin' on the ground, and began to deconstruct it, the first of the three steps towards mage-smithing. The item began to glow translucently, before seemingly entering a state between Idalos and Emea; it was now without touch or feel, only the shimmering false image of its previous shape. Which made it perfect for recreation, or alteration, or painting. Alistair began to imbue the property he wished upon it; the durability and hardness of Terrendyte. Imagining the rigidity and the density of the materials within the cloth, he imparted the thickness of the metal to it. Feeling that he had correctly contributed the hardness he wished onto the item, Alistair finished by reconstructing it, or returning it to the plane of Idalos.

And doing so was, at his current expertise, rather easy. It took him some time, but carefully re-imaging the item and shaping it back onto the world was easy enough. After some time, the shirt had returned to him, and he picked it from the ground, raising it high.

Alistair prepared his spear in one hand, and lightly attempted to plunge it through. To his pleasant surprise, it did not in fact puncture the shirt, though his attempt was not considerable in force. He knew that a very focused, hard attempt at ripping through would likely do the trick, especially considering the thin layer involved. Transmutation still had to work within the framework of the item.

Finally, as he knew he would be making a better item with the same qualities at some point, he tested a theory of his upon the item by attempting to use Absorption on it. By doing so, he wondered if he could sap the quality of the item from the material, thus returning it to its regularity. Alistair placed his palm upon the object, and ether began to spread across the surface, before even more ether was drawn back to the center of his hand. He then, with his bare palm, attempted to rip at the cloth and see if it would break. It, in fact, did - as if the density of the Terrendyte material had suddenly gone away; he'd quite literally ripped it out.

There was much to consider, here. For now, content in his findings and practice in the art, his day was to be utilized treating patients.

As he worked, he remembered the apple - and that he forgot to do what he wanted to do. Imbue the shirt with the taste of a candied apple and try to see if licking it would do anything. He then realized that was a very odd, and stupid, idea. The end.

[Cervantez]

mine

[Cervantez]

Ether and Candied Apples

☠ ======== ☠ ======== ☠ ======== ☠ ======== ☠

☠
Points awarded: 15 {which can be used for Transmutation}

Knowledge:

Transmutation: Quality: The durability of Terrendyte
Transmutation: Items are still bound by their inherent characteristics
Transmutation: Absorption: Can strip mage-crafted items of their qualities

Fame: n/a

Loot: -1 Shirt

Notes: Not much to be said with this one, it was a good start but unfortunately never bloomed into something. Enjoy your points

Your review request is HERE

Please include the following stamp to your review request:

Code: Select all

[center][img]/gallery/image/15325/medium[/img][/center][/center]

☠ ======== ☠ ======== ☠ ======== ☠ ======== ☠